Panels and talks will be on Saturday March 16 and Sunday March 17 between 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. There may be a few minor adjustments, and we will have printed schedules available at the event. Speaker bios are here.
SATURDAY
Main speakers room:
12PM – Grand Juries as Tools of Repression and How to Resist Panel (Shon Meckfessel, Leslie James Pickering): Are you ready for a grand jury subpoena? Anarchists get ready, the State is calling us by name. Come learn more about grand juries, why resistance is the only option, and the best ways to support resisters.
1 PM – Towards Collective Liberation (Chris Crass): How can anarchists help build powerful anti-racist, feminist, working class-based movements for collective liberation? How can we develop healthy activist culture that builds people up rather then tearing them down?” This talk will focus on organizing lessons from mistakes and successes in efforts to address these two questions.
2 PM – Science Vs. Capitalism (Kim Stanley Robinson): This talk will try to destrand science and capitalism in the hope of clarifying the current moment, by suggesting that science is an already existing utopian force
3 PM – Building Movements Beyond Fear in the Rise Of The Surveillance State (Scott Crow, Josh Harper): This presentation will examine the rise of the current surveillance industrial complex and its impact on radical social movements today. It will place the current strategies and tactics of government and corporate surveillance in the historical context of political repression in the US. Harper and crow will reflect on their personal experiences with surveillance, infiltration, being labeled domestic terrorists offering ideas of how activists can defend themselves and their communities to continue creating more just and sustainable worlds.
4 PM – CrimethInc.: The notorious CrimethInc. collective debuts their latest intervention. Not for the faint of heart.
5 PM – Catastrophism (Sasha Lilley, Eddie Yuen, Jim Davis): This panel will explore the politics of apocalypse—on the left and right, in the environmental movement—and examine why the lens of catastrophe can distort our understanding of the dynamics at the heart of numerous disasters—and fatally impede our ability to transform the world.
SATURDAY
“Cafe” Room:
12 PM – Surregional Explorations (Max Cafard): The defining moment of our epoch was the moment when somebody decided that everything needed a defining moment. What we really need to find is the undefining moment of each phenomenon, the anarchist moment, the moment when it is liberated from our definitions and dominations and is allowed to reveal itself in its wild becoming.
1 PM – Maps to the Other Side (Sascha Altman DuBrul): How can anarchist communities take better care of each other? How does our subculture make it both easier and harder to be mentally healthy? Come listen to some wild stories and ideas by Sascha from the Icarus Project and bring your questions.
2 PM – Accounting for Ourselves: Breaking the Impasse around Assault and Abuse in Anarchist Scenes (Nikita Riotfag): What are the major pitfalls anarchists have encountered in crafting accountability processes in response to assault and abuse? What new possibilities can we imagine for dismantling patriarchy and keeping us safe? This presentation will present critiques and suggestions from a new zine on the subject.
3PM – Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind Panel (Vikki Law, Mariposa, Sasha Luci, Tomas Moniz, and the Bay Area Childcare Collective): How do we support families in our movements and in the struggle for social justice? Join Don’t Leave Your Friends Behind contributors (and co-editor) for a discussion on ways to build an all-ages, all-inclusive revolution that leaves no one behind.
4 PM – Thanksgiving 2077 (Terry Bisson): A reading of a new and hopefully controversial short story Thanksgiving 2077, written for an upcoming anthology, IMAGINE: LIVING IN A SOCIALIST USA. There will be Q&A and discussion after. With dressing.
6:30 PM – Anarchism, Pornography, and Being an Ally: Conflict and Collaboration in the Past, Present, and Future: CIIS Room 304, 1453 Mission Street (between 10th and 11th)
SUNDAY
Main speakers room
12 PM – UnReal Estate – A Late 20th Century History of Squatting in the Lower East Side (Fly): UnReal Estate is an archive project founded by squatter artist Fly in 1995 – this slideshow presentation will focus on the 80s & 90s & will highlight photos & drawings of Squats, Squatters & Actions including: C Squat, Fetus, (& fire that destroyed it 1992) Glass House (& eventual eviction 1994), ABC No RIO (1980), Cooper Union Riot of 1993, Illegal Demolition of 5th St Squat by the City 1997, Dos Blockos (& 1999 eviction) plus E 7th St. fire – reconstruction & survival – ending with our success in taking 11 buildings to legal status.
1 PM – Anarchist Bookfair Poster Artist: How I Tried and Failed to Solve the Anarchist Image Problem (Hugh D’andrade): Hugh has created the poster for the Bay Area Anarchist Bookfair for 10 years now. Hugh will show slides of his work and discuss the problem of representing anarchist ideas in popular media.
2 PM – The Sex Workers’ Rights Movement: Current Local, National, and International Struggles for the Rights of Sex Workers (Shannon Williams, Cyd Nova): Join local sex workers’ rights activists for a discussion of the current state of their movement to end criminalization, stigmatization, and violence against sex workers.
3 PM – On Foreclosure and Eviction Defense (Angela MacWinnie): The talk will discuss the housing justice work in Portland, Oregon with a focus on some of the ideas, approaches, challenges and lessons from the last two years of housing organizing and eviction resistance work.
4 PM – Queering Anarchism: Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire Panel (Hexe, Gayge Operaista): What does it mean to “queer” the world? How does the radical refusal of the mainstream codification of LGBTQ identity as a new gender norm come into focus in the context of anarchist theory and practice? Gayge Operaista will discuss the dire need to both provide explicitly queer perspectives on the class struggle and to reinvigorate a working class movement for queer liberation. Hexe will discuss power structures, sexuality, consent and the anarchist community.
SUNDAY
“Cafe” Room
11 AM – Toward Social Revolution against Climate Barbarism (Liz López, Sky Cohen, Javier Sethness Castro): This discussion will synthesize the latest scientific findings on the state of Earth’s climate systems and examine the contributions social anarchism can provide as regards the development of radical, collective interventions aimed at disrupting the death-drive of capital, in defense of life.
12 PM – Anarchy Comics Revisited (Jay Kinney, Paul Mavrides): The editors of the legendary
anarcho-punk comic celebrate the publication of Anarchy Comics: The Complete Collection with an irreverent discussion of dour leftism, humor as propaganda, the inside scoop on comix publishing, and thinking outside the artistic box.
1 PM – Radicals Confronting the Climate Crisis: Staying Relevant, Staying Focused. (Joshua Kahn Russell): What’s the role of radicals in big-tent alliances to deal with the climate crisis? Lets talk about strategy together! Climate change isn’t about the “environment” – its about everything from migration to global finance to disaster response to agriculture and Indigenous rights. On one hand, its the greatest chance we have to overturn this economic system, and on the other, we do have a fast-ticking timeline to get our carbon under control. This presents us with tough political choices that require both political clarity as well as pragmatism. In this session, Joshua will offer personal stories from his own work navigating these questions to spur interactive discussion on key questions we face as a movement. Where are our opportunities to shift major coalitions to the Left, and how to we navigate the difficult choices in being relevant to popular fronts?
2 PM – Asia’s Unknown Uprisings: 1986-1992 (George Katsiaficas): While the Arab Spring has been widely covered in the mass media, decades before it, a series of uprisings was able to dislodge the rule of entrenched regimes in the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Burma, Nepal and Thailand. Because of longstanding civil traditions, none of the bloodshed characteristic of the current degeneration of the Arab Spring occurred. The form of these uprisings and their striking similarity to more recent ones reveal the unfolding global uprising that is underway.
3 PM – What Does Utopia Look Like? (Cindy Milstein): Like trash pickers in a vast landfill, rebels often engage in the task of scavenging useful fragments in the here and now, from the given social reality, so as to, as Martin Buber put it, “sketch the picture of an idea in process of development”: utopia. But what do our portraits consist of, and how do those images shape our resistance and experiments? Let’s go exploring together.
4 PM – Activist Ethnography and Militant Research (Annie Paradise, Andrej Grubacic, Manolo Callahan): Whether they have been described as movement research, activist ethnography, research militancy, co-research, or worker’s inquiry, the idea of community- based research has been an important part of the left-libertarian tradition. The focus of the our workshop will be to explore the methods, examples, and possibilities of militant research and inquiry as political activity.
Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair 