Step 1: Donate to Sameer Project here (sugg. donation $30).

Step 2: Register for “Autonomies from Below and to the Left” here. (Please indicate on the form whether you will be attending in-person or online)

We have always been non-state peoples. As the civilizational crisis in the west intensifies, many peoples around the world deepen their commitments to their own histories and ways of life by declaring their autonomy.

In this workshop, we will examine the ways that communities continue to turn inward and out to build autonomies otherwise. While many of the cases will come from across the Americas, we will also discuss some historical practices of shared or communal tenure, such as the Palestinian Masha'a. We will look at what place-based autonomy means, how peoples or pueblos use it to preserve and protect life, and what lessons we can draw for our own liberation.

George Quispe is a popular educator, militant researcher and interlocutor of critical theory between abiayala and turtle island. His main areas of research are extractivism, critical thought, biopower and popular power. He recently translated Raul Zibechi’s Constructing Worlds Otherwise (Ak press, 2024), and served as a co-editor for NACLA’s Viva Palestina Libre (2024) volume on the connections between Latin America and Palestine.