Press Releases

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SYMPOSIUM TO EXAMINE WAR, INEQUALITY AND JUSTICE

GLOBAL ACTIVISTS, POETS AND WRITERS FEATURED

(Worcester, MA – February 12, 2003) To recognize the global influence of poet and human rights activist Dennis Brutus, Worcester State College (WSC) will host an all-day event, “War, Inequality and Global Justice: A Symposium in Honor of Dr. Dennis Brutus,” Thursday, February 27, 2003.  Dennis Brutus, who was poet-in-residence at WSC in 2001, is paying a special visit to the campus to donate more of his papers to the Dennis Brutus Collection, the largest repository of his papers in the United States.  The symposium will include the following events:

8:30 – 9:45 a.m. in the Blue Lounge of the Student Center –A History & Politics of U.S. Foreign Policy with a Focus on Middle East, featuring Daniel Egan of UMass, Lowell.

10:00 – 11:15 a.m. in the Blue Lounge of the Student Center – Globalization and War from a Human Rights Perspective, featuring Winston Langley of UMass, Boston.

11:30 a.m. – 12:45 p.m. in the Blue Lounge of the Student Center – Inequality and War, with Michael Prokosch of United for a Fair Economy.

1:00 – 3:00 p.m. in the Multimedia Auditorium (Room 102) of the Ghosh Science and Technology Center – The Contemporary Movement for Global Justice, moderated by Martin Espada of UMass, Amherst with Dennis Brutus, Larry Robin of the Philadelphia Social Forum; a Worcester Peace Works representative; and a Worcester Global Action Network representative.

3:30 p.m.: Ceremony to accept papers to the Dennis Brutus Collection in the Worcester State College Library.

7:30 p.m. in the Multimedia Auditorium (Room 102) of the Ghosh Science and Technology Center – Evening of Poetry and Politics of Peace and Justice with nationally recognized poets Dennis Brutus, Martin Espada, Lamonte Steptoe and Marjorie Agosin.

All events are free and open to the public.  For additional information, please contact Corey Dolgon at 508-929-8159.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON SYMPOSIUM SPEAKERS

Dennis Brutus, more than any other single person, was responsible for South Africa’s and Rhodesia’s exclusion from the Olympic Games because of Apartheid. He was then banned from all political and social activity. Trying to escape his ban in 1963, he was arrested and subsequently sentenced to 18 months of hard labor on Robben Island off Capetown, South Africa, where he spent time breaking stones with Nelson Mandela. He has become an internationally recognized poet and human rights activist. He served as honorary co-president of Jubilee 2000 Afrika.  He was the recipient of the Langston Hughes Award in 1987 and received the first Paul Robeson Award for Excellence for Political Consciousness and Integrity from the Moonstone Foundation and Outstanding Teacher Award from the Institute for Policy Studies, Washington, D.C.  Brutus' first collection of poetry, Sirens, Knuckles and Boots (1962), was published in Nigeria while he was in prison in South Africa. His later works include Letters to Martha and Other Poems from a South African Prison (1969), A Simple Lust (1973), China Poems (1975), Stubborn Hope (1978), Salutes and Censures (1984), Airs and Tributes (1989), and Still the Sirens (1993). In 1982 he received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Worcester State College, at which time he donated an extensive collection of his papers to the college. In March 2000, he appeared with the Archbishop of South Africa Njongonkulu Ndungane, and participated in several human rights programs that were sponsored by the WSC Center for the Study of Human Rights. He was Poet-in-Residence at WSC in 2001. 

Daniel Egan (Ph.D. Boston College) of the Peace and Conflict Studies Institute at UMass, Lowell, teaches courses in the sociology of law and deviance. His teaching interests include theory, urban sociology, work and organizations, and political sociology. His research focuses on workers' cooperatives, progressive urban administrations, corporations, and the climate change in negotiations. Drawing on his research interests in globalization and international legal institutions, he is currently working on a book manuscript on progressive urban politics in London.

Winston Langley is associate provost and professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. A native of Jamaica, Dr. Langley immigrated to the United States in 1962. His research interests encompass human rights, alternative models of world order, and disarmament regimes. Recent publications include The Encyclopedia of Human Rights Since 1945 (Greenwood Publishing, 1999); “Nuclear Weapons and the International Court of Justice,” International Affairs, Spring 1997; Women's Rights in the United States: A Documentary History, Edited with Vivian Fox (Greenwood, 1994-Republished in paperback by Prager, 1998); and Human Rights: Sixty Major Global Instruments (McFarland & Co., 1992).

Michael Prokosch is a veteran Boston-based organizer who helped found CISPES (Committee in Support of People in El Salvador, which spearheaded opposition to U.S. policy in Central America during the 1980s). Prokosch is now staff to United For A Fair Economy, where he has established a new department on education and globalization that works closely with young people throughout New England. 

Larry Robin, owner and operator of Robin’s Book Store in Philadelphia, PA (“Philly’s literary cornerstone since 1936”) was impressed with Dennis Brutus when he met him in San Paulo, Brazil at the World Social Forum. According to Robin, “Dennis has been called the Johnny Appleseed of Social Forums, since wherever he visits; he leaves people inspired and wanting to have a social forum of their own. There are now about fifteen local Social Forums around the world.” The Philadelphia Social Forum meets each month at Robin’s Book Store.

Lamont B. Steptoe is a poet / photographer / publisher born and raised in Pittsburgh, PA. He is author of eight books of poetry including In the Kitchens of the Master, Mad Minute, Uncle's South Sea China Blue Nightmare, Cat Fish and Neckbone Jazz, Dusty Road, Common Salt and Trinkets and Beads. Steptoe is a father, Vietnam veteran, and founder of Whirlwind Press.  

Martin Espada, professor of creative writing at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has been hailed the “Latino poet of his generation.”  According to The Nation, Espada “defines political poetry for the turn of the century.” A Puerto Rican who was born in Brooklyn, NY, Espada won two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Massachusetts Artists’ Fellowship, the PEN/Revson Fellowship, and the Paterson Poetry Prize. His latest collection of poetry is A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen: Poems (W. W. Norton & Company, 2000). Espada's other books of poetry include Imagine the Angels of Bread (1996), which won an American Book Award; City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (1993); Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands (1990), a bilingual collection; and Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction (1987).

Marjorie Agosin is well known as a poet, critic, and human activist. She is also a well-known spokesperson for the plight and priorities of women in Third World countries. She was awarded the United Nations Leadership Award in Human Rights in 1998, a distinction from the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies  Harvard University, the Good Neighbor Award given by the Conference of Christians and Jews and the Jeanette Rankin Award in 1995.  She also received in 1995 two prestigious prizes given to Latino writers: the Letras de Oro prize and the Latino Literature Prize for two collections of poetry. She is currently a Professor of Spanish at Wellesley College. She has written almost 20 books of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and essays. Her most recent, Dear Ann Frank, is a collection of bilingual poems. Tapestries of Hope, Threads of Love, details the life of women under the Pinocet dictatorship.

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