Kopkind Colony

Kopkind began its first seminar/retreat session in this 25^th anniversary year on July 20 with left journalists and organizers who hail from as far away as Lafayette, Louisiana, as near as Brattleboro, and towns and cities in between – who focus on issues as diverse as tenants’ rights and the criminalization of dissent; workers’ power and land use; body autonomy and tech sector organizing; prison abolition and, for all, both ending the genocide in Gaza and stopping fascism at home. Their mentors for a week built around the theme “The Politics of Life vs Death” are Margaret Cerullo, who was one of Kopkind’s first mentors, in 1999; and Dania Rajendra, who was a young Kopkind ‘camper’ in 2001. As do often the case, we’re bringing it all home.

We’re putting on two free public events at 118 Elliot in downtown Brattleboro this week. Everyone in the area: please come!

Wednesday, July 24, 6:30 pm:  Speaker’s Night. Margaret Cerullo will speak on the Zapatista movement and prospects in Mexican politics under its new president, the first woman to hold the post. Margaret, a professor emerita of sociology and feminist studies at Hampshire College, has focused on social movements, global migration and Latin America, having been involved with the Zapatista movement since its emergence on the world stage on January 1, 1994. Her latest book, co-edited with her fellow members of the Lightning Collective, is a translation with commentaries: Zapatista Stories for Dreaming An-Other World. The book’s foreword is written by Kopkind president and program director JoAnn Wypijewski. The collective’s introduction quotes Andy Kopkind, whose Nation editorial almost immediately upon the 1994 uprising remains a model of historical analysis, political acuity and style. Margaret’s talk will be followed by discussion. This event is being hosted by the Windham World Affairs Council.

Saturday, July 27, 7 pm: Movie Night. Featuring Israelism, a documentary by Erin Axelman and Sam Eilertsen, about two Jewish Americans whose consciousness takes a sharp left turn as they see the brute realities of occupation firsthand and later pronounce, “We came to Israel and left from Palestine”. The screening will be followed by comments from a panel that represents the long-building grassroots movement for justice in Palestine: Hind Mari and Kopkind alum Alisa Klein, a Palestinian-American and Jewish Israeli-American, respectively, have been doing Palestine liberation organizing and activism together in Western Mass for more than 20 years; Louai Abu-Osba, a Palestinian-American who organizes with the Western MA Coalition for Palestine, and Molly Aronson, a Jewish American who is a central organizer of the Western Mass chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, have worked together on a number of actions over the past year, including the UMass Amherst encampment. This panel will then engage the audience in discussion.

Kopkind recognizes the essential connection between language, history, analysis and action in the realization of Freedom Dreams, as Robin D. G. Kelley discussed at a Kopkind public event years ago. The Zapatistas, as Andy explained way back in 1994, surprised the world with their rebellion, but its roots went deep, and they persist. “They have infused left politics”, Cerullo writes, “with an imaginative, literary, or poetic dimension—organizing horizontally, outside and against the state, and with a profound respect for difference as a source of political insight, not division.” The movement against genocide in Gaza and US complicity is the profound insurgent development in the US this year, but it too did not come out of nowhere. Kopkind mentor Dania Rajendra, a journalist and activist who has been working at the crossroads of capitalism and authoritarianism, has long been involved with Palestine solidarity, and her work on the political instrumentalization of antisemitism to promote anti-Muslim bias, racism, patriarchy and exploitation is used by community organizers in the US and Europe.

Please join us!

Kopkind has done remarkable things across the past quarter century. Our mentors have included eminent radical historians like Peter Linebaugh, brilliant longtime strategists and organizers like Makani Themba (who, along with Margaret, was our first mentor), astute independent journalists like Alexander Cockburn, who was a great friend of Andy’s. Our young participants have gone on to play critical roles across the country in the founding of Black Lives Matter, in youth organizing, in Palestine solidarity, in documenting the rise and political agenda of Christian nationalism, in advancing ideas about economic democracy and collective ownership, in fighting homophobia and the culture war, in arguing for abortion and bodily autonomy, in telling stories out of a queer/feminist/black radical tradition, in fighting the state’s power to kill and imprison, and in presenting alternatives. Our filmmakers have told luminous stories about culture and politics through the lives of Lorraine Hansberry, Howard Zinn, Susan Sontag, William Kunstler, Bayard Rustin, Gilda Radner, and the experiences of communities, movements and individuals around the world. Our events have, like the seminars, raised provocative ideas but on a public stage – from Robin Kelley, Edward Said (via film), Laura Flanders, Eddie Glaude, Patricia Williams, Kenyon Farrow, Jeff Sharlett, Tariq Ali, Najla Said, Elena Letona, Vijay Prashad, Grace Paley and more.

Andy Kopkind wrote out of a left analysis, a gay sensibility, a profound curiosity and sense of history, a resistance to inhumanity and a radical hope. This living memorial has strived to honor and advance all of that across the 25 years. In troubled times, we continue to keeping the left alive.

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