In the best spirit of anarchism, this seminar will strive to create a space of learning together, drawing from our shared understandings and experiences. It will explore anarchism as an ethical compass, which points simultaneously to an overarching critique of all forms of hierarchy and an expansive social vision of what it could mean to be free people in a free society. It will look at how anarchism can offer a way of thinking —a critical or dialectical theory—to find “cracks in the wall.” And from there, crucially, it will dig into anarchism as a living, breathing, prefigurative politics, utilizing illustrations from messy-beautiful experiments in the here and now that at once gesture toward a liberatory, loving world. At its heart, this seminar will revolve around what it means to aspire toward and practice an “everyday anarchism,” where notions such as self-organization and self-governance, mutual aid and solidarity, autonomy and collectivity, dignity and care, to name a few, become commonsensical second nature as well as the basis for new social relations and social organization.
Facilitator: Cindy Milstein. Cindy has long engaged in anarchistic organizing, contemporary social movements, and collective spaces, and is author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations, coauthor of Paths toward Utopia: Graphic Explorations of Everyday Anarchism, and editor of the anthology Taking Sides: Revolutionary Solidarity and the Poverty of Liberalism. Over the past couple years, they have focused on doing support for the J20 defendants and others facing state repression, co-organizing the Institute for Advanced Troublemaking’s Anarchist Summer School in Worcester, MA, and getting up to all sorts of “friendly anarchist” mischief as a collective member of Solidarity & Defense, Huron Valley in so-called Michigan. Cindy has also toured extensively this past year with their latest edited anthology, Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief, speaking about the intimate connection between structural losses, grief, and resistance while holding space for similar stories, and is honored, called on, to do death doula and grief care. Cindy blogs at Outside the Circle.
Cost: Sliding scale: $80/$60/$40 (please scroll down to “Registration”). Please pay what you can afford. (We have expenses to cover.) If you would like to attend but cannot afford it right now, you may request to do so at no cost. Please email us at inciteseminars@mail.com with your request and a brief explanation of your need.
Reading: We will use the first two essays in Cindy’s Anarchism and its Aspirations as the basis for our discussion. Please purchase the book at Wooden Shoe Books, 704 South Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147, 215-413-0999.
(Click image below for podcast discussion with Cindy)
