Graphic Liberation: Image Making and Political Movements with Josh MacPhee

  • April 14, 2024 1:52 am

from Making Worlds

ADVANCED REGISTRATION RECOMMENDED

From the fight against the AIDS crisis to the struggle for Black liberation and international solidarity, Graphic Liberation! digs deep into the history, present, and future of revolutionary political image making.

What is the role of image and aesthetics in radical change? In his most recent book, Josh MacPhee interviews some of the most accomplished international political graphics producers, and through these conversations charts the importance of revolutionary aesthetics as a through line connecting the Black Panthers to the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa to the AIDS organizing of ACT-UP to the Palestinian struggle to organizing against nuclear power and militarism. MacPhee argues that the culture produced by and within social movements is both central to their organizing strategies but also their sense of community and social identity.

Josh MacPhee has created a composite work life that merges elements of designer, artist, author, historian, and archivist. He is a founding member of the Justseeds Artists’ Cooperative (Justseeds.org), the author of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, and coeditor of Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture. He cofounded and helps run Interference Archive, a public collection of cultural materials produced by social movements (InterferenceArchive.org). He regularly works with community and social justice organizations building agit-prop and consulting on cultural strategy. work. In addition, MacPhee co-edits the publication Signal: A Journal of International Political Graphics and Culture, and this event will also be the release party of the newly published Signal:09.

  • Sunday, April 21, 2024
  • 4:00 PM 5:30 PM
  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

Necropolitics Reading Group

  • February 24, 2024 1:37 am

from Making Worlds Books

Necropolitics Reading Group is a DIY reading group focused on examining the links between statehood, violence, and dehumanization.

Necropolitics Study Group Details, Reading List, & Community Agreements

Please RSVP here

Saturdays 2PM – 3:30 PM starting February 24th at Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center

  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

Informality, Anarchy, and the Black Radical Tradition

  • February 15, 2024 1:15 am

from Making Worlds Books

The last couple years’ Black-centric revolts have been organized mostly informally. Informality is often overlooked when it comes to discussing Black liberation organizing, yet today’s cutting edge rebels are almost exclusively organized along these lines. We’ll be discussing informality, and anarchists’ strategies surrounding it, to better understand Black revolt and the Black left and to strategize destroying the civil society that has made Black liberation movements so necessary.

Advance registration appreciated.

This event will be a presentation followed by open discussion.

Atticus is a communist theorist and an anarchist in action. He’s been involved with anti-police struggle for the past 10 years of his life. His published writing is concerned with Black anarchism, the Black Radical Tradition, and small city organizing.

Cres is an anarchist living in Philadelphia. She’s participated in various struggles and uprisings over the last decade and a half. She’s interested in anarchy, incorrect and subversive uses of space and tools, and making memes.

  • Thursday, February 22, 2024
  • 5:00 PM 6:30 PM
  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

Beehive Design Collective Presents MesoAmerica Resiste! and The True Cost of Coal

  • February 4, 2024 1:12 am

from Making Worlds Books

Join Beehive Design Collective as they present their newly released 10 Year Anniversary edition of “MesoAmerica Resiste!”, their new book, “The True Cost of Coal”, and even a peek into their work-in-progress about California: “The Callegory”.

Advance registration strong recommended.

The Bees use their massive, collaboratively produced, and intricately detailed fabric murals to tell complex global stories of stories of resistance, resilience, and solidarity. Packed with nature metaphors, peoples histories, and teeming with biodiversity, these images offer the foundation for an event of participatory discussion, poetic storytelling, and popular education. “MesoAmerica Resiste!’ focuses on stories from Mexico to Colombia. A map drawn in old colonial style depicts the modern invasion of megaprojects planned for the region… and opens to reveal the view from below, where communities are organizing locally and across borders to defend land and traditions, protect cultural and ecological diversity, and build alternative economies.

“The True Cost of Coal” tells many stories from the frontlines of Southern Appallachia who fought mountaintop removal for coal extraction for decades. This graphics campaign reflects the complexity of the struggles for land, livelihood, and self-determination playing out in Appalachia, and was made with the intention of honoring the tremendous history of organized resistance and the courage of communities living in the shadow of Big Coal.

  • Sunday, February 11, 2024
  • 5:00 PM 6:00 PM
  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

Defying Displacement: Urban Recomposition and Social War — Author Andrew Lee with Keyssh from Decolonize Philly

  • February 2, 2024 1:14 am

from Making Worlds Books

Cities are in the midst of a profound transformation as the wealthy price out the remnants of the urban working class, especially people of color. Defying Displacement, focused on the US but informed by global examples, investigates gentrification from the perspective of the people fighting some of the most powerful institutions on the planet. As mass displacement alters the composition of gentrifying cities, the avenues available for social change become unsettled as well, forcing us to reimagine our strategies for building a better world. Author Andrew Lee will be in conversation with Keyssh Datts of Decolonize Philly.

“So often gentrification is a process understood in limited terms as a flow of people or the impersonal and inevitable flow of capital. In Defying Displacement, Andrew Lee analyzes both in tandem, illuminating how gentrification transforms not only housing markets, but the horizon of possibility for revolt. Regardless of where they are reading from, readers will be able to understand this subject with a fresh appreciation of how global struggles past, present, and future are linked by the making and unmaking of cities.” —Ayesha Siddiqi, editor in chief of The New Inquiry

Advance registration recommended and appreciated.

About the Speakers
Defying Displacement author Andrew Lee participated in a multi-year fight against the construction of a Google campus in San José, California that culminated in the creation of the first community land trust in the so-called Silicon Valley. He currently lives in Philadelphia and is a member of the No Arena in Chinatown Solidarity group opposing the planned 76ers arena. Lee supports grassroots social movements as managing editor for The ARD and his work has previously appeared in Yes! Magazine, The New Inquiry, Teen Vogue, and ROAR Magazine.

Keyssh Datts is a multimedia creator, community organizer, and founder of Decolonize Philly, a racial and environmental justice group using media and direct action to bring changemakers together to build towards a land revolution.

  • Friday, February 9, 2024
  • 6:00 PM 7:00 PM
  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

Informality, Anarchy, and the Black Radical Tradition

  • January 26, 2024 1:00 am

Submission


The last couple years’ Black-centric revolts have been organized mostly informally. Informality is often overlooked when it comes to discussing Black liberation organizing, yet today’s cutting edge rebels are almost exclusively organized along these lines. We’ll be discussing informality, and anarchists’ strategies surrounding it, to better understand Black revolt and the Black left and to strategize destroying the civil society that has made Black liberation movements so necessary.

Advance registration appreciated.

This event will be a presentation followed by open discussion.

Atticus is a communist theorist and an anarchist in action. He’s been involved with anti-police struggle for the past 10 years of his life. His published writing is concerned with Black anarchism, the Black Radical Tradition, and small city organizing.

Cres is an anarchist living in Philadelphia. She’s participated in various struggles and uprisings over the last decade and a half. She’s interested in anarchy, incorrect and subversive uses of space and tools, and making memes.

Thursday, February 22, 2024
5:00 PM 6:30 PM
Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center
210 South 45th Street

Going Underground: Race, Space, and the Subterranean with Lara Langer Cohen, Daphne Brooks, and S.S. Sandhu

  • September 7, 2023 1:01 am

from Making Worlds Books

Advanced Registration Encouraged: Click here to RSVP

Lara Langer Cohen’s Going Underground offers a genealogy of “the underground” as a space of subversion, tracing its formulation in Black radical manifestos, anarchist periodicals, sensationalist exposés of the urban underworld, manuals for sex magic, and the initiation rites of secret societies. The author will discuss the book with Daphne Brooks and S.S. Sandhu

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:
Lara Langer Cohen is the author of Going Underground: Race, Space, and the Subterranean in the Nineteenth-Century United States (Duke, 2023) and Associate Professor of English at Swarthmore College.

Daphne Brooks is the author of Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Harvard, 2021). She is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of African American Studies, American Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Music at Yale University.

S.S. Sandhu is the author of Night Haunts: A Journey Through The London Night (Verso, 2010) and Associate Professor of English and Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University.

ABOUT THE BOOK
First popularized by newspaper coverage of the Underground Railroad in the 1840s, the underground serves as a metaphor for subversive activity that remains central to our political vocabulary. In Going Underground, Lara Langer Cohen excavates the long history of this now familiar idea while seeking out versions of the underground that were left behind along the way. Outlining how the underground’s figurative sense first took shape through the associations of literal subterranean spaces with racialized Blackness, she examines a vibrant world of nineteenth-century US subterranean literature that includes Black radical manifestos, anarchist periodicals, sensationalist exposés of the urban underworld, manuals for sex magic, and the initiation rites of secret societies. Cohen finds that the undergrounds in this literature offer sites of political possibility that exceed the familiar framework of resistance, suggesting that nineteenth-century undergrounds can inspire new modes of world-making and world-breaking for a time when this world feels increasingly untenable.

[Thursday, September 14, 2023
6:00 PM 7:30 PM
Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)]

How do we Build Liberatory Capacity?: Solidarity Economy Assembly #2

  • July 21, 2023 1:54 am

from Making Worlds Books

As we work to build a solidarity economy, where we truly take care of each other and have our collective well-being at the heart of our everyday, the summit can sometimes be a steep climb in a world currently created to keep us separate and in competition with one another. A question organizers must ask themselves, and each other, again and again is: how do we build capacity for this work while also knowing and respecting our own individual and communal capacities?In collaboration with PACA member co-ops: Obvious Agency and Making Worlds, PACA continues its solidarity economy assemblies on Thursday, June 29th, 2023, from 6:30-8pm.

This second assembly will be facilitated by Obvious Agency and it will be a communal discussion of how we can build, investigate, honor, and take care of our collective capacities.Together we will investigate what drains and robs our capacities (bullshit jobs and isolated realities, for starters), as well as how we take our time and energy back. We will discuss how we’ve been conditioned to show up to “work”, how we decondition from that which does not serve us and only moves us towards the problems of burnout or accumulating social capital instead of dollars, as well as how we reframe showing up to efforts which matter to us. We will discuss how do we actually create capacity for this work (*cough* – more people – *cough*). Also, what is the world we’re actually trying to forge so that our practices of self- and collective-care aren’t just maintenance to shove us back into the grind, but instead we have spaciousness and possibility to allow us to have elements of being with those we love, being in regenerative solitude, showing up to the work which matters to us, immersing ourselves in other activities which gives us joy and meaning, and so much more.

We hope you’ll join us for this critical conversation around our collective capacity.

The good folks of Obvious Agency are, “Makers of games and interactive performances.” They are a “Worker-owned cooperative.” And they are, “Developing Space Opera – a game engine for building community”. https://www.instagram.com/obviousagencycoop

  • Thursday, July 27, 2023
  • 6:30 PM 8:00 PM
  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

Love In The Time Of Fentanyl

  • June 13, 2023 1:38 am

from Instagram

As deaths in Vancouver, Canada, reach an all-time high, the Overdose Prevention Society—a renegade supervised drug consumption site that employs active and former drug users—opens its doors. This intimate documentary looks beyond the stigma of drug use to show how the organization’s staff and volunteers do whatever it takes to save lives while giving hope to a marginalized community.”Join us for our next screening on Sunday, June 18th, where we’ll be watching Love in the Time of Fentanyl. We’ll be at @makingworldsbooks on 210 S 45th St.Naloxone training at 6, movie at 7, followed by a discussion. Suggested donation $10-20, proceeds go to @the_sol_stories and @south.philly.punkswithlunch

Revolution On and Off the Streets: A discussion of Practical Anarchism

  • April 28, 2023 1:01 am

from Making Worlds Books

Advanced Registration is strongly encouraged for this event. Please CLICK HERE to register.

Facing off against the violent forces of the state during street protests, we form bonds and clear space for a vision of a new world. But what happens after? How can we perpetuate social revolution in our daily lives? Ingrained state logic erases ways of organizing our lives with ease and limits our horizons of resistance. It doesn’t matter if we smash the state but can’t take care of ourselves or one another. We will discuss how to prepare ourselves for liberation with references from Scott Branson’s recently published book, Practical Anarchism: A Daily Guide.

About the Speakers:
Scott Branson is a writer, teacher, organizer, and artist, author of Practical Anarchism: A Daily Guide (Pluto Press), editor of Surviving the Future: Abolitionist Queer Strategies (PM Press), translator of Guy Hocquenghem’s Gay Liberation After May 68 (Duke), and co-host on The Final Straw Radio.
Vicky Osterweil is a writer and worker based in so-called Philadelphia. Her book In Defense of Looting was released in 2020, and she’s working on a new book called The Extended Universe, 2024 from Haymarket.

About the Book, Practical Anarchism: A Daily Guide:
You may not realize it, but you are probably already practicing anarchism in your daily life. From relationships to school, work, art, and even the way you organize your time, anarchism can help you find fulfillment, empathy, and liberation in the everyday.
From the small questions such as ‘Why should I steal?’ to the big ones like ‘How do I love?’, Scott Branson shows that anarchism isn’t only something we do when we react to the news, protest, or even riot. With practical examples enriched by history and theory, these tips will empower you to break free from the consumerist trappings of our world.
Anarchism is not just for white men, but for everyone. In reading this book, you can detach from patriarchal masculinity, norms of family, gender, sexuality, racialization, individual responsibility, and the destruction of our planet, and replace them with ideas of sustainable living, with ties of mutual aid, and the horizon of collective liberation.

Riotsville, USA: A Benefit Film Screening & Discussion to #StopCopCity

  • March 25, 2023 1:31 am

from Making Worlds Books

Join us on 3/30 for a benefit film screening and discussion of Riotsville, USA.

Advance registration is encouraged, please RSVP here.

The fight in Atlanta against “Cop City” is heating up. The Autonomous South Philly Cinema Association is hosting a benefit screening of Riotsville, USA (2022, 91 mins) to raise funds for mounting legal expenses. Riotsville, USA takes its name from the mock cities built by the U.S. government in the late 1960s to train police and military in repressive techniques to throttle uprisings, much as Cop City hopes to do — unless the struggle against it is victorious.

  • Thursday, March 30, 2023
  • 6:00 PM 8:00 PM
  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

Building the Solidarity Economy: First city-wide Solidarity Economy Assembly

  • March 19, 2023 1:15 am

from Making World Books

Join us for the first Philly-wide Solidarity Economy Assembly, a hybrid event, hosted by and in collaboration with Making Worlds Bookstore Cooperative Bookstore & Social Center.

Click here to register for this event.

The Solidarity Economy Principles Project defines SE as, “an organizing framework for those who wish to create a systemic commitment to and practice of interdependence and collective liberation in the economic activities that meet our material needs.  Solidarity economy rests on our shared values: cooperation, democracy, social and racial justice, environmental sustainability, and mutualism… Solidarity economies emerge from movements and integrate the three common strategies for social change: personal transformation, building alternative institutions, and challenging dominant institutions. Building solidarity economy movements requires building networks, federations, and coalitions that align with SE principles and practices. This is where we become truly powerful.”

This assembly aims to intentionally begin forging these “networks, federation, and coalitions” across all those in the Philly region working to build a just world. Invitation extended to groups doing work spanning mutual aid, land and food justice, housing, cooperative/democratic/and alternative economies, climate justice struggle, and how we “tell the story of our freedom”: artists, media, and technology workers. You’re all already doing incredible organizing. Our hope is to strengthen our networks so we can move forward together with intention and… solidarity.

Event is hybrid. It will be facilitated by Esteban Kelly, Executive Director of USFWC. Jamila Medley, former Executive Director of PACA and one of the original writers of the SE Principles, will ground us in discussing the frameworks and hopes for the Solidarity Economy. We hope to see you there.

  • Thursday, March 23, 2023
  • 5:00 PM 7:30 PM
  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

The George Floyd Uprising Book Launch and Discussion

  • March 12, 2023 1:21 am

from Making Worlds Books

Join us for an editor-led discussion of the recently published book, The George Floyd Uprising.

Written during the riots, The George Floyd Uprising is a compendium of the most radical writing to come out of that long, hot summer. These incendiary dispatches—from those on the front lines of the struggle—examine the new horizons opened by the revolt, as well as the social, tactical, and strategic obstacles it confronted. This practical, inspiring collection offers a toolbox for all those actively seeking to expand and intensify revolts in the future, and it is essential reading for everyone interested in toppling the state, racism, and capitalism.

Advanced registration encouraged. Click here to register.

More about the book:

In the summer of 2020, America experienced one of the biggest uprisings in half a century. After George Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police, angry crowds took to the street night after night, fighting the police, looting, and eventually burning down the Third Precinct. The revolt soon spread to cities large and small across the country, where rioters set police cars on fire, sacked luxury shopping districts, and forced the president into hiding in a bunker beneath the White House. Throughout the summer and into the fall, localized rebellions continued to erupt in Atlanta, Chicago, Kenosha, Louisville, Philadelphia, and elsewhere.

Written during the riots, The George Floyd Uprising is a compendium of the most radical writing to come out of that long, hot summer. These incendiary dispatches—from those on the front lines of the struggle—examine the new horizons opened by the revolt, as well as the social, tactical, and strategic obstacles it confronted. This practical, inspiring collection offers a toolbox for all those actively seeking to expand and intensify revolts in the future, and it is essential reading for everyone interested in toppling the state, racism, and capitalism.

About the Editors:

Vortex Group is an anonymous collective of writers who desire an end to this world and the beginning of a new one.

  • Sunday, March 19, 2023
  • 4:00 PM 5:30 PM
  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

If A Tree Falls: Screening and Discussion

  • February 2, 2023 1:07 am

from Making Worlds Books

IF A TREE FALLS is a documentary looking at the Earth Liberation Front, the radical environmental group that the FBI calls America’s ‘number one domestic terrorist threat.’ The documentary tells the story of Daniel McGowan, an ELF member who faced life in prison for two multi-million dollar arsons against Oregon timber companies. The film examines larger questions about environmentalism, activism, and terrorism.

The police killing of Manuel Teranat / Tortuguita and repression of forest defenders in Atlanta / Cop City this month adds dire weight to our ability to understand ecological defense struggles on their own terms, to understand the elements of repression and state power that seek to discredit, disrupt, and disempower ecodefense movements and separate them from wider bases of popular support. In the process, state violence intensifies and the need for unified support and solidarity is crucial.

This event is fundraising effort in support of ATL Solidarity Fund to help support frontliners in this moment.

Advance registration suggested (free and by donation) to help us host public events safely in a time of ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and other public health stresses on our communities. Click here to register.

  • Thursday, February 9, 2023
  • 5:00 PM 7:00 PM
  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)

Abolish the Family: Book Launch and Discussion with Sophie Lewis

  • January 6, 2023 1:35 am

from Making Worlds Books

RESCHEDULED – Stay Tuned!

Making Worlds Cooperative Bookstore & Social Center: Book Launch and Discussion: Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation

What if we could do better than the family?

Families can be filled with love and care, but for many they are sites of pain: nobody is more likely to harm you than your family. Even in so-called happy families, the unpaid, unacknowledged work that it takes to raise children and care for each other is endless and exhausting.

Abolish the Family traces the history of family abolitionist demands, beginning with nineteenth century utopian socialist and sex radical Charles Fourier, the Communist Manifesto and early-twentieth century Russian family abolitionist Alexandra Kollontai. Turning her attention to the 1960s, Lewis reminds us of the anti-family politics of radical feminists like Shulamith Firestone and the gay liberationists, a tradition she traces to the queer marxists bringing family abolition to the twenty-first century. This exhilarating essay looks at historic rightwing panic about Black families and the violent imposition of the family on indigenous communities, and insists: only by thinking beyond the family can we begin to imagine what might come after.

Registration required. Please RSVP here.

Sophie Lewis is a freelance writer living in Philadelphia, teaching courses for the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Her first book was Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family, and her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, Boston Review, n+1, the London Review of Books and Salvage. Sophie studied English, Politics, Environment and Geography at Oxford, the New School, and Manchester University, and is now an unpaid visiting scholar at the Feminist, Queer and Transgender Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

  • Friday, January 13, 2023
  • 6:00 PM 7:30 PM
  • Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center 210 South 45th Street Philadelphia, PA, 19104 United States (map)