[act-ma] Left Forum: Online Classes and Seminars in June

Amy Hendrickson amyh at texnology.com
Wed May 27 10:15:36 PDT 2020


 




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Upcoming and Ongoing Online Events!


While our annual conference has been postponed for now, we are still planning and organizing different online events and classes. Please see below and stay tuned for more as we continue planning for the summer and fall moving forward. Safety and solidarity!

 




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Today’s Two Depressions: Economic and Psychological 


 


June 11th and June 18th 6-8PM EST Online



This is a discussion seminar. Each session will start with short presentations by Harriet Fraad and Richard Wolff following by discussion among all participants utilizing interactive software.

We are confronted today by a global, viral pandemic and a global capitalist crash. Illness, death, fears about both, and isolating social lock-down have arrived without adequate preparation but with profound psychological effects. The failure to prepare for such a situation also triggered the latest capitalist crash (the 3rd since  2000 after the dot-com crash in 2000 and the sub-prime mortgage crisis in 2008). Today’s economic devastation now rivals the worst in capitalism’s history, namely the Great Depression of the 1930s. We are thus forced to endure 2 simultaneous depressions, one psychological and one economic. They worsen each other, yet also open the space for social movements for basic social and personal change.

Dr. Harriet Fraad has been a mental health counselor and hypnotherapist for many years in private practice in New York City.

Richard Wolff has been a professor of economics at several universities, currently at The New School University in New York. Both presenters have also long been political activists. 

Their work can be found at democracyatwork.info, harrietfraad.com, and rdwolff.com.


 



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Re-imagining Work in a Post-Pandemic World 


 


June 23rd and 30th 6PM - 8PM EST Online

“Reimagining Work in a Post-Pandemic World” will be a two-session set of collaborative conversations meant as a preliminary exploration of how to envision a radically different understanding of the nature of work and its place in our everyday lives. We’ll combine some reflections on our own working lives, some readings exploring the nature of work in non-conventional ways, and lots of discussion about how to articulate and begin to implement a radical shift in the meaning and structure of work on an individual and societal level. We’ll discuss the implications and viability of some currently percolating, potentially paradigm-shifting projects and proposals such as a guaranteed Universal Basic Income, Worker Cooperatives, and the emergence of networks of locally based mutual aid projects that have blossomed during the corona shutdown. Readings for these sessions will mostly be short, including some poetry and excerpts from David Graeber’s provocative book, Bullshit Jobs. Participants’ suggestions for additional readings and discussion topics are welcome. The hope is that this two-session set of (virtually presented) conversations will be a starting point for more extensive future explorations of work in the post-pandemic world, connected, as much as possible, to existing and emerging, community and workplace-based undertakings.

Paul Wasserman is a (mostly) retired adult education teacher and program director. His lifetime of political activism has included: rank and file labor organizing (Taxi Rank & File Coalition); Central America solidarity work; food justice advocacy and project development; immigrant support; mutual aid and solidarity/cooperative economy support. His approach to teaching, political activism and program administration has been shaped by his commitment to building and nurturing democratic, collaborative communities. He currently serves as co-president of his local community garden.


 



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Blood and Colonization: New Norms, New Structures – Lived Human Rights and Collaborative Community in the 21st Century 


 


Sunday June 21st 3PM-5PM & Sunday June 28th 3PM-5PM EST Online



In this two-part discussion-centered theory and practice course, participants will explore the origins of the United States, a settler-colonial nation grounded in dehumanizing “chattel-ization,” white supremacy and the mass extraction of labor, racialized narratives in the service of social ranking, and the formation of apartheid structures institutionalized by law and enforced by social custom and violence.

Kimberly Westcott is a practicing lawyer and instructor who works in the areas of prison abolition, anti-racism and human rights.

Robert Drinan is a practicing lawyer in the area of labor and employment in New York City.


 



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>From the New Spirit of Capitalism to the Lost Spirit and Mind of Capitalism: The Proletarianization of the World to States of Shock 


 


June 29th, July 6th and July 13th 6-8PM EST Online



An Introduction to the timely thought of Bernard Stiegler with Michael Pelias

This course is sponsored by  <https://leftforum.ourpowerbase.net/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=132326&qid=7574040> Left Forum and the  <https://leftforum.ourpowerbase.net/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=132331&qid=7574040> Institute for the Radical Imagination



Three sessions on the crucial work of Bernard Stiegler and its importance for our time(s):

The work of the seminal French philosopher, Bernard Stiegler will be introduced and encountered through 3 fundamental moments of his thought.

Michael Pelias has taught Philosophy at LIU Brooklyn for nearly 30 years and a founding member of the journal, Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination, a founder of the Institute for the Radical Imagination. His latest essays are “The Greek Boat People: Exile and Creativity,” and “Disaster Unionism: lessons learned from an academic union failure(s),” and a joint book project on the Techniques of Servitude, a philosophical—psychoanalytical approach to the contemporary logic of self-interest and submission.


 



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Prosperity Marxism: Birth of the Binge 


 


In the most recent episode of Prosperity Marxism from the  <https://leftforum.ourpowerbase.net/sites/all/modules/civicrm/extern/url.php?u=132331&qid=7574040> Institute for the Radical Imagination, Michael Pelias and Peter Bratsis discuss Dennis Broe’s recent book “Birth of the Binge” in light of the massive increase in media consumption due to COVID19. Birth of the Binge: Serial TV and the End of Leisure describes and details serial television and “binge watching,” the exceedingly popular form of contemporary television viewing that has come to dominance over the past decade. Author Dennis Broe looks at this practice of media consumption by suggesting that the history of seriality itself is a continual battleground between a more unified version of truth-telling and a more fractured form of diversion and addiction. Serial television is examined for the ways its elements (multiple characters, defined social location, and season and series arcs) are used alternately to illustrate a totality or to fragment social meaning. Broe follows his theoretical points with detailed illustrations and readings of several TV series in a variety of genres, including the systemization of work in Big Bang Theory and Silicon Valley; the social imbrications of Justified; and the contesting of masculinity in Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and Dollhouse.




 



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