Episode 15 Science Fiction, Crowdfunding, and Media Repression with Joan Haran 8.12.17

A lot going on, got this posted late. Holding in the light the family of hero & martyr Heather Heyer as well as all of the brave people who went out in Charlottesville yesterday to oppose fascism knowing how dangerous those people are. Please donate to their medical funds, more info here: https://fundly.com/defendcville

"All activism, all organizing, is science fiction."

Spoke to Imagine Activism scholar Joan Haran about sci-fi, writers including Octavia Butler, Starhawk, Marge Piercy, and Ursula K LeGuin, Octavia's Brood, independent publishing & the power of crowdfunding, the G20 in Hamburg, authoritarian sci-fi, the power of stories, the enlightenment, utopias & dystopias, imagining new forms of governance & social technologies, indigenous & afro futurism, the Handmaid's Tale, the war on drugs, and media repression.

Referenced:
Ava Duvernay adapting Octavia Butler for the screen: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/ava-duvernay-octavia-butler-dawn_us_598b5f2ee4b0449ed5078015?section=us_arts

It's Going Down article on the G20 in Hamburg: https://itsgoingdown.org/g20-battle-hamburg-full-account-analysis/

The Center for Applied Non Violent Action and Strategies (CANVAS): http://canvasopedia.org/

"But anarchism is not compelled to outline a complete organisation of a free society. To do so with any assumption of authority would be to place another barrier in the way of coming generations. The best thought of today may become the useless vagary of tomorrow, and to crystallise it into a creed is to make it unwieldy." - Lucy Parsons (from http://www.blackrosefed.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Black-Anarchism-A-Reader-4.pdf)

The Rise of Antifa by Peter Beinart of the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/the-rise-of-the-violent-left/534192/

Also a rebuttal: http://idavox.com/index.php/2017/08/09/newly-re-vamped-atlantic-magazine-calls-for-the-violent-suppression-of-anti-fascist-activists-in-major-editorial/

And here's a reading list given to me by Joan:
Octavia’s Brood – ed. Walidah Imarisha and Adrienne Maree Brown
The Fifth Sacred Thing – Starhawk
Donna Haraway – “A Manifesto for Cyborgs” (collected in Manifestly Haraway)

The Highest Frontier. College out in space—Invaded by undocumented aliens. Tor/Macmillan, September, 2011.

Brain Plague. Intelligent microbes invade human brains, offering limitless powers--at a price. Tor Books, August, 2000; Science Fiction Book of the Month Club, Alternate Selection.

The Children Star. A planet with biochemistry so alien that only children can be genetically engineered to survive there. And what unique alien intelligence is watching in secret? Analog serial, April, 1998; Tor Books, September, 1998.

Daughter of Elysium. In the far future, biologists engineer humans to live for thousands of years, then face a revolt by the machines that made it possible. Avon, 1993; Easton Press signed first edition, 1993; Avon pbk, 1994.

The Wall around Eden. Quaker teen-agers face the environmental consequences of nuclear war. William Morrow, 1989; Avon pbk, 1990; Italian translation, Editrice Nord, 1991.

A Door into Ocean. Women biologists genetically engineer fantastic creatures on a planet covered entirely by ocean. Science Fiction Book of the Month Club Main Selection, 1986; Arbor House, 1986; Avon pbk, 1987; Italian translation, Editrice Nord, 1988.

Still Forms on Foxfield. Quakers colonize a planet with bizarre alien inhabitants. Del Rey Books, 1980.

Anything by Nnedi Okorafor (start with the Binti novellas)