Exclusive interview by MHI with Yanar Mohammed, president of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), which she co-founded shortly after the US invasion in 2003. Read the rest of this entry »
The brave Iranians demonstrating against the ruling regime deserve our support. At least 13 have been killed already. The government has allowed the protests (so-called vigilantes attack protesters afterwards), but it continues to arrest prominent reformers and to attempt to stifle the flow of information by limiting Internet access and pressuring reporters to stay away. Yet hundreds of thousands—Tehran’s mayor says three million were in its streets Monday–continue to protest, risking bullets and long jail terms under harsh conditions.
The National Organization for the Iraqi Freedom Struggles (on the web at NO-IFS) sponsored the panel “Building Solidarity with Iraq’s Civil Resistance” at this year’s Left Forum.
Houzan Mahmoud, International Representative of the Organization of Women’s Freedom in Iraq (OWFI), had been scheduled to speak but was unable to make the trip to NYC. We hope she will come later in the year. The talks at the panel were, in this order: Bill Weinberg on various civil society organizations and the need to solidarize with them; Anne Jaclard on the work OWFI has done and its significance for freedom movements; and Michael Zweig on the recent conference he attended in Iraq at which a number of labor unions formed a coalition.
Building Solidarity with Iraq’s Civil Resistance, Part 1
Building Solidarity with Iraq’s Civil Resistance, Part 2
The Marxist-Humanist Initiative, along with the New SPACE, sponsored the panel “Concretizing Marx’s Alternative to Capitalism: A Marxist-Humanist Perspective” at the 2009 Left Forum. Below is the audio from that panel’s presentations and along with the discussion that took place afterwards.
Concretizing Marx’s Alternative To Capitalism: A Marxist-Humanist Perspective
Chair: Ray McKay
Presenters:
Joshua Howard – “Commodity Fetishism and Today’s Economic Crisis.”
Seth G. Weiss – “Silicon Valley Socialism: A Critical Examination of Richard Wolff and Stephen Resnick’s Conception of Post-capitalist Society.”
Anne Jaclard – “One System, Two Moments”
Discussant: Andrew Kliman
Talk by Anne Jaclard at the Anarchist Book Fair, New York City, April 12, 2008, on a panel entitled “Building a Movement Against Capitalism through Thinking of its Alternatives”
My title is tongue in cheek because I can’t possibly talk about all that in a few minutes. My point is to pose a theoretic challenge to feminists to work out the relationship of women’s liberation to the transformation of society as a whole. I think such a transformation of all human relations necessitates tearing up capitalism and starting a new society based on a new mode of production. My view is that the mode of production and women’s freedom are inextricably intertwined, not as if one were first and the other second, but as a revolutionary process of self-emancipation by massive movements of people before, during and after the overthrow of capitalism. And I argue that a philosophy of liberation—Marx’s humanism—is essential to this process. I can’t discuss very much of this project today, but I invite you to join the investigation.