Israel and its sponsor, enabler, and co-conspirator, the United States, extends it’s Forever War against Palestine and Palestinians, doubling-down on the genocide in Gaza, escalating ethnic-cleansing in the West Bank, and igniting fresh conflicts in Lebanon and Iran. The madness grows as war fever sweeps the region, and Israel sets itself on a suicidal path. We’re joined at Pilsen Community Books for a public conversation about war, peace, art, history, and resistance with our friends and comrades Rashid Khalidi, a Palestinian-American historian and the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, and author of The Hundred Years' War on Palestine and Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness; and Ismail Khalidi, a Palestinian/Lebanese American playwright, screenwriter theater director, and author of Tennis in Nablus, Truth Serum Blues, and a critically-acclaimed adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani's novella, Returning to Haifa---work that tackles the history of Palestine and the modern Middle East, as well as wider themes of race, colonialism, displacement and war.

In the late 1960s Detroit was ripe for revolution: a wave of urban insurrections had swept the country from coast to coast, and the 1967 Detroit rebellion was one of the largest and most consequential; Black auto workers who had experienced marginalization and discrimination in the industry as well as from their own union (UAW) were organizing grass roots resistance; and Detroit was a center of Black radical thought, notably fired by the presence of the Marxist leader CLR James, as well as James and Grace Lee Boggs. On May 2, 1968, 3000 workers at the massive Dodge Main plant participated in a wildcat strike, and soon the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) was born, and workers began organizing radical caucuses at other factories. There are several useful accounts—books, articles, films—about the life of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, its history and its impact, but with Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries Walda Katz-Fischman and Jerome Scott add a necessary and illuminating element: Oral History. The focus is meaning as it’s constructed by human beings—meaning made by actors in their particular situations—and this leads to story, to narrative, to approaches that are person-centered, shamelessly interpretive, and unapologetically subjective. Far from a weakness, the voice of the person—the narrator’s own account—is the singular achievement of this work, a worthy antidote to propaganda, dogma, imposition, and stereotype.

We are living through difficult times, tough times, and we’re not alone. Genocide, catastrophic capitalist climate collapse, increasing inequality, unapologetic imperial dreams and white supremacist policies unleashed, fascism on the rise—people all over the world are suffering, they get hurt and they get hard. Our rage and our sadness for all the unnecessary suffering, while understandable, can easily lead to despair and worse. But despair is deactivating, distorting, and destructive—a weapon of the powerful. Activism is a necessary antidote to despair, and activism opens a practical space where hope can come alive. Join us in conversation with one of the most joyful freedom fighters we know: Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research—a primer about everything that matters! Vijay is the author of forty books, including The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World, The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of Global South, and (with Grieve Chelwa) How the International Monetary Fund Suffocates Africa. He is an editor at LeftWord Books (New Delhi), Inkani Books (Johannesburg), and La Trocha (Santiago).