SIREN SONG

Partenope

Siren Song

Saturday 20 May 2017

Performances at 5.00pm and 6.30pm

The Mulberry and Bigland Green Centre

Bigland Street, E1 2LG

This short performance is the culmination of an ENO Baylis Community Project inspired by ENO’s production of Handel’s Partenope

The project brings together adult women of all ages from across London, and takes the central female characters in the opera as a starting point from which to explore contemporary perspectives on being a woman. The performance will combine original text and music created by the group alongside extracts from Partenope.

The group will be joined by ENO principal cast member Patricia Bardon and female members of the ENO Baylis Opera Works programme, with lighting design by ENO lighting technician Christina Smith.

This is a free event and places are limited.

To confirm your place please RSVP baylis@eno.org by Thursday 18^th April, stating your preferred performance time and the name of up to two guests.

We hope to see you there.

From the team at ENO Baylis.

Ruth Rikowski is singing in both performances with the ENO Baylis Community Project 

ENO Baylis 
Learning and Participation Team

+44 (0)20 7632 8484 | Baylis@eno.org
ENGLISH NATIONAL OPERA | St Martin's Lane, London, WC2N 4ES

Click to support English National Opera online today

ENO Partenope: https://www.eno.org/operas/partenope-3/ and https://www.eno.org/whats-on/partenope/

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski 

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

DARKMATTER

DARKMATTER

Announcing the publication of a special issue of Darkmatter Journal, "Reflections on Dispossession: Critical Feminisms" eds. Brenna Bhandar and Davina Bhandar, with contributions from Sara R. Farris, Jonathan Goldberg-Hiller, Alyosha Goldstein, Leticia Sabsay and Rafeef Ziadah.

This collection traces a path for contemporary critiques of neoliberal capitalism and colonial dispossession. The authors show the compelling need for complex strategies and tools to evaluate the interlocking or intersectional practices of dispossession, and their particular effects on racialised, Indigenous, sexualized, and gendered subjects. 

Darkmatter is an open access journal, and the special issue can be accessed here:

http://www.darkmatter101.org/site/category/issues/14-dispossession/

Praise for "Reflections on Dispossession":

"Crossing centuries, oceans, continents, and disciplines, this ambitious and extraordinary collection shows how the logic of dispossession and its productions of difference reach into a present that avows colorblindness and erases coloniality. In its courtrooms, border checkpoints, intimacies, reform impulses, prisons, refugee camps, and regimes of accumulation, the neoliberal order is shown to draw on and recalibrate histories of gendered colonial oppression as long as they are deep." - David Roediger (University of Kansas) 

First Published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/special-issue-of-the-journal-darkmatter-reflections-on-dispossession-critical-feminisms-out-now

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski 

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

Voter Registration in the UK

VOTER REGISTRATION IN THE UK

Don’t lose your Right to Vote!

Get on the Voters Registration by 1^st December 2015!

From 1st December 2015, in the UK, all household members must register individually or face being removed from the Voters Register.

Many could be disenfranchised – make sure you are not one of them!

Anyone who has not individually registered by 1 December 2015 will be removed from the register.

Originally, the deadline was December 2016 but the Tories have brought it forward by one year. This means that potentially over one million voters could lose the chance to vote in next May's local elections. 

Until 2009, one person in each household completed the registration for every resident eligible to vote, but now all that has changed. Each person who is eligible to vote now has to do this individually.

So, make sure you do not lose your right and opportunity to vote – something that has been fought so hard for by activists in history.

Also, see the film 'Suffragette' to emphasise the point for women!

So, get online and register to vote at: http://www.gov.uk/register-to-vote

Peterloo Massacre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre

Suffragette (film trailer, 2015): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=056FI2Pq9RY and Press Conference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUKjwIaTZ4Y

Further information:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34652008

http://www.theguardian.com/public-leaders-network/2015/feb/05/missing-voters-individual-electoral-registration-disaster

Briefing: Electoral Registration – Order and Regulations, December 2013 [pdf]
Report: Missing Millions – Roundtable into Individual Electoral Registration[pdf]
Briefing: Electoral Registration and Administration Bill Committee stage briefing – day 2 [pdf] -

See more at: http://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/voter-registration#sthash.abXAE3qj.dpuf

***END***

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski 

Ruth Rikowski @ Academia: http://lsbu.academia.edu/RuthRikowski

Ruth Rikowski at Serendipitous Moments: http://ruthrikowskiim.blogspot.co.uk/

A Rebel's Guide to Eleanor Marx

A REBEL’S GUIDE TO ELEANOR MARX

A Bookmarks Shop Event

Friday 16 January, 6.30pm

With Siobhan Brown

Bookmarks Bookshop
1 Bloomsbury Street, London, WC1B 3QE

Admission £2, Reserve your place here or call 020 7637 1848

Eleanor Marx was an agitator, an organiser and a writer. At a time of extraordinary upheaval, she was at the heart of world-changing movements. Whether organising support for refugees fleeing France after the crushing of the Paris Commune, or galvanising support for the new unionism in the 1880s, her belief in the power of workers to organise and change the world for the better remained central. Her words and actions have helped change our world.

A passionate writer and translator, her texts crackled with outrage at the desperate living and working conditions of London’s poor. She was inspired by the thousands of women workers who struck back and she developed new and important insights on questions of sexual equality and socialism.

Much more than the daughter of Karl Marx or the lover of a feckless academic, Eleanor Marx was a remarkable and revolutionary woman. This addition to the popular Rebel's Guide series places her back alongside other revolutionary leaders, where she belongs.

A Rebel’s Guide to Eleanor Marx

Siobhan Brown

Published By Bookmarks Publications

ISBN: 9781909026773

See: http://www.bookmarksbookshop.co.uk/events

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski 

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

Matchwomen's Festival

MATCHWOMEN’S FESTIVAL

Saturday 5th July 2014

Mander Hall

Hamilton House, Mabledon Place

London

WC1H 9BD

11AM to 9PM

Nearest stations: Euston and King’s Cross

Website: http://www.matchfest.co.uk/

Facebook: www.facebook.com/matchwomen

The Legacy of the Matchwomen

In the summer of 1888, 1400 women walked out on strike over management bullying and appalling, hazardous working conditions. The women and girls working at Bryant & May’s match factory in London’s East End shocked the world, and ultimately changed it.

Working-class women at this time were supposed to be seen and not heard, especially if, like many matchwomen, they were of Irish heritage. Instead, the matchwomen paraded the streets of the East End, singing songs and telling the truth about their starvation wages and mistreatment by the firm.

They marched to Parliament, and their strength and solidarity won them better pay, safer conditions, and the right to form the largest union of women and girls in Britain.

They were an inspiration to other groups of workers up and down the country and throughout the world. The modern movement for workers’ rights had begun, and the matchwomen were at the forefront of it.

Last year's first Matchwomen's Festival marked the 125th anniversary of the Matchwomen's Strike.

It was a brilliant day with around 700 visitors, including the late Bob Crow, and was one of Tony Benn's last public engagements.

Since then, the importance of the matchwomen to British history has been acknowledged in Parliament with a debate devoted to them, and Labour MPs recommending that the book about them, Striking a Light, should be on the school syllabus. Minister Ed Vaizey replied that Michael Gove would read it: so far, no word on whether Mr Gove enjoyed it, but we wait with baited breath.

MPs also wanted to see a properly-worded blue plaque acknowledging the women’s courage at the old factory site, which Vaizey supported. Watch this space, or indeed, that space if you live nearby.

This year’s festival is smaller, but still perfectly formed. We have some wonderful speakers, songs from Tina McKevitt, and spoken word from Faisal Ali.

We’re excited to have the inspiring Sara Khan on the importance of making links with Muslim women, Sukhwant Dhaliwal on the work and history of Women Against Fundamentalism, eminent trade union and human rights barrister John Hendy QC, and the TUC's Scarlet Harris.

Kate Connelly will speak on her book about the astonishing life of Sylvia Pankhurst,

Terry McCarthy will speak about the matchwomen-inspired London Dock Strike of 1889, on which he is an authority. Actor and director Kate Hardie will talk about her film Shoot Me, and Alex Wall will talk about working with people with eating disorders, and how they can affect us all.

Heather Wakefield and Caroline Raine have excellent records on organising trade union women, and will update us on the latest issues and disputes and how we can support them.

Louise Raw is the author of Striking a Light and speaks and writes on the Matchwomen, women, unions and history.  Diana Johnson MP was instrumental in bringing the Matchwomen’s legacy to the attention of parliament.

Special Guest:

Eam Rin

We welcome to the festival a very special guest. Eam is at the forefront of the dangerous struggle for workers' rights in Cambodia, which has left 5 people dead this year alone. A garment sewer for 14 years and secretary of the Cambodian Democratic Union, Eam is visiting the UK to talk about the current brutal government crackdown on freedom of association.

The Line-up: http://www.matchfest.co.uk/matchfest-line-up.html

Tickets are £2 each for the whole day through Eventbrite, plus a small booking fee.   

Booking: http://www.matchfest.co.uk/tickets.html

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski 

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

GUTS: Canadian Feminist Magazine

GUTS: CANADIAN FEMINIST MAGAZINE

CALL FOR PAPERS

Next up? GUTS talks about sex in issue 3

Conceptions of bodies, sexuality, and desire have been rallying points for feminist activism, research, and advocacy in different historical moments. Looking back to the 1970s, advocates of the Canadian women’s movement made courageous and influential efforts to secure safe access to abortion clinics, to establish supportive women’s shelters and rape crisis centres, and to better understand women’s reproductive and sexual health. The effects of this movement on Canadian society are undeniable. Take, for example, the Abortion Caravan (1969-70), a national feminist protest that mobilized over 500 activists from all over the country to demand that the government amend its abortion policy. Although abortion was not removed from Canada’s criminal code until 1988, the Caravan brought women’s reproductive rights to the forefront of the country’s consciousness. Coinciding with the Western world’s sexual liberation movement, second wave feminism in Canada made space for conversations about women’s sexuality beyond the bedroom.

Despite clear advances made by early forms of feminist organizing and advocacy in Canada, female and queer bodies remain contested terrain in government social policy:provincially funded abortions are increasingly inaccessible

, sex workers face anti-prostitution legislation, and women’s shelters, rape crisis centres, and women’s rights advocacy groups are invariably strapped for cash. All-too-frequent instances of sexual objectification of and violence against women today indicate that sex remains relevant to feminist analysis. And yet, despite the importance of sex to feminism in popular sex-positive discourses, women’s struggles are too often configured as isolated matters, rather than symptoms of a larger patriarchal structure.

For this issue, we set out to demystify sexuality while attending to the ways sexual liberation has evolved into a new brand of feminism that promotes sex as a means of achieving selfhood and financial independence. Pop-feminist discussions of sexuality are too often reduced to a crude consumerist notion of individuality, measured by one’s purchasing power and an ability to sleep with whomever one wants. Although sex positivism once provided a clear avenue toward instituting social and political change, its contemporary manifestation in today’s fabulous, independent, sexually liberated feminist icons only serves to conceal gendered and racialized forms of oppression that continue to inform our daily realities.

Our sex issue invites contributors to recover the politics of bodies, sexuality, and desire.
Potential topics for submissions might include:

·         * Abortion and reproductive rights

·         * Critiques of monogamy

·         * Non-heteronormative sexuality and love

·         * The romanticization of two-spirited sexuality

·         * Asexuality

·         * Polyamorous culture

·         * Sex-work activism in Canada

·         * The contemporary anti-porn movement

·         * Feminist porn (does it exist?)

·         * Rape culture, consent, and sexual violence

·         * Violence against and the disappearance of Indigenous women

·         * Online dating and post-physical relationships

·         * Disability and sex

·         * Beauty, consumerism, and self-marketing in a neoliberal economy

·         * Erotic fanfiction and feminine forms of escape

Submission Guidelines:

GUTS accepts personal and journalistic essays; poetry and fiction; reviews of books, TV, music, and film; creative interviews and conversations. GUTS also accepts images and videos relevant to our theme.

Please submit a short proposal (150-300 words) describing your project no later than July 15, 2014 to submit@gutsmagazine.ca

Final submissions (500-4000 words) will be due on September 1, 2014.

For further information about the submission guidelines, please email us at submit@gutsmagazine.ca

Yours,

GUTS

GUTS: http://gutsmagazine.ca/

GUTS Call for Papers: http://gutsmagazine.ca/4502/call-submissions-issue-3/

**END**

‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

Glenn Rikowski @ Academia: http://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski 

Glenn Rikowski @ ResearchGate: http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Glenn_Rikowski?ev=hdr_xprf

Online Publications at The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

Recent Articles and Features in the International Marxist-Humanist Webzine (July 2013)

Raya Dunayevskaya

RECENT ARTICLES AND FEATURES IN THE INTERNATIONAL MARXIST-HUMANIST WEBZINE (July 2013)

THE UNCONSCIONABLE ACQUITTAL OF GEORGE ZIMMERMAN -- by Dale Parsons
Summary: The acquittal of the murderer of Trayvon Martin shows, "beyond reasonable doubt," that unconscionable acts of murder and abuse against Black Americans continue to define the social and legal structures of this land, and that racism is more than ever the Achilles heel of American "civilization."

EGYPTIAN REVOLUTIONARIES PUSH OUT ISLAMISTS, BUT FACE ANOTHER ROUND OF MILITARY RULE  -- by Kevin Anderson
Summary: The overthrow of the Muslim Brotherhood government involved an unprecedented level of popular mobilization that has created a new opening for the Egyptian and the worldwide revolutionary movement.  At the same time, the new military-backed government carries with it serious dangers, as do the contradictions within the left itself, including on gender.

ONE LEAP FORWARD, TWO LEAPS BACK: PROGRESS ON LGBT RIGHTS VS. BACKWARD MOVE ON CIVIL RIGHTS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS -- by Peter Hudis
Summary: The U.S. Supreme Court's June 26 decision represents a crucial leap forward for LGBT rights. However, it takes place at the very time that the Court has pushed the country further backward on race relations.

REAFFIRMING THE CHARTISTS' REVOLUTIONARY MOMENT -- by Dan La Botz
Labor historian and activist Dan La Botz reviews David Black and Chris Ford's 1839: The Chartist Insurrection. This critical review stresses that "The authors aim is to show that modern Britain, so often thought of as a model of moderation and gradualism, . . . does indeed have a revolutionary, working class tradition." Originally appeared in New Politics.

A DEBATE ON SOCIALISM AND THE MARKET -- by Phil Walden and Richard Abernethy
Summary: This exchange of emails followed a discussion at a public meeting of the Oxford Communist Corresponding Society (website: http://communistcorrespondingsociety.org) on the subject of "A beginner's guide to economic planning" on 30 May 2013.

SLOVENIA ON THE ROAD TO PERIPHERY -- by Aljosa Slamersak
Summary: This article, written by a member of the Slovenian Marxist left, covers the impact of the global economic crisis in terms of its effects on the population and the neoliberal maneuvers of established political forces, including on the part of the center left.  At the same time, anger and a clarity of vision concerning capitalism itself are building among the population.

*** OTHER LANGUAGES ***

MANY ARTICLES on our site have recently been translated from English into Persian, Spanish, Chinese, French, and Portuguese. (See the Languages Pages.)

*** RECENT BOOKS OF INTEREST ***

MARX'S CONCEPT OF THE ALTERNATIVE TO CAPITALISM -- by Peter Hudis
Historical Materialism Series, Brill Academic Publishers, hardcover 
2012, paperback June 2013

MARX ON GENDER AND THE FAMILY: A CRITICAL STUDY -- by Heather Brown
Historical Materialism Series, Brill Academic Publishers, hardcover 
2012, paperback June 2013

RECENT BOOK REVIEWS:
Review of The Dunayevskaya-Marcuse-Fromm Correspondence, 1954-1978, ed. by Kevin Anderson and Russell Rockwell:
-Joane Braune, in Marx & Philosophy Review of Books (April 30)

Reviews of Kevin Anderson, Marx at the Margins:
-Ben Selwyn, "Beyond the Western World," International Socialism (April 13)
-Marcel Stoetzler, "Marx on Modernity, Revisited," Patterns of Prejudice (47:2)

*** SPECIAL FEATURE ***

NEW CONSTITUTION OF THE INTERNATIONAL MARXIST-HUMANIST ORGANIZATION 
It lays out principles and an organizational form for a revolutionary organization rooted in Marx and the heritage of Marxist-Humanism. At the same time, it takes cognizance of the present moment in terms of (1) the crisis of capitalism and the need for an alternative; (2) the forces of opposition -- rank & file labor, women's liberation, youth, African-Americans and other oppressed minorities, and sexual minorities.  (See About page.)

The International Marxist-Humanist is the webzine of the International 
Marxist-Humanist Organization (IMHO): http://www.internationalmarxisthumanist.org/
Contact: arise@internationalmarxisthumanist.org

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

'Cheerful Sin' – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski

Feminist Research Conference

FEMINIST RESEARCH CONFERENCE

Tuesday 23 July 2013, 0930-1630 - Docklands Campus, University of East London

This one day conference is designed for researchers, academics and PhD students with an interest in feminist theory for research.

The conference will include academics whose research work has covered various perspectives on feminist theory. In addition, there will be breakout groups where participants can choose to take part in discussions on women and the economy, intersectionality and reflexivity.

The day includes:
-    Input on feminist research from speakers.
-    Discussions on women and the economy, intersectionality and reflexivity.
-    Networking opportunities.

Speakers include Dr Kath Browne from the University of Brighton, Professor Yvette Taylor, Social and Policy Studies and  Head of the Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research, London South Bank University; Professor Christina Hughes of Warwick. Professor Ann Phoenix from the Institute of Education will also be speaking.

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.

If you have any questions about the conference, please email: feministresearchconference@uel.ac.uk
Booking can be made through the website: http://www.uel.ac.uk/feministconference

**END**

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

'Cheerful Sin' – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

All that is Solid for Glenn Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski

Online Publications at: http://www.flowideas.co.uk/?page=pub&sub=Online%20Publications%20Glenn%20Rikowski