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Indybay Feature

Santa Cruz Anarchist Convergence Workshop Descriptions and Events Info

by S.C.A.C
The Anarchists are Coming! There will be almost 40 workshops and discussions at the Santa Cruz Anarchist Convergence from May 7-11th. Here are times and descriptions of all of them! Also: flyers, dates, times, and descriptions of several events surrounding the convergence. Check it out!

Santa Cruz Anarchist Convergence Workshop, Bookfair, and Event Information

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The Anarchists are Coming! There will be almost 40 workshops and discussions at the Santa Cruz Anarchist Convergence from May 7-11th. Here are times and descriptions of all of them! Also: flyers, dates, times, and descriptions of several events surrounding the convergence. Check it out!


FRIDAY


10am
Free Skool for Kids - Panel Discussion
A discussion, brainstorm, and scheming about creating a free skools for kids K-12. What would that look like, feel like, and require? How do we raise the next generation in an anarchist community?

10am
Cuba's Current Political Crisis - Raquel
An open discussion on Cuba’s current political situation. We’ll begin with some historical background and then dive into the current state (rations, propaganda, education, government media, neighborhood government infiltrators…). Concluding with a discussion on concepts we’ve heard like having a revolution in an already industrialized country, changing the standard of living for many people, and how we can apply lessons we learned from Cuba’s disastrous revolution to our anarchist revolution.

10am
Know Your Rights and Resist the Police State - Wes and Jason
Know your “rights” before you find yourself in hot water. Keep yourself safe from police repression. Detentions, arrest, searches, interrogation, jail, warrants, and police infiltration. Learn the phrase: “I’m going to remain silent. I would like to see a lawyer.” A Free Skool Santa Cruz Workshop.

12pm
The Low-Down on Grand Juries - Ben Rosenfeld
Think of this as a 'know your rights' training concerning the criminal court system. The goal is to demystify court processes and to empower activists to make reasonable demands on their lawyers, as well as to educate their lawyer about the possibilities in political cases. Topics may include maintaining solidarity among co-defendants and the broader support community; embracing the politics of the case; responding to grand jury subpoenas; and communicating securely in the Orwellian age of warrantless surveillance.

2pm
Self Defense Workshop - Girl Army
Teachers from several backgrounds will share techniques and knowledge about fighting back and self preservation. “Girl Army is a self-defense collective that began in 1994. Our members are feminists,queer and sexpositive activists, and anti-authoritarians.”

2pm
Non Violent Communication (NVC) and Anarchism: Potential and Pitfalls - Dan
Nonviolent communication (NVC) is a world view and body of practices based in valuing choice, autonomy, flexibility, adaptation, and the idea that our individual needs are best met when we respect and co-operate with each other. NVC's values dovetail in many ways with anarchism, and its practices can be useful for anarchist efforts to create communities and relationships that are free from laws, moralities, institutions, and physical or emotional coercion. A collective discussion of what NVC is and isn't, where and how we see its ideas and practices being useful for anarchists, and possible problems or pitfalls with NVC from an anarchist perspective.

2pm
Practical Organizing to Overthrow the US Government and Global Capitalism - David Solnit and Sampada Aranke
* What are the roots of our problems?
* How do we make change and social revolution?
* Dual Power organizing alternatives and paralel institutions
* Making anarchy a threat: addressing challenges in the US anarchist scene: de-marginalization, effective political self defense against repression, making allies and effective organizing.

4pm
Responding to Intimate Violence: Beyond Rules - Leona
To avoid state intervention in our lives, we have to find our own ways to deal with conflict. This workshop will be a practical beginning to that purpose. Come with at least one friend.

4pm
The Current Crisis and the Coming Insurrection - Discussion
Capital is always in crisis and insurrection is always coming. In this intro to insurrectional theory and practice, we will be looking at ways that ungovernable and incoherent bodies can dismantle the structures imposed on time and space by the current social order, andways that the tiger's claw of the revolutionary minority can expand the struggle of exploited human beings and communities to exist for our own sake. We will be looking at recent and ongoing situations in Greece, California, France, NYC, and elsewhere, as well as the importance of feedback loops between theory and practice, in particular, for the practice of creating a specifically anarchist revolutionary project to destroy domination in all forms. (Booyah!)


4pm
Blue Anarchy For Beginners - Anarchist Yacht Club
Intro to sailing for beginners, knots, and discussion. How to pick a boat, etc... Location TBA, check for flyer in SubRosa courtyard Convergence weekend. Sailing lessons available all day Saturday & Sunday, weather permitting.

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SATURDAY


10am
Resisting 2010: A presentation and discussion about the ongoing struggle against the Vancouver Winter Olympics - Marianne, Zac, and Janick
The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Coast Salish territories, are a tangible and contemporary representation of the genocidal colonization that has been occurring in this land since the arrival of European peoples hundreds of years ago.
Here the Olympic project is in the frenzy of developers tearing up Vancouver to reconstruct a wealthier urban dream. We see it in the expansion of ski-resorts and promotion of tourism and land exploitation. Looking at the anti-Olympic movement means looking at a movement based on resistance to expanding capitalism, colonization, social control, and industrial/technological civilization. We will look at how the different anti-Olympic communities (mostly native and/or anarchist) lead lives of resistance and take direct-action against the atrocities carried out by the state and corporations, landlords and bosses. We will also look at the lack of solidarity and collaboration between these different communities.
Finally, we will open the discussion to explore what we know about native struggles in the states, how anarchists can play a part in the anti-2010 resistance and in future Olympic struggles. In summary, we feel like this presentation would very much fit into your description of “green scare” and “resistance”, as governments and corporations work to divide and conquer human and non human communities who resist to their transformation into resources and commodities.

10am
DIY Radio Broadcasting with Freak Radio Santa Cruz - Daniel
A DIY Radio broadcasting workshop, from nothing to a functioning pirate radio station in mere minutes. Demystifying radio equipment is a good start, since we’d like to make this technology more accessible. Free Radio Santa Cruz is one of the longest running pirate signals in the country: Reclaiming the airwaves, one frequency at a time.Hands-on demonstration of equipment and set-up to do actual micro-radio broadcasts.

10am
Free Skool Mutual Support Networks - Panel Discussion
We’ve created support networks in our communities, but how can we mutually support each other as free skools? how can we share what we know, the things we’ve learned, and the great people we’ve worked with?

12am
Challenging the Popular Wisdom: Deconstructing Public Education - Soneile Hymm
In this workshop we will discuss the many ways that education and our perceptions of it affect our ability to learn, the status quo, class, culture, personal liberation, etc. as well as how public education is used as a means of control. Through this discussion we hope deepen our understanding of schooling and illuminate the subtle and less subtle ways society manipulates us through education, in effort to keep our own educational projects truly liberatory while we look for ways to undermine traditional schooling.

12pm
The Audacity of Hopelessness - Aragorn
This history of many anarchist ideas follows Enlightenment thought. Ideas like progress, rationality, and humanism are part of many, if not most, understandings of anarchist political thought. These ideas have led to much of the rationale for anarchist organizing, publishing, and activism in the past 100 years and the time has come for an audit. What form would such an audit take? What presuppositions are useful, clouded or necessary? At the end of this process, we are not going to argue against all activity, or to argue for a new kind of puritanical activity that includes a dark room filled with books and no social life, but we have a stark assessment of anarchist activity. Are we primarily a group of active wishful thinkers, high-minded rhetoricians, far left harried activists, disillusioned revolutionaries, or all of the above and more? Perhaps our project is in an identity crisis. What if everything you are doing is wrong?

12pm
Making Families - Panel Discussion
Radical Bay Area parents, plus grandparents, kids, and caretakers, talking about supporting families when we make community. How do we involve and engage both kids and elders? How is being involved different when you’re parenting a toddler? How does our community’s response and responsibility change when we’re talking about teens and adolescents?

12pm
Surviving Trauma - Ashley McNamara
In this workshop, we will open a discussion about the ways our minds and our behaviors are changed by the things that break our hearts and terrify us out of our skins – and how we manage to survive afterwards. Death, abuse, rape, war, police brutality, violence, poverty, and oppression are all sources of massive trauma that transform us forever. We’re not just crazy and chemically imbalanced; all kinds of distress -- like anxiety, panic attacks, flashbacks, nightmares, depression, addiction, compulsion, and dissociation – can have their origins in trauma. Telling the story of what we’ve lived through can begin the process of saving us. Discovering that other people have emerged from the same fires can help us endure. Trauma often initiates recognizable patterns, and people have learned a lot about how we can heal; please come to listen, to join the discussion, to share skills, or to learn about resources you may not have encountered in your own journeys.

2pm
Can We Still Turn The World Upside Down? Lessons from 1649 - Lewis "Lew" Finzel
A lecture on 1640's era English Radicals (levellers, ranters, etc.) with a focus on anti-capitalist project of Gerald Winstanley and the Diggers with reference to current, analogous projects.

2pm
Black Mesa Resistance - Panel Discussion
Local anarchists who have travelled to Black Mesa will discuss the current situation, solidarity, and resistance.

2pm
Consent and Intimate/Sexual Violence - CLIT Collective
This workshop will be focused on exploring consent and why it is important. We will explore how consent contributes to safer spaces and building stronger radical communities. We'll discuss the link between consent and intimate violence, as well as the link between consent and social justice oriented movements. We will go over a history of sexual violence as well as methods of individual and community support. We will discuss the importance of consistent dialogue around intersectionality and its relationship to movement building. Together we will build a community definition of consent and discuss questions specific to radical communities striving for stronger, safer, and consensual spaces.

2pm
Green Scare, Security Culture, and the AETA - Open Discussion
How governments and corporations are trying to divide and conquer movements that use a diversity of tactics to stop the atrocities currently being carried out against animals and other forms of life. What we can do to fight this repression, while protecting and supporting each other.

4pm
Free Skools and Anarchism - Panel Discussion
A discussion about how free skools contribute to the broader anarchist project. How important are anarchist principles in free skools?

4pm
Building Autonomous Infrastructure: Strategy and Challenges - Ian
How can the construction of radical infrastructure increase our capacity for action, and how can an infrastructure hinder that same capacity? How can we create spaces which serve to provide relief from precarity and capitalism, while at the same time proliferating resistance to these systems of power? When we look to successful movements and communities, we see a correlation between a well developed infrastructure and action in the streets. A facilitated discussion of these questions, plus a short presentation on one Bay Area anarchist organization developing radical infrastructure.

4pm
Anarchism and Solidarity - Andrej Grubacic
A talk about building the anarchist movement, about the key concepts of solidarity and self activity, as well as theory/practice, strategy/program.

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SUNDAY


10am
Tree Climbing Training - North Coast Earth First!
A hands-on demonstration on how to safely climb the rope using prussik knots, clip into the tree (branches) using "lobster-claws", unclip, and then mid-line rappel down. Under careful supervision, everyone gets a turn to practice climbing and rappelling. Other skills covered: how to make and use lobster-claws, how to weave a dream-catcher for sleeping in, how to set and use traverses, and how to use a shot to get into new trees.

10am
Starting and Running a FreeSkool - Panel Discussion
A panel discussion from a variety of Free Skools discussing things we’ve learned about starting and running a free skool, getting and keeping people involved, engaging students, teachers, and organizers, dealing with spaces, and other free skool issues

12pm
Anarchist Infrastructure and the Surveillance Society: Moving from Paranoia to Security - Elijah Saxon
How did we get here? Surveillance should be understood as a process of capitalism, starting with the historical transformation from Fordist-capitalism, to neoliberalism and information capitalism, and finally to the recent rise of surveillance capitalism.
What is surveillance capitalism? Many terrifying examples will be given. Above all, surveillance capitalism has an ambiguous nature in the way it provides moments of empowerment and challenge to power structures but ultimately represents a fundamental shift of power toward capital and the state. For many reasons, it is nearly impossible for democratic-liberalism to mount an effect challenge to surveillance capitalism (because of inherent flaws in liberal discourse, because of the our legal system, because of the seductive nature of surveillance capitalism, because of shifts in liberal culture post-facebook, etc).
So, what are we to do? Many people call for increased self-surveillance of ourselves as a counterweight, others call for rejection of all technologically mediated communication. But there is another way: anarchist communication infrastructure. Radicals, and especially anarchists, are in a unique position: the seduction of capitalism does not have as much power, there is growing awareness of the dangers of surveillance, and activists have built alternative infrastructure that builds an ecology of secure communication capability. Only people who are willing to practice secure communication, even when it does not benefit them personally, are in a position to support the growth of communication systems which cannot be used as tools of domination. There are important ways in which mainstream communication will lead to our downfall (esp. in the case of social network mapping). If our movements are going to be able to survive into the hyper-surveillance future, we need to move more of our communication into these alternative systems.
With that happy thought, I will then spend a little while talking about simple things you can do to dramatically decrease the extent to which you and your friends are subject to surveillance while online. Topics to include: TrackMeNot, Firemole Secure Proxy, TACO, StartTLS, secure chat, secure social networking.

12pm
Digital Security Culture - Flatline
Exploring topics of security culture in the online world including email and chat encryption, securely deleting files, hiding your identity and personal information, etc

12pm
Infoshops - Panel Discussion
A discussion on possibilities, problems, successes, failures, ideas and organization surrounding infoshops. The panel will feature participants from infoshops from around the country.

12pm
The Oakland Rebellion - Billy No Good
During the first hours of 2009, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police shot and killed 22-year-old Oscar Grant while he was laying face-down with his hands behind his back on the platform. In the following days, videos emerged on the Internet that clearly depicted this execution. A week after Grant's death, downtown Oakland erupted in an all-out rebellion with hundreds of youth attacking police cars and stores and leaving vehicles and dumpsters in flames as they went on a rampage that lasted hours. The riots that took place put the state on the defensive and led to the arrest of the police officer, Johannes Mehserle, who shot Oscar Grant. The uprising of January 7th was a warning to the authorities, and the anger brewing in Oakland is still ever-present. This presentation will sketch out the events around Oscar Grant's death including the demonstrations, the participation by anarchists and the attempt by liberal elements in the Bay Area to try to quell the spontaneous rebellions. It will include video and photographs as well as time for Q & A and discussion.

2pm
Anarchism, Resistance, and Anarchy - Barry Pateman
So I thought I would chat about the ideas in my title from a historical, personal and contemporary perspective. Can I leave it that?

2pm
Digital Security Culture: Hands On - Flatline
Setting up encryption and security software on peoples computers, hands on training in the use of this software. BRING YOUR COMPUTERS! If you already know this stuff, come help install and train!

2pm
Direct Action Training - Kim Marks
Kim Marks, self defense instructor and direct action trainer, will lead a workshop on relevant tactical resistance.

2pm
Confronting Whiteness, Acknowledging Racism: Walking the Walk - Daniel
Not just another anti-racism workshop: An honest discussion about changing our relationships and behaviors that contribute to white supremacy in ways we sometimes don’t acknowledge. Santa Cruz is not a “white town.” The folks in our community/scene are not “all white.” But we need to acknowledge that a lot of the organizing and struggle in Santa Cruz is in fact white, because even when we talk a good talk we rarely walk the walk. Why? People miss the links between theory and practice. We have ideology but lack praxis. Show up ready to listen, ready to participate.

4pm
Applied Anarchisms - Open Discussion
Exploring the theories and applications of the distinct and nuanced streams of anarchism that many of us drink from. Which focuses quench our individual thirsts for freedom? Can any “ism” define the complexity of our behaviors, beliefs, and goals? How are these theories valuable, and what are their limitations?

4pm
Presenting Tapatio: A Framework For Communications During Mass Actions - Flatline
Tapatio is a piece of software that was developed by the hackbloc.org collective to assist in communications and distribution of information during the 2008 RNC protests. I will be going over its features and basic usage scenarios.

4pm
Social War Requires Social Skills - Crudo
Many anarchists desire a way to break out of the "comfortable, insular subculture," yet at the same time spend much of their activity strengthening it. If anarchism is going to be a viable force within the exploited as a whole in a time of ecological and economic crisis, anarchists will have to be clear as to where they make war and where they find comrades. Drawing from examples of his hometown of Modesto CA, the presenter contends that even with the growth of 'insurrectionary anarchism,' there's nothing revolutionary about an "anti-social" rupture. Crudo is a member of Modesto Anarcho Crew (MAC), which publishes Modesto Anarcho: The Valley's Insurrectionary Journal of Class Struggle and Firestorm. He also publishes a personal publication, Vengeance.






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Kick-Off Event Thursday

We've been planning a breathtaking kick-off performance for months now.  Performers from the 831 yo, and beyond.  An exciting Variety Show format, including music, slam poetry, spoken word, story, song, and a shadow puppet play.

Thursday May 7th 7:30 pm
Subrosa, Courtyard, 703 Pacific
Five bucks at the door.

All outside on the beautiful SubRosa outdoor stage.







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Friday Night Square Dance

Square Dance to Benefit Free Skool
Featuring the Wilder Creek String Band

Friday, May 8th at 7:30 pm
Pacific Cultural Center, 1307 Seabright Ave
$6-$12 at the door


Dance lessons at 7pm, dance starts at 7:30pm sharp. Set up, clean up and door person volunteer opportunities for folks with lack of funds. Beginners Welcome!








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Santa Cruz Anarchist Bookfair

Anarchist publishers, distros, campaigns, and projects from all over will pack the SubRosa courtyard with books, zines, posters, info and all sorts of other anarchist paraphernalia! Come check it out!

Saturday and Sunday, May 9th and 10th
Subrosa, Courtyard, 703 Pacific
FREE







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Saturday Punk Show Lineup

a punk show of such proportions that it will make your face melt right off you skull, yes! Also - vegan cupcakes for sale as a benefit for the AETA4 and some choice Santa Cruz and Bay Area zine distros.

Saturday, May 9 at 6:45 pm
Pacific Cultural Center
, 1307 Seabright Ave
$5 at the door but no one turned away for lack of funds.

La Plebe (sf) - spanish/english punk with horns

Blackbird Raum (sc) - mountain music for the apocalypse

Koalacaust (sc/sf) - pop punk with an accordian

Industria (sc) - anarch@-crust punk

Cicada of Sound (prescott, AZ) - radical folk









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More About This Thing

Between the forest and the ocean, among the students and the yuppies, Anarchists in Santa Cruz have fostered a close-knit community dedicated to destruction of this world and the creation of another. Santa Cruz is a hub of anarchist culture and resistance, with a long history of radical struggle and active anarchist projects spanning decades. Santa Cruz is proud to host the Santa Cruz Anarchist Convergence, a four-day anarchist event for building community and resistance and sharing radical ideas.


Thu May 7th through May 11th
SubRosa Infoshop, 703 Pacific Ave, Santa Cruz

Subrosa

Santa Cruz Anarchist Convergence

Convergence Housing

Workshop Schedule

Full Convergence Schedule



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by CLIT Collective
Hey Ya'll...

The CLIT Collective has a semi-updated description of their workshop that I thought I would include. Other than the description, it's still the same time and same place!

...

This workshop will be focused on exploring consent and sexual violence as it relates to radical communities and anarchist praxis. We will explore how consent contributes to safer spaces and building stronger radical communities. We'll discuss the link between consent and intimate violence as it relates to privilege and intersectionality. We will discuss the historical legacy of sexual violence as it relates to power. We will also be talking about the idea of 'restorative justice' as it relates to accountability and working outside of the state. This will include methods of individual and community support. Together we will discuss questions specific to radical communities striving for stronger, safer, and consensual spaces.

We will have 'workbooks' and snacks for those who attend! We will also have what remains of our distro, including the Incite! Anthology.

The CLIT Collective will also be tabling the Anarchist Bookfair as well as the punk show that night at the Pacific Cultural Center.

There will be 39 other workshops and 4 days of activities, we encourage you to check them out here:

http://santacruzanarchist.org/
We are 100% volunteer and depend on your participation to sustain our efforts!

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