Hey comrades, join us at the National Conference on Organized Resistance, February 4-6, 2005, at American University in Washington DC.
www.organizedresistance.org/

The Catalyst Project is a center for political education and movement building. We prioritize anti-racist work with mostly white sections of the global justice and anti-war movements with the goal of deepening anti-racist commitment in white communities and building multiracial left movements for liberation. We look forward to seeing those of you who can join us at NCOR and we send respect to all of you working for justice against imperialism.

-the Catalyst Project

Catalyst Program for National Conference on Organized Resistance 2005

1. Building Movement for Immigrant Justice - a panel

Immigrant led struggles are at the forefront of the labor movement and the struggle for global justice. Simultaneously, the right-wing has steadily built it's power in white working class communities attacking immigrant communities. From militarizing the U.S. Mexico border to mass detentions of Arabs and Muslims, these assaults have been met by resistance led my immigrant communities and their allies.

This panel includes immigrant and non-immigrant organizers. It will focus on organizing in immigrant communities and immigrant led resistance to U.S. imperialism at home and abroad. It will also focus on roles of white left/radicals working for immigrant justice. While the right mobilizes racism and xenophobia in white communities, this panel will discuss current strategies to build multiracial movement that prioritizes immigrant leadership and fights for justice.

Panelists: Monami Maulik from DRUM: Desis Rising Up and Moving (NYC), Mickey Lambert from the Immigrant Justice Solidarity Project (NYC), and Stefanie Gude from the Immigrant Working Group of the Ontario Coalition Against Poverty (Toronto)

Moderator: Clare Bayard of the Catalyst Project (bio below)

Monami Maulik was born in Calcutta, India and migrated to the Bronx, NY as a child where she came to political consciousness as a working class immigrant woman. Monami graduated with majors in Third World Development, Women's, and South Asian studies from Cornell University in 1996. Since then, Monami has been working as an immigrant rights, labor, and youth organizer in New York City.

In 1999, Monami co-founded DRUM- Desis Rising Up & Moving as one of the first low-income South Asian community-based organizations for social justice in the U.S. Prior to that Monami worked with the NY Taxi Workers Alliance, the Women Workers Project at CAAAV (Organizing Asian Communities), TICO (Training Institute for Careers in Organizing), and served on various city-wide coalitions and campaigns around prison abolition, youth, and People of Color organizing.

Monami is on the Advisory Board of the North Star Fund, the Steering Committee of the NYC Organizing Support Center, and represents DRUM on the national steering committee of Racial Justice 911. In 2002, Monami received the Jane Bagely Lehman Award from the Tides Foundation in recognition of her organizing for immigrant rights and civil liberties post- September 11, 2001. Monami has spoken to audiences around the U.S. and outside of the U.S. on immigrant rights, detention, and political movements of low-income Third World immigrant communities in the U.S. and global anti-imperialist struggles.

Mickey Lambert is an activist living in Brooklyn, NY. He works on a broad range of interconnected issues, including criminal justice, immigrant justice, anti-racism, and trans and queer issues. He is an organizer with the Immigrant Justice Solidarity Project and also works with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project and the Women's Prison Association.

The Immigrant Justice Solidarity Project (IJSP) is an all-volunteer, abolitionist collective organized to fight the United States’ immigration system, specifically against the detention and deportation of immigrants. By "abolitionist" we mean we envision a world without prisons and a world without borders. We are an organization made up of people from communities less-affected by detention and deportation. As such, we believe that in order to do our work, we must prioritize and support the leadership and voices of radical organizations based in people of color immigrant communities. We take our directional cues from these organizations, as well as taking responsibility for educating our own communities around the issues of detention and deportation.
Stefanie Gude is an Ontario Coalition Against Poverty Immigration caseworker. She is working to support the struggle of non-status people living in Toronto in the battle against the racist and anti-poor policies of Immigration in Canada. It is a fight for the freedom to move, for the right to live in safety, and with dignity for all. Stefanie has been a member of OCAP for 5 years.

OCAP is a direct-action anti-poverty organization based in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. We mount campaigns against regressive government policies as they affect poor and working people. In addition, we provide direct-action advocacy for individuals against eviction, termination of welfare benefits, and deportation. We believe in the power of people to organize themselves. We believe in the power of resistance.

2. Base Building: Community Organizers on Building a Multi-Racial Revolutionary Movement - a panel

We will hear from three long time radicals and revolutionaries who do base building community organizing. Through their on the ground experience of organizing in working class communities of color around issues such as immigration, welfare, police, prisons, and tenant’s and worker’s rights, these panelists will address issues around how oppressed communities build their power and position themselves within a global movement for dignity and justice, which offer some of the most realistic and exciting challenges to capital and the state, while offering some the most honest and useful lessons in how a revolutionary movement is built from the bottom up.

These organizers will address:
∑ Their definitions of base building and organizing.
∑ Their strategic visions for how oppressed communities can build power and develop their revolutionary potential.
∑ The connections between doing issue based community organizing and building a multi-racial revolutionary movement.
∑ What sectors they see as the forces which are poised to offer the biggest threat to capitalism and the state.
∑ How they developed (and are developing) their own capacity as organizers.
∑ What roles different people play in building power in working class communities of color.
∑ Ideas for moving beyond the false dichotomy of militant direct action vs. community organizing.
∑ Their reflections on how the anarchist movement in the United States can be participating in or relating to ongoing base building community organizing in oppressed communities.
∑ Examples of how communities have built their power in service of a radical vision of the transformation of society.

Panelists: Maria Poblet an immigrant tenent organizer (SF), Dawn Phillips from Just Cause (Oakland) and third panelist to be announced
Moderated by Josh Warren-White and Ingrid Chapman of the Catalyst Project

Maria Poblet organizes with the immigrant latino community in San Francisco's Mission District. Through direct action, political education, and base building, her work aims to link the daily struggles of tenants against displacement and gentrification to the larger anti-imperialist movement for self-determination and land rights. She is a queer latina poet, popular educator, and futbol enthusiast.

Dawn Phillips emigrated to the united states in 1991. He has spent the last eleven years organizing in the Bay Area with working class and homeless communities. He is currently working to build anti-imperialist grassroots power through the Oakland-based multi-racial and intergenerational organization, Just Cause Oakland.

3. Anti-Racism for Global Justice - a workshop
a participatory work on challenging white supremacy

Anti-Racism for Global Justice is a workshop designed to help white social justice activists build their analysis of white supremacy, identify white privilege and develop anti-racist organizing skills. Clare Bayard and Ingrid Chapman have led this workshop with thousands of white activists around the country and operate from the belief that anti-racism is a catalyst to build multiracial movements that can win real justice in this country.

While the curriculum is designed for white social justice activists, everyone is welcome to participate. They will use a variety of activities, including small and large group discussions, a participatory history section and handouts. Core content includes historical and institutional analysis of white supremacy, a survey of other systems of oppression, looking at how white privilege plays out in activist work, and anti-racism organizing principles that we can bring into all of our social justice work.

Trainers: Clare Bayard and Ingrid Chapman

Catalyst Project bios:

Clare Bayard is an organizer with the Catalyst Project, a center for political education and movement building. They prioritize anti-racist work with mostly white sections of the global justice and anti-war movements with the goal of deepening anti-racist commitment in white communities and building multiracial left movements for liberation. Clare works with the Heads Up collective and has played a leading role in developing alliances between mostly white left/radicals and immigrant led social justice activism. Clare is the author of Danger Third Rail Electric, a zine on gender, anti-imperialism and genderqueer identity.

Ingrid Chapman is a young community organizer, direct action activist, and a core member and trainer with the Catalyst Project. She was a key student organizer in Seattle against the WTO leading a walk-out of over 2500 students. She has played a leading role in the global justice movement through her work with Freedom Rising and the Ruckus Society. She was a founding member of "Active Solidarity; a collective for anti-racism education" and has led workshops with thousands of activists around the country.

Josh Warren-White is an organizer with the Catalyst Project doing anti-racist/anti-imperialist work within the global justice/anti-war movements. Over the past five years Josh has organized mass direct actions within the U.S. anti-capitalist movement, interned as a tenant organizer at the SF Coalition on Homelessness, and done theoretical development in Anarchist, anti-racist and anti-imperialist politics as a student at the Institute for Social Ecology, and through various study groups looking at revolutionary history, organization and theory. He is also a collective member of AK Press, a worker-owned collective leftist publisher and book distributor www.akpress.org.