This is a list of the workshops that will be held during FOR, along with their times, listed in alphabetical order. You can find a full schedule here.

We will also have space set aside during the conference for guerrilla workshops to come together. (If you have a guerrilla workshop in mind, feel free to post about it in the Comments section at the bottom of this page. Sign-up for guerrilla slots will be at the conference on a first-come first-served basis.)

Anarchist Alternatives to Coerced Living Spaces (Sunday 11-12:15)
presenter: Gale Ahrens

A brief history and development in the “civilized”world of coerced living spaces: Schools, Barracks, Prisons, Reformatories, Asylums, Courts, Churches and Temples, Zoos, Aquariums, Work Houses, Work, Homes built to Code, and creating liberated Anarchist alternatives to these spaces.

resources:
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Politics
Lucy Parsons, Freedom Equality & Solidarity Writings & Speeches 1878-1937
Paul Lafargue, The Right to be Lazy
Clarence Darrow, Crime & Criminals
Eugene Debbs, Walls and Bars

Bash Back 101: Tactically Queering Environments (Saturday 12:30-2)
presenter: Bash Back Chicago

An introduction to queer and trans insurrection/radical queer politics. The act of liberating and queering space contains the potentiality of transforming our social relationships, and creating insurrectionary/queer ruptures in the fabric of authoritarian society. Our attempts, successes, and failures at doing so will be discussed, in the hope of inspiring others to do so and manifestly generalizing these forms of conflict.

Collective Living Spaces: A Roundtable Discussion (Saturday 3-6)
presenters: K-Bunny and Monkey

This workshop will explore collective living spaces as sites of anarchist practice, staging grounds for resistance, and means for modeling and building the world we want to create. Residents of several different collective living spaces around Chicago will discuss the nuts-and-bolts, rewards and challenges of collective living as they apply to different types of living spaces, and the politics of radical urban living spaces, including private property, gentrification, sustainability, and community activism.

Creating and Maintaining Anti-Authoritarian Queer Space (Sunday 11-12:15)
presenter: Darrell Gordon

We’ll explore how to create an anti-authoritarian queer space, and the mechanism to unite the collective to form such an entity. How will this space contrast with existing mainstream queer spaces? What joint community organizing can come out of this space?

Creating Safe Space in an Unsafe World: Supporting Survivors Whilst Respecting Their Autonomy (Sunday 12:30-2)
presenter: Bash Back Chicago

We will explore the ways our community can help survivors of sexual assault gain space to heal. Other topics include active listening, respecting survivor autonomy, taking the steps to call out abusive behavior, how different oppressions can change the equation, and creating a culture of consent in our communities.

Demilitarizing Space (Sunday 3-4:15)
presenters: Rebecca Riley, Fancy Bamberg, and Nick Robinson

How can we effectively demilitarize space, what does it mean for a space to be “militarized” or “demilitarized,” and which spaces in our region are militarized? A short history of demilitarization campaigns and how they operate within militarized spaces of the university, military industrial sites/factories/r&d centers, and military bases. Brainstorm future actions, as well as discuss the efficacy of past and present actions to form an analytical model for action. Build connections to organize around Chicago-based military industry firms, as well as connect other folks in similar regions in the struggle of demilitarization.

Department of Space and Land Reclamation: 8 Years Later (Saturday 11-12:15)
presenter: Daniel Tucker

The Department of Space and Land Reclamation was a weekend long blitz of cultural production in public space. Space created as a way to get to and from work was transformed into a site of play, space created to sell us products became a canvas for self-expression. DSLR brought together a diverse group of artists, activists, and community organizers and got them to think about how they can learn from each other, and how public cultural practice can positively effect what they do and how they do it. This presentation will reflect on this project eight years after it took place in April 2001 in Chicago.

resource:
counterproductiveindustries.com/dslr/

Grey Pollution and Electronic Toxicity (Sunday 12:30-2)
presenter: Frederic Jones

This is a brief background to and updating of the concept of Grey Pollution, as outlined by critical theorist Paul Virilio. It is an interdisciplinary concept, in that it includes both cultural and scientific criticisms of contemporary technologies. The workshop will look at the capitalist tendency to rush new technologies to market without comprehensive safety testing and will sketch possibilities for anarchist science. The concept of Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg” is useful as a critical mapping of the issues involved. A short presentation will be followed by open discussion and Q&A.

Gentrification: Containment, Displacement, Yuppie Infestations, and the Resistance to Come (Saturday 11-12:15)
presenters: Fancy and Ezra

We’ll be looking at the intersections of gender/race/age/class/sexuality in city planning and the criminalization, displacement and containment of poor folk and people of color whose neighborhoods are currently being gentrified. What are the ways we can resist gentrification? How can space be reworked/re-envisioned (with squats, radical community centers, livable spaces that are hostile to developers, aldermen, and land lords)? Food deserts, environmental sacrifice zones (such as Pilsen and Little Village being bookended by Chicago’s only two coal power plants), transitioning industrial corridors, the creation of the projects, the demolition of the projects, graffiti, etc. will be viewed with a critical lens keeping resistance, both past and possible futures, always in mind.

A History of Anarchist Spaces in Chicago (closing plenary, Sunday 4:30-6)
presenter: Darrell Gordon

Founding members of the A-Zone and other veterans of Chicago radical spaces will reflect on these spaces’ history: how decisions were made, what organizing took place, the spaces’ strengths and weaknesses. Q & A can segue into a closing discussion of the future of anarchist spaces in Chicago and around the region.

“The Left is Dead”: “Ultra-Cutronism” and the “Anarcho-Autonomous” Milieu (Saturday 12:30-2)
presenter: the Ultra-Platypus Affiliated Society: an anti-everything crew

If the Left is dead, then who are the zombies talking about “capitalism” and “proles” and “The Party”? How the hell are we ever going to destroy capitalism without a Leftist organization led by a cadre of intellectuals to lead the masses? This workshop will be a multi-media presentation and critique of the “anarcho-autonomous” milieu–a term we and the French police use to lump together a mish-mash of contemporary anti-authoritarian currents taking up space in European radical discourse and infecting the North American “hoodlum milieu.” We hope that by discussing the practical effects of implementing communism “here-and-now,” we can develop a complete programme to make total destroy of capitalism. Our central concern will surround the questions: What spaces are ripe for the intensification of “social conflict,” and what behaviors in these spaces can cause this to deepen and spread? What makes a space “autonomous” or “anti-capitalist”?

resources:
Monsieur DuPont, Nihilist Communism
“Has the Black Bloc tactic reached the end of its usefulness?” -NEFAC Call
The Invisible Committee
Liam Sionnach, Earth First Means Social War
Wrecking you against for the first time – St. Paul Black Bloc Communique

Leisure’s Role in Space and the Anarchist Movement (Sunday 12:30-2)
presenter: Timothy Rodriguez

The philosophical concept of leisure has been thought about throughout history. One agreement throughout history is that leisure is essential to human beings. In the modern capitalist world, leisure is often considered a designated portion of time away from the constraints of work where one partakes in free activity. From an anarchist perspective, one could argue that in a more free and just society distinctions between leisure and work would disappear. Leisure is the basis for the relationship of people to the polis or community. In the modern capitalist world, this relationship (or lack thereof) is private instead of social. The concept of space within society is a focus of this relationship, and therefore a focus of leisure. The two dominant forms of space today are public (government-owned) and private (capitalist-owned). Another form – one that should be central to leisure in a democracy from an anarchist perspective – is socialized (community-owned) space. The transformation of leisure is in fact the anarchist revolution itself.

resources:
Wayne F. Stormann, Recreation’s Role in Community Development: Community Re-creation; Work: True Leisure’s Home? and The Recreation Profession, Capital, and Democracy
John L. Hemingway, Leisure, Social Capital, and Democratic Citizenship and Leisure and Civility: Reflections on a Greek Ideal
Susan M. Shaw, Conceptualizing Resistance: Towards a Framework for Understanding Leisure as Political Practice

Let’s Organize the Hood: Organizing in Poor Communities of Color and Among Impoverished Populations (Saturday 12:30-2)
presenter: Lorenzo Ervin

Anarchists should be involved in community-based organizing, instead of just their own (sometimes navel-gazing) scenes and insular projects. We’ll discuss our community work and current projects, and how those things can be expanded to involve our own neighborhoods and others for grassroots social change.

Mad Liberation and Safe Space (Saturday 3-4:15)
presenter: Mad Tea Party

This workshop seeks to introduce and explore Mad Liberation and the social and political space of madness as concepts both within and outside the radical community. We will tackle issues Mad people face, including involuntary incarceration, the need for choice in the use of psychiatric drugs, the stigma experienced by the “mentally ill,” and the need for safe spaces, including peer-led alternatives to the mental health industry.

Prison as a Liberated Space: Anarchism and The Revolutionary Prison Movement of the 1970’s (Saturday 4:30-6)
presenter: Lorenzo Ervin

This workshop will recount the rise of the radical prisoners’ movement of the 1970s, which subverted the prison regime, took over the prisons as autonomous spaces for a brief period, and politically educated thousands of prisoners, spurring further resistance. A thorough first-hand account by an actual veteran and “leader” of this movement. Any activist can become a victim of state terrorism, but there are ways to survive and come out alive, stronger and more committed. If we look at today’s prison population of millions, then we know we cannot wait to build a mass movement of resistance inside the prisons and on the streets, or risk being smashed by the state.

The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Saturday 3-4:15)
presenter: Skippy

This workshop covers the most important steps in preparing for a nonviolent struggle, and reviews the basic elements in nonviolent strategy. We’ll focus on the practical applications of nonviolent action, and create a basis for understanding the art of political Jiu-Jitsu.

Public Sex and Social War (Sunday 3-4:15)
presenters: Kelsey and Devin

A discussion of the revolutionary potential of public sex as a means of resistance (and a biopolitical strike) against the ruling social order. How does keeping sex “behind closed doors” reinforce capitalism and heteronormativity? What mechanisms act to control our public selves? How do we destroy those mechanisms and reclaim the public as a queer and sexual space? We’ll explore historical and contemporary examples of public sex/sexual counterpublics. We’ll theorize the possibility of reterritorializing our desires through the claiming and queering of space through public sex, ultimately destroying the capitalist divide between public and private.

Relationship Anarchism: A 3-part Workshop (Sunday 11-2)
presenter: Bill Burns

Anarchism is rich in its differences and ingredients, but blending these elements together in a rich soup that can transform our world has not occurred. We maintain agendas, establish informal hierarchies and cliques, and remain seemingly unable to build relationships of empathy and honesty that will meld the rich elements of anarchism into a powerful force. Could anarchism be more that just rebellion against all forms of authority, the creation of new lifestyles, and the rise of the working class; could anarchism be a body of people working to become skilled at building empowering, empathetic relationships with each other, ourselves, and other sentient beings? As anarchists, the question “What is my relationship, at this moment, with myself and others?” can be a tool for understanding. When we build this process into our movement, anarchism can become truly viable and the absence of government in all forms possible.

Part I: Anarchism: Is it Viable or an Illusion? Could anarchism be a process of relating in which we have a sense of open space in our relationships with each other and our world? A brief her-history of anarchism will be given. Special emphasis will be placed on how domination and hierarchy within our movements and outside of these movements have continually fragmented our relationships with each other, creating spaces that are confined and devoid of freedom.

Part II: What is Our Relationship with Ourselves? Are our minds an open, expanding space or are they governed by an internal State that continually lays SHOULDS on us? Is our self fractured? How can we heal relationship with our self?

Part III: Relationships with Each Other and Non-violent Communication. Is there a means to open space in our relationships with ourselves, each other, and our world, and in so doing create spaces of freedom and anarchism?

resources:
Marshall B. Rosenberg, Non-Violent Communication: A Language Of Life
the writings of Jiddu Krishnamurti

A Return to the Land (Sunday 3-4:15)
presenter: Joseph Iwasa

Anarchistic back to the landers share our experiences and reasoning for participating in a return to the land. Issues to be explored include separation, safer spaces, sustainability, collective land use, and remaining politically active and in touch with urban struggles.

resources:
Peter Kropotkin, Fields, Factories and Workshops
Peter Maurin, Easy Essays

The Seizure of Space and the Public Sphere: Enduring Lessons from the Zapatistas (Sunday 11-12:15)
presenter: Richard Gilman-Opalsky

In the capitalist societies of the world, all of the major physical and discursive spaces have been colonized, taken over by and for the interests of capital. Yet, the public sphere is critically important in developing a radical politics capable of challenging global capitalism and the neoliberal state. Radical politics still has much to learn from the example of the Mexican Zapatistas in the 1990s, particularly from the novel and paradigmatic ways the Zapatistas understood the seizure of space and the public sphere.
Resource:
Richard Gilman-Opalsky, Unbounded Publics: Transgressive Public Spheres, Zapatismo, and Political Theory

Spaciality and Transformation (Saturday 4:30-6)
presenter: John Ludwig

We will consider our attitudes toward space, as we recognize our struggles, our capabilities, our barriers, and our need to transform the spaces that we interact in. Space has become something that is owned, privatized and regulated. For this reason, the anarchist relationship to space tends to be one of transformation. How does this transformative attitude toward space relate to how we interact with our world and each other? How does this relate to our actions, theories, and struggles? Through discussion and an interactive art project, the workshop aims to reflect, with a critical and empowering gaze, on examples of spacial transformation, past and current.

Sobriety Within the Struggle (Sunday 3-4:15)
presenters: Marie Hammond and Ephran Ramirez

We will discuss the relationship between intoxicants and our movements, and how the inherent problems that arise with intoxicants impact the work that we do. What impact does it have on consent and boundaries? How does it affect our security culture? Does it affect our ability to fulfill responsibilities? How can it change our social interactions? Does it impact public perception of us? Our goal with this workshop is not changing who we are, but giving us an alternate perception of our behaviors and possibly giving us a chance to make slight improvements within our movements.

Teaching and Organizing In, Around, Alongside, and Between the Spaces of Academia (Saturday 3-6)
presenters: Ira Smolensky, Nathan Jun, John Slavin, Matt Bradney, Scott Hultgren, Edward Miller, Ashley-Eve Downs, Ryne Tate, Jerry Justice, Greg Lyons

The panel will present various perspectives on studying, teaching, and practicing anarchism within the confines of academia. Experience on both ends of the teacher-student relationship will be discussed as will be the demands, opportunities, and challenges involved with getting institutions of higher education to genuinely embrace open-minded inquiry and the quest for social justice.

Which Way To Nowhere? A Short History of Anarchist Spatial Theory and Practice (Saturday 11-12:15)
presenter: Jesse Cohn

In a world entirely surveyed and owned, anarchists have had to grapple with the question: how can “autonomous” spaces be conceptualized and built, and how might these coincide, clash, or collude with the dominated spaces surrounding them? How do anarchists imagine and reclaim the “commons”? This talk will look at how anarchists have attempted to answer these questions. We’ll cover the work of Peter Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus, as well as concrete experiments ranging from rural settlements to urban outposts, the “nomadism” of anarchist immigrants, hobos, and trimardeurs to the “local” spatial struggles of Chicago’s Department of Space and Land Reclamation and Anarchists Against the Wall in Israel/Palestine.df