Nick Cooper
"I enjoyed the information given... I found it hopeful and wondered if more people are aware of other ways of living and being human would they not want that peaceful, equal, empowering way of being. So the workshop worked for me in that it tapped into my plural voice that is hopeful and understands that community can change things and individual working with community can awaken community desire for natural nurturing of society." -- Patrice C. Queen, member of Voices of Women Organizing Project / Battered Women's Resource Center
taoism ------ diogenes the cynic ------- zapatista women --------- anti-fascism
Throughout civilization, oppression has inspired a rich history of creative resistance. Over time, though, resistance can harden and create new oppressions; systems of power can co-opt the methods and symbols of those who resist. Lao Tsu, in the Tao Te Ching, and Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas both discover methods of recognizing and avoiding this pitfall, arriving at the metaphor of the power of water. Like water, oppressed peoples can take innumerable blows, only to later wash over their oppressors without weapons or bloodshed.
Seeking to compare authoritarian philosophies, structures and psychologies to those that are yielding, consensual, communitarian, or autonomous, Nick has also studied The Ku Klux Klan, Focus on the Family, Lyndon LaRouche, The Minutemen, Tom DeLay, Indymedia, Food Not Bombs, Roberto Freire, Wilhelm Reich, and Hannah Arendt. Nick 's presentation examines oppression and the struggles of those who have searched for non-oppressive ways to escape it.
Nick has conducted this workshop in...
Venezuela at the World Social Forum, Washington DC at the National Conference of Organized Resistance, Houston High Schools (Bellaire, Lamar, KIPP), São Paulo Brazil with the Ativismo ABC Collective (read an interview), Bryan TX at the Revolution, Houston with The Politically Active Students Organization, Sedition Books, The Houston Social Forum, & the Art Car Klub, Fayetteville at the Five Squirrels, New Orleans at the
Iron Rail bookstore, NYC at the The Brecht Forum, & with the Icarus Project, Tallahassee at the Progressive Center, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Tennessee at The Sequatchie Valley Institute, Pumpkin Hollow & the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, North Carolina at the Blue Heron Farm, Internationalist Books, Virginia at Hampton Roads Indymedia, & Twin Oaks, DC at the Al Fishawy Internet Cafe, Worcester, MA at Collective A Go-Go, NY State at Binghamton Indymedia & Rochester Indymedia, Ohio at the Wire in Athens, Chicago at the ACME art works, Milwaukee at Brewing Grounds for Change, at the crimethinc 2006 gathering, Salt Lake City at the Boing Collective, Spokane and Tacoma WA at houses, Eugene OR at the Jawbreaker, Klamath Falls OR Unitarian Church, San Francisco at Studio40, Berkeley at the Long Haul Infoshop, Cafe Fresno, Sylmar CA at Tia Chucha's, South Central LA at the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, LA at Antigua Cultural Coffee House, Santa Ana CA at the Mexican Cultural Center, North Hills CA at Unitarian Universalist Society, Phoenix AZ at the Firehouse, and Tucson AZ at the Dry River.
download a flyer: flyer
email: nick--at--nickcooper.com (replace the --at-- with an @)
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