“We Are Witnessing the End of an Era”
Interview with Silvia Federici by Max Henninger

[A conversation about pauperization and the Occupy movement in the USA]

Max Henninger: According to figures published by the US Census Bureau in September 2011, 46.2 million US citizens were living below the poverty line in 2010 – the highest number in the 52 years for which poverty estimates have been published. How visible is the increase in poverty and how do those affected respond to their situation?

Silvia Federici: Undoubtedly the figures are correct, but it is not just poverty that is in question. What is happening is a dramatic policy shift whereby the rights and entitlements the US working class has fought for and come to expect are now declared to be, for the foreseeable future, unreachable and unjustified. To put it in media terms, it is “the end of the American dream,” signifying the historic severance of US capital from the US working class, in the sense that US capitalism is becoming completely de-territorialized and is now refusing any commitment to the reproduction of the US workforce.

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Mark Poster, 1941–2012

Mark Poster, Emeritus Professor of History and Film & Media Studies at UC Irvine, passed away in the hospital earlier this morning. Mark Poster was a vital member of the School of Humanities, and for decades one of its most widely read and cited researchers. He made crucial contributions to two different departments, History and Film & Media Studies, and played a central role in UCI's emergence as a leading center for work in Critical Theory.

In the first part of his career, when his focus was on modern European intellectual history, his path-breaking publications included the influential book *Existential Marxism in Postwar France* (Princeton University Press 1975), a study of the intellectual world around Jean-Paul Sartre. When the theory boom hit the U.S., thanks in part to this book, he became a widely sought-after authority on French critical thought, especially the writing of Michel Foucault, whose work he helped introduce to American audiences. He played a crucial role in setting the History Department on its current course, as one of the first departments--if not the first department--in the discipline with a required graduate sequence in theory. In that sequence Mark taught a Foucault seminar that became legendary.

In San Francisco's Mission District, the Black Bloc Breaks Some Windows and Fails to Make an Impact
Max Crosby

Gentrification is a process where a working class, low-income neighborhood is colonized by the affluent and transformed into a bourgeois area. The 'embourgeosification' of a formerly proletarian quarter often begins when authentically impoverished low-income artists and bohemians move in. Minimum-toil-culture types are drawn to a low-income area by cheap rents, and are also often animated by an authentic antipathy for the larger homogenous corporatized society around us. Their marginal presence is followed by a proliferation of artsy enterprises: high-end galleries, shops, bars and restaurants drawing mainstream prosperous types to shop and consume in an area once thought to be too dark, dirty and (usually) non-white for upper middle class tastes. The gentry come to shop and party, and end up moving in, driving up the cost of rental housing, annexing affordable housing altogether, helping to drive hardcore wage slaves and the poor out of their homes and remaking an area in the image of the gentry's grasping, conspicuously consuming, conformist selves.

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

Critical Arts Ensemble Book Launch London October 6th
Marcus Campbell Arts Books

Four Corners Books and Marcus Campbell Art Books are delighted to invite you to a talk by artist Steve Kurtz, who will discuss the work of Critical Art Ensemble, the artists' group he co-founded and the making of their new book: Disturbances. Steve's talk will be followed by a general discussion and Q&A with Steve and other members of the group.

The book will be available for sale at the shop as part of the Four Corners Books residency program at the shop for the next 2 months.

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Neil Smith, 1954-2012
Bill Roberts and Hector Agredano

A Passionate Scholar and Socialist

Bill Roberts, a founding member of the ISO, and Hector
Agredano, a doctoral student at the CUNY Graduate
Center, remember the life of a determined activist.

Neil Smith, the renowned scholar, beloved teacher and
devoted activist, died on September 29 at the age of
58.

Neil is best known for his academic work. He was a
professor of anthropology and geography at City
University of New York. In particular, his writings on
the patterns of social development in cities--drawing
on history, economics, political and social theory, and
ecological studies--are among the most prominent left-
wing views on the subject.

Video of Madrid Demonstrations, Sept 25-29, 2012

This short film chronicles the events of September 25-29th in Madrid, Spain where tens of thousands of people have taken to the streets to demand the resignation of the government and an end to police brutality. Many of the protests ended in clashes with the police.

Since the stand off began on September 25th , the images of police brutality have travelled the world over, shocking and inspiring people across Europe and leading to an international day of action on September 29th. This film tells the story of why so many people took to the streets and follows these events as they unfolded. Go to globaluprisings.org for the full series of mini-documenaries about reactions to the economic crisis around the world.

http://www.desrealitat.org/2012/10/madrid-25-29-septimebre-2012.html

The Rise of Greek Neofascism
Clandestina

http://vimeo.com/50083938http://vimeo.com/50083938

This is a link of a video from the second anarchist "milicia antifascista" patrol that took place last week in Athens. The motorcycle patrol took place in the areas where nazis usually attack immigrants (the first patrol, two weeks ago, did the same thing). The song heard is an old partisan (communist) antifascist song.

Here in Greece, the state is systematically constructing a fascist "movement", in order to neutralize the social movement that has risen since December 2008 and the IMF attack in Greece. The fascist "movement" gains strength thanks to the scapegoating of immigrants.

Many people from the anarchist millieu and the antiauthoritarian left are ready to bare the burden and pay the cost of a state-provoked small(?)-scale civil war. The internationals have to realize this and take action before it is too late,

A Post-Capitalist Farming Experiment
Potentials, Problems and Perspectives
Jan

Since one and a half years around 70 people are involved in a post-capitalist farming experiment. Situated in the middle of Germany a collective of 5 growers is feeding around 65 supporters, year-round with a full supply of vegetables. The production is organised along the needs and abilities of the community.

Internally the growers collective evaluates the needs of each "worker". Both in financial terms ("wage") and concrete needs (e.g. a place to live). Those needs have to be met in order to enable the individuals to sustainably organise within the project. This happens independently from the evaluation of the amount of time that each grower is willing to commit to the project ("working hours"). If both of this results in a feeling of enough resources to start growing, a budget is calculated summing up all production costs (including "wages") and running investments of a one-year production.

Reactivating the Social Body in Insurrectionary Times:
A Dialogue with Franco 'Bifo' Berardi

[An interview conducted with David Hugill and Elise Thorburn and first published in the Berkeley Planning Journal, 25(1).]

Abstract: The Italian theorist Franco “Bifo” Berardi has spent a lifetime participating in revolutionary movements and thinking through their complexities. He is best known in the English-speaking world for his association with the Italian autonomist movement Operaismo (“workerism”) and its prominent attempts to transform communist politics by resituating
the “needs, desires, and organizational autonomies” of workers at the foundation of political praxis (Genosko and Thoburn 2011: 3).

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