Programs

Thursday, September 2
7:30 pm
Forum
Co-sponsor: Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) & International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH)
The United States & Yemen
Destroying Lives in the Name of National Security
Ezz-Adeen Saeed Ahmed Al-Asbahi, Mohammed Naji Saleh Allaw, Tawakkol Karman, Leili Kashani, & Pardiss Kebriaei

Leading Yemeni activists and a CCR human rights attorney speak on state violence, targeted killings, and human rights abuses enabled by the so-...

Sunday, September 5
4:00 pm
Visual Liberation Film Festival
Co-sponsor: Red Channels
Liberation of the Imagination
Rebellion in Real Time

Mayday (Black Panther) | Newsreel, 15 min | 1969
New Haven | Abbie Hoffman and the National Guard | Videofreex | 1970 | 23 min
Mayday...

Tuesday, September 7
7:30 pm
Healing Organizers
Healers from 3 Cities Talk about the Role of Healing and Wellness for Social Justice Movements

What does healing have to do with social justice? If we all are healing internalized oppression and colonialism and seeking care and support to do...

Wednesday, September 8
7:30 pm
Book Party/Forum
Tunnel People
Teun Voeten

By the end of the millennium, thousands of homeless people roamed the streets of Manhattan. A small group of them went underground. Invisible to...

Thursday, September 9
7:30 pm
- 10:00 pm
Visual Liberation Film Festival
Co-sponsor: Red Channels
9500 Liberty
Dirs. Annabel Park & Eric Byler | 80 mins | 2007 | USA

"9500 Liberty makes it clear that when we, as a nation of immigrants, debate the immigration issue, we are defining our very identity as...

Sunday, September 12
7:00 pm
Book Party/Forum
God's Demon Warriors
Michael Parenti

“Parenti offers a valuable rebuttal to the drumbeat . . . from the right.”  
New York Times Book Review...

Tuesday, September 14
7:30 pm
Global Capitalism
A Monthly Update & Discussion
Rick Wolff

These Tuesday evenings will each begin with an update and analysis of major economic events of the last...

Wednesday, September 15
7:30 pm
Co-sponsor: Left Forum
How Does the US Social Forum Contribute to Building a New Progressive Movement in the US?
Reflections from 3 Forums—Left Forum, Brecht Forum & USSF
Seth Adler, Sam Anderson, Kazembe Balagun, Rod Bush, Jerry Jeremie, Alfredo Lopez, Liz Mestres, Frances Fox Piven, Maliha Safri & Max Uhlenbeck, Moderated by Lori Minnite

The accomplishments of public forums are often elusive. People come together—sometimes in massive numbers—to strategize, engage...

Saturday, September 18
7:00 pm
SPECIAL FORUM
Climate Justice
From Bolivia to the Bronx and Beyond!
Miguel D'Escoto, Tanya Fields, Monique Harden, Mychal Johnson & Pablo Solón

Join Father Miguel D'Escoto for a People's Council on Climate Justice. Strategize about how the Cochabamba People's Accord and the Environmental...

Monday, September 20
7:30 pm
Book Party/Forum
Co-sponsor: Verso Books
The Obama Syndrome
Surrender at Home, War Abroad
Tariq Ali, Rick MacArthur & Frances Fox Piven

What has really changed since Bush left the White House? Very little, argues Tariq Ali, apart from the mood music. The hopes aroused during...

Friday, September 24
7:30 pm
Book Party/Forum
The Anti-American Manifesto
Ted Rall

Cartoonist/columnist Ted Rall has produced the book he always wanted to write: a new manifesto for an America heading toward economic and...

Monday, September 27
5:30 pm
- 7:30 pm
8-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Beginning Spanish
Marisol Ruiz

A first course for those with little to no previous knowledge of the language. Students speak Spanish from the first day and acquire basic...

Monday, September 27
7:30 pm
12-Session Class Begins
Readings & Films with Discussion
Revolutions
Europe: 1968-1978
Convened by Michael Lardner

Our ongoing study moves forward from the defeat of the Paris Commune of 1871 and the complete consolidation western capitalism, to Europe a...

Tuesday, September 28
5:30 pm
- 7:30 pm
8-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Intermediate Spanish
Marisol Ruiz

Students will continue to develop everyday conversational skills while learning more complex grammatical forms. Emphasis will be placed on...

Thursday, September 30
7:30 pm
- 9:30 pm
10-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Modern Background to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit
Russell Dale

Many Marxists take Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit to be a crucial text for understanding Hegel’s dialectical method and much...

Friday, October 1
7:30 pm
Performance
FreEpLay Fridays
Special Daylight Savings Show
Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble

“The Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble merges music, theater, improvisation, and structured composition into a total multi-media...

Tuesday, October 5
7:30 pm
4-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Antonio Gramsci
Revolutionary Strategy & the Historic Bloc
Harmony Goldberg

Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks is one of the most powerful left strategy documents developed in the last hundred years....

Tuesday, October 5
7:30 pm
Book Party / Forum
Ecology and Socialism
Solutions to Capitalist Ecological Crisis
Chris Williams

Around the world, consciousness of the threat to our environment is growing. The majority of solutions on offer, from using efficient light bulbs...

Monday, October 11
7:30 pm
Revolutions Film Series
If...
Discussion led by Michael Lardner
Dir. Lindsay Anderson | 1969 | 111 mins | UK

Lindsay Anderson's film "IF..." is set in an English boarding school. HIs "everyman" character, Mick Travis, is played by...

Tuesday, October 12
7:30 pm
Global Capitalism
A Monthly Update & Discussion
Rick Wolff

These Tuesday evenings will each begin with an update and analysis of major economic events of the last...

Thursday, October 14
7:30 pm
BOOK PARTY & FORUM
The Hidden 1970s
Histories of Radicalism
Dan Berger, Andy Cornell, Vikki Law, Matt Meyer, Ben Sheppard & Meg Starr

The 1970s were a complex, multilayered, and critical part of a long era of profound societal change. The Hidden 1970s explores the distinctiveness...

Friday, October 22
8:00 pm
3 BY FO

Dario Fo was born in 1926 in Lombardy, Italy. He began his career as a comic and mime and became a highly successful actor, director and writer of...

Monday, October 25
7:30 pm
Revolutions Film Series
Tout Va Bien
Discussion led by Michael Lardner
Dirs. Jean-Luc Godard & Jean-Pierre Gorin | 1972 | 95 mins | France/Italy

"Tout va bien" is set in 1972, i.e. four years after the events of 1968 in Paris. President De Gaulle and his successor president...

Wednesday, October 27
7:30 pm
Co-sponsor: Committee for the Open Discussion of Zionism
Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
Why One State Is the Only Feasible Solution
Joel Kovel & Norton Mezvinksy

Join Professors Joel Kovel and Norton Mezvinsky as each presents his respective argument for a one-state solution to the...

Friday, November 5
7:30 pm
Performance
FreEpLay Fridays
Special Daylight Savings Show
Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble

“The Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble merges music, theater, improvisation, and structured composition into a total multi-media...

Tuesday, November 9
5:30 pm
- 7:30 pm
4-SESSION CLASS BEGINS
Alternative Approaches to the Housing Problem
Socialist, Social Democratic & Capitalist
Tom Angotti & Peter Marcuse
  1. The housing problem from a Marxist perspective: Engels and after   
  2. ...
Tuesday, November 9
7:30 pm
Global Capitalism
A Monthly Update & Discussion
Rick Wolff

These Tuesday evenings will each begin with an update and analysis of major economic events of the last...

Friday, November 12
7:30 pm
Book Party/Forum
The Sweetest Dream
Love, Lies, & Assassination
Lillian Pollack

A novel that addresses the experience of United States Trotskyism, Lillian Pollack’s The Sweetest Dream is set in momentous...

Monday, November 22
7:30 pm
Revolutions Film Series
Scenes from the Class Struggle in Portugal
Discussion led by Michael Lardner
Dir. Robert Kramer | 85 mins | USA | 1977

Combining newsreel footage, still photographs, interviews, and analytical narration, this documentary follows the evolution of the radical social...

Monday, November 29
7:30 pm
Revolutions Film Series
Torre Bela
Discussion led by Michael Lardner
Writer/Dir. Thomas Harlan | 55 mins | Italy/Portugal | 1975

A year  after the Portuguese "Carnation Revolution" that ended the longest running dictatorship in Europe, people from a group of...

Friday, December 3
7:30 pm
Performance
FreEpLay Fridays
Special Daylight Savings Show
Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble

“The Strike Anywhere Performance Ensemble merges music, theater, improvisation, and structured composition into a total multi-media...

Tuesday, December 7
7:30 pm
Global Capitalism
A Monthly Update & Discussion
Rick Wolff

These Tuesday evenings will each begin with an update and analysis of major economic events of the last...

Wednesday, December 8
7:30 pm
Book Party / Workshop
Facilitating Group Learning
Tools that Build on Freire for Today's Multi-Cultural World
George Lakey

This combination workshop-and-book-party invites participants to experience a set of teaching/training tools and to go behind them to explore...

Monday, December 20
7:30 pm
Revolutions Film Series
Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000
Discussion led by Michael Lardner
Dir. Alain Tanner | Writers. John Berger & Alain Tanner | 116 mins | France/Switzerland | 1976

The revolutionary upheaval of 1968 rocked Europe, and led to many changes. For a while, it was possible to think that the radical idealism of the...

OUR SPECIAL THANKS! The Brecht Forum owes its existence to a broad network of support. Our modest fees cover only a fraction of our costs and we rely on the progressive community for our financial survival. Hundreds of valued subscribers and donors provide steady contributions to all of our activities. Our programs are made possible with support from Manhattan Neighborhood Network, The Surdna Foundation, and the New York State Council on the Arts, a State Agency.

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