Chicago Higher Education Week of Rage

We are all Mary Faith. One class away from homelessness. Educate and Agitate!

Noli Nos Provocare (Do Not Provoke Us): Call for more Mary Faith Cerasoli supporters from across the country to share your face and location for a short video documentary about her protest on the steps of the DeNew York State Department of Education. Text should be similar to the following for a consistent visual: "We are ALL Mary Faith, one illness, cancelled course away from Homelessness. Location."  Submit via the link above or to [email protected].

This training is primarily for Chicago organizers and activists working to build the leadership and collective power of communities who are most directly affected by U.S. government policies and their enforcement (policing, prisons, detention centers, border patrol, etc.) and to put that power into action for social change. The goal of the workshop is to strengthen participants’ understanding of the role of the U.S. in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Group of 8 (G8)—two international bodies that are meeting simultaneously over the weekend of May 18-20, with NATO meeting in Chicago—which make decisions that affect all of our lives. Participants will also come out of the workshop with a clear breakdown of the connections between the U.S. economy and U.S. militarism globally, as well as a strengthened understanding of how to deepen their work for economic and social justice in the U.S. through an antimilitarist lens. They will also learn about the current status of the U.S.-NATO war in Afghanistan as well as Afghan resistance to occupation. Participants will engage in an array of exercises and activities that draw upon popular education tools and methods.

Marco Rossi, experienced Chicago anti-imperialist and solidarity activist, will present “Libya, the West, and the Legitimacy of Humanitarian Intervention: A Critical Examination of Foreign Military Intervention in the Battle for Libya”: The military intervention into Libya has received a tremendous amount of celebration and controversy. For those supportive of the military strike the United Nations has changed its inaction towards crises. Those opposed have accused the intervention of being another attempt to take over an Arab nation. There is a manner to systematically address these concerns. The UN Secretary General’s report A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility outlines the moral parameters for humanitarian interventions. While the ability to use force in the NATO strike on Libya is legal, according to the criteria accepted by the authors of A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, it is not legitimate. Alan Maass, editor of Socialist Worker and author of The Case for Socialism, will present “NATO’s Mission Creep and the War in Libya”: When it was formed in the aftermath of the Second World War, the NATO military alliance was supposed to have a defensive mandate—a coalition of countries led by the U.S. to oppose the former USSR during the Cold War. This was never true—the alliance had an offensive character from the beginning. This aspect of NATO became more pronounced falling the collapse of the Eastern European satellites of Russia, and then the USSR itself. First in Europe, and then beyond, NATO has played the role of aggressor, representing the interests of the most powerful governments involved, above all, the U.S. This was the role that NATO played in Libya. The national rebellion against the Qaddafi regime was entirely legitimate, but after an initial hands-off attitude, the West, led by the U.S., intervened in Libya with the aim of shaping anti-Qaddafi forces into a new political and economic structure that would by to its interests. The result has been a set-up in post-Qaddafi Libya that has been dominated, though not without sympathetic challenges, by pro-Western forces nurtured during the NATO intervention.

Wednesday March 21 – Evening with Luther Castillo, MD Calles y Sueños Gallery 1900 S. Carpenter, Chicago 773.208.0553   Honduran graduate of Cuba’s free international medical school, built hospital in Afro-Honduran community Dinner 6pm (donation), Program 7pm Dr. Castillo believes in health care as a right. He will speak on his experiences starting grassroots clinics in Honduras, the medical needs and responses in Haiti, and on Cuba’s preventative approach to public health and the role of Cuban doctors abroad. Castillo will lead a discussion on the possibilities of implementing people’s medicine.

https://www.facebook.com/events/357207937653469/

For your listening pleasure - an audio file of Tuesday's teach-in. Be careful, you know what they say about anarchism and contamination. . .

Image by Natalie Roman of Davis, CA (http://defactodestructo.wordpress.com/), courtesy of Occuprint.

About the speakers: The CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective (CWC) is a decentralized anarchist collective composed of many cells which act independently in pursuit of a freer and more joyous world. Visit them online @ http://crimethinc.com

This teach-in will explore the effects of state repression on contemporary political practice in Belarus. When “traditional” methods for free speech and civil disobedience aren’t available, how does one adapt? The facilitator, a young anarchist philosopher from Minsk, will discuss some of the noncommercial and alternative spaces in his hometown that have thrived under the blanket of neoliberalism. A short video about recent crackdowns will be shown, as well as a film about the Masterskaya squat that existed in Minsk from May to October of 2008. We’ll also hear about Rebel Studies Library, an educational project he began with friends.

Room 700, facilitated by Todd Freeman, Brian Holmes, Crystal Vance Guerra (Occupa El Barrio, Occupy Chicago) and Toby Chow (Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation)

Alberto Toscano is a professor of Sociology at Goldsmith's in England. His most recent book is: Fanaticism - On the Uses of an Idea.  A recent interview with him discussing the book can be found here, an interview with him in the Guardian is here, and a video of a talk here.