[lbo-talk] Critical Perspectives on Wars, Classes, & Empires

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Tue Sep 23 04:54:55 PDT 2003


The following is the fall calendar of educational events that my fellow organizers and I will be hosting. Just to let you know what we are doing in Columbus, OH. . . . Diane and anyone else who lives in Ohio -- if you have some free time, please drop by!

Weekly Educational Forum: Critical Perspectives on Wars, Classes, & Empires (Fall Calendar)

WHEN: Every Thursday, 7:30 PM WHERE: Journalism Building, Room 300, 242 West 18th Ave. (at the corner of 18th and Neil Aves.), Ohio State University, Columbus, OH Campus Map: <http://www.acs.ohio-state.edu/map/linkbuildings/journalismbuilding.html> Campus Parking Map: <http://www.tp.ohio-state.edu/maps/campusmap.shtml> Directions to Campus: <http://www.osu.edu/visitors/directions.html> All Events Are Free & Open to the Public.

Oct. 2 - _Bowling for Columbine_ (Dir. Michael Moore) -- _Bowling for Columbine_ is an alternately humorous and horrifying film about the United States. Why do 11,000 people die in America each year at the hands of gun violence? The talking heads yelling from every TV camera blame everything from Satan to video games. But are we that much different from people of many other countries? What sets us apart? How have we become both the master and victim of such enormous powers of violence? This is not a film about gun control. It is a film about the fearful heart and soul of the United States, and the 280 million Americans lucky enough to have the right to a constitutionally protected Uzi.

Oct. 9 - _The Spirit of Crazy Horse_ (Dir. James Locker), with an introduction by Molly Springer, Coordinator of American Indian Student Services -- _The Spirit of Crazy Horse_ is a tale recounted by Milo Yellow Hair, a full-blood Oglala Sioux, whose great-grandfather fought General Custer at the Little Big Horn. The tale reveals the modern Sioux struggle to regain their heritage and shows how places like Wounded Knee became sites for a fight for human dignity and rights that continues to this day.

Oct. 16 - "Argentina's Alternative Media & Social Movements," a lecture by media activist Marie Trigona, with video presentation: _The Face of Dignity: A Memory of MTD (Unemployed Workers Movement) of Solano_ and _Crónicas de Libertad (organizando la resistencia) [Chronicles of Freedom (organizing resistance)]_. Trigona will discuss the state of alternative communication and its contribution to the growth of social movements in the wake of the economic crisis in Argentina. Argentina Arde counter-information collective, Indymedia Argentina, and Grupo Alavío are some of the groups that have blossomed since Argentina's popular rebellion December 19 and 20, 2001. These alternative media collectives have emerged along with the massive social movements (unemployed workers movements, popular assemblies, and worker-controlled factories) that have been celebrated throughout the globe as a harbinger of the new. (Some of Trigona's writings are available online: <http://www.americaspolicy.org/citizen-action/focus/0211argentine_body.html>; <http://www.americas.org/News/Features/200307_JulyAugust/Argentina-Brukman.htm>.) Co-sponsored by the OSU Center for Latin American Studies.

Oct. 23 - _Lumumba_ (Dir. Raoul Peck) -- At the Berlin Conference of 1885, Europe divided up the African continent. The Congo became the personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium. On June 30, 1960, a young self-taught nationalist, Patrice Lumumba, became, at age 36, the first head of government of the new independent state. He would last two months in office. This is a true story. _Lumumba_ is a gripping political thriller which tells the story of the legendary African leader Patrice Emery Lumumba. The brilliant and charismatic Lumumba rose rapidly to the office of Prime Minister when Belgium conceded the Congo's independence in June, 1960. Lumumba's populist and anti-imperialist vision of a united Africa gained him powerful enemies: the Belgian authorities, who sought to perpetuate neo-colonial control in their former colony's affairs, and the CIA, who supported Joseph Mobutu in order to protect U.S. business interests in Congo's vast resources and ensure U.S. dominance in the Cold War. The ruthless machinations behind Lumumba's brutal assassination in 1961 (a mere nine months after he became the country's first Prime Minister) are dramatized for the first time in _Lumumba_. Cf. <http://www.zeitgeistfilms.com/current/lumumba/lumumba.html>.

Oct. 30 - _Injury to One_ (Dir. Travis Wilkerson), with an introduction by Dan La Botz, labor activist, professor of history (Miami University), and author of _Rank-and-File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union_ (1990, <http://www.versobooks.com/books/klm/labotz_tdu.shtml>), _Mask of Democracy: Labor Suppression in Mexico Today_ (1992, <http://www.southendpress.org/books/MaskofDem.htm>), _Democracy in Mexico: Peasant Rebellion and Political Reform_ (1995, <http://www.southendpress.org/books/DeminMex.htm>), and _Made in Indonesia: Indonesian Workers Since Suharto_ (2001, <http://www.southendpress.org/books/MadeinIndonesia.shtml>) -- _An Injury to One_ provides a glimpse of a particularly volatile moment in early 20th century American labor history: the rise and fall of Butte, Montana, chronicling the mysterious death of Wobbly organizer Frank Little. Butte's history was entirely shaped by its exploitation by the Anaconda Mining Company, which, at the height of WWI, produced ten percent of the world's copper from the town's depths. War profiteering and the company's extreme indifference to the safety of its workers (mortality rates in the mines were higher than in the trenches of Europe) led to Little's arrival. "The agitator" found in the desperate, agonized miners overwhelming support for his ideas, which included the abolishment of the wage system and the establishment of a socialist commonwealth. In August 1917, Little was abducted by still-unknown assailants who hung him from a railroad bridge. Pinned to his chest was a note that read 3'-7'-77", dimensions of a Montana grave. Eight thousand people attended his funeral, the largest in Butte's history. Butte's history is bound with the entire history of the American left, the rise of McCarthyism, and the destruction of the environment. Cf. <http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/oct2002/wilk-o04.shtml>

Nov. 6 - _500 Dunam on the Moon_ (Dir. Rachel Leah Jones) - _500 Dunam on the Moon_ excavates the history of Ayn Hawd, a Palestinian village that was captured and depopulated by Israeli forces in the 1948 war. In 1953 Marcel Janco, a Romanian painter and a founder of the Dada movement, helped transform the village into a Jewish artists' colony and renamed it Ein Hod. This documentary tells the story of the village's original inhabitants, who, after expulsion, settled only 1.5 kilometers away in the outlying hills. This new Ayn Hawd cannot be found on official maps, as Israeli law doesn't recognize it, and its residents, deemed "present absentees" by the authorities, do not receive basic services such as water, electricity or an access road. Rachel Leah Jones' filmmaking debut is a critical look at the art of dispossession and the creativity of the dispossessed. Cf. <http://www.500dunam.com/>.

Nov. 13 - "Selling (Off) Iraq," a lecture by Tim Shorrock - Tim Shorrock, a frequent contributor to _The Nation_, _Asia Times_, and other publications, will discuss the privatization of Iraq and the history of US foreign interventions. (Some of Tim Shorrock's writings are available online: <http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030707&s=shorrock>; <http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/indices/regions/asia/index.php?sort=title>; <http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/shorrok.htm>.)

Nov. 20 -- _Life and Debt_ (Dir. Stephanie Black) -- Using excerpts from the award-winning non-fiction text "A Small Place" by Jamaica Kincaid, _Life & Debt_ presents a subtle tapestry of stories of individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and parameters of day-to-day existence are determined by the U.S. and other foreign economic agendas. By combining traditional documentary telling with a stylized narrative framework, _Life and Debt_ illuminates the complexity of international lending, structural adjustment policies and free trade in the context of the everyday realities of the people whose lives they impact. Cf. <http://www.lifeanddebt.org/>.

Sponsors: Al-Awda-Ohio, Social Welfare Action Alliance, Solidarity, & Student International Forum Website: <http://www.service.ohio-state.edu/students/sif/> Contact: Yoshie Furuhashi, 614-668-6554, <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu>; and Keith Kilty, 614-292-7181, <kilty.1 at osu.edu>

-- Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>



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