Activism

Tucked away down under Manhattan Bridge in Brooklyn, the Powerhouse bookstore cum arena cum gallery played host to the latest PEN World Voices Festival offering: "The Writer as Activist." The Powerhouse’s large airy space and piped acid jazz music gave it a very contemporary feel, perhaps not surprising given its location in the heart of New York’s hippest borough. The snarled up traffic due to the Five Borough Bike Ride meant the event started 30 minutes late.

Rape. It's something most of us are uncomfortable discussing and an ugly part of our world. I could use a less obtrusive term. like "sexual assault" or "sexual violence," but I wont. It's a powerful word that we need to keep discussing because it's an issue that faces millions of people worldwide.

Audio interview with Jeremy Glick, the co-editor of Another World is Possible: Conversations in a Time of Terror, Professor of English at Hunter College, and currently working on a book on dramatic and operatic representations of the Haitian Revolution.

Further Resources:

Hunter College

Audio interview with Margaret Yard, a sociologist, psychologist, nurse practitioner in geriatrics and psychiatry, lyricist, writer and an activist.

Audio interview with Mike Bonanno, co-founder of the Yes-Men and a co-Director of The Yes-Men Fix the World.

Audio interview with Hilary Wainwright, a leading researcher and writer on the emergence of new forms of democractic accountability within parties, movements and the state. She is also editor of Red Pepper, a British new left magazine. An updated edition of her book, Reclaim the State: Adventures in Popular Democracy was published in December of 2009.

Further Resources:

Audio interview with Richard Grossman, a man that lectures widely on issues of corporate power, law and democracy. He is co-author of Fear at Work: Job Blackmail, Labor and the Environment and Taking Care of Business: Citizenship and the Charter of Incorporation as well as former co-director of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy and co-founder of the Daniel Pennock Democracy Schools at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

Further Reading:

Audio interview with Lois Gibbs, the founder and director of the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice. Lois, one of the world's foremost environmental activists, has guided CHEJ's efforts to provide critical organizing and technical assistance to thousands of communities engaged in their own environmental struggles across the country. She has received numerous honorary doctorates, the Goldman Environmental Prize, the Heinz Award, and many other honors.

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Leslie Cagan (born 1947) is an American activist, writer, and socialist organizer involved with the peace and social justice movements. She is the former national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, the former co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and the former chair of Pacifica Radio.

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In 2006 I read Elizabeth Royte’s Garbage Land(Little Brown, 2005), wherein Royte traces her trash through the labyrinthine American waste system. Royte asked, after we toss it into the garbage can, where does it go? What is the impact of the item’s life post-use? What does the vast and growing collection of too-easily disposable products in our landfills say about American lifestyle, priorities and, yes, morals? Since reading Royte’s accounts I have been composting all my food waste, and I strive to maintain a higher conscience of wasteful purchasing habits (e.g. I try to buy used or pluck from the trash rather than buy new).