Symposia Community Events – July 2010

Are you a forward-thinking artist, activist, academic, writer, scientist, teacher, poet or dreamer with a desire to contribute your ideas for the construction of a better world?  Consider sharing your story, theory, question, project, or wonderings on television.  Do you have a visionary plan for world peace? Would you like to name a problem that isn’t being named by corporate media? We’ll give you a rare public platform to shatter this silence: not as a “talking point,” but as part of a humane and transformative dialogue.

Like a true bohemian salon, we’ll also make space for art. Do you have a song, poem, or painting you’d like to share? Have you seen a film or play (or read a novel) that transformed or awakened you, or gave you a glimmer of radical hope? Would you like to share—or, perhaps discover, or refine—that meaning with a wider community? Maxine Greene, a philosopher of Education whose writing (and salons) inspire my own work, believes art helps us to “imagine things as if they could be otherwise.” With this in mind, what does Avatar have to teach us about a world that might be? And how might we build on the victories Reverend Billy (a NYC-based performance activist, and 2009 Green Party mayoral candidate) has won against Starbucks, Victoria’s Secret, and, most recently, Chase Manhattan Bank—with his hilarious, joyful brand of spiritual activism? In what ways is our emerging dialogue itself an art?

In a world in which ennui and lassitude and, in some cases, depression (manufactured by the corprotocracy) often keep us submerged in the banal routines of the everyday, how might we reach for—as Virginia Woolf called it—“moments of being?” In quest for a more caring and humane social order, how might we create a space for hope (a new, radiant Age of Aquarious?) that inspires our morning leaps out of bed and keeps us moving forward?

Here’s an article about us, recently published in the web magazine Hoboken Patch.

Our next taping is this Friday, 7 pm, at Hoboken’s Symposia Community Bookstore.

510 Washington St, Hoboken, NJ. RSVP if you’d like to be a guest (8 member panel) or audience member.

You can watch us Thursday evenings, from 8 to 9 pm, on HudsonCounty’s Public Access channel 19. And, we’re coming soon to NYC’s Manhattan Neighborhood Network!

Contact Information

• July 31st, 2010 at 7:00 PM.

• It’s a club that:
  Reminds you that books can be just as interactive as the internet!
  Encourages you to say more than just “Hi” to a colleague, roommate, or stranger.
  Makes you think outside the box.
  Increases your confidence.
  Transforms you to feel as if you’re just as good a public speaker as Obama (okay, well, maybe not, but pretty darn close!)
  Encourages you to USE the information in the real world.
  Allows you to bond with others.
  Requires you to have FUN!

  Organizer: Robin Sampson
  Book: Fierce Conversations by Susan Scott

  Contact Information

• Robin Sampson
• robinann04@aol.com