Category: Events

A Two-Part Discussion on Hinterland

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

Wednesdays

Powderhorn Park

Northeast Corner

7:00 PM

Over the last forty years, the human landscape of the United States has been fundamentally transformed. The metamorphosis is partially visible in the ascendance of glittering, coastal hubs for finance, infotech, and the so-called creative class. But this is only the tip of an economic iceberg, the bulk of which lies in the darkness of the declining heartland or on the dimly lit fringe of sprawling cities. This is America’s hinterland, populated by towering grain threshers and hunched farmworkers, where laborers drawn from every corner of the world crowd into factories and “fulfillment centers” and where cold storage trailers are filled with fentanyl-bloated corpses when the morgues cannot contain the dead.

September 11th: Part One

Intro plus Chapters one and two.

September 25th: Part Two

Chapters three and four.

Read for free here.

Border Resistance Speaking Tour

From Border Resistance Convergence

Tuesday, August 6th

Seward Cafe

2129 E Franklin Ave

6:00 PM

Join us for a week long tour of discussions, panels, fundraisers and dance parties with revolutionary autonomous organizers working on the borderlands.

We will be giving first hand accounts from local grassroots organizers about the last 8 months of Direct Action and Mutual Aide in the Border towns of Juarez/El Paso and Tijuana/San Diego.

We hope to collaborate with local migrant justice organizers from each city to create a broad and strategic discussion on how folks can plug into work that is actually working towards dismantling concentration camps and US-funded genocide.

Rad t-shirts, stickers, buttons and artwork will be sold for donation.

Beware the Influencing Machines! Towards a Mad Peoples’ History of Psychiatry and Law

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

Thursday, July 25th

Boneshaker Books

2002 23rd Ave S

7:00 PM

Efforts have been made in recent years to reconsider and question standard histories of madness, mental illness, psychiatry, and medicine. Some of these have involved more empathetic interpretations of mental illness, others have included accounts and perspectives from mad people themselves about their treatment or experience, but very few have seriously considered what the writings, artworks, and words of the mad could offer outside of what they have to say about their treatment experience or their personal suffering. On July 25th—the birthday of the legendary conservative German judge turned madwoman on a rampage against God, Daniel Paul Schreber—Sasha Durakov will argue that mad histories are not only possible, but that the works of those called insane and locked in asylums or hospital wards offer coherent and contemporary political critiques of the state of law and medicine from the perspective of those who cannot but see these as essentially related. Specifically, when one contextualizes and takes seriously the supposedly ‘delusional’ writings and art works about ‘influencing machines’ (up to now dominated by the literature on ‘schizophrenic delusions’), one finds tangible, and often radical, new ways of thinking about the relationship between law, medicine, and power. As more politicians and activists begin remonstrating the state of America’s prison system and offer psychiatric services as an alternative, it is more vital than ever that we consider the works of psychiatric patients who rejected this alternative through creative uses of language.

Building Accountable Communities

From TC Radical Calendar

Monday, July 1st

Boneshaker Books

2002 23rd Ave S

6:30 PM

“Accountability is a familiar buzz-word in contemporary social movements, but what does it mean? How do we work toward it? What does it look like to be accountable to survivors without exiling or disposing those who do harm?”

In fall of 2018, Kiyomi Fujikawa and Shannon Perez-Darby joined Mariame Kaba for an online discussion on these questions, exploring models for building accountable communities for the purpose of healing and repair. The presenters filmed the online discussion, with the encouragement for folks to host viewings and discussions. We are hosting this event as an informal group of folks who have been meeting over potlucks to talk about conflict engagement work in our communities. Please come out and talk about conflict and accountability with us on July 1st, and lets find ways together to continue the work and conversations.

There will be snacks and resource-sharing and a discussion after the screening. All ages welcome. Some content may be heavy, dealing with abuse and assault. Please contact us if you have questions or concerns about accessibility, safety within this space, or other things. The meeting room at Boneshaker has no steps to enter and the path to the restrooms is also level.

About the Speakers

Kiyomi Fujikawa works within movements to end gender-based violence, organizing with Queer and Trans communities of color around preventing and responding to intimate partner violence and towards racial, gender and economic justice.

Shannon Perez-Darby has spent 12 years as a community advocate working within LGBTQ communities and communities of color to support survivors of domestic and sexual violence. She is a queer, mixed Latina writer, survivor, community activist and author of the piece “The Secret Joy of Accountability: Self-accountability as a Building Block for Change” in the seminal book The Revolution Starts at Home. Shannon’s passion lies in supporting communities to actualize our dreams in our day-to-day lives.

Mariame Kaba is an organizer and an abolitionist, the founder of Project NIA, co-founder several organizations including of Survived and Punished, and a current BCRW activist in residence.

A Reading Group On Joyful Militancy

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

Wednesdays

Matthews Park

7:00 PM

Joyful Militancy foregrounds forms of life in the cracks of Empire, revealing the ways that fierceness, tenderness, curiosity, and commitment can be intertwined.

July 10th: Introduction

Building Thriving Resistance in Toxic Times

July 17th: Chapters One & Two

Empire, Militancy, and Joy & Friendship, Freedom, Ethics, Affinity

July 24th: Chapter Three

Trust and Responsibility as Common Notions

July 31st: Chapters Four & Five

Beyond the Sad Comforts and Stale Air of Radicalism

The entire book is available to read here.

Beyond Line 3: Confronting State Repression

From Pipeline Legal Action Network

Monday, June 17th

Seward Cafe

2129 E Franklin Ave

7:00 PM

As we prepare for action against Line 3, we confront a state highly skilled in using criminal charges to disrupt radical social movements. Using the framework presented in A Titled Guide To Being A Defendant, this event tackles the question of how we combat state repression through the legal system and emerge stronger as a result.

This workshop will be led by Betsy Raach-Gilman, a longtime environmentalist and revolutionary, whose activism informed A Titled Guide.

All proceeds will be used to provide Titled Guides for Line 3 defendants.

A Reading Group on The End Of The Line

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

Monday, June 17th

Powderhorn Park

Northeast Corner

7:00 PM

The rusting fossil-fuel infrastructure of the upper Midwest connects the poisoned residents of Flint to the wreckage of Alberta’s oil sands. Can it also become the backbone for a new movement against planet-killing capitalism?

The text can be read for free here.

Extending the Conversation on Housing, Financialization, and Race in Minneapolis

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

Wednesday, May 29th

Boneshaker Books

2002 23rd Ave S

7:00 PM

A discussion on “It’s Own Peculiar Decor” by Chris Wright and the film Jim Crow of the North that reckons with settler colonialism and ways institutional racism is entrenched through credit and financialization. Film available to stream from Twin Cities Public Television’s website. This essay helps us understand a history of financialization in the US as it pertains to race, the home, and the suburbs. Part of the time will be spent discussing this history of property alongside a history of settler colonialism. Essay available online here and free printed copies also available at Boneshaker Books.

Fascism & Anti-Fascism In Present Day Austria

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

Thursday, May 30th

Boneshaker Books

2002 23rd Ave S

6:00 PM

As today’s extreme right wing Austrian government came into power in 2017, it fits well within the narrative of the european political atmosphere of racist, xenophobic, and anti-immigrant tendencies—but how did it happen?

A short introduction to post World War II politics in Austria; why the government can be counted among the extreme far-right and what anti-fascists try to do about it.

Prisoner Letter Writing Nights

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

First & Third Thursdays

Walker Church

3104 16th Ave S

6:00 PM

Minneapolis Anarchist Black Cross is a local anti-authoritarian prison abolition group. Come & join us in reaching out to folks trapped on the inside.

Autonomy Is In Our Hearts with Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater

From Boneshaker Books

Wednesday, May 8th

Boneshaker Books

2002 23rd Ave S

6:00 PM

The lessons offered by the Zapatista movement of Chiapas, Mexico are more pertinent now than ever. As the “pink tide” of left Latin American governments recede and the right resurges throughout the Americas and the world, the Zapatistas offer a different way forward. Instead of seeking state power, they have remained steadfast in their commitment to build an autonomous government system beyond the logic of capital and the nation state, and continuously resist attacks on their communities by all sides of the Mexican political spectrum, including the current “progressive” Lopez Obrador administration.

Autonomy Is in Our Hearts gives a detailed account of this autonomous government system based on hundreds of testimonies from within the Zapatista base communities. It is rooted in Dylan’s own experiences of years of Zapatista solidarity work and as a student of Tsotsil, a Mayan language indigenous to the highlands Zapatista communities of Chiapas.

Dylan Eldredge Fitzwater has encountered the Zapatistas as a human rights observer, as a participant in several international gatherings, and as a student at the Zapatista language school in Oventik. His most recent permanent residence was Portland, OR where he worked at Burgerville, a regional fast-food chain, and organized for the Burgerville Workers Union, an affiliate of the Industrial Workers of the World. He is currently on the road living out of a van and selling Zapatista coffee through MonkeyBear Coop.

Reading Group: Our History Is The Future

From Boneshaker Books

Wednesday, May 22nd

Boneshaker Books

2002 23rd Ave S

6:00 PM

Join us on Wednesday, May 22nd from 6-8pm for a discussion of Nick Estes’ Our History is the Future: Standing Rock versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long History of Indigenous Resistance. With the climate crisis upon us, stopping Line 3 (a proposed tar sands pipeline expansion) from crossing Minnesota is critical. Our History is the Future will provide important context about organizing and activism from Standing Rock, and help us think about how to frame Line 3 in the long history of settler-colonialism in the United States. Copies of the book are available at Boneshaker for 20% off the cover price.

Roxanne Dunbar Ortiz, author of An Indigenous People’s History of the United States, says:

“In Our History Is the Future historian Nick Estes tells a spellbinding story of the 10 month Indigenous resistance at Standing Rock in 2016, animating the lives and characters of the leaders and organizers, emphasizing the powerful leadership of the women. Alone this would be a brilliant analysis of one of the most significant social movements of this century. But embedded in the story and inseparable from it is the centuries long history of the Oceti Sakowin’ resistance to United States’ genocidal wars and colonial institutions. And woven into these entwined stories of Indigenous resistance is the true history of the United States as a colonialist state and a global history of European colonialism. This book is a jewel—history and analysis that reads like the best poetry—certain to be a classic work as well as a study guide for continued and accelerated resistance.”

See Estes discuss the book on Democracy Now!, and hear him discuss the current fight for indigenous liberation on the podcast Better Off Red.

All are welcome!

May Day Is (Y)Ours: Call for Autonomous and Decentralized Anti-Capitalist Actions on May 1st in the Twin Cities

Anonymous submission to Conflict Minnesota

The first of May is a day for commemorating International Worker’s Day, and before that, the welcoming of Spring. While these traditions live on in near-petrified form, we can bring them a new life. We: you, and I, and all our friends.

This is a call for autonomous and decentralized anti-capitalist actions to take place on May Day around the Twin Cities. This means that anyone seeking a more dignified life—a life beyond cops, work, prisons and borders—take their own initiative to act in whatever way they see fit. Autonomous, so that we don’t need anyone else’s permission to act; decentralized, so that we can be everywhere, centering ourselves instead.

We wish to emphasize both creativity and flexibility in this call. Creativity can push us beyond the stale forms that activism accustoms us to, encouraging us to forge new paths of acting in the world. While centering ourselves means giving us an ease of flexibility by allowing anyone to act on their own time, with their own means.

Do not be daunted. Surely, it’s easier to show up to a protest march organized for you and follow along, but it’s far less fun. There is no greater feeling than acting in a way that is in every way y/our own. We are so used to being guided and governed by the economy, that even our resistance tends to fall along the same lines. This too we must refuse.

As others have said elsewhere “May Day is our day to imagine and bring forth a world of ecstatic sharing and joy in common.” So get going—make plans and together we can make May Day ours!