Wednesday July 19, 2006, 6pm
at The Friends Center,
1515 Cherry Street
215-685-4830
"The future is now. We are the ones inheriting it, writing the history, fighting the battles, learning the lessons and planning for the struggles ahead. You better listen up. And quick. Previous generations of radical movements set out to change the world, and our activism takes shape on the backs of what those before us did. From their successes as well as their failures. We are a new generations of rebels. Watching the $40 million coronation of Bush's second term, one might be lulled into thinking that our generation is apathetic, narcoleptic, peripatetic, lethargic, sophomoric, and generally soporific. The fact is that our generation is energetic, frenetic, epic, apoplectic, enthusiastic, and more precisely colic. ... the possibilities for activism in support of progressive social change are expanding and infinite. Today's social movements are so broad based and diverse that no one voice could possible do them justice. Mainstream discourse tend to isolate today's young activists in the all too neat dichotomy of black-clad-crazy-White-anarchists vs. naïve-liberal-White-do-gooders. Even the Left bestows young activists with its own ultimatums, often telling us, for example, that Labor is the only voice of and for the Movement. And yet the reality is infinitely more complex. Today's social movements are on the frontlines of working for racial, economic, gender, environmental, and global justice. Some of us work in unions, but the U.S. labor movement does not define our generation's struggles. ...We proudly declare that we are transgender, lesbian, queer, gay, bisexual, heterosexual, and hetero-flexible - are you sure you aren't one of us? We are preppy campus organizers, dumpster-diving punks, immigrants, former prisoners, the children of prisoners, Rhodes scholars, Iraq war veterans, labor organizers, hip-hop heads, vogueing ball queens, and club kids. Our movements - from women's rights to antiwar, from overhauling the criminal justice system to practicing international solidarity- directly impact and implicate you. Won't you come in and join us?" from the introduction of Letters From Young Activists. Need one say more?
Our speakers are:
* Walidah Imarisha, a 25-year-old Philadelphia resident, is a spoken word sista and political poet. She does anti-prison organizing with the Human Rights Coalition, a group of prisoners' families and former prisoners with chapters in Philadelphia, Chester and Livingston, Texas. Walidah helped found both AWOL Magazine and the poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista, and hopes to help found an autonomous anti-state someday soon.
* Dan Berger, co-editor of Letters From Young Activists and author of Outlaws of America: the Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity is a writer, activist, and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. His writing has appeared in academic journals, activist publications, and Web sites across the country. He has worked as an activist on global justice, anti-racism, prisoner solidarity issues.
* Phoebe Jones is a member of the Global Women's Strike, a network of women in over 60 countries demanding that governments "Invest in Caring Not Killing". Part of the International Wages for Housework Campaign, she has worked to support the achievements of Venezuela's women-led revolution. Phoebe was actively involved in the 2000 Republican Convention protests, was a spokesperson for the Philadelphia mobilizations against the war on Iraq and has been working for the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal. She is a co-author of The Milk of Human Kindness: Defending Breastfeeding from the Global market and the AIDS industry, has a Ph.D. in physical education, is a runner, a Quaker and works out of the Crossroads Women's Center, Germantown.
* George Lakey is Executive Director of Training for Change. He trained as a Sociologist, taught at the college and graduate level including peace studies at Swarthmore and Haverford Colleges, Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania. George is the author of six books and has trained people all over the world in non-violent resistance. Training for Change was founded on Martin Luther King's birthday in 1992, a carefully chosen birthday for a group that spreads the skills of democratic, nonviolent social change. Since then they've led hundreds of workshops for nonviolent activists around the world with their unique direct education approach.