The destiny of social movements is to change the structure of human relations -- so be careful what you ask for! This class aims to look at the cultural roots of the current university crisis, and in that light, to explore the role that experiments like The Public School could play in re-imagining education. The class will be discussion based and can be expanded/completed/reoriented by other inputs. It will take place September 4-5.

That world capitalism is in a profound crisis is no secret, especially in hard-hit areas such as California. But a radical response requires an understanding of the deep, "epochal" causes of the crisis, beyond now-mainstream banter about financialization or sub-prime or Wall Street bailouts and bonuses. What has happened since 2008 is merely an acceleration of the "slow motion" crisis that has been with us in reality since the late 1960's/early 1970's. The crisis is global, and the response to it must ultimately be global.

A conversation about getting fired, losing a job, and the implications and hidden potentialities of unemployment moderated by Michael Wilson as part of an installation and event series by Liz Glynn.

Frank Edwards | AreaChicago – It was truly an honor to be witness to a conversation between Grace Lee Boggs and Immanuel Wallerstein this morning at the Social Forum. I recorded audio (available for download here), and jotted down a few notes that I'd love to share. I know I will listen to this conversation again soon, and hope to spend some more time when things are less hectic reflecting on their words and observations.

For the next few weeks, this site will be occupied by Brian Holmes. A member of the editorial collective of the French journal Multitudes from 2003 to 2008, he is the author of Unleashing the Collective Phantoms: Essays in Reverse Imagineering and Escape the Overcode: Activist Art in the Control Society. Holmes was awarded the Vilém Flusser Prize for Theory at Transmediale in Berlin in 2009. He holds a doctorate in Romance Languages and Literatures from the University of California at Berkeley.

Losing your job and your home can turn a moderate into a radical damn fast. So can watching one of your kids suffer through an untreated illness because insurance was lost along with that job. And if crowds of the newly disaffected are flocking to the Tea Party on the right, the U.S. Social Forum was evidence of serious organizing and deep engagement on the left as well.

"Welcome to the D," said Kwamena Mensah in a resounding baritone on Tuesday morning. It was the first day of the 2010 US Social Forum and Mensah, president of the Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, was standing before a circle of about 65 activists to open a workshop on the thriving local urban agriculture movement. Mensa's group and Earthworks, a predominantly white urban farming group, combined what had originally been scheduled as two separate workshops in order to discuss their efforts to navigate complex and often painful racial dynamics in order to work together.

Democracy Now! broadcasts from Detroit on the opening day of the US Social Forum, where thousands of people have gathered for one of the largest gatherings of grassroots activists and community organizers in the country.

The heresy of Greece is that the uprising of its ordinary people provides an authentic hope unlike that lavished upon the warlord in the White House.

With a mass general strike on May 20 in the private and the public sector and a large demonstration in Athens and other cities, the workers of Greece continued the struggle to overturn an austerity program imposed by the Greek government, European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).