Americas

Saturday, September 11, 2010, 7:00 p.m. Join Sergio Reyes of the Boston May Day Committee and Latin@s for Social Change for a survey of the radical changes and advances in Latin American constitutional development. Using his firsthand impressions of the process in Bolivia and a textual analysis of the new constitution of the Plurinational Republic of Bolivia, Reyes will provide his assessment and lead the conversation. Additional speakers and experiences will be announced shortly. Sponsored by the Boston May Day Committee.

Friday, September 10, 2010, 7:00 p.m. The Community and Resistance Tour seeks to communicate about current struggles for justice and liberation, from the current BP Oil Drilling Disaster devastating the Gulf Coast to nooses hung in the northern Louisiana town of Jena. From women organizing inside prisons to cultural resistance. The tour also seeks to connect communities of liberation, and to build relationships between grassroots activists and independent media. This tour is for anyone interested in issues of health care, education, criminal justice, housing, or the ways in which systems of racism, patriarchy and other forms of oppression intersect with these struggles.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010, 6:30 p.m. Radical author and historian  Paul Street speaks about his new book: The Empire's New Clothes: Barack Obama and the Real World of Power. Paul is an independent radical-democratic policy researcher, journalist, historian, and speaker based in Iowa City, Iowa, and Chicago. He is the author of four books to date: Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2004); Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (New York: Routledge, 2005); Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis: a Living Black Chicago History (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2007); and (most recently) Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics.

Street’s essays, articles, reviews, and commentaries have appeared in numerous outlets, including the Chicago Tribune, Capital City Times, In These Times, Chicago History, Journal of American Ethnic History, Social History, Review of Educational, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Dissent, Black Agenda Report, Dissident Voice, Black Commentator, Monthly Review, History News Network, Tom’sDispatch, AlterNet., and (above all) ZNet and Z Magazine.

For more on Paul and his work, go to http://www.paulstreet.org/

Sponsored by the Authority Smashers Collectivehttp://www.authoritysmashers.wordpress.com and Mass. Global Action.

Thursday, July 8, 2010, 6:00 p.m. Ana Justo has been a leader of Brazil 's Landless Workers Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra - MST) for 23 of its 25 years. The largest social movement in Latin America, the MST has 1.5 million members. The MST struggles for land reform, access to healthcare, schools, organic production and infrastructure by promoting ground-up sustainable development based in the needs of all Brazilians. Ana coordinates the Secretariat of the MST's Florestan Fernandes National School located in Guararema, Sao Paulo. This event is sponsored by Grassroots International.

A Story of Mexico City

Thursday, April 29, 2010, 7:00 p.m. Join renowned journalist John Ross for an evening connecting the people of Latin America and the United States... Nor ordinary scribe, Ross’ writing and presentations blend beat generation poetry with magical realist prose all while rooted in concrete social struggles and real politics... Ross leaves his audiences inspired to action and craving social change...

April 20, 2010, 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. Join organizers and activists in Cochabamba, Bolivia and New York City for a live interactive conversation as part of the Climate and Mother Earth Rights conference (hosted by the people of Bolivia).  This global interaction is part of the Cochabamba Expanded conversation organized by May First/People Link.

Saturday, February 13, 2010, 6:00 p.m. Join Victor Wallis and Sylvia Escarcega in a discussion concerning the potential political and ethical contributions of indigenous thought and social movements to building alternatives to capitalism. Victor's paper, "Beyond 'Green Capitalism'" recently published in Monthly Review (61:9, February, 2010) provides a starting point for the conversation. In it, he notes the connection between the present economic recession, the crisis-ridden character of capitalist economy and the ecological limits to the capitalist growth model. But he goes on to observe that most of the world is still caught up in capitalist institutions and does not yet recognize the link between socialism and ecologically appropriate responses. He finds hope and examples in the Global South, insurgent socialism and indigenous resistance.

Friday, March 5, 2010, 8:00 p.m. [Updated flyers attached] Join  Paul Baker Hernandez (from Nicaragua), Sergio Reyes, Dave Scandurra & The Excited People, The Grass Gypsys.

Paul Baker Hernandez - Eco-Minstrel performing Songs of Loveliness and Courage

Paul has invaded Queen Elizabeth II’s private castle heading a posse of bishops and other church leaders protesting nuclear weapons, confronted popes with protest songs for global justice, joined Hollywood stars on Central American picket lines in Los Angeles, and helped fight off death squads attacking Salvadoran exiles right in the heart of the USA.

He now lives in Nicaragua where he has founded Echoes of Silence, a network of “artists with broken nails” who support community health, education, ecological and cultural projects, and with whom he continues to write irreverent songs about cell phones, dictators, Starbucks, and more.

Thursday, February 4, 2010, 7:00 p.m. In the face of a deepening economic crisis and continuing brutal raids on immigrant workers and their communities, this event brings together union workers, immigrant organizers and community activists. It is part of the campaign by the Boston May Day Committee and its affiliates to unite workers across sector and borders. Join the conversation and help build toward May Day 2010!

Visit BostonMayDay.org for more information 

Thursday, January 28, 2010, 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. While Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez continues to capture headlines, a much larger story involving a wider cast of characters has gone largely ignored. Venezuela Speaks!, published by PM Press, is a collection of interviews with activists and participants from across Venezuela’s social movements. From community media to land reform, cooperatives to communal councils, from the labor movement to the Afro-Venezuelan network, Venezuela Speaks! sheds light on the complex realities within the Bolivarian Revolution.

A Discussion with Aarti Shahani, Mizue Aizeki & Joe Nevins

Wednesday, December 30, 2009, 5:30 p.m. Immigration reform will soon be on the national legislative agenda. All options on the table punish immigrants for global economic and policy failures. To consider the different bills, in particular the one that many progressives may offer critical support--HR 4321 aka the Guiterrez Bill--three important thinkers, Aarti Shahani (founder of Families for Freedom), Mizue Aizeki and Joseph Nevins (most recently authors of Dying to Live: A Story of U.S. Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid) will join us for an early evening conversation and light dinner.

See here for summaries: 1. from the Immigration Policy Institute (this is an Adobe Acrobat [PDF] file)

Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 7:00 p.m. "My name is Martha Lucia Giraldo Villano and I was born on June 22, 1978 in Cauca, Colombia. I am the daughter of José Orlando Giraldo, a small-scale farmer who was the victim of an extrajudicial killing by the National Army. In my country, there have been many extrajudicial killings that are also categorized as false positives (the killing of innocent civilians to pass them off as guerrillas killed in combat within the context of Colombia's armed conflict). The execution of my father is an example of a 'false-positive' murder."

"I am part of the Victims of State Crimes Movement. Along with other victims, we work together on organizing and training in order to demand our rights to truth, justice and reparation."

Saturday, November 7, 2009, 6:30 p.m. Mexico-US Solidarity Network invites you to join us for a discussion of popular education in Zapatista indigenous communities and the role of urban academics as resources in constructing an autonomous education system.

Patricia Hernández, a sociologist specializing in education & gender, has worked since 2001 with indigenous communities to develop their primary and secondary schools, following a model of "autonomous education." She worked intensively with indigenous teachers—called "education promoters" (promoter@s)—to develop the secondary school for indigenous children living in the Zona Selva Tzeltal. Local leaders, who oversaw the project, wanted the community's demands for land, food, peace, justice and democracy to serve as the content for classes on history, language and mathematics.

Thursday, October 22, 2009, 7:00 p.m. Grahame Russell of Rights Action, recently returned from Honduras and Guatemala, speaks about popular resistance to mining and the coup in Honduras. The event is a kickoff for the Committee in Solidarity with People of El Salvador (CISPES)'s anti-mining campaign. Contact the organizers, Boston CISPES [e-mail bostoncispes speakeasy net], for more information.