Join us on Sunday, January 12, 2025, at Making Worlds Bookstore and Social Center for a special community pop-up event hosted by UC Green's Herb Bar! As winter settles in and the cold and flu season kicks into gear, take a moment to care for yourself and your loved ones at our Make and Take Tea Blend Station. Choose from a curated menu of herbal tea blends known for supporting immunity, fighting off colds and flu, and optimizing respiratory health. Whether you're seeking a soothing sip or a boost to your well-being, there's something for everyone.

This event is donation-based, with all funds raised going towards UC Green’s equity fund. Your contributions will help us remove barriers to planting in our community, including the removal of dead trees and grinding old tree stumps, ensuring a healthier, greener environment for all. Come for the tea, stay for the community, and support our mission to make our neighborhoods thrive!

You can donate directly to support UC Green here.

Registration to attend the event is appreciated, your contributions support the labor and maintenance of Making Worlds Bookstore and Social Center.

Join Philadelphia Area Stitchers on Sunday, January 12th from 12 -3pm. Let’s get together for an afternoon filled with tatreez! If you practice tatreez please come and bring your project, along with your supplies…we’d love to hear and see what you are working on! Although this isn’t a tatreez class, if you don’t know how to tatreez you are still welcome to come! Our Tatreez Circles always serve as a safe space for pro-Palestinians. If you come remember to wear something Palestinian if you can, a thobe, keffiyeh, your favorite t-shirt…anything! This is a safe space for Palestinians and non-Palestinian allies as well. Hope to see you there!

Registration in advance is appreciated

Join artist, educator, and writer Dr. Kim Wilson for an in-person event to discuss her book, We Grow The World Together, co-edited with Maya Schenwar. This remarkable collection of essays includes contributions from some of the most influential abolitionist theorists and movement organizers. The essays illuminate the ways in which caregiving and struggles for liberation intertwine, offering both transformative ideas and practical tools for building new worlds even in the direst of circumstances. 

REGISTRATION IN ADVANCE IS APPRECIATED HERE

Join Philadelphia Area Stitchers on Saturday, December 21st from 12 -3pm. Let’s get together for an afternoon filled with tatreez! If you practice tatreez please come and bring your project, along with your supplies…we’d love to hear and see what you are working on! Although this isn’t a tatreez class, if you don’t know how to tatreez you are still welcome to come! Our Tatreez Circles always serve as a safe space for pro-Palestinians. If you come remember to wear something Palestinian if you can, a thobe, keffiyeh, your favorite t-shirt…anything! This is a safe space for Palestinians and non-Palestinian allies as well. Hope to see you there!

Registration in advance is appreciated

What the opioid epidemic teaches us about the addiction at the root of our social life—and how we free ourselves from it. Join us at Making Worlds in a conversation Annie Spencer author of How to Break an Addiction and David Spataro, organizer, and community college professor.

REGISTRATION IN ADVANCE APPRECIATED

How To Break An Addiction paints an original and dynamic portrait of the nature of the opioid crisis while offering original commentary on what the crisis portends about the present historical conjuncture. Interrogating long- and short-run, macro and micro, national and global, structural and personal factors, it takes the ongoing US opioid crisis as a jumping off point to illustrate the profound conclusion: capitalism at its core is an addiction.

Join us on the Common Notions YouTube channel for the book launch of In Defense of Common Life: The Political Thought of Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar.

Accompanying the author we will hear from Dawn Marie Paley, Magalí Rabasa, and Conor ‘Coco’ Tomás Reed in a conversation moderated by Brian Whitener.

Join us on the Common Notions YouTube for a very special livestream. REGISTER HERE

Join Philadelphia Area Stitchers on Saturday, Nov 30 from 12 -3pm. Let’s get together for an afternoon filled with tatreez! If you practice tatreez please come and bring your project, along with your supplies…we’d love to hear and see what you are working on! Although this isn’t a tatreez class, if you don’t know how to tatreez you are still welcome to come! Our Tatreez Circles always serve as a safe space for pro-Palestinians. If you come remember to wear something Palestinian if you can, a thobe, keffiyeh, your favorite t-shirt…anything! This is a safe space for Palestinians and non-Palestinian allies as well. Hope to see you there!

Registration in advance is appreciated

Bring the books you’ve loved but are ready to pass on, and swap them for something new! There’s no limit to how many books you can bring or take—just be thoughtful about what you offer (something you would like to receive) and what you take (share the good stuff!).

Join us in the launch of the book Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis in a conversation moderated by Max Fox with the author Tracy Rosenthal, and Sterling Johnson organizer with Philadelphia Housing Action.

Advance registration is appreciated.

How do we solve the housing crisis? Two L.A. Tenants Union co-founders wrote Abolish Rent to answer that question, guided by the expertise of LATU members, who are organizing to take back control of their housing, their neighborhoods, and their lives. At Making Worlds, we'll bring together author Tracy Rosenthal and organizer and scholar Sterling Johnson to reflect on their struggles in their building and citywide, and talk about how our work right now shows us the future of the tenant movement, moderated by Max Fox and co-presented by Pinko Magazine.

Join us for an engaging evening of poetry and conversation bringing together Latinx voices from Mexico and Philadelphia to explore creative resistance, moderated by Daniela Johannes.

Advance registration appreciated.

Readings by:
Tania Favela
Luis Verdejo
Roger Santiváñez
Anjoli Santiago
Miguel Bacho
David Acosta
Carole Metellus

Joy James and M. E. O’Brien in dialogue, with Lara Sheehi
Online at Common Notions YouTube | Monday, November 18th at 5 PM Eastern

Join us on the Common Notions YouTube for a very special livestream.  Advance registration very much appreciated!

Join Joy James and M. E. O’Brien in dialogue, moderated with Lara Sheehi, in exploring care, abolition and revolutionary struggle. In their respective research, all three have grappled with the place of maternal love, caretaking, and interdependent nurturing possible through collective insurrection against white supremacy and capitalism.

Joy James explores this through the Captive Maternal in Black rebellion, maroon sites of revolutionary love. M. E. O’Brien grapples with family abolition through what she calls “insurgent social reproduction,” the revolutionary horizons of abundant care that emerge in collective mass rebellion. Lara Sheehi draws on the decolonial potential of psychoanalysis, in Palestine and around the world. They will explore the intersections and tensions of their work, seeking to illuminate the love made possible only through abolitionist revolution.

Our Right to Gaze is an annually curated touring anthology of short films by emerging Black filmmakers, presented by Full Spectrum Features. This is the third year cinéSPEAK has partnered with Full Spectrum Features to screen the program in Philly.

This year’s program was curated by Open Television (OTV), a non-profit streaming platform and media incubator for intersectional storytelling, with artists and their creative visions at the center.

Register here with cinéSPEAK

**EVENT FLOW:
4:30 PM Doors
5:00 - 6:20 PM Film Program
6:20 - 7:00 PM Mix & Mingle Coffee Time

**TICKETS**
$10

If you cannot afford the full 'General Admission' price, please use the 'Pay-What-You-Can' ticket option, No one turned away for lack of funds.

Join us for a reading and Q&A with the creators of TAKEOVER! A Human Rights Approach to Housing! There are ten abandoned properties for every homeless Philadelphian, yet people are dying on the streets. The Poor People’s Army has a common sense solution: take over vacant government-owned housing and fix it up for homeless families. Learn how the organized poor are using the power of community to stay alive–because basic human rights aren’t up for negotiation.

Advance registration appreciated. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

ADVANCED REGISTRATION RECOMMENDED

Come co-work with other writers in three 40-minute units of silent writing, every other Friday starting September 20th, from 1–3:30 pm.

Writers and projects of any type are welcome. Includes 10-minute breaks between units, with optional task-oriented self-accountability check-ins. Feel no pressure to share the content of what you are working on during the sessions. The Writing Room provides a friendly, low-stress way to carve out focus through the silent company of others while learning to break larger (and sometimes daunting) projects into less stressful (and possibly pleasurable!) units of concentrated attention. BYO computer chargers, notepads, etc. Come and go as you please.

This method has been designed with the practices of writing pedagogy, mindfulness, trauma-informed nervous system regulation, and anarchist pedagogy in mind.

Facilitated by Shannan (she/they)

ADVANCED REGISTRATION RECOMMENDED (CLICK HERE)

Join us for a screening of the early the cinematic work of Mtume Gant, a New York City based and born Filmmaker. His work explores issues of nihilism, the psychological warfare inflicted on the Black artists trying to navigate the exploitive political economy of today’s America. Films to be screened are SPIT (2015), White Face (2017) and Mold Malachi (2022). There will also be a small preview of his feature length film The Hand that Feeds and an opening address by the filmmaker as well as a Q&A.

Mtume Gant is an NYC based Filmmaker whose films include the hip hop sonata Spit, the politically charged White Face and Mold of Malachi, a scathing indictment of the racial politics of the entertainment industry. Mtume’s feature length debut The Hand That Feeds is due in 2025, and he is in development for his next film which deals with the Revolutionary Underground of the 60’s and 70’s. Mtume is currently an Assistant Professor of Film at SUNY Purchase College.

How do we keep doing this—making art? Stacey D’Erasmo had been writing for twenty years and had published three novels when she asked herself this question. She was past the rush of her first books and wondering what to expect—how to stay alive in her vocation—in the decades ahead.

THE LONG RUN by Stacey D'Erasmo: A conversation about sustaining oneself creatively in the long run across mediums with local Philly-based-artists Dito van Reigersberg, Julian Shendelman, and Alex Smith.

Advance registration greatly appreciated. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stacey D’Erasmo is the author of the novels Tea, A Seahorse Year, The Sky Below, Wonderland, and The Complicities, and the nonfiction book The Art of Intimacy. She is a professor of writing and publishing practices at Fordham University.

Since 2010, Address This! has been facilitating correspondence courses focusing on collective political education in PA prisons. In Address This! courses, participants’ responses are transcribed and sent back out to the cohort, creating a shared learning experience even for people held in the most restrictive conditions. Co-founders Saleem Holbrook and Emily Abendroth, along with early collaborators Felix Rosado and Iresha Picot, will talk about creating paths for collective learning and organizing on the inside.

Advance registration appreciated. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

ADVANCED REGISTRATION RECOMMENDED

Come co-work with other writers in three 40-minute units of silent writing, every other Friday starting September 20th, from 1–3:30 pm.

Writers and projects of any type are welcome. Includes 10-minute breaks between units, with optional task-oriented self-accountability check-ins. Feel no pressure to share the content of what you are working on during the sessions. The Writing Room provides a friendly, low-stress way to carve out focus through the silent company of others while learning to break larger (and sometimes daunting) projects into less stressful (and possibly pleasurable!) units of concentrated attention. BYO computer chargers, notepads, etc. Come and go as you please.

This method has been designed with the practices of writing pedagogy, mindfulness, trauma-informed nervous system regulation, and anarchist pedagogy in mind.

Facilitated by Shannan (she/they)

Scholar-activists Andrew Zonneveld and Modibo Kadalie present a new book documenting lesser-known histories of oppressed peoples of African, Indigenous, and European descent who lived and fought together for their collective liberation while building multi-racial and directly democratic communities within Georgia's most remote and secluded natural landscapes, from the earliest period of European colonialism up to the end of the U.S. Civil War and Reconstruction.

Advance registration is appreciated. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.

SPEAKERS

Andrew Zonneveld is an independent historian, master naturalist, and organizer from DeKalb County, Georgia. He is the author of "All Will Be Equalized!": Georgia's Freedom Seekers of the Swamps, Backwoods and Sea Islands, 1526-1890.

Modibo Kadalie is a scholar-activist and retired professor of political science with nearly 65 years of experience in the Civil Rights, Black Power, Pan-Africanist, and Social-Ecology movements. He is the author of Pan-African Social Ecology (2019), and Intimate Direct Democracy: Fort Mose, the Great Dismal Swamp, and the Human Quest for Freedom (2022).

As cruel legislation targeting transgender youth has surged nationwide, our team at the Campaign for Southern Equality has been at the frontlines of the crisis, offering direct support, accurate information, and practical solutions when it comes to accessing gender-affirming care or staying safe in school.

Through this relentless period, we've met so many trans youth and the people who love them, listening to their stories and understanding how they're grappling with these challenges – and finding joy everywhere they can.

Now, we're honored to share these stories with you through Trans Kids, Our Kids: Stories and Resources from the Frontlines of the Movement for Transgender Youth. All proceeds from the book will support the Trans Youth Emergency Project, which directly supports families of transgender youth.
This event will include a conversation with the authors; reading from TRANS KIDS, OUR KIDS; a panel discussion that includes co-authors Alexis Stratton and Adam Polaski, and cover designer Liz Williams; a Q&A focused on how you can take action; and a book signing. 

Advance registration is very much appreciated. CLICK HERE TO REGISTER.