Everyday Revolution After Fukushima<
16 Beaver, New York City, Oct. 07, 2012
A day long forum on everyday revolution after Fukushima
What: A Forum on Creating Everyday Revolution After Fukushima
When: October 7th at 11:00 am - 8pm
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
Who: Free and Open to All
Join us for a day long intensive learn-in on Fukushima from a global
perspective.
Session I (11am – 1:30pm)
An Introduction: Silvia Federici
An Intro from China; Cold-war History in America, and post-fukushima
development of Asia: with Yoshihiko Ikegami (skype)
‘Nuclearity’ and colonial aspects of nuclear productions: with Gabrielle
Hecht (skype)
Session II (2 – 4:30pm)
Radiation-Monitoring Movement and Exodus: with Shiro Yabu
Evacuation and Becoming the Media: with Iori Mochizuki
Session III (5 – 8pm)
Agent of Struggle and Direct Action: with Joel Kovel, George Caffenztis,
Arkadi Filine (skype) and Marina Sitrin
Childcare will be shared and organized
___________________________________________
1. Fukushima, Why
On May 5th, our last announced gathering, we had marked the closing of the
last nuclear reactor in Japan with Todos Somos Japon. We met at Central
Park and also made a modest action at the consulate of Japan. Since that
time, much has happened, in Japan, two units were brought back online
sparking a wave of protests and forcing the government to delay further
nuclear reactors from being restarted.
We return this Sunday, October 7th, once again organizing a day long
gathering and learn-in on Fukushima from a global perspective with Todos
Somos Japan. This event will bring together thinkers, scientists, and
activists who will help us consider Fukushima from different perspectives.
As we have proposed, since the flurry of movements began to take hold in
2011, Fukushima remains a critical part of any picture of resistance
today. It is critical, because it helps approach and understand the
enormity of the challenges confronting the struggles underway. Here we see
the ecological and economic dimensions converge into a toxic formula of
'continue as before at any cost, as long as its not the bottom line'.
In short, over this last year we have learned that the struggles against
the looting of the commons and commonwealth, for maintaining an economic
paradigm which is unsustainable and biocidal, is most acutely felt in a
post nuclear Japan.
No job plan or tax cuts or whatever rubbish we read in the American press
is able to confront these biocidal practices proliferating globally and
manifesting in a post-nuclear Japan. Thus, learning about a post-nuclear
Japan is also about understanding how one could begin to imagine the
necessary conditions of struggle for apo-capitalist* or non-capitalist
life.
*The term apo-capitalist is an invocation of both:
- the imposition today to be subject to the dictates of capitalism even
under apocalyptic conditins, as is acutely the case in Japan today, and
less perceptibly, but with no less force or imposition, in the context of
Global Warming and Warmongering
- the 'from, away from, separate, free from' retained in the prefix apo-
in Greek or the apa- in Sanskrit or the ab- in Latin, the af- in Gothic.
___________________________________________
2. RadioActivity – Creating Everyday Revolution After Fukushima
Where are we at today after Fukushima, in the struggles against nuclear
power – that is a question.
As news from Japan slowly reveals the truth about the worst nuclear
disaster to date, people today continue to live under the threat of
radioactive contamination. Amidst an unprecedented crisis, neglected by
the government, they have engaged in massive protests and various forms of
resistance – from street demonstrations to the monitoring of radiation in
public parks and in baby formulas – making radiation visible. In this way,
the Fukushima crisis is certainly changing the map of anti-nuclear
struggle.
Stories coming from the Nigerien uranium mines clarify the nature of the
nuclear cycle; they show how ‘nuclear’ is actually a form of global power
and continuing colonialism. The history of anti-nuke resistance in the US
– where it all began- illuminates our possibilities and also the
difficulties in the way of our ending nuclear power. Recently, we have
also learned from the experience of CASTOR –a blockade formed against the
transport of a nuclear waste from Germany to France.
By examining these different forms of resistance and the new challenge
that reproductive labor faces in Japan, we aim to link global struggles
and think together how we can together tackle this planetary crisis.
Todos Somos Japon
___________________________________________
3. Participants
George Caffentzis is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Southern Maine. He is co-founder of the Midnight Notes Collective and the
Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa. He is the author and co-author
of many articles and books including Midnight Oil: Work, Energy, War
1973-1992.
Silvia Federici is a feminist writer, teacher, and militant. She has been
a member of Committee for Academic Freedom in Africa and Midnight Notes
Collective, author of Caliban and the Witch: Women, the Body and Primitive
Accumulation. and a new book: Revolution at Point Zero: Housework,
Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle.
Arkadi Filine:
Gabrielle Hecht is Associate Professor of History at the University of
Michigan. She is the author of The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and
National Identity after World War II (1998), Being Nuclear (2012) and
co-editor of Technologies of Power (2001).
Yoshihiko Ikegami is a former editor-in-chief of Gendaishiso (Contemporary
Thoughts), a prominent political magazine in Japan. He has contributed
numerous post-Fukushima thoughts and issues from Tokyo for jfissures.org
as an author and an editor. Ikegami currently lives in Tianjin, China.
Joel Kovel remembers Hiroshima because he (9 years old at the time) was at
summer camp that day, and the entire camp broke out in rapturous cheers to
celebrate the greatness of the USA. A terrible moment, which he is still
trying to come to terms with. Later on he became an anti-nuclear activist
and, while working with the War Resisters League, played some role in
planning the great anti-nuclear rallies of 1982. Following on that
experience he wrote Against the State of Nuclear Terror, which was
published in 1984 by South End Press. Recently, the primary focus of his
work has been the development of Ecosocialism (see
ecosocialisthorizons.com). The central idea is to regard the ecological
crisis within a comprehensive anti-capitalist perspective. This meeting
gives an opportunity to extend that analysis to the crisis posed by
nuclear power and weaponry.
Iori Mochizuki writes for the Fukushima Diary blog (has approximately
10,000 access daily) to share on-the-ground information of what’s
happening to the people in Japan since Fukushima. After March 11, 2011,
frustrated with the lack of reliable information from official Japanese
channels, he began posting stories he discovered on Facebook sites from
his native Yokohama. Harassed and threatened by Japanese officials,
repeated online DDoS attacks and sickened by radiation (diarrhea,
headache, coughing, nasal congestion, fatigue, pain behind his eyes),
Mochizuki left Japan in December, 2011. Since then, he has traveled
extensively in France, Spain, The Netherlands, Romania, Austria and
Tunisia. He currently lives in US.
Marina Sitrin is the author of Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and
Autonomy in Argentina (2012), Occupying Language: The Secret Rendezvous
with History and the Present (2012) and Horizontalism: Voices of Popular
Power in Argentina (2006). She is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Committee
on Globalization and Social Change at the CUNY Graduate Center, and a
participant in Occupy Wall Street.
Shiro Yabu has extensively written in various names since the 90′s,
creating a new trend of thought in Japanese social movement. Since his
graduation from high school, he has been developing his characteristic
writing style while working as steeplejack, factory worker, book store
clerk and bar tender. His publication includes “Nuclear City” (2010), “The
3.12 Ideas” (2012) and “Contemporary Thoughts of Love and Violence”
(2006).
Todos Somos Japon is a NYC-based project of network building, of creating
a current in and out of Japan, to support Japanese activists and movements
and for a new association of the struggling people of the world.
___________________________________________
4. Suggested Readings
Gabrielle Hecht, Nuclear Ontologies
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~hechtg/articles/HechtConstellations06.pdf
Gabrielle Hecht, Being Nuclear (Chapter 1)
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/chapters/0262017261chap1.pdf
Silvia Federici & George Caffentzis, Must We Rebuilt Their Anthill? – A
Letter to/for Japanese Comrades
http://www.jfissures.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/Federici_Caffentzis_...
Midnight Notes, Strange Victories
http://www.midnightnotes.org/pdfstrangvic0.pdf
Midnight Notes, No Future Notes
http://libcom.org/library/strange-victories-midnight-notes
http://www.midnightnotes.org/PDFnofuture.pdf
Claudia von Werlhof, No Critique of Capitalism without a Critique of
Patriarchy!
http://www.emanzipationhumanum.de/downloads/critique.pdf
Mari Matumoto, Nuclear Energy and Reproductive Labor – The Task of
Feminism
http://www.jfissures.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Matsumoto_interview_...
Yoshihiko Ikegami, A New Movement of the People
http://www.jfissures.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Ikegami-New-Movement...
Manuel Yang/Yoshihiko Ikegami, People Who Transcend Catastrophe:
Connecting the Radiation-Measuring Movement to People’s Movements around
the World
http://www.jfissures.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ikegami_interview_en...
Shiro Yabu, Leaving Tokyo
http://www.jfissures.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Yabu_Leaving_Tokyo_e...
Shiro Yabu, Before and After 3/11
http://www.jfissures.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Yabu_Before_After_en...
Iori Mochizuki
http://fukushima-diary.com/
http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/01/worst-vegetable-mutation/
http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/09/tepco-sent-emergency-email-to-report-...
http://fukushima-diary.com/2012/08/dog-survived-with-the-dried-meat-stic...
Todos Somos Japon, Nuclear Housework – The Enraged Mothers and Farmers of
Japan
http://www.jfissures.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/enraged_mothers_en.pdf
