Come to the event that Dacyn and Simon have been organizing!

Forum on Peoples’ Struggles

Today (Friday), 4-6pm
Barber Centre Room 155

Although geographically in different regions on the globe, activists, indigenous peoples and citizens are facing very much the same struggles against increasingly repressive states and corporations. The same mechanism to suppress dissent has caused extrajudicial killings of journalists, and activists in the Philippines, as well as the arrest of Dr. G. N. Saibaba along with student leaders involved with the Jawaharal Nehru University protests in India. The same mechanisms are used by Canadian resource extraction companies to plunder land in the Philippines, India, and the Americas, while we turn a blind eye to this injustice. The same mechanisms to uproot indigenous communities have caused 40000 Lumads (indigenous peoples) in Philippines to be displaced, not to mention that the same displacement perpetrated by the state and its partners occurs to this day in the Americas.

In response to these struggles, and courageous resistance to repressive states and corporations presently happening around the world, the Revolutionary Student Movement – Vancouver chapter would like to inform students on campus about them, especially when these issues are not discussed in the lecture hall or reported widely in the media. We will be hosting a forum in the Irving K. Barber Learning Centre, Room 155 on Friday March 4th 2016 from 4-6pm where a number of speakers will be giving some presentations about these global issues. Coffee will be provided at the event. Furthermore, panelists include:
– Eviatar Bach, of the UBC Social Justice Centre, who will speak on mining injustice.
– Lakhbir Khunkhun, of the East Indian Defence Committee (EIDC), who will speak on state repression in India.
– Representatives from RSM who will speak on what our organization does.

Join us for an informative afternoon of presentations, so that we may strengthen international solidarity for our global comrades.

Facebook Event Page

[Sorry these are late… I have been having computer problems.]

Together, you will collectively produce a document (using Google Docs) in response to one of the following three prompts. It will be only at the time of the midterm itself that you will be given the specific prompt that you have to answer, but it will be one of these three:

1. What is a revolution? And why might we (anybody) want one?
2. What are the main obstacles to revolution, or dangers inherent in trying to organize one?
3. How have revolutions been represented or depicted, and how should they be portrayed?

In each case, please respond with specific reference to the full range of texts we have read and discussed in class.

Ensure also that the document you produce is well-structured, organized, and coherent. It should have a beginning, a middle, and an end, and a coherent thesis, which may (and probably should) of course be broken down into discrete but complementary elements.

It is up to you to figure out how to organize yourselves and assign responsibilities and roles to tackle this task. The result will be viewed and assessed as a collective project, and if it is judged unsatisfactory, then everyone will be involved in rewriting and revising (and/or redoing) it until it is satisfactory.

Though I am giving no hard guidelines on length, I am expecting a substantial document. I think you should probably aim for ten pages (double spaced).

In the midterm itself, you are allowed to use whatever resources you deem necessary: books, notes, the Internet, whatever. You are free (indeed, encouraged) to talk to each other as you work together.

Omar Cabezas’s Fire from the Mountain is now available here.

In this version, it’s a little longer than in the one I have. I may (as with The Country Under My Skin) suggest you only need to read some parts of it, but I may not. I will look over it and tell you.