Thursday, January 14, 2021; 5pm PST 40 minute talk followed by 30 minutes of public conversation broadcast live at thelab.org RSVP HERE FOR ZOOM LINK
Historian Gerald Horne and poet Tongo Eisen-Martin discuss the journey of the U.S. empire and the topography of international Black revolution. The practice of uniting the experience of event and idea into the present-moment mechanics of consciousness that extends from and into resistance. Interpreting the crests and troughs of social contradictions; or masses as music.
Gerald Horne is an American historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. Horne has published on W. E. B. Du Bois and has written books on neglected but by no means marginal or minor episodes of world history. He writes about topics he perceives as misrepresented struggles for justice, in particular communist struggles and struggles against imperialism, colonialism, fascism, racism and white supremacy. A Marxist, individuals whose lives his work has highlighted in their historical contexts have included the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter John Howard Lawson, Ferdinand Smith (a Jamaican-born communist, sailor, labor leader, and co-founder of the National Maritime Union), and Lawrence Dennis, an African American fascist and racist who passed for white.
While many of Horne's books use a celebrated, intriguing or politically engaged individual as a prism to inspect the historical forces of their times, Horne has also produced broad canvas chronicles of infrequently examined periods and aspects of the history of white supremacy and imperialism such as the post-civil war involvement of the US ruling class—newly dispossessed of human chattels—with slavery in Brazil, which was not legally abolished until 1888, or the attempts by Japanese imperialists in the mid-20th century to appear as the leaders of a global war against white supremacy, thus allies and instruments of "liberation" for people of color oppressed by imperialism.
Manning Marable has said: "Gerald Horne is one of the most gifted and insightful historians on racial matters of his generation."
Originally from San Francisco, Tongo Eisen-Martin is a poet, movement worker, and educator. His latest curriculum on extrajudicial killing of Black people, We Charge Genocide Again, has been used as an educational and organizing tool throughout the country. His book titled, "Someone's Dead Already" was nominated for a California Book Award. His latest book "Heaven Is All Goodbyes" was published by the City Lights Pocket Poets series, was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and won a California Book Award and an American Book Award.
The Forum is an experiment in creating discourse within the context of isolation. Art creates a space for reconsidering our knowledge across various social and professional fields. It asks us: Why do we perceive things the way we do? What are we living for? How can we reimagine our relationships to the human and non-human world? The Forum proposes that the project of freedom is a project of making a world with others. So, we invite you to help us answer: what can we do now?
Please bring your ideas, proposals, questions to discuss following the talk.
