Mass Media, Iran, & the Dangers of the Faith-Based Presidency, Presenter: Anthony DiMagigo
June 25, Thursday, 6:45 pm
Open University Of The Left
Lincoln Park Library
1150 W Fullerton
How has the mainstream media's discussion of Iran and the WMD question corrupted public opinion? What are the consequences of this fanatic belief in Iran's "threat"? Despite the consistent findings of international and national intelligence that in reality Iran poses no threat, political and media officialdom continues to put forward the patently false paradigm that places Iran at the center of what the Bush regime called the "axis of evil."
Author and activist Anthony DiMaggio teaches U.S. and International Politics at Illinois State University. His book Mass Media, Mass Propaganda: Examining American News in the "War on Terror" (LexiMasngton) was published last year. His next publication is When Media Goes to War: Hegemonic Discourse, Public Opinion, and the Limits of Dissent (Monthly Review Press, forthcoming in 2010). His editorials continue to appear in Z Magazine and Counterpunch, among others.
The Global Economic Crisis and the Legacy of Rosa Luxemburg, Presenter: Peter Hudis
July 7, Tuesday, 6:45 pm
Open University Of The Left
Lincoln Park Library
1150 W Fullerton
Rosa Luxemburg wrote what is widely regarded as the first systematic analysis of the globalization of capital in her 1913 work, The Accumulation of Capital. What is Luxemburg's analysis of the global character of capitalist accumulation? Can her theory of capitalist crisis illuminate any features of today's financial-economic crisis?
Born in Poland, Rosa Luxemburg was a revolutionary and labor leader who played a key role in the founding of the Spartacus League, which grew into the Communist Party of Germany. She wrote extensively on the theory and practice of Marxism, and is regarded as among the most influential of twentieth century thinkers. She was murdered during the German revolution of 1919.
Open Univeristy welcomes Peter Hudis, co-editor of The Rosa Luxemburg Reader. Peter has published numerous essays on Luxemburg, Marxian theory, and contemporary social and political philosophy. He is a member of the U.S. Marxist-Humanists.
Film: The Fever
July 23, Thursday, 6:45 pm
Open University Of The Left
Lincoln Park Library
1150 W Fullerton
Vanessa Redgrave stars in Carlo Nero's 2004 film of Wallace Shawn's brilliant, biting, incisive play on the ever-widening gap between those who have and those who have not.
What, if anything, is a morally consistent way to live in the world as it is? A nameless woman from a privileged world, suffering from a sense of disconnection from her comfortable life, travels to a country (also nameless) in the throes of civil war. Suddenly ill, she collapses and confronts an internal chorus of conflicting voices: dreams of comfort from her past, images of physical and economic violence, accusations of indifference, and cold-blooded arguments in favor of oppression. It is the brutal realization that we are deeply connected to the condition of so many other people that lies at the core of The Fever.
Co-stars include Michael Moore, Joely Richardson and Angelina Jolie. Vanessa Redgrave received a Screen Actors Guild best actor nomination for her role in The Fever.
"... a well-to-do Westerner comes to terms with world poverty, exploitation and Karl Marx ... Radical politics have rarely been debated so openly" — Variety
"An intense, harrowing monologue..." — The London Times
Open University Television Broadcast Premier
July 26, Sunday, 11:30 am, Chicago Cable Access Television, Channel 21
Available to Comcast and RCN customers in the Chicago Area
Economic Crisis: Captial & Labor — The 1930s & Today, Presenter: Dan La Botz
This Open University event was taped on May 28, 2009. Additional broadcast dates to be announced.
Presented by: Open University Of The Left
Co-sponsor: Chicago Solidarity
Is the labor movement and the left prepared to respond to the world economic crisis? Today's economic crisis and labor's response cannot be a replay of the 1930s, but what can we can learn from that historical experience? As the global left finds itself in a difficult position without, in most places, a strong socialist organization or a powerful labor movement, what is key to the development of the these movements in the United States and Europe?
OUL welcomes author and labor activist Dan La Botz, who argues that solutions to the current crisis will be, as it was in the early 1930s, the development of militant minorities in the workplace and unions, in communities, and in the various fronts that challenge the status quo.
Dan La Botz, a Cincinnati-based teacher, writer and activist, writes on labor and politics for such publications as Labor Notes, Against the Current, Multinational Monitor, NACLA, MRZine, Counterpunch and others. He is the author of several books on labor in the U.S., Mexico and Indonesia. He is a leader of Solidarity and a member of the editorial board of New Politics. Learn more about his work at DanLaBotz.wikidot.com.
A Chicago native, Dan's most recent article in The Nation is a contribution to the essential Re-Imagining Socialism series, titled "Militant Minoriities." Dan is best known in the labor movement for his book The Troublemaker's Handbook, a rank-and-file activist organizing manual, and for Rank and File Rebellion: Teamsters for a Democratic Union, an account of the Teamster reform movement. He has written several other books on labor and politics in Mexico including The Crisis of Mexican Labor, Mask of Democracy: Labor Suppression in Mexico Today, and Democracy in Mexico: Peasant Rebellion and Political Reform. He is also the author of a study of labor in Southeast Asia, Made in Indonesia: Indonesian Workers Since Suharto, a book he wrote with assistance from the Fund for Investigative Journalism. In 2005 Peason Longman published his biography César Chávez and La Causa. He is the editor of Mexican Labor News and Analysis (MLNA), a monthly electronic report on workers and unions in Mexico.