Solidarity and Radical Transformation During End Times, a Panel Discussion

Source: Building Solidarity Economies

Building Solidarity Economies, an assemblage of teaching and research projects in and outside of UMass, will offer a panel discussion entitled “Solidarity and Radical Transformation During End Times” at the Old Chapel on the UMass Campus from 6-8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 2.
The discussion will focus on building resilience and power in these challenging times. The event is free and open to all, but registration is required.

The Panel
Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson and author of Jackson Rising Redux: Lessons on Building the Future in the Present  

Ethan Miller of Land in Common and author of Reimagining Livelihoods: Life Beyond Economy, Society, and Environment

Michell McCormick of Cooperation Vermont and General Manager of Marshfield Village Coop

The Discussion
White-supremacist, patriarchal regimes are further consolidating power through naked state discipline and power; spectacles of and libidinal overtures towards violence; and techno-feudalist machinations. Intensifying extractivism is rapidly destroying life-sustaining relationships between humans and non-human others. At the same time, the social-symbolic order that has held colonial capitalism together is coming undone; more and more communities are rejecting the world as they have come to know it, and searching for and advancing other modes of life to fight for and bring more fully into being.  In this conversation, Akuno, Miller, and McCormick introduce their work, and then discuss intersecting strategies towards building resilience and power through relational ways of being with each other, and non-human others. What is the role for solidarity economy movement and practice in cultivating relationships of interdependence and care; in building power to defend communities and fight against fascism and colonial capitalist extractivism; in imagining, organizing around, and advancing other worlds? 

This event is sponsored by the following programs at UMass Amherst: UMass Amherst Equity and Inclusion, WSIP Decolonial Global Studies Certificate; Department of Anthropology; Civic Engagement and Service Learning; UMass Alliance for Community Transformation; the Labor Center; School of Public Policy; Social Thought and Political Economy; Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies