A discussion examining the roots of the explosion and mass protests currently unfolding in Lebanon with speakers on the ground in Beirut. ----- Please join the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) International Committee and Haymarket Books for this forum examining the momentous events currently unfolding in Lebanon, featuring three speakers on the ground in Beirut. The massive explosion that rocked Beirut on August 4 revealed the depths of the Lebanese ruling elite’s criminal mismanagement. The explosion and mass protests that followed come on the heels of a year-long economic crisis and popular revolt. Since October 17, 2019 the people of Lebanon have been in the streets again and again struggling to transform the country’s sectarian-oligarchic political and economic system. Now in the wake of the COVID crisis, economic collapse, and devastation caused by elite incompetence which has driven 300,000 people from their homes, the people of Lebanon are rising up again. What can we learn from Lebanon’s long uprising and how can we show solidarity? Speakers: Rima Majed is a writer, activist, and Assistant Professor of Sociology at the American University of Beirut (AUB). Her research focuses on social movements, sectarianism, conflict and violence in the Middle East. She has written extensively on the political economy of sectarianism, protests and uprisings in Lebanon and Iraq, structural transformations and unemployment in postwar Lebanon, and the importance of labor organization. Her work has appeared in a range of academic journals and media outlets, including Social Forces, Mobilization, Global Dialogue, Idafat: The Arab Journal of Sociology, Al Jumhuriya, CNN, Middle East Eye, openDemocracy, and Al Jazeera English. She is currently working on a book that looks at sectarian capitalism and the shift in sectarian boundaries in Lebanon. Lara Bitar is a journalist in Beirut and the founding editor of The Public Source, a Beirut-based independent media organization that covers socioeconomic and environmental crises afflicting Lebanon since the onset of neoliberal governance in the 1990s and provides political commentary on events unfolding since October 17, 2019. Bassel Salloukh is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Lebanese American University (LAU) in Beirut. He is co-author of The Politics of Sectarianism in Postwar Lebanon (2015) and Beyond the Arab Spring: Authoritarianism and Democratization in the Arab World (2012) and co-editor of Persistent Permeability? Regionalism, Localism, and Globalization in the Middle East (2004). Moderator: Shireen Akram-Boshar is a socialist activist and alum of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). She has organized around the question of the Syrian uprising and the relationship between Syrian and Palestinian struggles for liberation, as well as on anti-imperialism and solidarity with the revolts of the Middle East/North Africa region. Her writing has covered the repression of Palestine solidarity activists in the US, revolution and counterrevolution in the Middle East, Trump’s war on immigrants, and the fight against the far right. Shireen is part of the Middle East and Africa working group of DSA's International Committee. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/Z2otEIX9Eu8 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

A conversation about why capitalism has failed and how we can fight for an economy, and society, that works for the 99%. ---------------------------------------------------- Join writers and socialists Hadas Thier and Meagan Day for a conversation about the unfolding global economic and health crises and the importance of arming a new generation of activists and organizers with the tools of Marxist economics. The Covid-19 pandemic and attendant economic meltdown expose capitalism’s failures more clearly than ever, and make evident the pressing need for an alternative way of understanding, and organizing, society. Thier and Day will discuss how profound inequality has determined the impacts of the health crisis, the inadequacy of free market solutions to the problems we face, the Marxist theory of economic crisis, and more. This event is a book launch for Hadas Thier’s A People’s Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics, a lively, accessible, and timely guide to Capitalism for those who want to understand and dismantle the world of the 1%. Order it here: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1481-a-people-s-guide-to-capitalism ---------------------------------------------------- Hadas Thier is an activist, writer, and socialist, and in her spare time, an amateur paleontologist (aka mom to a toddler). She is the author of A People’s Guide to Capitalism: An Introduction to Marxist Economics. Meagan Day is a staff writer at Jacobin magazine and a member of the Democratic Socialists of America. She is the co-author of Bigger Than Bernie: How We Go From the Sanders Campaign to Democratic Socialism. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/PEObOvuwI0g Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

A conversation on the intersecting crises that have plagued Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria and the communities organizing to rebuild. ---------------------------------------------------- Join Marisol LeBrón, Yarimar Bonilla, and Molly Crabapple for a conversation on the intersecting crises that have plagued Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria in 2017, and the communities organizing to resist and rebuild. This event will include the premier of the new short film: "Aftershocks of Disaster," directed by Juan C. Dávila, and produced by Yarimar Bonilla. “Broad in scope, passionate, and urgent, Aftershocks is a necessary anthology of Puerto Ricans telling the story not just of Maria but of resistance to colonialism, austerity and disaster capitalism.” —Molly Crabapple Three years after Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Ricans are still reeling from its effects and aftereffects. Aftershocks collects poems, essays and photos from survivors of Hurricane Maria detailing their determination to persevere. The concept of "aftershocks" is used in the context of earthquakes to describe the jolts felt after the initial quake, but no disaster is a singular event. Aftershocks of Disaster examines the lasting effects of hurricane Maria, not just the effects of the wind or the rain, but delving into what followed: state failure, social abandonment, capitalization on human misery, and the collective trauma produced by the botched response. Speakers: Yarimar Bonilla is the co-editor of Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm. She is a political anthropologist specializing in questions of sovereignty, citizenship, and race across the Americas. She has tracked these issues across a broad range of sites and practices including: postcolonial politics in the French Caribbean, the role of digital protest in the Black Lives Matter movement, the politics of the Trump presidency, the Puerto Rican statehood movement, and her current research, for which she was named a 2018 Carnegie Fellow, on the political, economic, and social aftermath of hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. Marisol LeBrón is is the co-editor of Aftershocks of Disaster: Puerto Rico Before and After the Storm and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching focus on social inequality, policing, violence, and protest. She is the author of Policing Life and Death: Race, Violence, and Resistance in Puerto Rico, which examines the growth of punitive governance in contemporary Puerto Rico. Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer whose inspirations include Diego Rivera and Goya’s The Disasters of War. She is the author of Brothers of the Gun, an illustrated collaboration with Syrian war journalist Marwan Hisham, which was a NY Times Notable Book and long-listed for the 2018 National Book Award. Her memoir, Drawing Blood, received global praise and attention. Her animated short film “A Message from the Future with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” has been nominated for an Emmy award in the category of Outstanding News Analysis: Editorial and Opinion.Follow us to help support our work! ---------------------------------------------------- Order a copy of Aftershocks of Disasters, edited by Yarimar Bonilla and Marisol LeBrón: https://www.haymarketbooks.org/books/1333-aftershocks-of-disaster Order Molly Crabapple's book, Brother of the Gun: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9780399590627 Order Molly Crabapple's illustrated memoir, Drawing Blood: https://bookshop.org/a/1039/9780062797223 Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/W1PU46ihFR0 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

The first in a series of Critical Conversations organized by Study and Struggle discussing prison abolition and immigrant justice. The Study and Struggle program is the first phase of an ongoing project to organize against incarceration and criminalization in Mississippi through four months of political education and community building. Our Critical Conversations webinar series, hosted by Haymarket Books, will cover the themes for the upcoming month. ———————————————— The first webinar theme is Abolition as Study and Deconstructing Racial Capitalism and will be a conversation exploring the longstanding relationship between political study and the practice of abolition. Speakers will also discuss racial capitalism and its connection to the Prison Industrial Complex both historically and in current organizing contexts. Speakers: Rachel Herzing is the executive director of Center for Political Education, a resource for political organizations on the left, progressive social movements, the working class and people of color. Rachel has played roles as an organizer, activist, and advocate fighting the violence of policing and imprisonment. Rukia Lumumba is the Executive Director of the People’s Advocacy Institute, co-lead of the Electoral Justice Project of the Movement for Black Lives, and a steering committee member and co-chair of legal committee of the Mississippi Prison Reform Coalition. Derecka Purnell is a human rights lawyer, writer, and organizer. Since graduating from Harvard Law School, she has worked to end police and prison violence nationwide by providing legal assistance, research, and trainings to community based organizations through an abolitionist framework. Derecka is currently a columnist at The Guardian and Deputy Director of Spirit of Justice Center. Stephen Wilson is a currently incarcerated, Black, queer writer, activist and student. For over two decades, he was active in the ballroom community and worked as an HIV-prevention specialist and community organizer. His work and practice inherit teachings from prison abolition, transformative, and racial justice, Black feminist theory, and gender and queer liberation. Specifically, he works to end cycles of poverty and incarceration that have plagued his community. He works to expose and dismantle the prison industrial complex and to build a world in which we deal with harm without caging or exiling other people. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/PWUJKPX8md0 Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

Join Arundhati Roy and Nick Estes for an urgent and timely conversation on the present crisis, resistance, and the meaning of freedom. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The chant of "Azadi!"—Urdu for "Freedom!"—is the slogan of the freedom struggle in Kashmir against what Kashmiris see as the Indian Occupation. Ironically, it also became the chant of millions on the streets of India against the project of Hindu Nationalism. Even as Arundhati Roy began to ask what lay between these two calls for Freedom—a chasm or a bridge?—the streets fell silent. Not only in India, but all over the world. The coronavirus brought with it another, more terrible understanding of Azadi, making a nonsense of international borders, incarcerating whole populations, and bringing the modern world to a halt like nothing else ever could. In this series of electrifying essays, Arundhati Roy challenges us to reflect on the meaning of freedom in a world of growing authoritarianism. The essays include meditations on language, public as well as private, and on the role of fiction and alternative imaginations in these disturbing times. The pandemic, she says, is a portal between one world and another. For all the illness and devastation it has left in its wake, it is an invitation to the human race, an opportunity, to imagine another world. Arundhati Roy studied architecture in New Delhi, where she now lives. She is the author of the novels The God of Small Things, for which she received the 1997 Booker Prize, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. A collection of her essays from the past twenty years, My Seditious Heart, was recently published by Haymarket Books. Her latest book is Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. Nick Estes is a citizen of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe. He is an Assistant Professor in the American Studies Department at the University of New Mexico. In 2014, he co-founded The Red Nation, an Indigenous resistance organization. For 2017-2018, Estes was the American Democracy Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. Estes is the author of the book Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance and he co-edited Standing with Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement, which draws together more than thirty contributors, including leaders, scholars, and activists of the Standing Rock movement. Co-presented by Haymarket Books and Elliott Bay Book Company, with the support of Tasveer, this event is to celebrate the release of Arundhati Roy’s new book of essays, Azadi: Freedom. Fascism. Fiction. Order your copy of Azadi from Elliott Bay: https://www.elliottbaybook.com/book/9781642592603 Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/iEr4wCWJ9GM Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks

A virtual conversation with Bedour Alagraa, Zoé Samudzi, and SA Smythe, moderated by Robin D. G. Kelley. ---------------------------------------------------- In “What the Twilight Says,” Derek Walcott wrote that “the noblest are those who are trapped, who have accepted the twilight,” a reference to the the hinge-point between old and new forms of domination, poetics, and unresolved historical conjunctures. Join Bedour Alagraa, Zoé Samudzi, and SA Smythe in conversation with Robin D.G. Kelley on the colonial, carceral, and plantation logics underpinning the defining crises of our time: what Bedour Alagraa refers to in her scholarship as “the interminable catastrophe” and SA Smythe describes as “death by numbers.” ---------------------------------------------------- Speakers: Dr. Bedour Alagraa’s The Interminable Catastrophe: Fatal Liberalisms, Plantation Logics, and Black Political Life in the Wake of Disaster charts a conceptual history of catastrophe as a political category, via its crystallization as a concept on the plantation. Alagraa explores the limits of current conversations concerning ecological catastrophe, against the discourse of “imminent disaster” and anthropocene studies, considers these occurrences as expressions of the durability of plantation modes of social relations, rendering them political conjunctures rather than ecological Events. Zoé Samudzi’s work focuses on German colonialism, the Herero and Nama genocide, and its afterlife. In examining the intimate relationship between biomedicine and Germany’s first genocide, Samudzi traces an ideological and material continuity from this 1904 genocide in southwestern Africa to the structuring of Nazi genocide less than 40 years later that illustrates yet again the colonial roots of authoritarianism. Her most recent works on Black anarchism (including As Black as Resistance, co-authored with William C. Anderson) explore our current crises of authoritarianism." Dr. SA Smythe’s Where Blackness Meets the Sea: On Crisis, Culture, and the Black Mediterranean traces a contemporary history of Europe’s racialized notions of citizenship and Black belonging in the wake of Europe’s self-initiated migration crises. Smythe explores the ongoing colonial logics of xenophobia, anti-blackness, and racial capitalism across Europe, East Africa, and the Mediterranean and emphasizes intertwined Black and migrant struggles with an analysis of literary and other political responses to the violence of national borders and Europe’s economics-driven valuation of human life. The conversation will be moderated by Robin D.G. Kelley, whose forthcoming book, Black Bodies Swinging, is a historical autopsy narrating the slave patrols and lynch law of the Deep South to segregated housing, the war on drugs, slum clearance, predatory lending, and extraction of wealth. Kelley draws a direct line from the “blood at the root”—the racial terror at the heart of the American social and economic order—to the latest casualties of that terror, including the lives and deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, and so many others. Watch the live event recording: https://youtu.be/p9zVl0tTRwU Buy books from Haymarket: www.haymarketbooks.org Follow us on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/haymarketbooks