User:Msarle

The Brecht Forum
451 West Street NY, NY 100014

The BRECHT FORUM is a place for people who are working for social justice, equality and a new culture that puts human needs first. Through its programs and events, the Brecht Forum brings people together across social and cultural boundaries and artistic and academic disciplines to promote critical analysis, creative thinking, collaborative projects and networking in an independent community-level environment.

The New York Marxist School

The Brecht Forum's flagship project--The New York Marxist School--uses Marx's uniquely valuable contributions, along with others within and outside of the Marxist tradition, to study conditions today and possibilities for transcending capitalism and building an emancipatory society.

"In my opinion, this is the principle reason why one should study Marxism: namely, that if it is so…that you can actually at a certain moment, given certain conditions, make a difference between victory and defeat, and not only for the working class but really humanity, with the power of ideas, then shouldn't we check these ideas out? That's the first premise of the educational approach that we take in this school. People should start by studying this important question of conscious politics, based upon a verifiable body of evidence that says that you can change the world if you engage authentically in this activity. That's the Marxist proposal…Where does this science reside? In the first place, it resides in the only scientific presentation of historical materialism, that is Capital. Lenin…was guided by this notion. You can find this in the book What the Friends of the People Are and Why They Fight the Social Democrats, where he specifically answers the derision of his opponents [who] said, "And where is your 'historical materialism' presented? Where is this thesis of history presented as a scientific thesis?" And Lenin responds, "In Capital, that's where." Arthur Felberbaum, Talk on "The Priorities of the Marxist Education Collective," January, 1976

Current Brecht Forum Classes, Spring 2009:

The Grundrisse

Black Resistance History

Revolutions

Part 2. The Haitian Revolution

Capitalism’s Crisis

A Marxian Analysis

Consensus Mechanics: Decision-making as Change

Anarchism & Communism

class times, descriptions and info. at http://brechtforum.org/classes

The Institute for Popular Education at the Brecht Forum

The Institute for Popular Education was founded in 1992 to build on popular education traditions developed in Latin America, particularly the work of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal. The program uses popular education methods in classes and workshops to provide activists with basic analytical tools, help them examine organizing strategies in a larger context, build leadership skills, deepen awareness of the issues affecting New Yorkers on a daily basis, and increase their involvement in the political life of the city.

The Institute for Popular Education was founded in 1992 to provide tools for organizers and educators who are commited to social justice and who work to build social movements that can bring a just society into being. The Institute builds on popular education traditions developed in Latin America, particularly the work of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal. The program provides forums for discussion and debate of issues important to organizers and uses popular education methods in classes and workshops designed to provide activists with basic analytical tools, help them examine organizing strategies in a larger context, build leadership skills, deepen awareness of the issues affecting New Yorkers on a daily basis, and increase their involvement in the political life of the city.

TOP Lab (Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory) facilitates workshops regularly at the Brecht Forum using Image Theater and Forum Theater.

Current TOP LAB Workshops: Cop-in-the-Head: an introspective technique used to recognize and confront internalized forms of oppression. The workshop begins with someone recounting a personal experience of oppression, and then gradually goes from the particular to the general. In the end, the group, and not the original story teller, has become the protagonist.

Rashomon: an improvisatory technique inspired by filmmaker Akira Kurosawa's study in multiple perspectives. It is used to highlight the role of perception in the creation of the “Other,” and is specifically designed for the study of rigid patterns of perception that give rise to distorted, incomplete, or mistaken impressions of others, and ultimately hatred, in closed, recurring situations.

Rainbow of Desire: is used to recognize and confront internalized forms of oppression, and explore power relations and collective solutions to concrete problems. The process begins with an individual recounting a true personal story of oppression and how she/he dealt with, but failed to resolve, the conflict. Next, workshop members create skits based on the scenario just described. This skit is acted out more than once: the first act recreates the story of oppression as it actually happened. Subsequent acts recreate the same scenario of oppression, but other members of the workshop are free to intervene at any time in the dramatic action to offer or propose alternate solutions to the original oppressive action.

For more information go to http://brechtforum.org/institute

Events at the Brecht Forum

In addition to classes and workshops the Brecht Forum is hosting the following events.

Gallery Our Flesh of Flames Collages by Theodore A. Harris with Captions by Amiri Baraka

A Radical Party? Is Now the Time? Members of the 15th Street Manifesto Group & Others TBA

NEUES KABARETT Carl Maguire & Floriculture with Stephanie Griffin, John Hebert, Oscar Noriega, Dan Weiss

FILM SCREENING & DISCUSSION Burn! Discussion with Michael Lardner Jeremy Glick & Members of the "Revolutions" Class

Hubert Harrison The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 Jeff Perry

event times, descriptions and info. at http://brechtforum.org/upcoming

Brecht Forum Economy Watch

The Brecht Forum supplies tools for staying informed and alert about our current economic situation through classes and at http://brechtforum.org/economywatch

“[The absolute general law of capitalist accumulation] makes an accumulation of misery a necessary condition, corresponding to the accumulation of wealth. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is, therefore, at the same time accumulation of misery, the torment of labour, slavery, ignorance, brutalization, and moral degradation at the opposite pole, i.e. on the side of the class that produces its own product as capital.”