Meet Me in DC
Just got my final assignments for the national Animal Rights 2008 conference, which will convene in DC from 14 to 18 August. (Schedule and registration information here.) If you go, you’ll find me speaking at the following sessions:
15 August
- Nurturing Activism (with Minneapolis activist Dallas Rising)
16 August
- Newcomer Orientation (tips for activists new to the movement)
- How to Deal with Despair/Guilt? (discussion group of the kind I recommend in Aftershock)
- Global Issues Affecting Animals (with Debra Erenberg of Rainforest Action Network and my dear friend Adam Weissman of Global Justice for Animals and the Environment)
- Forging Coalitions (with Debra again… her advice about this is always good)
17 August
- Commonality of Oppression (with Eternal Treblinka author Charles Patterson and my dear friend lauren Ornelas of the Food Empowerment Project)
- History of Activist Repression (with Heidi Boghosian of the National Lawyers Guild and Green is the New Red sensation Will Potter)
If you don’t come to any of those sessions, look for me at the Eastern Shore Sanctuary table, which ought to be adjacent to the Lantern Books table in the exhibit hall. Also in the exhibit hall, I hear that CrimethInc will not only have its own table but also host an eco/anarcha-feminist table featuring free buttons, stickers, and literature by many of my favorite feminist writers. Don’t skip it!
Even if you can’t afford the conference (which I do wish was less costly), anybody can visit the exhibit area for free, so do stop by if you’re going to be in DC anyway on one of those days. Of all of the annual AR conferences, this is the only one at which advocates of direct action like CrimethInc, SHAC, and supporters of the ALF are welcome to share their views alongside their more moderate allies in the struggle. I appreciate that recognition of the importance of what I like to call tactical biodiversity.
June 28th, 2008 at 6:56 pm
Wow, pattrice. What a great line up. I’m going to miss the conference (I’ll be at the International Society for Anthrozoology meetings during this same time). I hope there’s going to be lots of tweets, podcasting and live blogging from the conference.
On a related note, there were point-counterpoint editorials in BMJ this week about the issue of conference attendance. Though they addressed medical fields per se, the issues and arguments are the same regardless of conference theme. Granted, animal protection doesn’t tend to have mega conferences at exclusive golf resorts in the Caribbean and get fat tax write offs, but how we gather still matters. I say this as someone who attends regional and international conferences and someone who is looking at her own choices critically.
It would make for an interesting roundtable. Looking forward to SuperWeed posts from/about the conference!
August 19th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
[...] at which I’ll be speaking about dealing with grief and about state repression of activism, among other topics. If you’re new to this blog, you might be interested in some of my previous conference [...]