A Discussion with Havaar: Iranian Initiative Against War, Sanctions and State Repression
When: Wednesday, May 16 at 7 pm – 9 pm
Where: 365 Fifth Ave. CUNY Graduate Center, Segal Theater, First Floor.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Place, Culture and Politics
Havaar* is a coalition of Iranians, Iranian-Americans, and allies formed in response to the U.S. government’s escalating attacks on Iran and to the Iranian government’s ongoing repression of people’s progressive movements (http://havaar.org).
At a time when crippling sanctions and threats of war bear down on people in Iran, there is an urgent need for people in the United States to organize against these policies advanced in our name. As global solidarity between people in the United States and other parts of the world gains new momentum, how can we support grassroots struggles in Iran that oppose both outside intervention and domestic authoritarianism?
Join us for a discussion about how to rebuild an anti-war movement that is centered around people-to-people solidarity.
Plus video testimonies from activists in Iran and around the world.
*Havaar means “cry of emergency” in English.
Speakers:
Ali Abdi is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Yale University. He was engaged in the student movement and women’s rights movement in Iran for five years, and participated in post-2009 presidential election protests in Iran. The Iranian democratic movement, globally known as the Green Movement, has informed his activism since then.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb8G7YUiCG4&feature=youtu.be]
Arang Keshavarzian is an Associate Professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at New York University. He is currently on the editorial board of the International Journal of Middle East Studies and was on the editorial committee of the Middle East Research and Information Project (www.merip.org) from 2005 to 2011. His book, Bazaar and State in Iran: Politics of the Tehran Marketplace, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxiJr58Ju_w]
Bitta Mostofi is a nonprofit, immigrant rights attorney. She has also worked as a civil rights attorney and served on the board of directors of the Council on American Islamic Relations. Bitta has participated in anti-war and anti-sanctions campaigns, and was a co-coordinator for the Voices in the Wilderness; Iraq Peace Team from 2002-2003. In recent years Bitta has co-founded and worked with Where is my Vote, New York, which formed in the after math of the highly disputed 2009 Iranian presidential elections. WIMV-NY strives to raise the level of international solidarity with the citizens of Iran in their movement towards social justice and democratic change and to speak out against the Iranian state’s human rights violations.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5J3NpoG3lU]
Manijeh Nasrabadi is an American Studies Ph.D. student in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Her essays and articles have appeared in Comparative Studies of the South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, Social Text online,About Face (Seal Press, 2008), Hyphen Magazine, Tehran Bureau, Callaloo and vidaweb.org. She is a founding member of Raha: Iranian Feminist Collective in New York City.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmJEcHFlN5U&feature=relmfu]
Moderator:
Maia Ramnath organizes with Adalah-NY, South Asia Solidarity Initiative, and the Occupy Wall Street-Global Justice working group. She is on the board of the Institute for Anarchist Studies and is the author of two recent books: Haj to Utopia and Decolonizing Anarchism.
She is currently an adjunct history instructor at NYU.