Please forward
or repost
Upcoming Brecht Forum Conference
CHALLENGING THE COLOR LINE:
CONFRONTING ISSUES OF RACE AND CLASS IN THE ERA
OF GLOBAL
CAPITAL
Friday, February 22 to Sunday, February 24
*******NOTE:
THIS CONFERENCE WILL BE HELD AT THE NYU LAW SCHOOL.
ADDRESS
BELOW************
212.242.4201
info@brechtforum.
www.brechtforum.org
"The problem of the twentieth century is the
problem of the color line--the
relation of the darker races to the lighter
races of men and women in Asia
and in Africa, in America and the islands of
the sea."
--from The Soul of Black Folks by W.E.B. Du Bois
* The
Brecht Forum;
* New York University's Africana Studies Program and
Institute of African American Affairs;
* The Walter Rodney Institute for
Social Research; and
* The W.E.B. Du Bois Foundation
present a
conference:
CHALLENGING THE COLOR LINE: CONFRONTING ISSUES OF RACE AND
CLASS IN THE ERA
OF GLOBAL CAPITAL
Friday, February 22 to Sunday,
February 24
at New York University Law School
Tishman
Auditorium*
40 Washington Square South
New York City
(*and other
locations to be announced)
On the occasion of W.E.B. Du Bois' 134th
birthday, this conference seeks to
bring together progressive activists and
analysts to assess the ways the
issue of race and racism has changed in the
last 100 years, to look at how
racist ideology is ingrained in our culture,
and to advance a dialogue on
how we can work to solve the problem of the
color line in this new century.
One hundred years ago, W.E.B. Du Bois
placed solving the problem of the
color line on the historical agenda as
central to any new vision of a just
and egalitarian society. Now, we find
ourselves in the era of global capital
and, rather than declining, racism is
on the rise. Both at home and around
the world, the gap between wealth and
poverty is growing rather than
declining, and the suffering falls in ever
higher proportions on people of
color.
At the dawn of the 21st
century, new movements are emerging to challenge
globalization with the
belief that a better world is possible--from the
anti-World Bank, IMF and WTO
struggles that burst into the public eye in
1999 in Seattle, to the 2001
World Conference on Racism in Durban, South
Africa that, despite a U.S.
boycott, identified colonialism and the
trans-Atlantic slave trade as crimes
against humanity, and now to the new
anti-war movement that is coming into
being following the events of
September 11.
Yet perhaps Du Bois
identified the key a century ago : if we want to build a
broad-based,
multi-faceted democratic movement that can confront the
cultural, political
and economic offensive of global capitalism, we must
place the struggle for
racial justice at the center of our struggles.
*** Partial List of
Themes and Workshop Topics ***
The "racial moment"--the role and
relevance of race for global capitalism in
the post-apartheid/post-civil
rights global racial formation and the
structural and cultural forces
unleashed by capitalist globalization.
--The Color Line today: Retreat,
retrenchment or progress?
--The post-Durban global anti-racist
movement
--Labor, immigration, and race in the global
economy
--Race, ideology and media in the 21st
century
--Responsibilities of white people in the struggle for racial
justice
--Combating racial tensions among people of
color
--Repression and police brutality; challenging the Prison
Industrial Complex
--Resistance to racism in popular
culture
*** Partial List of Participants ***
Sam
Anderson
Charles Barron
Nellie Bailey
Kai Lumumba Barrow
Humberto
Brown
Dennis Brutus
Horace Campbell
Kimberly Crenshaw*
Bhairavi
Desai
Teresa El Amin
Bill Fletcher
Hector Figueroa
Trichur
Ganesh
Gerald Horne
Gerald Hudson
Rashidah Ismaili
Maulana
Karenga
Robin D.G. Kelley
Peter Kwong
Augustin Lao*
Evelyn
Lynn
Alfredo Lopez
Sharon Maeda
Biju Mathew
Asha Samad
Matias
Muntu Matsimela
Monami Maulik
Tony Monteiro
José
Morales
Yusuf Nuruddin
Marie-Claire Picher
Vijay Prashad
Sofia
Quintero
Gerardo Renique
Don Rojas
Nan Rubin
Annette T.
Rubinstein
Mark Toney
*invited
*** Schedule
***
Friday, February 22
6:00 pm: The Color Line--Then and Now: A
Tribute to W.E.B. Du Bois
Saturday, February 23, 9:00 am to 6:00
pm
9:00 am: Registration
9:30 am: Opening Plenary: The Racial
Moment--Race, Class and Global
Capitalism
11:30 am:
Workshops
1:30 pm: Lunch
2:20 pm: Workshops
4:30 pm:
Closing Plenary: Building Bridges--Anti-racist
Global-Local
Solidarity
Sunday, February 24, 9:30 am to 12
noon
9:30 am: Coffee and snacks
10:00 am: Reportback from
workshops and discussion of next steps
*** Partial List of
Endorsers ***
--African Poetry Theater
--The Black World Today (
www.tbwt.com )
--Dennis
Brutus, Professor Emeritus, Africana Studies, University
of
Pittsburgh/Jubilee South Africa
--Center for Constitutional
Rights
--Center for Non-Profit Technology
--Center for Third World
Organizing
--Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence
--Committee in
Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES)
--Committees of
Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
--Desis Rising Up and Moving
(DRUM)
--Forum of Indian Leftists
--Freedom Road Socialist
Organization--NY/NJ
--Freedom Socialist Party
--Greater New York
Labor-Religion Coalition
--Harlem Tenants Council
--Inang Bayan Movement
(Philippines)
--Institute for Mass Communication/People-link.org
--The
Malcolm X Museum
--The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project at Stanford
University
--Medgar Evers Center for Law and Social Justice
--National
Network of Indochina Activists
--New York City Taxi Workers Alliance
--New
York University Institute for Education and Social Policy
--North American
Congress on Latin America (NACLA)
--Patrice Lumumba Coalition
--Pro
Libertad Freedom Campaign
--Racism Abolished, Justice Established
(RAJE)
--Reparations Mobilization Coalition
--Resistance in
Brooklyn
--Socialism and Democracy
--The Theater of the Oppressed
Laboratory (TOPLAB)
--Urban Justice Center, Human Rights Project
--Vieques
Support Campaign
--Women for Justice
--Women's International League for
Peace and Freedom
(WILPF)
*******************************************************************
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Tell no lies, claim no easy
victories -Amilcar Cabral
Washing one's hands of the conflict between the
powerful and the powerless
means to side with the powerful, not to be
neutral
-Paulo Friere
I hope I never lose hope, but if that day comes
and I'm sure that I have
nothing to expect, nothing to believe in, and that
the human condition is
doomed to stupidity and crime, then I hope I will be
honest enough to kill
myself. -Eduardo Galeano
Yesterday we bowed for
kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today,
we kneel only to truth,
follow only beauty, and obey only love.
-Kahlil Gibran
The truth is
always revolutionary -Antonio Gramsci
Mas vale morir de pie, que vivir de
rodillas -Praxedis Guerrero
My silences have not protected me. Your
silence will not protect you.
-Audre Lorde
If you're not ready to die
for it, put the word "freedom" out of your
vocabulary. -Malcolm X
The
most important time in history is NOW, the present -Talib Kweli
Fascism
should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a
merger of
state and corporate power. -Benito
Mussolini
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