A-Infos (en) US, IAS News :: 015 - April 2006 - Newsletter of the Institute for Anarchist Studies

In this Issue:
1 Mark Lance Introduces the IAS’s Tenth Anniversary Fund-raising Campaign
2 Winter 2006 IAS Grants Awarded
3 Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile
4 Renewing the Anarchist Tradition Conference: Call for Proposals
5 Subscribing to Perspectives on Anarchist Theory
6 IAS Speakers Bureau
7 Upcoming Events
Mark Lance Introduces the IAS’s Tenth Anniversary Fund-raising Campaign
Dear IAS Supporters (Old and New):

This is an exciting time for the IAS, now celebrating its tenth
anniversary. In addition to our core mission of providing small grants
to anarchist writers and translators worldwide, and the newly expanded
Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, the IAS has recently launched a
project with AK Press to publish work by our supported authors,
increased our editorial support for new authors, and put together an
impressive speakers bureau. The Renewing the Anarchist Tradition
conference continues to grow every year, and is developing ever-greater
intellectual depth and a real feeling of community. These projects,
together with the wonderful infusion of new energy on the board and
other ideas still germinating, mean that the IAS is poised to make a
powerful contribution to a resurgence of anarchist education and
scholarship in North America.

I am one of the new members of the board, and I would like to use this
e-newsletter as a chance to introduce myself. (You will hear from
others on the board in future missives.) I spend about half my time
working in mainstream academia--as a philosophy professor--and the
other half working in social movements. In the former capacity I work
mainly in the philosophy of language, logic, and epistemology; in the
latter I do international solidarity work, support local grassroots
organizing around schools and housing, try to plant seeds of public
education, and participate in antiwar and global justice activism. Not
surprisingly to those receiving this letter, I find neither half of my
life altogether satisfying. The academy is not about radical social
change, and most movement organizations are not involved in thinking
deeply about anti-authoritarian power and the radical transformation of
society. For me, and I'm sure for you as well, such a disconnect is not
at all acceptable.

The IAS is one of the few organizations on the anti-authoritarian Left
that is trying to bridge that gap, to bring radical scholarship into
productive cooperation with radical action. For many years I have
admired the work of the IAS, and the thoughtful radical scholars and
activists who were involved in it. I have attended the Renewing the
Anarchist Tradition conference for several years, read and contributed
to Perspectives on Anarchist Theory, and gotten to know members of the
IAS board as well as IAS grant recipients. So it was a real thrill to
be asked to join the board last year. I look forward to working to
continue the extension and expansion of the projects that the IAS is
known for, particularly by strengthening Perspectives and contributing
to new community educational projects.

But to achieve all this, we need your help. Some of you have donated to
the IAS recently. We thank you most sincerely for that and apologize for
this new appeal. But we are in a situation where we can do an enormous
amount with a reasonably small infusion of money. Over the past year,
the IAS has put a great deal of effort into decentralizing
responsibilities that used to be concentrated in the hands of one
director/administrator. In many ways we have been successful, and board
members have become much more active in propelling our different
projects forward. Nevertheless, as we have come to discover, there are
still many day-to-day operations that demand the attention of a paid
staff person. For this reason, we intend to hire a part-time
administrator in the next two months.

Funds for our grant-giving efforts also need to be rebuilt. In working
through the recent financial difficulties we have kept up our
commitment to funding anarchist writers and translators. At our "Decade
of Dissent" dinner event in New York City this February, we heard from
many past IAS recipients who offered moving thoughts about the
importance of these grants to their own development and their ability
to finish their projects. For many, the IAS grant, small as it was,
paid the rent or bought the groceries for a month, quite literally
making it possible to write. Several also noted the significance of the
moral support and encouragement that receiving a grant from fellow
radicals implied, particularly since the recipients also knew that the
funds came from contributors around the globe like you. It is our firm
hope and intention to gradually expand the amount we are able to give
toward such projects.

So once again we are asking you to support the work of the IAS. We are
ready to build on our work, but simply can't do it without you. You can
make a contribution online, using the PayPal button on our Web site, or
by sending a check or postal order to our mailing address. Remember
that every contributor receives a yearlong subscription to Perspectives
on Anarchist Theory, and those who donate US$25 or more are eligible to
receive one or more books
(http://www.anarchist-studies.org/support/books), thanks to the good
people at Raven Books in Cambridge, MA. (You'll find the list of books
for donors on our Web site as well.)

Please help us show the world that anarchist thought is a vibrant,
growing area of engaged scholarship.

Yours in solidarity,
 Mark Lance
 For the IAS board

Donate Today!: http://www.anarchist-studies.org/support/donate



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Winter 2006 IAS Grants Awarded
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Congratulations to the three recipients of the winter 2006 IAS grants
for radical writers and translators!

Mandisi Majavu was awarded $250 for his essay project, "Development in
South Africa."Majavu will examine ways in which South Africa has
benefited or been harmed by international financial institutions like
the IMF, World Bank, and WTO. He will contrast that trajectory with a
vision of how South Africa could have developed if a participatory
economics agenda had been implemented after 1994.

Majavu is a culture critic based in Cape Town, South Africa. His social
critique borrows heavily from the anarchist tradition.

Imad Mortada was awarded $250 for an Arabic translation of David
Graeber's Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology. Mortada hopes that
this translation will contribute to the growing debate within the Left
in Lebanon, other Arab states, and diaspora communities about the
possibilities presented by contemporary anarchism and
anti-authoritarianism. The translation will include new introductions
by Graeber and Mortada.

Mortada, born in Lebanon and currently based in Barcelona, is a queer
anarchist Arab. He has been involved in various political projects in
Lebanon, Iraq, and Europe, with a focus on Palestinian refugees,
no-border networks, queer and women's rights, and alternative media.

Jacob Mundy was awarded $500 for "Self-Governance in Exile: The Western
Saharan Refugees, Thirty Years Later." Since 1976, nearly half the
indigenous population of Western Sahara has lived in exile in four
self-managed refugee camps in Algeria. Their relatives and friends, the
other half of the divided population, still live under Moroccan
occupation in what is Africa's last official colony, Western Sahara. In
the four Sahrawi refugee camps--small spaces of political autonomy ceded
by Algeria--the Western Saharan independence movement (Polisario Front)
has committed itself to a now thirty-year-old experiment in
prefigurative self-governance. Unlike any other refugees' experiences
in the world, the Western Saharan refugees who inhabit the camps manage
their daily lives without direct help from the international community.
At the same time, they participate in the political structures of their
own liberation movement--from daily meetings in "tent groups" to the
"National Congress" held every three years. The refugees claim that the
camps model the very society an independent Western Sahara will achieve
once Morocco withdraws. But is this really the case? Grounded in
Mundy's research experience in the camps, this essay will try to answer
that question and access the lessons from the Western Sahara refugees'
experiment in grassroots democracy.

Mundy is the coauthor of a forthcoming book on Western Sahara with
Stephen Zunes. This fall, he will begin his PhD studies at the
University of Exeter in the United Kingdom. Originally from Seattle, he
currently resides in San Jose, California, with his partner and their
two dogs.




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Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile
-----------------------------------------------------------




The IAS congratulates Ramor Ryan on the publication of his first book,
Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile (AK Press, 2006),
due out next month. Ryan received an IAS grant for this collection of
essays in 2002.

> From the book jacket: Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish
Exile
Ramor Ryan
AK Press, $14.95

This book is a map, allowing us to navigate the liberated zones of
riots and festivals; late-night conspiring and pre-dawn revelry;
alleyway escape routes and jungle hide-aways; parties in crumbling
squatted buildings and tea ceremonies in rugged guerrilla
encampments--always with a rakish raconteur at our side. At once
celebratory and self-critical, Clandestines offers a geography lesson
of the shadows, where borders are disregarded, revolution is in the
air, and adventure is always just around the corner.
 --Jennifer Whitney, coauthor of We Are Everywhere: The Irresistible
Rise of Global Anticapitalism

Clandestines plays in the light and shadows cast by revolutionary
outlaws in order to unmask the power of a politics from below. These
poetic tales of anti-capitalist resistance and autonomous spaces are as
heartbreaking as they are filled with heart, and that is precisely their
clear-eyed utopian beauty. "A bolt of lightening [to] wield against the
oppressors," as Ramor puts it, Clandestines should be read by rebels
everywhere around their campfires, cafes, and kitchen tables.
 --Cindy Milstein, Institute for Anarchist Studies

An epic debut, Ramor Ryan's nonfiction tales read like Che Guevara's
The Motorcycle Diaries crossed with Hunter S. Thompson's wit and flair
for the impossible. A shrewd political thinker and philosopher with a
knack for ingratiating himself into the thick of any social situation,
Ryan has been there and lived to tell about it.

As much an adventure story as an unofficial chronicle of modern global
resistance movements, Clandestines spirits the reader across the globe,
carefully weaving the narrative through illicit encounters and public
bacchanals. From the teeming squats of mid-1990s' East Berlin, to
intrigue in the Zapatista Autonomous Zone, a Croatian RainbowGathering
on the heels of the G8 protests in Genoa, mutiny on the high seas, the
quixotic ambitions of a Kurdish guerrilla camp, the contradictions of
Cuba, and the neoliberal nightmare of postwar(s) Central America we see
everywhere a world in flux, struggling to be reborn.

Ramor Ryan is a rebellious rover and Irish exile who makes his home
between Dublin, New York City, and the Zapatista Autonomous Zone.




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Renewing the Anarchist Tradition Conference: Call for Proposals
-----------------------------------------------------------



CALL FOR PROPOSALS (due July 1, 2006)
September 29 to October 1, 2006
at Goddard College, Plainfield, Vermont

The Renewing the Anarchist Tradition (RAT) conference, sponsored by the
Institute for Anarchist Studies, will again take place at Goddard
College in Plainfield, Vermont over the September 29-October 1, 2006
weekend. The conference aims to provide a scholarly space in which to
both reexamine and reinvigorate the social and political tradition of
anarchism. RAT is meant as one contribution to the project of
developing a more rigorous as well as contemporary theoretical
framework for anarchism, and to assist in nurturing new generations of
anti-authoritarian public intellectuals. As in the past, we hope that
RAT continues to raise difficult questions in a support, participatory
environment among anarchist peers.

For more details on RAT's mission and past conferences, see
http://www.homemadejam.org/renew.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
(due July 1, 2006)

We are now accepting proposals for individual presentations and
panels/debates/panelists for the 2006 Renewing the Anarchist Tradition
conference (RAT), sponsored by the Institute for Anarchist Studies. For
more on RAT, including past presentations and panels, see
http://www.homemadejam.org/renew. People of color, women, those outside
academia, and others often excluded from scholarly life--due to gender,
sexuality, class, and so forth--are especially encouraged to send in
proposals. And please feel free to forward this e-mail to others who
may be interested in participating in and/or attending RAT.

We're looking for individual presentations that attempt to analyze
and/or critique current social relations and dilemmas; share work and
ideas on anarchism's relevance and potential as a political/social
theory as well as a practice; grapple with and constructively
challenge/build on standard anarchist notions in light of a radically
changing world; and cover a wide variety of perspectives and scholarly
disciplines.

While you can also propose a full panel or debate, including all
panelists, please consider simply proposing yourself for a panel topic
or two and we will put the panel together based on a diversity of
viewpoints. Specifically, we would like to see panel/debate proposals
that explore the following concerns through an anarchist lens: specific
written works and/or major theorists; contemporary social phenomena,
especially those undergoing dramatic transformations; movements and/or
movement building, especially in light of present-day geopolitical
events; various forms of identity, particularly race, gender, and
sexuality; the rise of fundamentalisms and their implications; issues
surrounding racism, anti-Semitism, and/or Islamophobia; ecology;
imperialism and anti-imperialism; like-minded as well as divergent
strains of radical social thought/praxis, from autonomous Marxism to
various horizontalist movements; past historical examples of
anti-authoritarian theories and/or practices; and the changing
character of such standard categories as "the state," "capitalism,"
"class," and so on. These are just a sampling of our ideas; please feel
free to propose others, of course!

Individual presentation and panel proposals should be no more than one
typed page each; remember, you can also propose yourself as a panelist
and let us set up the panel itself. Please include a presentation or
panel title and one-paragraph description, two to three sentences about
yourself and/or other proposed panelists, and complete contact
information (address, phone, and e-mail). Indicate if you feel
comfortable having your presentation/panel audiotaped, and if so, if
you would be amendable to postconference"publication" of such audio on
a Web site or CD. Keep in mind that presenters are asked to limit
individual presentations to about 30 to 40 minutes, and end by framing
a question or two for the participants in order to facilitate another
30 to 40 minutes of discussion. Panelists should each prepare about 10
to 15 minutes of material, leaving time for discussion as well. Our
intent with the panels is to stimulatelively, but friendly debate, so
again, a variety of perspectives on each panel is encouraged.

Proposals are due by July 1, 2006, and should be e-mailed to both
coorganizers:



*  John Petrovato: jpetrovato@hotmail.com
*  Cindy Milstein: cbmilstein@yahoo.com

If you have further questions about proposals, please contact John, our
proposal coordinator.

We will inform you about the outcome of your proposal(s) soon after our
deadline date.

Please note: all presenters must also register and pay for the
conference. Details to come; stay tuned to our Web site or send Cindy
an e-mail to be added to our occasional RAT e-update list.

Renewing the Anarchist Tradition: http://www.homemadejam.org/renew



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Subscribing to Perspectives on Anarchist Theory
-----------------------------------------------------------




The next issue of the IAS's biannual journal, Perspectives on Anarchist
Theory, will be published in May. The theme of the spring issue is
"Migrations".

The easiest way to subscribe to Perspectives is to donate to the IAS!
All donors automatically receive a yearlong subscription to the
journal.

If you prefer not to donate but would like to subscribe to
Perspectives, please mail us a note to that effect, including your full
name and complete mailing address, phone number, and e-mail, along with
payment by check or money order to:

Institute for Anarchist Studies
Attn: Perspectives
PO Box 1664
Peter Stuyvesant Station
New York, NY 10009
USA

Subscription Rates:
IAS donors: FREE
USA and Canada: US$10 per year.
All other countries: US$15 per year.
Institutions: US$20 per year.

If you represent a bookstore, an infoshop, or a library, and would like
your institution to carry Perspectives, you can order directly from the
IAS. To find out more about terms and rates, please contact John
Petrovato, our distribution manager, at jpetrovato[at]hotmail[dot]com.
You may also contact him via Raven Used Books.

Address:
52-B JFK Street
Cambridge, MA 01238
Phone: (617)441-6999

Back Issues: http://www.anarchist-studies.org/publications/perspectives



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IAS Speakers Bureau
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Through the IAS Speakers Bureau, your organization can arrange to host
one of the diverse and dynamic speakers in our network of scholars and
activists. At the same time, you will be helping to support the work of
the IAS.

Speakers and Topics

Ashanti Alston is a former member of the Black Panther Party and an
ex-political prisoner. He is a board member of the IAS and publishes
the zine Anarchist Panther. He has been a guest lecturer at the
Institute for Social Ecology in Vermont, speaking on the Panthers and
the history of black nationalist movements. Ashanti recently spent six
months in Chiapas studying the autonomous structure of Zapatista
communities and writing his memoirs. He resides in New York City, where
he served as the regional coordinator for Critical Resistance, a
national organization committed to ending the prison-industrial
complex.

Topics: Lessons from the Black Panther Party; history of black
nationalist movements; black anarchism; and the Zapatistas.

Kazembe Balagun is a writer/educator living in Brooklyn, New York. A
graduate of Hunter College with a BA in Africana studies and
philosophy, he was a member of the Student Liberation Action Movement
(SLAM). He is currently a member of Estacion Libre, a people of color
organization in solidarity with Chiapas. His articles have appeared in
the Indypendent, Left Turn, and Perspectives on Anarchist Theory.

Topics: Queer theory; African American cultural history; and black
liberation.

Paul Glavin is a writer, acupuncturist, and board member of the IAS. He
has been active in social and political movements for over twenty years.
Paul is a founding member of the Youth Greens, an ecological anarchist
organization, as well as a former member of the Love and Rage
Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, the Free Society Journal
Collective, and the AWOL political collective. He lives in the Pacific
Northwest, and has been published in Z Magazine, Clamor, Perspectives
on Anarchist Theory, and New Formulation.

Topics: Anti-authoritarian organizing; capitalism, the state, and
ecology; an anarchist perspective on the Black Panther Party; and the
radical roots of acupuncture detox in the revolutionary movements of
the 1960s.

Mark Lance is a professor of philosophy, and a professor of justice and
peace at Georgetown University. He is widely published on philosophy
language, logic, epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy. Mark
is a board member of the IAS, and coeditor of Perspectives on Anarchist
Theory. He has also been an activist on a wide range of issues for
twenty years, publishes in a number of activist journals, and is
currently writing a book on "constructive anarchism."

Topics: Palestine; democracy; revolution and constructive radicalism;
nonviolence; terrorism; and academic lectures on a range of issues in
philosophy.

Todd May is a professor of philosophy at Clemson University. He teaches
and writes in recent French thought, particularly poststructuralism.
Todd is the author of The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist
Anarchism. In addition to his academic work, he has been involved in
liberation struggles from gay rights to anti-apartheid work to the
Palestinian rights struggle.

Topics: The intersection of philosophy and anarchism;
poststructuralism; and Palestine.

Cindy Milstein is a co-organizer of the Renewing Anarchist Tradition
conference, a board member with the IAS, and a member of the Free
Society Collective and Black Sheep Books collective in Montpelier,
Vermont. Her work appears in anti-authoritarian periodicals and several
recent anthologies, including Globalize Liberation (City Lights Books),
Confronting Capitalism (Soft Skull Press), and Only a Beginning
(Arsenal Pulp Press).

Topics: Anarchism; contemporary anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian
movement(s); direct democracy; globalization; changing character of
statecraft and politics; and contemporary issues from an anarchist
perspective.

Ramor Ryan is an Irish anarchist who lives between Dublin, New York
City, and the Zapatista Autonomous Zone. He has traveled extensively
throughout Latin America. Ramor has also worked as a journalist in
print, radio, and television. His writing has appeared in several
anthologies and a variety of magazines, and his first book,
Clandestines: The Pirate Journals of an Irish Exile (AK Press), will be
published in 2006.

Topics: Anti-imperialist struggles in Ireland and Latin America;
anti-capitalism; and the Zapatistas and grassroots autonomy.

Bill Weinberg is an award-winning journalist and editor of the online
magazine World War 4 Report (WW4Report.com (http://www.WW4Report.com)),
which was launched immediately after the 9-11 attacks. He is the author
of Homage to Chiapas (Verso, 2000) and War on the Land: Ecology and
Politics in Central America (Zed, 1991). As a correspondent for Native
Americas, the quarterly journal of Cornell University's American Indian
Program, he has won three awards from the Native American Journalists
Association for his reportage on indigenous issues from Nicaragua to
Arizona. He is currently working on a book about Plan Colombia and
indigenous resistance movements in the Andes. He lives in New York's
Lower East Side.

Topics: Latin America; Plan Colombia; the Zapatistas; indigenous
movements (especially in the Andes, Mexico, and Central America);
secular Left resistance in Iraq and the Islamic world; the "war on
terrorism" and the corporate agendas it masks; and building alternative
media.

Please check our Web site for a complete and up-to-date list of
speakers.

To schedule a speaking engagement with one of the speakers, or to ask
for more information about the IAS Speakers Bureau, please contact us
by e-mail at speakers@anarchist-studies.org.

Host organizations are expected to provide all transportation costs and
lodging or lodging costs (where applicable), along with an honorarium.
Speakers will then contribute at least 25 percent of the honorarium to
support the projects of the IAS.




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Upcoming Events
-----------------------------------------------------------

IAS board members Louis-F. Gaudet and Cindy Milstein will be presenting
at the International Anarchist Activists and Academics Conference,
which will be held at Pitzer College, Claremont, California, from April
13-15, 2006 (http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/dward/AAA.html). Louis will be
presenting on anarchists in the academy, while Cindy will be exploring
the "new" anarchism.

The IAS will also be tabling at the New England Anarchist Bookfair
(http://neanarchistbookfair.org/index.htm) (April 22), the Montreal
Anarchist Bookfair (http://salonanarchiste.taktic.org/bookfairEng.html)
(May 20), and the Mid-Atlantic Radical Bookfair
(http://redemmas.org/bookfair/2006) (June 30). If you are planning to
attend any of these upcoming events, please do drop by our table to say
hello!

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That's all for this issue of IAS News. If you think any of this information would be of value to a friend or organization, please feel free to forward this newsletter.

Send suggestions and comments to: info@anarchist-studies.org

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Copyleft 2006 Institute for Anarchist Studies
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