XCO EVENTS: 090303 Gustavo Esteva at El Kilombo/THE END OF AN ERA: THE NEW UNREST AND THE EMERGING COMMONISM

XCO EVENTS: 090303 Gustavo Esteva at El Kilombo/THE END OF AN ERA: THE NEW UNREST AND THE EMERGING COMMONISM

THE END OF AN ERA: THE NEW UNREST AND THE EMERGING COMMONISM
**with GUSTAVO ESTEVA**
March 3rd, 2009 (Tuesday)
7:00pm, at El Kilombo Social Center
324 West Geer Street, Durham NC 27701
(919) 688-8768
Directions to Kilombo: http://www.elkilombo.org/directionstospace/directions.html

**This panel will be conducted in Spanish with translation into English.**

Guest speaker GUSTAVO ESTEVA is a 'deprofessionalized intellectual.' He is the founder of the Universidad de La Tierra in Oaxaca, and author of several books, including Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures, and Escaping Education: Living as Learning within Grassroots Cultures.

TALK DESCRIPTION
Which voices, social movements, and ideas currently resist and challenge dominant political and economic paradigms and policies? Which are the pathways now opened for dignified work and meaningful life? A new unrest reveals the search for alternatives, in the epic now unfolding at the grassroots. In this third panel in the ongoing series we seek to learn from the forms of resistance created by many others, and to continue to develop our own strategies of resistance. Members of El Kilombo will give opening and closing remarks.



SERIES DESCRIPTION

An enormous political crisis is emerging in the United States, involving the privatization of public goods, the elimination of public space, the marketization of political representation, the displacement of poor communities—in short, the privatization of wealth and the socialization of misery. All evidence seems to suggest that these watershed transformations resulting from global capitalism are picking up speed. If one were to listen to prevalent media discourse, however, the global supremacy of the US, our dysfunctional party-political system, and the power of neoliberalism will survive the coming crisis unscarred. The perspective from below is somewhat different. History teaches us, and the debacle of the current financial crisis bears out, that the brunt impact of these changes will fall hardest on working class and people of color communities. Furthermore, it was from below that the "modern world" was made possible, and it is here (away from the cameras and microphones of those above) that another world is already under construction. In this context, the El Kilombo community speaker series provides us with a space to think strategically about the struggles that must be continually developed in the face of this gathering storm. We will examine these transformations through multiple lenses, in conversation with national and international guest speakers on issues including: the relation of movements to electoral politics; gentrification, the logic of racialized power, and the central importance of territorial control; and the inspiration of global struggles for dignity and autonomy.

Things Unseen, the El Kilombo Speaker Series, will continue in April with:

Part 4: GLOBAL MOVEMENTS FOR AUTONOMY
April 4, 2009 (Saturday)
5:00pm, at El Kilombo Social Center

**Speaker: Angel Luis Lara, Musician and sociologist; Lara conducts research at the Universidad Complutense in Madrid