There’s still time to sign up for the @social-ecology.bsky.social’s newest course! Dive into the literary worlds of Ursula Le Guin and Kim Stanely Robison in the ISE’s new class Utopian Literature starting Monday 9/15 at 8pm Eastern.
bit.ly/ISE-UL
Starting in two weeks!
This extraordinary book is a fictional account of a future revolution in New York City, told through oral history interviews with its participants looking back upon their experiences. A must-read for visionaries and radicals.
Sign up here to join: givebutter.com/E4E-ISE
Join us on Wednesday (8/20) for our next reading group, on Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072, by @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social and @genderhorizon.com!
Wednesdays at 7pm eastern for six weeks
You can join remotely for most of the sessions!
Week 4: Dialectics applied to understand history (Marx and historical materialism)
Week 5: Dialectics applied to understand nature (Bookchin and social ecology)
Week 6: Dialectics as a social practice, for people with different views to get closer to truth through dialogue with each other
The syllabus is structured around the following themes:
Week 1: Introduction to dialectical thinking, in contrast to category thinking
Week 2: Ancient and premodern roots of dialectics, in Heraclitus, Taoism, Buddhism, and Aztec philosophy
Week 3: Beginner's guide to Hegel
Our Being Is Becoming: An Introduction to Thinking Dialectically. Start date September 7, Sundays at 3pm Eastern for six weeks. Register at biy.ly/ISE-OBIB. An online course with the Institute for Social Ecology.
Join us this fall for our online course Our Being Is Becoming: An Introduction to Thinking Dialectically. It is an accessible beginner's guide to dialectics, from the ancients Heraclitus and Lao Tzu on through Hegel, Marx, Bookchin, Mao, and beyond. No philosophy background required, open to all!
We're proud to be co-sponsoring this year's summer intensive hosted by our friends @social-ecology.bsky.social. Register today to reserve yourself a spot!
Now more than ever, exploring new forms of organizing and living is of great importance. The @social-ecology.bsky.social is doing great work in paving the way towards a more democratic and ecological society. Please donate if you can.
givebutter.com/ISE-Summer-D...
While the focus will be mainly on homelessness in the United States, these questions are essential to wrestle with elsewhere around the world. The syllabus is available on the course page if you want to take a preview!
Register here to attend: social-ecology.org/wp/courses/h...
We will discuss the root causes of the housing crisis, the link between housing and the ability to participate meaningfully in the public sphere, homelessness and othering, and the relationship between these and the exercise of biopower in contemporary nation-states.
This course will investigate homelessness as a political problem from an interdisciplinary perspective, focusing on the political economy of housing and homelessness in relation to democratic citizenship, biopolitics, governmentality, and social justice.
social-ecology.org/wp/courses/h...
Home/lessness: an online course taught by Dr. Saladdin Bahozde. Starts July 9, running Wednesdays at 1:30pm Eastern for ten weeks.
This summer, we are running a brand new course offering: Home/lessness, taught by Kurdish philosopher and longtime associate of the ISE Saladdin Ahmed Bahozde.
Start date July 9! Register today to join.
Please share widely, with your comrades, artists, and artist-comrades, both in Appalachia and beyond!
givebutter.com/ISEIntensive...
Over this week, we’ll explore how cultural work fuels political imagination and how organizing thrives when it embeds creativity. Through collective study, workshops, discussion, and hands-on making, we’ll explore: Social Ecology—as a politics and philosophy of radical social and ecological transformation that offers today’s organizers the tools to uproot systems of domination in this time of planetary crisis. Art as organizing; organizing as art—how cultural forms like theater, visual art, and performance can be embodied strategies for rehearsing revolution and prefiguring desirable futures Appalachia and the Bluegrass: a terrain of struggle—from land defense to labor uprisings to abolitionist organizing, learn this region’s frontline lessons in resisting extraction and seeding alternatives Prepping for beautiful trouble—together we can supplant disaster capitalism with disaster communalism by weaving art into community defense and mutual aid relief efforts Autonomous infrastructure—the role of cultural organizing spaces like artfarm in social movement ecosystems Co-organizing this event is expected, whether you bring wisdom, art, labor, or whatever you can offer. Come ready to think, make, plot, and build—because the most powerful organizing doesn’t just demand a better world, it practices it. Bring your questions, your stories, and your readiness to dig in. The land remembers. The fight continues. The future is ours to create. Register soon! We hope to see you in August.
In a time of crisis and reaction, we choose courage and refuse despair. We ask: How do we build power in the wreckage? How do we grow freedom in the cracks of a broken system? What is the art of organizing in a time of collapse and possibility? How do creative practices and community organizing intertwine to cultivate regenerative futures? This year’s summer intensive course will be hosted at artfarm, itself an embodiment of these questions: part artist-run cooperative, part free school, part living experiment in building the future in the present. More than a physical space—with studios, offices, a gallery, a stage, a library, a mutual aid pantry, and a risograph infoshop—it is a movement commons where we practice the relationships and strategies necessary to build and fight for more free, caring, and ecological futures.
We gather in a land of contradictions—where flooded hollers tell stories of extraction and abandonment, where prisons stand where mountains once did, and where the scourge of right-wing fascism has never left. Appalachia has been called many things: an internal colony, a sacrifice zone, “a place for trash." But we know it as a place of radical hope and stubborn resistance. Subterranean labor organizing, militant opposition to bosses and “the feds,” guerrilla-friendly hills and cavernous depths treacherous to those who ain’t from around here; in yonder horizon shines a light, nurturing seeds of insurgent possibility in the Bluegrass and beyond. Here, in Lexington, on the western edge of central Appalachia, we find ourselves mired in the muck of swamps undrained. ICE storms the streets, surveilling every migratory Flock. Student visas have been revoked and houseless neighbors are criminalized for daring to survive in public. Yet even now, in the shadow of rising authoritarianism, new potentialities take root. A land rematriation project has successfully blocked a federal prison. A local tenants union has won a ban on source of income discrimination so people cannot be denied housing because they pay rent with vouchers or child support. As the State tries to quash the desires of trans youth, women, menstruators, and all who love us, grassroots models for collective care germinate underground. A new commons—artfarm—is rising, where art and organizing intertwine to prefigure the worlds we want to live in and with.
Our co-hosts in Lexington have written this poetic overview of our vision and aims for this year's intensive course.
Institute for Social Ecology's summer intensive: The Art of Organizing, hosted at artfarm in Lexington, KY
You can now register to attend this year's social ecology summer intensive course, hosted in Lexington, KY! Our program theme revolves around the role of the arts and cultural organizing in our movement work. Open to all!
Hand of the poster holding the book "Practicing Social Ecology" by Dr. Eleanor Finley
Ready for the next Reading Group with @social-ecology.bsky.social !
One of many important concepts I learned during my studies at @social-ecology.bsky.social is "recallable delegates."
Instead of electing representatives for multi-year terms, elect delegates who (a) don't usurp the people's decision-making authority & (b) can be recalled at any time by the people.
You can also learn more about the social ecology-inspired arts center that is hosting this intensive at their website: artfarm.coop
Hope to see you in August!
Event registration details to come. In the meantime, we recommend reserving rooms or campsites. Most convenient and affordable is Kentucky Horse Park, which has limited availability and will fill up - so book soon!
kyhorsepark.com/campground/
We’ll explore how cultural work fuels political imagination and how organizing thrives when it embeds creativity. Participants will spend a week together studying and learning the core ideas of social ecology and practices for building transformative community movements.
Save the date Institute for Social Ecology's summer intensive: The Art of Organizing Hosted at artfarm in Lexington, KY August 2-8.
Mark your calendars! This year's social ecology summer intensive course will be in Lexington, Kentucky from August 2-8, at the new community space artfarm.
The theme of this year's intensive is The Art of Organizing.
In this critical dialogue, Kali is in coversation with South African revolutionary veterin Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara about South Africa's role on the international stage and it's internal contradictions.
Join ISE and Kali Akuno of @coopjax.bsky.social this Thursday 3/27 at 1pm Eastern for Part 4 of our ongoing series "The Winds of Change on the African Continent"
givebutter.com/Jl4dk3
Last chance to register!
