“Assata Shakur’s Legacy & Lives of Resistance” Free University
June 15, 2013
12-6pm
Marcus Garvey Park, Harlem, NYC
(enter south side at 120th st and 5th ave)
RSVP/share on facebook

ALL DAY:
Arts, Crafts, Food, Care station
Bring art materials, blankets, food, and extra care. Join the national art project to create “Assata is (STILL) Welcome Here” artwork.

“Story Booth” oral history station
Share thoughts and stories of movement histories, struggles, and celebrations. Who is your favorite freedom fighter? When did you get involved in social justice? What kind of change do you wish to help create in the world? What inspires you to be politically active? All ages, big and small, are invited to share your reflections.

SCHEDULE:
Free University-NYC Brief Welcome and Statement of Intention
12pm sharp!

“The Chicago and South Africa Anti-Eviction Campaigns”
Deshonay Dozier
12pm

“Discussion on Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, the war on drugs, and mass incarceration”
Fury Young
12pm
A presentation/discussion on the drug war and mass incarceration. Research culled from Michelle Alexander’s 2010 book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. A brief teach-in of the war on drugs, and the rise of the prison industrial complex from 1982 to the present.

“Prison Education: Liberation and Cooptation”
Progressive Education Initiative
1pm
Teachers from the Progressive Education Initiative will give a presentation about the current educational opportunities – and lack thereof – in the women’s facility on Rikers Island. We will also invite workshop participants to strategize on how to connect activism for educational justice with prisoners’ struggles.

“Teaching Assata Shakur ar Riker’s Island”
Tony Gronowicz
2pm

“Joining The Struggle Against Police Terror with the Freeing of All U.S. Held Political Prisoners/Prisoners of War & Exiles”
Brother Shep
2pm

“Critical Walk – Harlem African Burial Ground”
Matthew Bissen
2pm
This class will discuss the history and legacy of the Harlem African Burial Ground and the current efforts by community organizations to bring this legacy back to the surface. It will include a walk through the neighborhood to experience and discuss aspects of the 1658 Nieuw Haarlem Dutch colony which still influences the urban context of today and the site of the burial ground.

“Writing and Resistance for Home, School, and Everyday Life”
Susan Naomi Bernstein
2pm
For new and experienced writers: This course presents the processes of writing for anyone who struggles to write. Together we will develop our own practices of writing for audiences and purposes that connect to our visions of resistance to oppression – and for social transformation – of home, school, and everyday life.

“Overtested and Indebted: Critiquing and Imagining Education (Together)”
Jason and Winter
3pm
This last year we’ve seen student walk outs against austerity cuts, boycotts against the testing regime, labor strikes against racist and neoliberal education policies, university occupations and attempts at debt strikes. From Seattle to Chicago to Philly to New York, an education revolution is underway in the U.S.
In honor of Assata Shakur, we gather together to ask some big questions about what all of this means. How does our education system operate? How does it perpetuate class and racial inequalities? What kinds of people does it create? What are the connections between labor, testing, financialization and debt? What other kinds of education systems can we imagine?

“Assata Shakur’s Memoir is a Tool for Liberation”
Nicholas Powers
3pm
The goal of the workshop is to introduce participants to the ideas in Shakur’s memoir which are still relevant today such as: Double-Consciousness, personal transformation and liberation ideology. If you can, please bring your copy of her book, but it’s not necessary.

“Radical History of CUNY and SUNY”
Biola Jeje
4pm
New York Students Rising will give a workshop on the radical history of CUNY and SUNY student struggles and what students today are doing to defend public higher education.

“From FBI’s COINTELPRO to NSA’s PRISM: a community dialogue on resisting state repression”
5pm
The recent revelations of the US government’s massive surveillance operation PRISM, in collusion with several major online and phone companies, has made state repression a topic of critical conversation everywhere. For those who know the history of COINTELPRO in violently targeting social movements, this news causes special alarm as well as radicalizing opportunities. It may dissuade people from taking political action, or it may urge people to get involved. More whistleblowers may come forward. Social movements’ alternatives may finally get the hearing we deserve. In solidarity with Assata Shakur’s ongoing legacy of struggle, we welcome a dialogue on past, present, and possible futures of state repression, and how our communities for transformative justice can respond. We will not be silenced, so let us strategize together how to use our voices and actions most effectively.

Potluck Dinner
6pm
Some food will be provided by Free University, but also please bring some to share! Vegetarian and vegan options available.