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Communist Manifestivity Update 10-17-98
150th Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto
October 30 & 31 at Cooper Union's Great Hall
For more information call
(212) 802-9276
or access
** Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to Haunt Cooper Union
on the 150th Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto **
** Amiri Baraka, Wallace Shawn, Tony Kushner,
Vinie Burrows, Sandra Maria Esteves and
Louis Reyes Rivera in cultural performance **
** Cornel West, Stephen Jay Gould, Maria Helena Alves,
Ellen Meiksins Wood, Barbara Fields, Richard Levins and
Sam Gindin in special roundtable **
** Bread and Puppet Theater performance, day-long
poetry jam, marathon film showings, economics panels,
small-group discussions and workshops...and more! **
"In place of the old bourgeois society." wrote the two young German revolutionists in 1848, "there will be an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all."
On Friday and Saturday, October 30 and 31, the Great Hall at Cooper Union, 3rd Avenue and 7th Street in New York City, will be the site of a MANIFESTIVITY in which artists, scientists, activists, scholars, trade unionists and social justice activists will revisit the Communist Manifesto on its 150th Anniversary.
In a special opening program on Friday evening at 7:30 pm, poets, writers and performers including Amiri Baraka, Wallace Shawn, Tony Kushner, Vinie Burrows, Sandra Maria Esteves and Louis Reyes Rivera will combine music and poetry with dramatic readings from the Manifesto itself. The event will culminate in a Saturday evening roundtable in which theologian Cornel West, scientists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Levins, Brazilian Workers Party founder Maria Helena Moreira Alves, _Monthly Review_ editor Ellen Meiksins Woods, historian Barbara Fields, and Sam Gindin of the Canadian Auto Workers discuss our society's dilemmas on the eve of the 21st century and the epochal challenge presented by the Manifesto to go where we've never gone before.
The MANIFESTIVITY is one of many events taking place in over 60 countries this year and several anniversary editions of the persistent best-seller have drawn wide attention. Event organizer Eric Canepa notes that economic turbulence from Wall Street to East Asia seems to heighten interest in the book. "There is an eerie resonance in their treatment of what would now be called globalization." Even some staunch conservatives begin to wonder if Marx and Engels might have been right about capitalism after all, he said.
Throughout the day on Saturday, beginning at 10:00 am, an array of activities and discussions of culture and politics are planned: a performance by the Bread and Puppet Theater; a panel of economists looking at how the Manifesto's diagnosis of capitalism and it's crisis stands up today; a day-long poetry jam and film showing; and small-group discussions on the Manifesto in the light of New York City's labor conflicts and battles over public education, medical services, workfare and housing.
Saturday panelists include Alexander Cockburn (_The Nation_, _NY Press_), Dennis Brutus (South African poet), Harry Magdoff (_Monthly Review_), Daniel Singer (_The Nation_), Aijaz Ahmad (York University), Annette T. Rubinstein (_Science & Society_), Bertell Ollman (New York University), poet Tony Medina, Boots (of "The Coup") Tricia Rose (New York University}, and Leo Panitch (_Socialist Register_) among others.
This will not be the first time that the spirit of Karl Marx has been present at Cooper Union. At the time of his death in 1883, overflow crowds filled the Great Hall in what was at the time the largest memorial meeting in the world. The organizers of the meeting, the Central Labor Union of Greater New York and Vicinity, used the proceeds to publish an edition of the Communist Manifesto. Each union that had helped organize the event received 300 free copies for distribution to their members.
The MANIFESTIVITY is organized by The Brecht Forum in cooperation with more than 40 other New York area organizations and individuals. The Brecht Forum, home of the New York Marxist School since 1975, offers a regular program of political and cultural events and study groups, including long-term study of the writings of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. For tickets and further information call 212-802-9276 or check the Brecht Forum's web site at <http://www.brechtforum.org>
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Sponsor: The Brecht Forum
Individual Endorsers: Maria Helena Alves; Sam Anderson, NY Metro Black Radical Congress; Sylvia Aron, Adelphi University School of Social Work; Amiri Baraka; Rosalyn Baxandall; Annanya Bhattacharjee; Betsy Blackmar; Carl Bloice; Augusto Boal; Robert and Frances Boehm; Mary Boger; Ellen Braune; Stephen Brier; Dennis Brutus; Paul Buhle; Vinie Burrows; Joseph Buttigieg; Leslie Cagan; Eric Canepa; Luciana Castellina; Noam Chomsky; Julie Christie; Andrew Comer; Angela Davis; Ossie Davis; Ruby Dee; Martin Duberman; Ann Druyan; Terry Eagleton; Ghassan Fawzi; Rabbi Michael Feinberg, New York Labor-Religion Coalition; Hector Figueroa; Eric Foner; Mike Fuller, Prensa Latina & Jose Marti International Institute of Journalism, Havana, Cuba; Eduardo Galeano; Neftali Garcia; Dan Georgakas; Sam Gindin; Norman K. Gottwald; Stephen Jay Gould; Joan Greenbaum; Mary Dugan and John Hanlon; Sandra Harding; David Harvey; Ron Hayduk; Bill Henning, CWA Local 1180; Cherrene Horazuk; Boris Kagarlitsky; Lisa Maya Knauer; Bill Koehnlein; Tony Kushner; Maureen La Mar; Peter Laarman, Judson Memorial Church; David Laibman, _Science and Society_; Roger Leisner, Radio Free Maine; Jerry Lembcke; Diane Greene Lent; Hanna and Les Lessinger; Richard Levins; Susan Lowes; Elizabeth Macklin; Harry Magdoff; Victoria Maldonado; Manning Marable; Peter and Frances Marcuse; Samori Marksman, WBAI Radio; Esperanza Martell; Biju Mathew, Forum of Indian Leftists; David McReynolds; Alice Meaker, Lower East Side Collective; Eli Messinger; Liz Mestres; Gerald Meyer; Francette Lazard, EspacesMarx, Paris; Michael Lowy, EspacesMarx, Paris; Jakob Moneta; Vicente Navarro; Manny Ness; Ngo Thanh Nhan; Yusuf Nuruddin; Shivaun O'Casey; Bertell Ollman; Grace Paley; Leo Panitch, _The Socialist Register_; William A. Pelz, Ph.D., Institute of Working Class History; Renee Pendergrass; Charles Post; Victor Quintana; Sofia Quintero; Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, Global Pan African Movement; Merle Ratner; Jeremy Raw; Colin Robinson; Mimi Rosenberg; Frank Rosengarten; Sheila Rowbotham; Nan Rubin, Community Media Services; Annette T. Rubinstein; Sungur Savran; Herman Scheer, member, Bundestag, Social Democratic Party, Germany; Pete Seeger; Anwar Shaikh; Joel Shufro; Daniel Singer; Greg Smith; Hobart Spalding; Bill Tabb; Studs Terkel; Sheila Thimba; Rene Toback; Carmen Vazquez; Lise Vogel; Michael Wallace; Victor Wallis; Joel Washington; Paul Washington; Cornel West; Karen Kurenski & Michael Yates; Ethan Young; Mike Zielinski (Organizations for Identification Only).
Organizational Endorsers: Action for Community Empowerment; Catholic Worker; City College of New York SLAM (Student Liberation Action Movement); Coalition for a District Alternative (CODA); Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV); Committees of Correspondence; Democratic Socialists of America (DSA); El Centro Salvadoreno; Freedom Road; Freedom Socialist Party; Guyanese-American Workers United; Haiti Anti-Intervention Committee; Immigrant Workers Association; Jews for Racial and Economic Justice; _Left Business Observer_; Lower East Side Community Labor Coalition; Monthly Review Press; National Lawyers Guild; National Nicaragua Network; New York Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES); New York Metro Black Radical Congress; North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA); Radical Women; _Rethinking Marxism_; _Samar_ Magazine; _Science and Society_; _Socialism and Democracy_; The Socialist Party USA; _The Socialist Register_; Solidarity; The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory; Verso Press
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)