Wednesday, August 18th, 5:00 PM ET

Please join us for this critical dialogue about the current protests rocking the Islamic Republic, class struggle and labor politics in Iran, revolutionary and counter-revolutionary dynamics in the Middle East, the myth of the “Axis of Resistance” — and how progressives and internationalists should make sense of these critical developments.

***Register through Eventbrite to receive a link to the video conference on the day of the event. This event will also be recorded and have live captioning.***

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Speakers:

Frieda Afary is an Iranian American librarian, translator, and activist. She produces the blog Iranian Progressives in Translation and writes about the Middle East and the politics of solidarity for a variety of publications, including New Politics magazine. Her essay “The Iranian Uprising of 2019-2020” appeared in the recent book A Region in Revolt: Mapping the Recent Uprisings in North Africa and West Asia, edited by Jade Saab and published by Daraja Press.

Latest article:

“Iran: A New Wave of Mass Protests and Strikes” (New Politics)

Kaveh Ehsani is associate professor of International Studies at DePaul University in Chicago. His books include Social History of Oil in Iran (in Persian) and Working for Oil: Comparative Social Histories of Labor in the Global Oil Industry. He has worked as a regional planner at the World Bank and the UNDP. As a development planner in Iran he worked on water resources planning, drought, urban governance, and post-war reconstruction in Khuzestan Province. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Middle East Research and Information Project (MERIP) and is a contributing editor of the journals Goftogu (based in Tehran), Middle East Report, and Iranian Studies.

Latest article:

“The Moral Economy of the Iranian Protests” (Jacobin)

Danny Postel is Assistant Director of the Center for International and Area Studies at Northwestern University and a member of Internationalism from Below. He is co-editor of The People Reloaded: The Green Movement and the Struggle for Iran’s Future, The Syria Dilemma, and Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East. Formerly Senior Editor of openDemocracy magazine, he has written for Boston Review, The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Democratic Left, Dissent, The Guardian, In These Times, Middle East Report (MERIP), The Nation, New Politics, and The Progressive, among other publications.

Latest article:

"The Other Regional Counter-Revolution: Iran’s Role in the Shifting Political Landscape of the Middle East" (New Politics)

Moderator:

Sam Salour is a member of the Tempest Collective and a sociology PhD student at UC Santa Barbara.

Latest article:

“Striking echoes in Iran: A report from the oil and gas strikes”

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

This event is co-sponsored by Internationalism from Below, Haymarket Books, and New Politics. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important publishing and programming work.