Kopkind Colony

1999
Theme: Can you have a left media without a left movement?
Mentors, Margaret Cerullo (Hampshire College), Ron Nixon (Roanoke Times), Makani Themba Nixon (Praxis Project)
Campers, Jennifer Berkshire (Boston), Kim Diehl (Raleigh/Durham), Theo Emery (Amherst, Mass.), Liza Featherstone (New York), Marti Garza (Boston), Prasi Gupta (Rochester, NY)

Movie Night – “U & I dot com”, with director Branda Miller
Speaker’s Night – JoAnn Wypijewski on “Sex, Crime and the Culture of Straight Men”

2000
Theme: After Seattle—global justice, urban justice, a new landscape for the left?
Mentors, Alexander Cockburn (CounterPunch), Janine Jackson (FAIR), Bob Wing (Applied Research Center/Color Lines)
Campers, Angela Ards, (New York) Rico Cleffi, (New Bedford, Mass.) Rona Fernandez, (San Francisco) John Grebe (Boston), Mindanao Hickey (San Francisco), Maureen Lane (New York), Emile Turner (New York)

Movie Night – “Lavender Lake”, with director Allison Prete
Speaker’s Night – Patricia Williams on “The Body Politic”

2001
Theme: The left in Bush time
Mentor, Mandy Carter (Southerners on New Ground)
Campers, Tomas Aguilar (Boston), Pamela Bridgewater (Jacksonville, Fla.), Candace Carpenter (Austin), Pia Infante (Boston), Claudine LoMonaco (Los Angeles), Susan Phillips (Philadelphia), Yun Jong Suh (San Francisco)

Movie Night – “Yes, In My Backyard”, with director Tracy Huling
Speaker’s Night – Katha Pollitt on “Women, Liberty and the Left in the Age of Bush”

(Kopkind/Independent Press Association)
Theme: Ethnic press and community
Mentors, Abby Scher, Gregory Tewksbury, Greg Morris
Campers, Arkady Kagan, Reginald Juste, Yajaira deLeon, Dania Rajendra, Tom Watkins (all NYC)

Movie Night – “41 Shots” and other videos from the youth film collective Listen Up!
Speaker’s Night – Robin D.G. Kelley on “Freedom Dreams”

2002

Theme: War, ‘terror’ and the left
Mentors, Kevin Alexander Gray (Black News, South Carolina ACLU), Doug Lummis (Tsuda College, Tokyo, ret.; Okinawa peace movement)
Campers, Adina Berrios (New York), Malkia Cyril (Oakland), Kathleen Fitzgerald (Boston), Richard Kim (New York), Angelo Logan (Los Angeles), Katy Reckdahl (New Orleans), Roopa Singh (Berkeley)

Movie Night – a 25th anniversary John Scagliotti film retrospective
Speaker’s Night – Edward Said (canceled due to ill health)

2003
Theme: ‘The second superpower’, a new internationalism?
Mentor, Mike Marqusee (freelance journalist, author, founding member of Britain’s Stop the War Coalition)
Campers, Rehan Ansari (New York/Pakistan), Gabriel Arteaga (Chicago), Eunice Cho, (San Francisco), Elizabeth Fox (Washington, DC), Ronald Lwabaayi (Toronto/Uganda), Jen Soriano (Oakland/Philippines), Rhianna Tyson (New York)

Movie Night – “Novela, Novela”, with director Liz Miller
Speaker’s Night – “Selves and Others”, a filmed conversation with Edward Said

2003 (Kopkind/EqbalAhmad Initiative)
Theme: Covering the Middle East at home and abroad
Mentors, Nabil Abraham, (Henry Ford Community College), Dunya Alwan (International Women’s Peace Service, Palestine), Margaret Cerullo (Hampshire College/Eqbal Ahmad Initiative), Sue Katz (freelance journalist, founding member of Israeli peace groups Women in Black and Black Laundry), Alisa Klein (former Zionist, Western Mass. peace and Palestinian rights activist)
Campers, Brennen Bartlett (Minnesota), Kerry Eleveld (Berkeley), Tram Nguyen (Oakland), Melanie Smith (New York), Camille Taiara (San Francisco), Tom Wallace (Boston), Bernice Yeung (San Francisco)

Movie Night – “The Settlers”, with former Israeli settler Uri Strauss, and “Gaza Strip”
Speaker’s Night – Rabab Abdulhadi on “Sex, Gender, War: Radical Reinterpretations of Politics and Resistance in the Middle East”

2004
Theme: Cultures of resistance, histories of our side
Mentors, Rabab Abdulhadi (Center for Arab-American Studies, UM, Dearborn), Jack O’Dell (long-time labor, peace and civil rights activist), Jaime Veve (former Young Lord, founding member of New Directions, Transit Workers Local 100)
Campers, Peter Asen (Providence, RI), Paula Dobbyn (Anchorage), Willie Johnson (Detroit), Sarah Kim (Los Angeles), Kiyoko McCrae (New York), Saja Raoof (Detroit), Standard Schaefer (San Francisco), Talia Whyte (Boston)

Movie Night – “The Weather Underground”, with former Weather people Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn
Speaker’s Night – “The War Abroad, the War at Home”, a conversation with Phyllis Bennis, Jack O’Dell and Saja Raoof

2005
Theme: Religion and politics
Mentors, Jeff Sharlett (editor, The Revealer, research professor, NYU Center for Religion and Media), Suzanne Pharr (co-founder of SONG and the Women’s Project, former director of the Highlander Center)
Campers, Malachi Larrabee-Garza (Oakland), Jen Angel (Toledo, OH), Billy Sothern (New Orleans), Roberto Lovato (New York), Jessica Wilbanks (Washington), Camilor Romero (New York)

Movie Night – “Born Again”, with James Ault (plus a short, “Tomboys!” by Christian McEwen and Julie Akeret)
Speaker’s Night – Eddie S. Glaude Jr. on “What’s God Got to Do With It?: Religion, Rage and Resistance in American Life”

2006
Theme: The Law, the left and the state
Mentors, Pamela Bridgewater (professor, American University School of Law, and author of the forthcoming Breeding a Nation), Mike Ferner (member, Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy and author of Inside the Red Zone: A Veteran For Peace Reports from Iraq)
Campers, Maria Lupe Areola (San Francisco), Bennett Baumer (New York), Lisa Burriss (New York), Lisa Jervis (San Francisco), Cole Krawitz (New York), Erica Sagrans (Providence, RI), Ivy Schlegel (Boston), Alicia Schwartz (Oakland)

Movie Night — “The Road to Guantanamo”, with Aziz Huq of the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Project
Speaker’s Night — “Who You Calling Illegal?: Borderlines and the Immigrants’ Rising”, a conversation between Maria Elena Letona (executive director, Centro Presente, in Boston) and Gary Younge (US correspondent for The Guardian and author of No Place Like Home: A Black Briton’s Journey Through the Deep South)

2007
(Kopkind/Center for Independent Documentary
Theme: Filmmaking and Diversity
Participants, John Scagliotti (Kopkind), Susi Walsh (CID), Alexandra de Gonzalez (Malden, MA), Deb Ellis (Burlington, VT), Jennifer Kaplan (Newton, MA), Nancy Kates (Berkeley), Joel Katz (Woodstock, NY), Emily Kunstler (New York), Robbie Leppzer (Wendell, MA), Eli Moore (Berkeley/Syracuse, NY), Rebecca Snedeker (New Orleans), Savanna Washington (New York)

Kopkind Grassroots Film Festival
Day 1 — selections from “Lovejoy’s Nuclear War”, “The Last Resort” and “Save the Planet”, with Charles Light of Green Mountain Post Films (plus an extended trailer for the forthcoming “FAR OUT!”)
Day 2 — “Cruel and Unusual”, with filmmaker Dan Hunt and local transgender community activist Michel Yoew)
Day 3 — “The Peace Patriots”, with filmmaker Robbie Leppzer (afternoon)
“The Devil’s Miner”, with Cleo Godsey of First Run Features (plus a short, “Beauty of Our Hands”;) (evening)

Guests for Harvest fundraising events, informal lunch/dinner talks or seminars over the years:
Tariq Ali, Jennifer Berkshire, Pamela Bridgewater, Michael Bronski, Roane Carey, Sue Carter, Paula Chakravarti, Alexander Cockburn, Ellen David-Freeman, Russ Davis, Laura Flanders, Don Guttenplan, Doug Henwood, Aziz Huq, Richard Kim, Leda Leitao Martins, Judith Levine, Stephanie Luce, Maria Margaronis, Tim McCarthy, Muffie Meyer, Rhea Mokund, Marty Nathan, Grace Paley, Steve Pierce, Bob Pollin, Verandah Porche, Jane Power, Mazin Qumsiyeh, Susan Smith Richardson, Lisa Simmons, Kueku Toure, Wendy Wallas, Seymour Wishman