CANADIAN ANARCHIST MOVEMENT-ONTARIO:
BLACK FLAME BOOK TOUR:
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“Black Flame” Ontario Book Tour - March 15-21 kicks off tonight!
March 15, 2010 3:01:51 PM
South African writer and activist Michael Schmidt, co-author of “Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism” will be in several Ontario cities between March 15 and March 21 to promote and discuss this important new book on the global history of anarchist movements and ideas. The tour, organized by Common Cause with support from AK Press and several local sponsors, is scheduled to pass through the following cities listed below.
To promote the tour Common Cause has also produced a short video which can be seen
here and set up a
Facebook page. Copies of "Black Flame" will be available for purchase at each tour stop.
March 15 - Waterloo,
4PM to 6PM
School of Business and Economics,
Room 2260
Wilfrid Laurier University
75 University Avenue West
Sponsored the Communication Studies and Global Studies departments.
London - March 16,
2pm to 4pm
Sommerville House Rm. 2348
University of Western Ontario Campus
7pm
Tonda Room, Central Library
251 Dundas St.
March 17 - Hamilton
McMaster University,
12-2pm
MUSC Rooms 311 and 313
1280 Main St. West
Limited seating.
Please RSVP at
commoncauseontario@gmail.comSponsored by the
LIUNA-
Mancinelli Professorship in Global Labour Issues and the School of Labour Studies.
Sky Dragon Centre,
7-9pm
27 King William Street
Hamilton, ON
Organized by Common Cause Hamilton
6:30pm
DIRA
2035 St-Laurent
Organized by Common Cause Ontario, the Union Communiste Libertaire (UCL) with support from AK Press.
March 19 - Ottawa
two separate times/venues
3:00pm
Desmarais Building room 3120 (DMS),
University of Ottawa
(the newer building at 'Laurier Station' on the Transitway)
7:00pm
Exile Infoshop,
256 Bank St 2nd floor (at corner of Cooper)
Ottawa stops co-sponsored by Common Cause Ottawa, Exile Infoshop, OPIRG/GRIPO-Ottawa and PIDSSA (Univ of Ottawa)
March 20 - Toronto
3:00p.m. - 5:00p.m.
Bahen Centre,
Room 1220,
40 St. George Street(University of Toronto)
Co-sponsored by the Pan African Solidarity Network,
CUPE 3902 & 3907,
IWW Toronto
GMB, and the Work and Labour Studies Program, York University.
For more information contact
commoncauseontario@gmail.com and check
www.linchpin.ca for updates.
About the book from AK Press:
“Black Flame (Counter-Power, Volume 1) is the first of a two-volume set examining the democratic class politics of the worldwide anarchist movement, its vision of a decentralized planned economy, and its impact on popular struggles on five continents over the course of the past 150 years. From anarchism's first glimmers as a nineteenth-century ideology to today's
anticapitalist struggles, Black Flame traces anarchism's lineage and contemporary relevance, outlining the movement's insights into questions of race, gender, class, and imperialism. With Black Flame, Michael Schmidt and Lucien van
der Walt, both writers and activists in South Africa, have begun what promises to be the definitive synthetic account of the international anarchist tradition. Nearly exhaustive in scope, and rigorous in its scholarly detail, this first volume significantly
reframes the work of previous historians and, especially, examines coherent alternatives to Marxist and nationalist approaches to revolutionary theory and practice. An indispensable conceptual
roadmap to the history and continuing relevance of anarchist
praxis”
Reviews:
“In recent years, there has been an upsurge in class struggle anarchism or social anarchism. In these circumstances, there is a need for a clear and more forceful theoretical statement of principles, and Black Flame serves as an excellent opening statement of the relevance of class struggles anarchism in a twenty-first century context...this book is an impressive introduction to the history of anarchist theory and anarchist movements.” Sean Benjamin, Upping the Anti no. 9, November 2009.
"This highly worthwhile book represents the fruit of considerable scholarship and deep reflection. The authors have done a remarkable job in drawing together a vast international body of literature. They show convincingly that anarchism and syndicalism were far more significant political forces in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century world than historians have generally given them credit for. They provide excellent accounts of the movement's global political reach, supported by an impressive knowledge of disparate literatures. Schmidt and van der Walt also make a powerful and lucidly written case for anarchism as a serious and coherent political philosophy." —Jonathan Hyslop, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
"This book fulfills a daunting task. Covering anarchism in all parts of the world and emphatically tying it to class struggle, the authors present a highly original and challenging account of the movement, its actions and ideas. This work is a must for everybody interested in non-authoritarian social movements." —Bert Altena, Rotterdam University
"A well-thought out and nuanced study of the intellectual, political, and social history of anarchism." —Steven Hirsch, University of Pittsburgh
About the authors:
Michael Schmidt is a Johannesburg-based investigative journalist and journalism trainer, with more than twenty years experience in the field as a reporter for South Africa's leading newspapers including the Sunday Times and This Day, and as a co-editor of the anarchist news and analysis website
anarkismo.net. A seasoned activist, his work has taken him to
Chiapas, to Guatemala during the civil war, to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Rwanda,
Darfur, Lebanon, and beyond.
Lucien van der Walt is based at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, where he teaches in development, economic sociology, and labor studies. His recently completed PhD on the history of anarchism and syndicalism in early twentieth-century South Africa was awarded the prestigious Labor History international prize for the best doctoral thesis of 2007. He has written and lectured widely on contemporary working-class struggles and the relationship between race and class, and, together with Steven Hirsch, he is the editor of the forthcoming volume, Anarchism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World, 1880-1940 (Brill 2009).
-- Common Cause
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