A R E A

AREA's Another Chicago Newsletter
Tuesday, October 16 2007
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Early Warning: AREA Chicago is having our first fundraiser party on December 8 @ the Green Lantern Gallery. Check our emails for more updates.

Summary:
1) 10.17 Blocks Together Fundraiser @ Irish Eyes
2) 10.20 Public Square's Festival of Democracy @ Experimental Station
3) 10.20 Chicago Archives Fair @ Newberry Library
4) 10.21 Ferd Egan Memorial (Address Change!) @ Batey Urbano
5) 10.23 Chicago's first professional "diverse-abilities" dance company
6) 10.27-11.11 Chicago Humanities Festival "Climate of Concern"
7) 10.31 Capitalism Gives Me the Creeps Halloween Parade in Wicker Park
8) 11.5 Michael Albert on Participatory Economics @ the Hull House
9) 11.6 Public Forum: RRR: Reform, Revolution and Resistance @ SAIC
10) 11.10 Teachers for Social Justice Curriculum Fair in Pilsen
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Event Details
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1)======================
Dear Friends,

As many of you know, BT's last fundraiser at T's got seriously rained out.  So we're doing it again this time at:

Irish Eyes
2519 N. Lincoln (Lincoln + Altgeld)
Wednesday, October17th
7:00p

BT staff will be making and serving your drinks all night long, all tips earned will go to support BT.  We will also be asking a suggested donation of $5 at the door, holding a raffle and selling t-shirts!

We have so many reasons for you to come:
1.      Jennifer and Martine will be there!
2.      It's Caro and Yusufu's birthday!
3.      We're trying to raise $15,000 before we close our books at the end of the year - every dollar helps!

If you have questions or plan on attending contact Amita at 773.276.2194 or alonial@blockstogether.org!

With love,
Carolina, Irene, Amita and Charity

PS:  Parking will probably be difficult.  Irish Eyes is located by the Fullerton Stop (Brown, Purple and Red Lines.)

2)====================
Festival of Democracy:
Unleashing Radical Imagination

Saturday, October 20, 2007
1:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Experimental Station
6100 South Blackstone Avenue

Join us for this gathering of activists, scholars, artists, and all those who are interested to collectively imagine and grapple with issues of human rights, political power, and struggles for social justice. Speakers include Rashid Khalidi (Columbia University), Laura Flanders (Air America), Bill Fletcher (Center for Labor Renewal), Bernadine Dohrn (Northwestern University), and Salim Muwakkil (In These Times).

 This program is free and open to the public, but reservations are required. Dinner will be provided. You can make reservations online, via e-mail, or by calling 312.422.5580. http://www.thepublicsquare.org

Schedule here:

3)====================
Chicago Archives Fair @ Newberry Library

In order to celebrate American Archives Month, the Chicago Area Archivists (CAA) and the Chicago Metro History Education Center (CMHEC) are teaming up to sponsor the Chicago Archives Fair, an exciting event designed to build awareness and publicize the wealth of archival collections available for research in the Chicago metropolitan area. The event will feature representatives and resources from area repositories, in addition to information sessions designed to "demystify" archival research, and to provide area archivists with tips on how to assist Chicago History Fair students in their repositories.

When: Saturday, October 20th, 2007

Where: Newberry Library, 60 West Walton, Chicago, IL 60610.

Audience: Educators, Archivists, Students of all ages, Scholars, Genealogists, etc.

Free and Open to the Public!

Contact: Laura Carrol (773) 771-9172, laura_carroll99@yahoo.com OR Morgen MacIntosh Hodgetts (773) 325-7896, mmacinto@depaul.edu if you have any questions.

About Chicago Area Archivists:
Since 1982, the Chicago Area Archivists has worked to provide opportunities for local archivists, historians, librarians and others in the Chicago metro area to meet together for discussion, social interaction, and education. Our 175+ members include archivists, librarians, and records managers in academic, corporate, governmental, institutional, library, and museum settings.

4)====================

(Please note address correction below - updated since original message.)
 
Memorial for Ferd Eggan
October 21, 2007
2 - 5 p.m.
Café Teatro Batey Urbano
2620 W. Division Street, Chicago
 
Ferd was a writer, activist, teacher, and a tireless advocate for people with HIV/AIDS. A veteran of the "new left," civil rights, gay liberation, and student movements of the 1960s-70s, he was a founder of ACT UP/Chicago and longtime supporter of Puerto Rican independence. From 1979 to 1990, he worked at the Pedro Albizu Campos Puerto Rican High School in Chicago. Ferd was a brilliant thinker and rhetorician whose creative output included experimental films, audio CDs, and prolific writing. He was, and remains, the Cranky P.W.A.

Join us as we celebrate Ferd's life, work, and writing, share memories, watch videos, and listen to some of his favorite music.
For more information contact:
(773) 227-7676 or
tricia@crossroadsfund.org

5)====================
On Tuesday, October 23rd we invite you to join us at DRC's Project
Embrace's* first event, Dance>Detour.

The Disability Resource Center proudly introduces, Dance>Detour to
campus.  Dance>Detour is Chicago's first professional
"diverse-abilities" dance company comprised of multi-talented artists
(with and without disabilities).  The focus of their work is solely
dedicated to the art of physically integrated dance and collaborations
that include dancers of all abilities who explore movement
possibilities together as EQUALS.
http://www.dancedetour.org/

Please come join us!
Tuesday, OCTOBER 23, 6:30pm
828 S. Wolcott Ave., Chicago, IL 60612
Student Center West - Room C
Free Entry

Performance featuring, Ms. Wheelchair America, 2008, Alana Yvonne
Wallace, director of Dance>Detour, who will be discussing her passion
for accessibility and universally designed environments.

Video Description, Interpreter Service, and Captioning will be provided.
Please contact Annie Hopkins at amhopkin@uic.edu with any questions.

*ProjectEmbrace, presented by the Disability Resource Center, is an
ongoing effort to bring disability centered cultural events to the UIC
campus.  The mission of ProjectEmbrace is to expose the University
body and surrounding community to disability and to celebrate
disability.

6)====================
http://www.chfestival.org

7)====================
This Halloween, join the 3rd annual-ish Capitalism Gives Me The Creeps! Anarchist Halloween Parade. Dress as your favorite capitalist ghoul! (Greedy businesspeople, money-grubbing politicians, exaggerated pop-culture icons, destructive developers, murderous warmongers, etc...) Let's remind people how scary capitalism can be. Bring treats! Bring music! Bring props: floats, bikes instruments, puppets, signs/banners, and whatever else you can come up with! Bring your friends! We'll gather in Wicker Park (the actual park) at 4:00pm and step off at 5:00pm.

8)====================
Funding the Revolution?
Participatory Economics and Funding Activist Organizing in Chicago
A discussion with Z-Mag's Michael Albert (Author of Par-Econ: Life After Capitalism)
Monday, November 5 2007
6pm-8pm
at Jane Addams Hull House Museum's Dining Hall
800 S. Halsted St. (On the campus of UIC)

Co-Sponsored by 49th St Underground, AREA Chicago, Jane Addams Hull House Museum, and CAPES (Chicago Area Participatory Economics Society).

About the Speaker:
Michael Albert (born April 8, 1947) is a longtime activist, speaker, and writer, is co-editor of ZNet, and co-editor and co-founder of Z Magazine. He also co-founded South End Press and has written numerous books and articles. He developed along with Robin Hahnel the economic vision called participatory economics, or parecon for short. Albert identifies himself as a market abolitionist[1] and favors democratic participatory planning as an alternative. Please check out background on Parecon here http://www.zmag.org/parecon/indexnew.htm

About Funding Issues:
In recent months Chicago has seen many critical community gatherings and discussions focusing on the challenge of funding important and critical organizing in a climate of privatization, neoliberalism and the rise of the so called "non-profit industrial complex." The Hull House museum hosted a whole workshop series with Incite! Women of Color Against Violence - the authors of "The Revolution Will Not Be Funded" and this summer AREA Chicago and Fire This Time Fund held a large discussion "How We Fund" to discuss different alternative funding strategies being employed throughout the city.

At this event, the organizers would like to attempt to connect the critiques and challenges around resource sharing and funding critical organizing in a capitalist society with one of the most potent proposals for en economic system outside of capitialism. This event should be relevant to students of economics and non-profit management, artists and activists and concerned curious people alike! Come on out and join the discussion.

This event is part of AREA Chicago's irregular "Infrastructure" lecture series about self-organized infrastructure, strengthening critical networks and activist organizational structure. www.AREAchicago.org

Contact Mitchell Szczepanczyk, mitchell@chicagomediaaction.org for more details.

9)================
The 3 Rs: Reform, Revolution, and "Resistance"
The problematic forms of "anticapitalism" today

Tuesday, November 6, 2007, 7-9PM
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
280 S. Columbus Drive main auditorium

"[After the 1960s, the] underlying despair with regard to the real efficacy of political will, of political agency [. . .] in a historical situation of heightened helplessness [. . .] became a self-constitution as outsider, as other [. . .] focused on the bureaucratic stasis of the [Fordist/late 20th Century] world: it echoed the destruction of that world by the dynamics of capital [with the neo-liberal turn after 1973, and especially after 1989].

The idea of a fundamental transformation became bracketed and, instead, was replaced by the more ambiguous notion of 'resistance.' The notion of resistance, however, says little about the nature of that which is being resisted or of the politics of the resistance involved - that is, the character of determinate forms of critique, opposition, rebellion, and 'revolution.' The notion of 'resistance' frequently expresses a deeply dualistic worldview that tends to reify both the system of domination and the idea of agency.

'Resistance' is rarely based on a reflexive analysis of possibilities for fundamental change that are both generated and suppressed by [the] dynamic heteronomous order [of capital]. ['Resistance'] is an undialectical category that does not grasp its own conditions of possibility; that is, it fails to grasp the dynamic historical context of which it is a part."

    - Moishe Postone, "History and Helplessness: Mass mobilization and contemporary forms of anticapitalism" (2006)

A moderated panel discussion and audience Q&A on problems of strategies and tactics on the Left today. Panelists: Michael Albert (Z Magazine), Chris Cutrone (Platypus), Stephen Duncombe (Gallatin School of New York University), Brian Holmes (Continental Drift and Universite Tangente), and Marisa Holmes (new Students for a Democratic Society).
http://home.comcast.net/~platypus1917/platypus_resistance110607.html

10)================
Teaching for Social Justice Curriculum Fair
Saturday Nov. 10 11am-5pm
Orozco School 1940 W. 18th Street
www.teachersforjustice.org
teachersforjustice@hotmail.com
1pm-2:45pm Forum "Teachers As Activists"

Come by and pick up a copy of AREA's Issue #5: "How We Learn"