When We Fight Back: Resistance, Survival, and Risk
Thursday, July 20, 7pm

Join us for a screening of a series of short films on the options, resources and risks that people face when resisting sexual and gender violence, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Third World Newsreel and concurrent with the exhibition Take Back the Fight: Resisting Sexual Violence from the Ground Up.

Our program includes Janie’s Janie (1971, 25 minutes), Make Out (1970, 5 minutes), and Walking Home (2011, 4 minutes, a production of the Third World Newsreel Workshop) which link questions of personal autonomy and consent to the liberation movements of the time. We will also screen a series of three short videos (2017) from the organization Survived and Punished on the cases of Joan Little, Paris Knox, and Marissa Alexander that show the risks of repercussion that women, especially women of color, face when they choose to fight back against sexual and physical violence. Visit our website for more information.

Join us at at GetOrganizedBK’s Civic Festival!
Tuesday, July 25, 5:30-8:30pm

We’re heading over to Prospect Park to take part in GetOrganizedBK’s Civic Festival — and we’re bringing an Interference Archive propaganda party with us!

What is a propaganda party? It’s where we get together to make and share graphic and informational material that we can use in our organizing work. This is a time to meet people, learn about the work different organizations are doing, and pick up flyers, stickers, posters, buttons, and more. All this material is free to you.

What will we be doing on July 25 in Prospect Park? As part of the GetOrganizedBK Civic Festival, we’ll be giving away posters and stickers in support of many of the issues and movements the community is organizing around right now. We have space set up to make buttons, and we’ll be screenprinting onsite. And, as always, we’ll be meeting new people (that’s you!) and having great conversations about community organizing. We’re excited to see you there!

Take Back the Fight Exhibition Walk-Through
Sunday, August 6, 2pm

Our current exhibition, Take Back the Fight: Resisting Sexual Violence from the Ground Up, focuses on organized responses to gender and sexual violence, highlighting the ways individuals and communities have developed creative and powerful grassroots and non-institutional justice and healing practices. A collaboration with Lesbian Herstory Archives, Take Back the Fightnarrates intersecting histories of activism by and on behalf of survivors of sexual violence and their communities. The exhibition will coincide with a series of public events in order to collectively engage with the exhibition material, relating the histories presented to ongoing efforts to end and heal from sexual violence.

Join four of the Take Back the Night curators (Louise Barry, Rachel Corbman, Melissa Forbis, and Lani Hanna) for a conversation about the material included in the show, and the history of organizing against sexual violence.

This event is free and open to the public.

Come Read With Us!
New reading group starts August 12

Come read with us! A few of us have decided to spend some time reading together over the coming weeks at Interference Archive. We’ve decided to focus on The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander, because we thought this would be a great book to have people to talk about with — whether you’re reading it for the first time, or for a second (or third?!).

Our discussion will happen every second Saturday afternoon (4-6pm) at Interference Archive, starting August 12, 2017. Participants should find a copy of The New Jim Crow at your local public library or bookstore; we’ve outlined the schedule we’re hoping to stick to below, and we’ll read in advance of meeting each time.

We’re coming at this discussion not as experts, but as people who love to learn and who hope to learn from the others who come to this group. We’ll also work together to find related material in the Interference Archive collection for us to read if we choose; participants are encouraged to suggest related articles, podcasts, and books for others to check out as we go along.

Check out our reading schedule and discussion times on our website, or email us for more info.

New from Audio Interference: Sascha Altman DuBrul

Mad Pride and Radical Mental Health: Sascha Altman DuBrul and The Icarus Project

This week on Audio Interference Archive we’re talking to Sascha Altman DuBrul, the co-founder of the Icarus Project, a radical peer-to-peer mental health support group, about mad pride and radical mental health. The organization started in 2003 when DuBrul and a few friends started traveling the country and talking to people who had been diagnosed as bipolar or schizophrenic but rejected the dominant models of treatment. Listen here!

Take Back the Fight: Resisting Sexual Violence from the Ground Up
Exhibition Dates: June 1 – October 29, 2017

Recovery from trauma after sexual assault is often imagined as a personal, internal experience. However, an exclusive focus on individual narratives of victimization and healing can obscure decades of collective, grassroots struggle by and on behalf of sexual assault survivors. Rape is not an isolated experience, but a pervasive form of violence that acts in concert with oppression in the workforce, at home, and in medical and academic institutions--as well as with structural racism, homophobia, transphobia, and capitalism. Likewise, organizing against sexual violence is intimately linked to struggles for liberation in both public and private spheres. The history of organizing against sexual assault and rape helps us to understand feminist resistance to violence as a collective struggle against patriarchy, and sexual and gender violence as a function of state violence.

Interference Archive’s summer 2017 exhibition Take Back the Fight: Resisting Sexual Violence from the Ground Up focuses on organized responses to gender and sexual violence, highlighting the ways individuals and communities have developed creative and powerful grassroots and non-institutional justice and healing practices. A collaboration with Lesbian Herstory Archives, Take Back the Fight narrates intersecting histories of activism by and on behalf of survivors of sexual violence and their communities.

This exhibition will situate multiple histories of resistance to sexual violence within a broader narrative of feminist, anti-racist, and queer activism. It will present strategies of resistance, both historical and contemporary, looking at the ways in which activists have sought justice outside of the courts and the criminal justice system. Ultimately, Take Back the Fight will demonstrate the crucial role of grassroots organizing in the struggle against sexual violence and the importance of this activism as a tool of both healing and resistance. Read more on our website.