Thank you

A great big THANK YOU to HSA, CUPE BC, BCGEU, CUPE Metro, CUPE 23, ILWU 500, VDLC and PAGE BC!!

Your donations have allowed us to bring in great speakers, hold the event at a central and accessible location, and to have the event filmed for all the people who can’t attend in person!

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The World Peace Forum Society Teach In 2014

Imperialism, Resistance & Alternatives
100 Years After the Start of WWI

October 25, 2014

8:00-9:00 Registration at the door

9:00-10:00 Déjà vu: How WWI gets used to justify imperialism today (Ingo Schmidt)

10:15-11:15 Imperialism: Reliable Allies? Four workshops to choose from: 

• China: Left or Right? (Yuezhi Zhao)
• NATO Pushes East- What Does the Ukraine Represent? (Roger Annis)
• Latin America: Alternative or Partner? (Marta Harnecker)
• South Africa: Neoliberalism with a Human Face? (Lawrence Boxall)

11:30-12:30 Resistance. Four workshops to choose from:

• The Chinese Labour Movement Today (Xinying Hu and Cathy Walker)
• Euro-critics, Left AND Right: Unraveling Troika-Power? (Ingo Schmidt)
• Housing, Health, and Education: Defending the Right to Live (Tara Ehrcke and Chris Shelton)
• Arab Spring, Winter or Fall? (Mahdi Nazemroaya and Mostafa Saber)

12:30-1:30 LUNCH ON YOUR OWN

1:30-2:30 Two Big Boys: NATO – The Cops of the World; and CHINA – Number Two and Trying Harder (Mahdi Nazemroaya and Minqi Li)

2:45-3:45 Alternatives. Four workshops to choose from:

• The Rise of the Working Class in China (Minqi Li)
• Fundamentalists of All Countries Unite: The Reappearance of Everything Old (Gary Cristall)
• Bolivarian Revolution and ALBA at 10 Years (Representative of the Consulate General of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela)
• O Canada! Strategies for Change: A panel of activists from the electoral and extra-electoral movements for change (Nadia Santoro, Bill Hopwood, and Audrey Siegl)

4:00-5:00 Fortune Telling: Thoughts on the Coming Years (Minqi Li and Marta Harnecker and Mahdi Nazemroaya)

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 IMPERIALISM, RESISTANCE & ALTERNATIVES

The World Peace Forum Society’s  7th Annual Teach In

Saturday Oct. 25, 2014, at Simon Fraser University Harbour Centre- 515 West Hastings.

Registration will start at 8:30 am,  the first plenary will begin at 9:00 am,  the last will end at 6:00 pm. Over the course of the day there will be three plenary sessions and three sets of workshop sessions.

 

The plenary sessions are-

• Déjà vu– How WWI Is used to justify imperialism today- Ingo Schmidt
• Two Big Boys– NATO- The Cops of the World (Mahdi Nazemroaya), and China- Number Two and Trying Harder (Minqi Li)
• Fortune Telling– Thoughts on the Coming Years- Minqi Li, Marta Harnecker, Mahdi Nazemroaya

Workshops- Three series of four simultaneous workshops, arranged thematically-

 Imperialism

• China: Left or Right?
• NATO Pushes East- What does the Ukraine Represent?
• Latin America- Alternative or Partner?
• South Africa- Neoliberalism with a Human Face?

Resistance

• The Chinese Labour Movement Today- and a report back from BC Fed visit to China
• Euro- critics- Left AND Right
• Health, Housing and Education- Defending the Right to Live
• Arab Spring- What Season Are We In?

Alternatives

• The Rise of the Working Class in China
• Fundamentalists of All Countries Unite- The Reappearance of Everything Old
• Bolivarian Revolution and ALBA at 10 Years
• O Canada! Strategies for Change- A panel of activists from the electoral and extra-electoral movements for social change

The names of speakers and facilitators for each workshop will be available in early September at our web site- www.peaceforumteachin.org

 

*AND*

TUESDAY NOVEMBER 11

Remembrance Day

The World Peace Forum presents a film showing:

 All Quiet on the Western Front- 1930

A cinematic classic and powerful denunciation of war.

THE W.I.S.E. CLUB 1882 Adanac St. 1:00pm

 WPF 2014 Imperialism Resistance Alternatives Proposal-12a

 

Thank you to BCGEU, CUPE BC, HSA, ILWU 500, the VDLC, the NWDLC, the SFU Labour Studies program, all of the presenters, and all of the participants for helping to make the 6th Annual World Peace Forum Teach-In “If Capitalism Doesn’t Work, What Does?” and the live performance of “The Investigator” such successful events!

The members of the WPF organizing committee have started to develop ideas for the 2014 teach-in. The general theme we are proposing is “Imperialism, Resistance and Alternatives”. This is a very broad title and may be further refined as we procede. At this point, however, we have some very exciting possibilities.

With 2014 being the 100th anniversary of the start of WWI, we envision presentations and panels that will look at the legacy of WWI in this year of its centennial, and the beginning of the Canadian government’s campaign to enhance the warrior image of Canada. Other areas of focus under discussion include the fate of the Arab Spring, resistance in South Africa, and analysis of events in Russia and the Ukraine.

2014 is also the year of another important anniversary. Twenty years ago, January 1st, 1994, the Zapatista uprising, timed to coincide with the beginning of NAFTA, shook Mexico, Latin America and much of the rest of the politically observant world. Since then Latin America has been the one area of the world where mass resistance, and successful resistance, to neoliberalism has been an important factor. We would like to explore this conflict and resistance.

We also want to take a look at China. This is an area we have never looked at in detail and, given the role being played by this country in the world, it makes a great deal of sense to do so. Cathy Walker, veteran trade unionist and activist has shared a proposal based on an examination of China. Cathy’s proposal- still a draft- is quite ambitious. She proposes a Report from the First British Columbia Labour Federation delegation to China (June-July 2014) by Jim Sinclair, President, BCFL; 5,000 years of Chinese history in 20 minutes by herself, The Rise of the Working Class and the Future of the Revolution in China featuring Minqi Li, University of Utah, economics teacher; The Struggle for Socialism in China: The Fall of Bo Xilai and the Chongqing Model by Yuezhi Zhao, Professor, SFU Communications Department, The Chinese Labour Movement Today: Worker resistance and the ACFTU, by Xinying Hu, Instructor, SFU Labour Studies Program and Guoxin Xing, Instructor, SFU Communications Department, and Chinese Workers in Canada: from the Gold Rush to the Temporary Foreign Worker Program also by herself. We are also considering a plenary panel discussion – What is next in China? Thoughts on the next few years with Mingqi Li, Zhao Yuezhi, Xinying Hu, and Guoxin Xing.

We are open to other ideas and encourage anyone interested to put their thinking cap on and contact us with their suggestions. The general framework is the victory of imperialism on the one hand, the crisis of their neoliberal project on the other, the resistance to it in various sectors and the alternatives that are being created, tentatively but in reality, in various places.

As for our Remembrance Day cultural event at the WISE Hall, We have had only vague discussions about what to do. Suggestions are welcome, in fact, beseeched.

 

Teach-In 2014 Videos