[act-ma] Tonight - Lessons from the 60s; Thursday - Landless Workers Mvmnt (MST) @ e5

[Suren Moodliar]

Please see the 2 exciting events at encuentro 5 (33 Harrison Ave, 5th
floor, Boston, MA 02111, http://www.encuentro5.org) below and also
check out our conference this weekend
(http://digitalmediaconference.org):

1. Monday, October 17, 2011, 7:00 p.m. The historians of the late
1960s have emphasized the work of a small group of white college
activists and the Black Panthers, activists who courageously took to
the streets to protest the war in Vietnam and continuing racial
inequality. Poor and working-class whites have tended to be painted as
spectators, reactionaries, and, even, racists. Most Americans, the
story goes, just watched the political movements of the sixties go by.

James Tracy and Amy Sonnie, who have been interviewing activists from
the 1960s for nearly ten years, reject this old narrative. In five
tightly conceived chapters, they show that poor and working-class
whites, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther
Party, started to organize significant political movements against
racism and inequality during the 1960s.

Their book explores an untold history the New Left. Challenging the
Right for the allegiance of white workers, a diverse network of new
political groups helped to redefine community organizing at a pivotal
moment in the history of the United States, collaborating with their
better known colleagues in SDS and the Black Panthers.

These organizations kept the vision of an interracial movement of the
poor alive by working arm in arm with Dr. Martin Luther King and the
Puerto Rican Young Lords and, in so doing, gave rise to a generation
of community organizers. In the best tradition of people's history,
Tracy and Sonnie bring these diverse and groundbreaking movements
alive.

2. Thursday, October 20, 2011, 6:00 p.m. Building Grassroots Power:
The Experience of the Landless Workers Movement (MST, Brazil) with
Janaina Stronzake, MST’s Florestan Fernandes National School.