DERRY SOCIALISM CONFERENCE
Time for an Alternative
With Eamonn McCann, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, US activist Tithi Bhattacharya, Goretti Horgan, Belfast City Cllr Gerry Carroll and others – speaker information below.
Saturday, March 21st
10AM-7:30PM
The Playhouse Theatre
5-7 Artillery Street, Derry
https://www.facebook.com/events/1401881060120082/
Grotesque inequality is growing but the super-rich have never been so wealthy. Oxfam reported that the share of the world’s wealth owned by the richest 1% has increased from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014, while the least well-off 80 currently own just 5.5%. If current trends continue the rich will own more than 50% of the world’s wealth by 2016.
Resistance to grinding poverty, zero-contract jobs and the destruction of desperately needed social services is spreading. The people of Greece elected a left-wing party committed to reversing austerity. Millions are demanding the same across Europe. In Ireland, North and South, struggles challenging austerity and cuts are developing. Across the North, thousands of people went on strike, marched and rallied on March 13th to say no to the Stormont House Agreement. Across the South, a mass movement is defying the government’s plans to impose water charges.
An alternative based on the priorities of the vast majority is needed and possible — but we can also see billionaires and their institutions from Egypt to Greece to Ireland are determined to stop fundamental change.
Join us in Derry to discuss the challenges we face and how we can effectively organise solidarity and resistance. We’ll be taking up crucial questions for everyone interested in social justice such as challenging exploitation and oppression; neoliberalism and austerity; immigration and immigrant rights; gender violence and women’s liberation; working class struggles North and South of the border; sectarianism and the peace process; and, how we can win a world based on the needs of the vast majority of people instead of profits and war.
Schedule:
10AM Registration and Radical Book Fair Open
11AM Neoliberalism, Gender Violence and Women’s Liberation with US activist Tithi Bhattacharya & Goretti Horgan
https://www.facebook.com/events/335498013317914/
1:15PM Workers of the World, Unite! When the Shankill and the Falls Fought Together with Sean Mitchell & Ruairi Gallagher
3:15PM Solidarity has no Borders: Capitalism, Racism and Immigrant Rights with Bernadette Devlin McAliskey & Shaun Harkin
https://www.facebook.com/events/347679658772065/
4:45PM Dinner
Pizza Dinner Break-out: Questions for Socialists with Becca Bor & others
Pizza Dinner Break-out: After March 13th – where now for the trade union movement? with leading trade union activists in Belfast and Derry
5:45PM Challenging Austerity and Sectarianism: Fighting for a Socialist Ireland with Eamonn McCann, Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Nicola Curry & Belfast City Cllr Gerry Carroll
https://www.facebook.com/events/1550802688525779/
Speakers:
Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, Co-ordinator of the migrants rights South Tyrone Empowerment Program (STEP) and author of The Price of My Soul. Bernadette was a student Civil-Rights leader with People’s Democracy and was elected to Westminster Parliament in 1969 as an independent socialist.
Gerry Carroll, Long-time student and community activist, and, People Before Profit Alliance Councillor. Gerry was elected to the Belfast City Council in May 2014 in the West Belfast Sinn Féin dominated Black Mountain Ward. On being elected Gerry told the Belfast Telegraph “There is a lot of anger in west Belfast at the minute over the situation at Royal Victoria Hospital’s A&E, the privatisation of leisure centres and the Casement Park issues – those residents have been trampled on. This is where we are strong. I am not a nationalist or a unionist, I am a socialist. Belfast has a strong history of socialism and this is it coming back.”
Eamonn McCann, Veteran activist and Civil-Rights movement founder; columnist for the Belfast Telegraph, Irish Times and Socialist Worker; author of War and an Irish Town, Bloody Sunday in Derry: What Really Happened, War and Peace in Northern Ireland, and, Dear God: The Price of Religion in Ireland. Eamonn is a long-time activist with the National Union of Journalists and leading member of the Derry Trades Union Council.
Tithi Bhattacharya, professor of South Asian History at Purdue University, Indiana. She is the author of The Sentinels of Culture: Class, Education, and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal and a long time activist for Palestinian justice. She writes extensively on Marxist theory, gender, and the politics of Islamophobia. Her work has been published in the Journal of Asian Studies, South Asia Research, Electronic Intifada, Jacobin Magazine, Salon and the New Left Review. She is on the editorial board of the International Socialist Review (ISR).
Goretti Horgan, Social Policy lecturer at The University of Ulster and author of Abortion: Why Irish Women Must have the Right to Choose. She is Branch Secretary of University and Colleges Union at Ulster University and on the board of NI Anti Poverty Network. Goretti is a regular contributor to Socialist Worker and the Irish Marxist Review.
Sean Mitchell, activist based in Belfast, regular contributor to the Irish Marxist Review, author of The Permanent Crisis of 21st Century Ulster Unionism and is currently working on book about the 1932 Belfast Outdoor Relief Strike. Sean is a UNISON member and shop steward at Coláiste Feirste in Belfast.
Nicola Curry, long-time activist and socialist in Dublin. Nicola is very active in the movement against water charges and is a local convenor of the Campaign Against Home and Water Taxes. She is the chairperson of the Ballyogan Environment Group which was set up by local residents because of concerns about a waste disposal centre located in her residential area. She stood as a candidate for People Before Profit Alliance in Dublin South.
Becca Bor, is an American socialist living in Derry. In Chicago, she was a member of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), including during the historic 2011 strike. Becca is the author of Race and Class in Obama’s U.S. in the Irish Marxist Review and Malcolm X – 50 years on at swp.ie
Ruairí Gallagher is a socialist activist from Derry and is a first year PhD student at NUI Galway. He is involved with NUI Galway’s Irish Centre for the Histories of Labour and Class (ICHLC) and is interested in class history and ‘history from below’. He is studying a comparative history of Labour militancy in Belfast & Glasgow, 1915-1924; particularly focusing on the shipyards and engineering industries in Clydeside and the Lagan. He has published an article in the Irish Marxist Review entitled ‘Irish Tories and Social Bandits of Seventeenth Century Ireland’ and has recently written book reviews for the latest addition of Saothar, journal of the Irish Labour History Society,(vol. 39, 2014)
Shaun Harkin, Derry native and long time socialist activist and writer in the United States. In Chicago, Shaun was an organiser for the March 10 Movement and the historic 2006 May 1st ‘Day Without Immigrants’ actions across the US demanding full legalisation, ending deportations and workers’ rights. His articles can be found at swp.ie, Socialistworker.org, the International Socialist Review, Jacobin magazine, El Beisman and Counterpunch.org. He is currently working on a James Connolly Reader.
The Playhouse is Wheelchair accessible.
Contact us ASAP for Childcare.
Limited free housing is available.
Hosted by the Derry Socialist Workers Party
Contact SWPDerry@gmail.com for more information
https://www.facebook.com/derryswp
www.swp.ie
https://www.facebook.com/SWPIreland
https://www.facebook.com/IrishMarxistReview
Shaun
07960404137
**END**
‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs
Posted here by Glenn Rikowski
Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski
Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf
Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski
Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com
Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.co.uk/
All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski 