A Catalytic Conversation on Anarchy and Peace with Alexis Bhagat
Friday Feb 26, 7PM @ Red Emma's
The stage for the conversation is set by an analysis of the War on Terror from an anarchist perspective. Analysis is the process of breaking a complex topic or substance into smaller parts to gain a better understanding of it. If the War on Terror is anything, it is complex. It is worth analyzing: But how to begin? Our strategies have failed. The state moves ahead with its imperial manoeuvres, pulling new justifications out like rabbits from hats. This is "change:" bait-and-switch. We know that we do not really know what is going on. All experts are liars, or repeaters of lies. We must come together to constitute knowledge, to know how to construct new strategies.
But, it is difficult to move from the position that we do not know what is going on. ANARCHY AND PEACE will work to help us arrive there. Not didactic analyses, not conventional rhetoric. In the first part of the evening we will get drunk on some words – PEACE, WAR, PACIFICSM, AHIMSA, NUCLEAR WEAPON, MASS DESTRUCTION, QUAGMIRE, DRONE, PRISON – get dizzy and confused in order to remember that WORDS ARE MAGIC. They constitute reality. And from this position, the talking stick will be extended so that we may come together to remake reality.
Alexis Bhagat is coeditor of "An Atlas of Radical Cartography," a collection of maps and essays on social issues ranging from globalization to garbage. He is a former board member of the IAS and former editor of its journal, "Perspectives on Anarchist Theory." Since 1999, he has been an active participant in Peace Walks in the United States and Asia organized by the nuns and monks of Nipponzan Myohoji. He was an initiator of the 2000 New York Prison Dharma Walk, organized by Jun Yasuda of Nipponzan Myohoji, and participated in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania sections of the 2001 Prison Dharma Walk from Plymouth Rock to SCI-Greene. Currently, he is helping to organize the northern branch of the 2010 Walk for a Nuclear Free Future, from Cold Spring Territory, Seneca Nation, to New York City.
800 St. Paul St. * Baltimore, MD 21202 * (410) 230-0450 * info@redemmas.org
Red Emma's is open Monday through Friday from 10AM-10PM, Saturday from 10AM-8PM, and Sunday from 10AM-6PM. Our weekly collective meetings are Sunday at 7PM, and are open to anyone interested in the project, except for the first Sunday of every month, which is closed to everyone except collective members.
Red Emma's is part of IU 660 of
the Industrial Workers of the World, one of the only unions to recognize that worker collectives can stand in solidarity with those fighting the bosses as part of one big union.
Comments