Prison and Social Death
Joshua M. Price with Silvia Federici

February 15, 2016, 7PM
The Brooklyn Commons
388 Atlantic Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11217

Sliding scale: $6 | $10 | $15

The United States imprisons more of its citizens than any other nation in the world. To be sentenced to prison is to face systematic violence, humiliation, and, perhaps worst of all, separation from family and community. It is, to borrow Orlando Patterson’s term for the utter isolation of slavery, to suffer “social death.” In Prison and Social Death, Joshua Price exposes the unexamined cost that prisoners pay while incarcerated and after release, drawing upon hundreds of often harrowing interviews conducted with people in prison, parolees, and their families.

Price argues that the prison separates prisoners from desperately needed communities of support from parents, spouses, and children. Moreover, this isolation of people in prison renders them highly vulnerable to other forms of violence, including sexual violence. Price stresses that the violence they face goes beyond physical abuse by prison guards and it involves institutionalized forms of mistreatment, ranging from abysmally poor health care to routine practices that are arguably abusive, such as pat-downs, cavity searches, and the shackling of pregnant women. And social death does not end with prison. The condition is permanent, following people after they are released from prison. Finding housing, employment, receiving social welfare benefits, and regaining voting rights are all hindered by various legal and other hurdles. The mechanisms of social death, Price shows, are also informal and cultural. Ex-prisoners face numerous forms of distrust and are permanently stigmatized by other citizens around them.

A compelling blend of solidarity, civil rights activism, and social research, Prison and Social Death offers a unique look at the American prison and the excessive and unnecessary damage it inflicts on prisoners and parolees.

Class Wargames Book Launch London 25 October
Red Gallery 1-3 Rivington St, London EC2A 3DT

Richard Barbrook
Class Wargames: ludic subversion against spectacular capitalism

“In a world become ‘game-ified’ against its will, Class Wargames provides the field manual for the only game that matters – that of history.” – McKenzie Wark

5.00-7.00pm: collective games playing
7.00-7.30pm: screening of Ilze Black's 'The Game of War' film
7.30-9.00pm: talks by Richard Barbrook, Fabian Tompsett and Kimathi Donkor
9.00pm until late: KCC & the Rocking Crew and Toi-Toi featuring Claus Voigtmann

Requisite fb event page

There will also be a book event at the London Anarchist Bookfair, 18 October at 5PM

The International Gathering of “The Workers’ Economy” Mexico City November 7-8

Following the first four encuentros internacionales (international gatherings) of the “Workers’ Economy,” held in Argentina, Mexico and Brazil from 2007 to 2013, and after the first Regional Gathering of Europe and the Mediterranean, held in Marseille, France in January 2014, it is now proposed to conduct Regional Gatherings in every even-numbered year and International Gatherings in odd-numbered years. Following this plan, the 1st Regional Gathering of the North America, Central America and Caribbean Region of “The Workers’ Economy” will be held in Mexico City, Mexico on November 7th and 8th, 2014; the 1st South American Regional Gathering of the “The Workers’ Economy” will take place in Argentina on October 3th and 4th, 2014; and the 5th International Gathering of “The Workers’ Economy” will be held in Venezuela in July, 2015.

We invite you to attend the 1st Regional Gathering of the North America, Central America and Caribbean Region of “The Workers’ Economy” in November 2014.

Conducting an encuentro in the North America, Central America and Caribbean Region on themes pertaining to “the workers’ economy” entails enormous challenges for the emerging struggles of workers building an alternative economy. First, there is a huge gulf between the developed countries of North America (Canada and the USA) and those further south (Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean) — in technological development, economic organization, and standards of work and life. Second, the imperialist role and agenda pursued by American capitalism has meant economic and political dependence among most capitalist governments and countries in the region. Third, the region’s workforce continues to experience enormous disparity and dispersion.

nanopolitics, exhaustion, biopolitics: an evening of bodies and books
London, October 9th 7pm @ no.w.here
Top Floor, 316-318 Bethnal Green Road, London E2 OAG

This evening will present an encounter of three lines of thought and practice relating to politics, bodies, life, the social and the common. Doing so, we attempt to think across conceptions and realities of micro, nano and biopolitics. Asking what it is that these dimensions may hold in common, what distinguishes them, and what they may learn from each other, we propose three short presentations followed by an open discussion.

First up is the handbook by the nanopolitics group from London, published with Minor Compositions this fall. Playfully sketching out the term ‘nanopolitics’, this handbook departs from bodies and their encounters in investigating the neoliberal city and workplace, the politics of crisis and austerity, precarity and collaboration. This book, packed with excercises and tools for action draws on social movements, grassroots organizing, dance, theatre and bodywork. As the hosts of this evening, the nanopolitics group will propose some ways of activating their handbook, which tries to think politics with and through the body.

Meeting on Workers' Inquiry in the Logistics and Warehouse Sector in London
Angry Workers of the World
@ LARC, 62 Fieldgate Street
Wednesday 18th September, 7pm

We are planning a militant worker inquiry in the distribution networks around West-London. The initial plan is to continue to research and discuss the situation in the global and local logistics and warehouse sector, to get jobs in strategically interesting places and to potentially make some interventions. Of course all this would be decided by those who choose to join.

"No TAV: The Valley That Resists"
Ilaria Bertazzi

A Presentation at Bluestockings
Tuesday, September 3rd @ 7 PM

Discussion: NO TAV:
“The Valley That Resists”
With Ilaria Bertazzi

In Val Susa (Italy) the population is resisting the construction of a high velocity railroad, creating one of the most powerful movements today in the EU fighting against ecological degradation and selfdetermination. Ilaria Bertazzi examines the significance of this struggle, in the context of the attack the NO TAV Movement is presently undergoing and the strategies and methods of struggles the movement has developed during the last two decades. Ilaria Bertazzi is a student born and living in Torino (Italy). Since 2008 she’s been part of the NO TAV movement which is centered in Val di Susa, the western part of Piemonte, confining with France. She has also been involved in the University Students Movement and the Feminist movement in Italy.

Precarious Worlds: Organising in the realms of reproductive work
A Series of events hosted by Prekär Café in collaboration with Territorio Domestico, Radical Collective Care Practices, Mandelbaum Verlag and Labournet.tv

Care and reproductive work assure the functioning and maintenance of our societies. Elderly care, childcare, healthcare, housework, education, cleaning and tidying up – in private and public spaces alike, these forms of work are often invisibilized, unpaid or badly paid, and in the informal sector they tend to be only minimally protected in legal terms, if at all. The organization of this world of work is changing throughout the course of history. How can we transform it based on our needs, and turn it to stand in the way of the reproduction of capitalism?

Class Struggle in China:
“We Are Not Machines! The Struggles of Workers in China”
Members of the Gongchao Collective

New York City
April 15, 17, and 18, 2013

Presentation: “We Are Not Machines! The Struggles of Workers in China”
with Members of the Gongchao Collective

The Chinese-Taiwanese company Foxconn employs more than one million people in China alone. As the world’s biggest contract manufacturer in electronics, it works for Apple and many other large brands — but, as revealed in the spotlight drawn by a series of worker suicides in 2010, Foxconn’s workers face horrendous working conditions while producing Phones, Pads, and other desired products. A contributor to the Gongchao collective will report on the exploitation in these factories and Foxconn workers’ resistance, countering the image of a perfect digital world presented by the leading gadget
brands like Apple.

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When: Monday, April 15th @ 7PM
Where: Bluestockings Bookstore
172 Allen St.
New York, NY 10002
(212) 777-6028
Who: Free and open to all– $5 Suggested, but no one turned away.

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When: Wednesday, April 17th 7:00pm
Where: 16 Beaver Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY
Who: Free and open to all

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When: Thursday, April 18 at 7:30PM
Where: The Brecht Forum
451 West Street (that's the West Side Highway) between Bank & Bethune Streets
NYC 10014
(212) 242-4201
Who: Sliding scale: $6/$10/$15

COUNTERING CONTINGENCY: TEACHING, SCHOLARSHIP, AND CREATIVITY IN THE AGE OF THE ADJUNCT
A conference sponsored by the Adjunct Faculty Association of the United Steelworkers
April 5-7, 2013

Inspired by the effort to organize by adjunct faculty at Duquesne University and the emerging discussion about adjunct faculty issues nationwide, this conference offers an opportunity to think more deeply about the state of contingent, non-tenure-stream faculty in the Pittsburgh region's colleges and universities. Contingent labor constitutes the majority of faculty, yet adjunct faculty are the lowest paid and most overburdened higher education workers. Adjunct faculty represent the foundation of academic experiences at the undergraduate level and offer irreplaceable interactions with students. They are artists, scholars, researchers, and examples of inspired teaching. This conference is an invitation to imagine the answers to crucial questions raised by adjunct faculty's tenuous position: How can we use what we know to create a more sustainable and equitable labor and educational system, one that will benefit everyone at the university? What change is most needed? What does it mean to constitute the new faculty majority at a college or university? What are the first and best steps to improve the conditions of adjunct faculty's labor and students' learning?

4th International Gathering of the 'Workers' Economy'
Self-management and Work as Alternatives to the Global Economic Crisis
July 9-12, 2013 - João Pessoa, Brazil

In an international context where the global capitalist crisis is increasingly affecting European countries, especially in the Mediterranean region, the only response from governments has been to implement the usual austerity measures. But austerity—tried and tested in other parts of the world—has, yet again, not only failed to regenerate economies, it has also led to further impoverishment, structural unemployment, marginalization, and insecurity for the majority who must work to earn a living. In response, large protest movements have begun to emerge in the “developed” countries, where the effects of the crisis are being felt the most. These movements underscore the need for changes in the economy’s management—changes that not only contemplate the welfare of workers, but that also assure workers’ management of the economy.

In the so-called “developing” countries—particularly in Latin America—social movements, people’s organizations, and labor movements have been spearheading self-managed organizations at a grassroots level for some time now. We can think of, for example, the worker-recuperated enterprises in various South American countries, or other forms of workers’ control, both urban and rural. In some instances, these movements have gained recognition and support from governments, bringing into question the role of the state and the relationship between state power and the autonomy of popular movements. On the one hand, the state can potentially facilitate the processes of workers’ control. On the other hand, it can be seen as an antagonistic instrument of traditional power with the potential to limit the autonomy of self-managed organizations.