3Cs presents at Hemi GSI 2012

Liz and Tim gave a talk this Saturday as part of a panel on “Geopolitics of Reimagination: Art, Media, and Social Movements” at the Hemispheric Institute’s 2012 Graduate Student Initiative convergence. See below to click through to the PDF of our presentation, which talked about some of the relationships between mapping and militant research and showed some of our work.

3Cs Presentation at Hemi GSI Convergence Nov 2012

Geografía Crítica en Bogotá

Liz asistió a las jornadas de Geografía Crítica: Teritorialidad, Espacio y Poder en América Latina en Bogotá organizadas por GeoRaizAL. Ver el programa completo. Un día, tal vez, Liz subirá el texto de su ponencia.

También conoció a compañeros Razón Cartográfica.

Audio from Situaciones Workshop

The complete audio from the Apr 27-28 Workshop with Colectivo Situaciones is now up!

Conocimiento en Movimiento: Challenges and Practices of Activist Research in Times/Spaces of Crisis

Colectivo Situaciones defines itself as a militant research collective. The group emerged from Argentina’s radical student milieu in the mid 1990s and, since then, have developed a long track record of intervention in Argentine social movements. Their books are dialogues with the unemployed workers movement, explorations of the question of power and tactics of struggle, and conversations about how to think about revolution today.

The two-day workshop was divided into 3 parts:

Part I: The Geneologies and Experiences of Colectivo Situaciones

Part II: Activist Research at a Crossroads
with 3cs, El Kilombo, and Edu-Factory

Part III: New Forms of Politics: Beyond the Left-Right Spectrum
with Michael Hardt and Walter Mignolo

Report from Activist Research Panel w/ Colectivo Situaciones

Liz and Maribel from 3Cs spoke on a panel about “activist research at a crossroads” with folks from Colectivo Situaciones, El Kilombo and Edu-Factory on April 28.

Listen to the audio from the event here

audio from edu-factory panel!

On February 24, 3Cs hosted a panel discussion at UNC on the theme of “We Won’t Pay for Your Crisis!”

We’ve finally got the audio from that event edited and posted. Click through each speaker’s name to download an mp3 of their talk, or click here for the group Q&A session. Apologies for the poor audio quality…

Speakers, and their talks, were:

• Anna Curcio: postdoctoral associate, John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute, Duke University, founder member of the edu-factory collective and co-editor of Global University. Hierarchies and Self-education in the Knowledge Market (Autonomedia forthcoming).
• Brett Neilson: associate professor in social and cultural analysis, University of Western Sydney, founder member of the edu-factory collective and co-editor of Global University. Hierarchies and Self-education in the Knowledge Market (Autonomedia forthcoming)
• Michael Palm: assistant professor of communications, UNC-CH, co-editor of The University Against Itself: The NYU Strike and the Future of the Academic Workplace, and organizer of the 2005 NYU graduate employees strike.

Here’s how the original flier described the event:

Is the current financial crisis affecting the university? University of Arizona is apparently over the brink, Princeton is bankrupt, and university job offers are being erased in the NY area. Is the crisis accentuating a threatening tendency in higher education towards a university model as “post-fordist knowledge factory + corporate research laboratory”, as some are claiming? At the same time, is there a better place to be than a university in times of crisis? how can we defend that space? what opportunities might this crisis open?

Join us to hear how others have been organizing in and around the university. How people have blasted open the narrow vision of the university as an ivory tower to demand rights to a just livelihood and access to education. Speakers from New York, Sydney-Australia and Rome-Italy will join us to discuss new ways that students, faculty and employees are taking the university to task for what it is- a tower of power not ivory.

AAG 2009 Report Back: Where have all the pictures gone?

Craig and Liz’s second AAG presentation was on the panel: “Where have all the pictures gone? Visualization and power in political geography”.

A quick summary: after thoroughly deconstructing maps – showing how maps reflect and enact power, construct borders, inflict violence, etc., critical geographers are now unable to produce their own maps. A case of deconstruction gone too far? Does recognizing the always political nature of maps mean that that cartography now lies outside of the realm of academics? It certainly means we can no longer pretend to be disengaged and disinterested intellectuals (as if we ever could!)

Luckily, we don’t have to wait for academic geographers – the combat of the cartographies is on! In our presentation we showed some examples (maps!) of how social movements are engaging cartography. Here are a few:

Aquí viven genocidas by el Grupo de Arte Callejero
Tactical Cartography of the Straits by Hackitectura
A People’s Guide to the RNC

We hope geographers located in academia will follow their example (as many are already!) We know how powerful of a tool maps are – and so does capital and the state – so it’s up to us to make better maps, to map new worlds and new forms of power, to create maps that are more just, more useful and more fun.

El Kilombo Speaker Series: Building Autonomy in a Time of Crisis

Speaker Series: Things Unseen: Building Autonomy in a Time of Crisis

PANEL EVENT: GENTRIFICATION AND THE STRUGGLE AGAINST IT
January 23, 2009 (Friday)
7:00pm, at El Kilombo Social Center
324 West Geer Street, Durham NC 27701
(919) 688-8768
Directions

PANELISTS:
**Speaker I: Glen Ford, Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report, the
journal of African American political thought and action
**Speaker II: Kenneth Saltman, Educational Policy Studies and Research at
DePaul University; author of Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking
Public Schools
**Speaker III: Daniella Ann Cook, Post-doctoral Research Fellow in the
Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke University; Project
Coordinator for The National Coalition for Quality Education in New Orleans
**Speaker IV: El Kilombo Intergaláctico

SERIES DESCRIPTION:
An enormous political crisis is emerging in the United States, involving
the privatization of public goods, the elimination of public space, the
marketization of political representation, the displacement of poor
communities—in short, the privatization of wealth and the socialization
of misery. All evidence seems to suggest that these watershed
transformations resulting from global capitalism are picking up speed. If
one were to listen to prevalent media discourse, however, the global
supremacy of the US, our dysfunctional party-political system, and the
power of neoliberalism will survive the coming crisis unscarred. The
perspective from below is somewhat different. History teaches us, and the
debacle of the current financial crisis bears out, that the brunt impact of
these changes will fall hardest on working class and people of color
communities. Furthermore, it was from below that the “modern world” was
made possible, and it is here (away from the cameras and microphones of
those above) that another world is already under construction. In this
context, the El Kilombo community speaker series provides us with a space
to think strategically about the struggles that must be continually
developed in the face of this gathering storm. We will examine these
transformations through multiple lenses, in conversation with national and
international guest speakers on issues including: the relation of movements
to electoral politics; gentrification, the logic of racialized power, and
the central importance of territorial control; and the inspiration of
global struggles for dignity and autonomy.

This first event in the ongoing series will address Gentrification and the
Struggle Against It. Keynote speakers are GLEN FORD, co-founder and
executive editor of Black Agenda Report, the journal of African American
political thought and action (www.blackagendareport.com), to discuss the
process of gentrification in city development; KENNETH SALTMAN, Associate
Professor of Educational Policy Studies at DePaul University, and author
most recently of Capitalizing on Disaster: Taking and Breaking Public
Schools, to speak on Obama’s appointment of Arne Duncan as Secretary of
Education, and the role that charter schools play in the displacement of
poor communities; and DANIELLA ANN COOK, the current Postdoctoral Research
Fellow in the Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke University,
and Project Coordinator for The National Coalition for Quality Education in
New Orleans (www.ncqeno.com), to speak about the relationships between
school reform and gentrification in post-Katrina New Orleans. A member of
El Kilombo will discuss Kilombo‘s effort to build community in the midst of
Durham’s ongoing citywide gentrification process.

Things Unseen, the El Kilombo Speaker Series, will continue through April
and will include:

Part 2: THE ARTIST AND REVOLUTION
February 19th, 2009 (Thursday)
7:00pm, at El Kilombo Social Center
**Speaker I: Fred Moten, Department of English at Duke University; author
of In the Break: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition
**Speaker II: Robin D. G. Kelley, Department of American Studies and
Ethnicity; author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination and
Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original

Part 3: THE END OF AN ERA: THE NEW UNREST AND THE EMERGING COMMONISM
March 3, 2009 (Tuesday)
7:00pm, at El Kilombo Social Center
**Speaker: Gustavo Esteva, “Deprofessionalized intellectual”; founder of
the Universidad de La Tierra in Oaxaca; author of Grassroots
Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures

Part 4: GLOBAL MOVEMENTS FOR AUTONOMY–EUROPE
April 4, 2009 (Saturday)
5:00pm, at El Kilombo Social Center
**Speaker: Angel Luis Lara, Musician and sociologist; Lara conducts
research at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid