Sonic Youth: A New Wave of Activists Makes Some Noise

A A A Comments By Joseph McCombs Tuesday, Feb 7 2006

photo: Courtesy of Vanessa Mosley

Bill Fletcher Jr. of TransAfrica Forum

Details

Turning the Tide Towards Freedom: Building the Youth and Student Movement for Justice
Bayard Rustin High School for the Humanities
351 West 18th Street
Friday at 7 p.m., Saturday at 9:30 a.m.
Barnard College, Barnard Hall
Broadway & 117th Street
Sunday at 9:30 a.m.
212-727-8610, ext. 24 $10 to $50

More About

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Weekly Newsletter: (Sent out every Thursday) Our weekly feature stories, movie reviews, calendar picks and more - minus the newsprint and sent directly to your inbox.

A message to all you fine young minds who feel disempowered and disenfranchised, and that your government is unresponsive and unjust: The Young Democratic Socialists wish to remind you that paralyzed defeatism is no solution, and to illustrate and motivate, they offer this three-day conference over Presidents' Day weekend. To combat what they call the far right's "war on America's fundamental democratic values," the YDS have assembled an array of panels and workshops featuring many of America's top leftist writers, educators, and activists, all sharing goals of increased liberty and equality in the U.S. and beyond. The Friday opening plenary, "Beyond Katrina: Continuing the Struggle for Racial and Economic Justice," features the energizing Bill Fletcher Jr. of TransAfrica Forum, while Saturday and Sunday panels explore such interconnected issues as imperialism, global capitalism, and unequal access to education. Leading academics like postcolonial theorist and Derrida scholar Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and sociologist-author Frances Fox Piven (The War at Home: The Domestic Costs of Bush's Militarism) join muckraking journalists including frequent Nation contributors Liza Featherstone and Christian Parenti in conversations whose urgency is underscored by a Frederick Douglass quote: "Power concedes nothing without a demand!"