Miami University

Activist Eric Mann to speak

Eric Mann will present "Fighting Back Against the Empire: Antiracist, Environmental Justice and Anti-Imperialist Strategies for the 21st Century" at 8 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 28, at Hall Auditorium. His free talk is part of the Center for American and World Cultures Speakers Series.

A veteran activist and former auto worker, he has been an anti-Vietnam war, labor and environmental justice organizer for 35 years with groups including the United Auto Workers, the Congress of Racial Equality, Students for a Democratic Society and the former League of Revolutionary Struggle (ML).

He is director and a founding member of the Labor/Community Strategy Center in Los Angeles. The center encompasses a multiracial, anti-corporate "think tank/act tank" and the National School for Strategic Organizing; its projects include rebuilding the labor movement, fighting for environmental justice, mass transit and immigrant rights.

He also is a founding member of and serves on the planning committee for the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union (BRU). The BRU includes 3,000 dues-paying members and is the recognized class representative for 400,000 bus riders.

Eric Mann is author of four books, including Dispatches from Durban: Firsthand Commentaries on the World Conference Against Racism and Post-September 11 Movement Strategies.
Free tickets to the talk will be available at the box office in the Shriver Center, 9-3200. It is co-sponsored by Miami’s Center for Community Engagement in Over-the-Rhine, the Center for Education and Cultural Studies, the department of educational leadership and the Institute of Environmental Sciences.

Eric Mann also will present "Anti-Racism, Anti-Colonialism and Social Justice Activism: Ideological Reorientation and Life Choices in Social Movement Mobilization" at 4 p.m. Monday, Oct. 27 at Leonard Theatre.

He will discuss the importance of student activism in social justice movement organization and mobilization and show a video based on building a bus riders union.

Lian Hurst Mann of the National School for Strategic Organizing and the Labor/Community Strategy Center will lead a discussion on "Ideological Reorientation in a School of Social Life: Practicing Equality of Languages in Building a Bus Riders Union" at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 27, at 124 Irvin Hall.

She will also lead a brown bag informal lecture at noon the same day at 115 MacMillan Hall.

She will speak on "Women hold up half the sky: In the workplace, in communities and at home, what do we want to teach our daughters about imperialism?" For more information, call Kay Owen at 9-8588.

Date Published: 10/16/2003
Volume: 23   Number: 11