Communist Manifestivity Update 10-17-98
150th Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto
October 30 & 31 at Cooper Union's Great Hall
For more information call
(212) 802-9276
or access
<http://www.brechtforum.org>
** Karl Marx and Frederick Engels to Haunt Cooper Union
on the 150th Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto **
** Amiri Baraka, Wallace Shawn, Tony Kushner,
Vinie Burrows, Sandra Maria Esteves and
Louis Reyes Rivera in cultural performance **
** Cornel West, Stephen Jay Gould, Maria Helena Alves,
Ellen Meiksins Wood, Barbara Fields, Richard Levins and
Sam Gindin in special roundtable **
** Bread and Puppet Theater performance, day-long
poetry jam, marathon film showings, economics panels,
small-group discussions and workshops...and more! **
"In place of the old bourgeois society." wrote the two
young German revolutionists in 1848, "there will be an
association in which the free development of each is
the condition for the free development of all."
On Friday and Saturday, October 30 and 31, the Great
Hall at Cooper Union, 3rd Avenue and 7th Street in New
York City, will be the site of a MANIFESTIVITY in which
artists, scientists, activists, scholars, trade
unionists and social justice activists will revisit the
Communist Manifesto on its 150th Anniversary.
In a special opening program on Friday evening at 7:30
pm, poets, writers and performers including Amiri
Baraka, Wallace Shawn, Tony Kushner, Vinie Burrows,
Sandra Maria Esteves and Louis Reyes Rivera will
combine music and poetry with dramatic readings from
the Manifesto itself. The event will culminate in a
Saturday evening roundtable in which theologian Cornel
West, scientists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Levins,
Brazilian Workers Party founder Maria Helena Moreira
Alves, _Monthly Review_ editor Ellen Meiksins Woods,
historian Barbara Fields, and Sam Gindin of the
Canadian Auto Workers discuss our society's dilemmas on
the eve of the 21st century and the epochal challenge
presented by the Manifesto to go where we've never gone
before.
The MANIFESTIVITY is one of many events taking place in
over 60 countries this year and several anniversary
editions of the persistent best-seller have drawn wide
attention. Event organizer Eric Canepa notes that
economic turbulence from Wall Street to East Asia seems
to heighten interest in the book. "There is an eerie
resonance in their treatment of what would now be
called globalization." Even some staunch conservatives
begin to wonder if Marx and Engels might have been
right about capitalism after all, he said.
Throughout the day on Saturday, beginning at 10:00 am,
an array of activities and discussions of culture and
politics are planned: a performance by the Bread and
Puppet Theater; a panel of economists looking at how
the Manifesto's diagnosis of capitalism and it's crisis
stands up today; a day-long poetry jam and film
showing; and small-group discussions on the Manifesto
in the light of New York City's labor conflicts and
battles over public education, medical services,
workfare and housing.
Saturday panelists include Alexander Cockburn (_The
Nation_, _NY Press_), Dennis Brutus (South African
poet), Harry Magdoff (_Monthly Review_), Daniel Singer
(_The Nation_), Aijaz Ahmad (York University), Annette
T. Rubinstein (_Science & Society_), Bertell Ollman
(New York University), poet Tony Medina, Boots (of "The
Coup") Tricia Rose (New York University}, and Leo
Panitch (_Socialist Register_) among others.
This will not be the first time that the spirit of Karl
Marx has been present at Cooper Union. At the time of
his death in 1883, overflow crowds filled the Great
Hall in what was at the time the largest memorial
meeting in the world. The organizers of the meeting,
the Central Labor Union of Greater New York and
Vicinity, used the proceeds to publish an edition of
the Communist Manifesto. Each union that had helped
organize the event received 300 free copies for
distribution to their members.
The MANIFESTIVITY is organized by The Brecht Forum in
cooperation with more than 40 other New York area
organizations and individuals. The Brecht Forum, home
of the New York Marxist School since 1975, offers a
regular program of political and cultural events and
study groups, including long-term study of the writings
of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. For tickets and
further information call 212-802-9276 or check the
Brecht Forum's web site at <http://www.brechtforum.org>
**********
Sponsor: The Brecht Forum
Individual Endorsers: Maria Helena Alves; Sam Anderson,
NY Metro Black Radical Congress; Sylvia Aron, Adelphi
University School of Social Work; Amiri Baraka; Rosalyn
Baxandall; Annanya Bhattacharjee; Betsy Blackmar; Carl
Bloice; Augusto Boal; Robert and Frances Boehm; Mary
Boger; Ellen Braune; Stephen Brier; Dennis Brutus; Paul
Buhle; Vinie Burrows; Joseph Buttigieg; Leslie Cagan;
Eric Canepa; Luciana Castellina; Noam Chomsky; Julie
Christie; Andrew Comer; Angela Davis; Ossie Davis; Ruby
Dee; Martin Duberman; Ann Druyan; Terry Eagleton;
Ghassan Fawzi; Rabbi Michael Feinberg, New York
Labor-Religion Coalition; Hector Figueroa; Eric Foner;
Mike Fuller, Prensa Latina & Jose Marti International
Institute of Journalism, Havana, Cuba; Eduardo Galeano;
Neftali Garcia; Dan Georgakas; Sam Gindin; Norman K.
Gottwald; Stephen Jay Gould; Joan Greenbaum; Mary Dugan
and John Hanlon; Sandra Harding; David Harvey; Ron
Hayduk; Bill Henning, CWA Local 1180; Cherrene Horazuk;
Boris Kagarlitsky; Lisa Maya Knauer; Bill Koehnlein;
Tony Kushner; Maureen La Mar; Peter Laarman, Judson
Memorial Church; David Laibman, _Science and Society_;
Roger Leisner, Radio Free Maine; Jerry Lembcke; Diane
Greene Lent; Hanna and Les Lessinger; Richard Levins;
Susan Lowes; Elizabeth Macklin; Harry Magdoff; Victoria
Maldonado; Manning Marable; Peter and Frances Marcuse;
Samori Marksman, WBAI Radio; Esperanza Martell; Biju
Mathew, Forum of Indian Leftists; David McReynolds;
Alice Meaker, Lower East Side Collective; Eli
Messinger; Liz Mestres; Gerald Meyer; Francette Lazard,
EspacesMarx, Paris; Michael Lowy, EspacesMarx, Paris;
Jakob Moneta; Vicente Navarro; Manny Ness; Ngo Thanh
Nhan; Yusuf Nuruddin; Shivaun O'Casey; Bertell Ollman;
Grace Paley; Leo Panitch, _The Socialist Register_;
William A. Pelz, Ph.D., Institute of Working Class
History; Renee Pendergrass; Charles Post; Victor
Quintana; Sofia Quintero; Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, Global
Pan African Movement; Merle Ratner; Jeremy Raw; Colin
Robinson; Mimi Rosenberg; Frank Rosengarten; Sheila
Rowbotham; Nan Rubin, Community Media Services; Annette
T. Rubinstein; Sungur Savran; Herman Scheer, member,
Bundestag, Social Democratic Party, Germany; Pete
Seeger; Anwar Shaikh; Joel Shufro; Daniel Singer; Greg
Smith; Hobart Spalding; Bill Tabb; Studs Terkel; Sheila
Thimba; Rene Toback; Carmen Vazquez; Lise Vogel;
Michael Wallace; Victor Wallis; Joel Washington; Paul
Washington; Cornel West; Karen Kurenski & Michael
Yates; Ethan Young; Mike Zielinski (Organizations for
Identification Only).
Organizational Endorsers: Action for Community
Empowerment; Catholic Worker; City College of New York
SLAM (Student Liberation Action Movement); Coalition
for a District Alternative (CODA); Committee Against
Anti-Asian Violence (CAAAV); Committees of
Correspondence; Democratic Socialists of America (DSA);
El Centro Salvadoreno; Freedom Road; Freedom Socialist
Party; Guyanese-American Workers United; Haiti
Anti-Intervention Committee; Immigrant Workers
Association; Jews for Racial and Economic Justice;
_Left Business Observer_; Lower East Side Community
Labor Coalition; Monthly Review Press; National Lawyers
Guild; National Nicaragua Network; New York Committee
in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES);
New York Metro Black Radical Congress; North American
Congress on Latin America (NACLA); Radical Women;
_Rethinking Marxism_; _Samar_ Magazine; _Science and
Society_; _Socialism and Democracy_; The Socialist
Party USA; _The Socialist Register_; Solidarity; The
Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory; Verso Press
Louis Proyect
(http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
