What Three Midnight Notes Students Learned in the Zapatistas’ “Little School House”

What Three Midnight Notes Students Learned in the Zapatistas’ “Little School House”
George Caffentzis, Dan Coughlin, Peter Linebaugh

Date: February 8, 2014
Time: 7:00PM
Venue: The Base, 1302 Myrtle Ave. Brooklyn, NY

Closest subway station: Central Avenue on the “M” train
Website: www.thebasebk.org

Twenty years ago the Zapatistas emerged from the forests and mountains of Chiapas to occupy the major cities of that Mexican state and to recuperate for the landless hundreds of thousands of acres of land from the big landowners. During the 1990s the Zapatistas became known as the most effective example of the claim that “another world is possible.” Since then the Zapatistas have worked to turn that claim into a reality. Starting in August, 2013, they have invited thousands of people from all over the world to a program called “escuelita” allowing these visitors to learn from rank-and-file Zapatistas what freedom and autonomy mean to them in practice. To do this they have turned the state of Chiapas into a “little school house” or "escuelita" in Spanish.

Come to listen to and discuss what three students (George Caffentzis, Dan Coughlin and Peter Linebaugh of the Midnight Notes Collective), who went to the forests and mountains of Chiapas with thousands of others to be part of the experience, learned.