Kopkind 2014 Call for Participants
Kopkind, the magical retreat in Southern Vermont for media makers and activists is headed for its 16th summer, and is calling for people who are interested in attending to send letters of intent. The political camp for journalists and activists will be held from July 12 through 20. Letters of intent must be emailed to jwyp@earthlink.net by Saturday, June 14.
The project was started as a living memorial to the great radical journalist Andrew Kopkind. Since 1999 we have been bringing people together for a week-plus of political and cultural exploration, intellectual stimulation and rest, an experience of provocative ideas, delicious food and great company amid the pastoral beauty of Tree Frog Farm in Southern Vermont, where Andy spent twenty-five summers with his partner, John Scagliotti, the documentary filmmaker and pioneer in gay media, who is Kopkind’s administrator. This project in Andy’s name follows in his spirit of thinking deeply, living expressively and extending the field for freedom, pleasure and imagination.
The political camp brings younger journalists, activists and other media makers together with political veterans, whom we call mentors, to consider the issues of the day, their own work and the larger question of justice – toward creating a world fit to live in – in light of a particular theme.
This year’s theme is Solidarity vs. Alienation: Recovering the Commons, Envisioning Social Happiness.
We are still working out a number of details of the program, but are thrilled to have as a mentor Peter Linebaugh, about whom Robin D.G. Kelley (author of Freedom Dreams and a past special guest at Kopkind) has said, “There is not a more important historian living today. Period.” Peter, just retired from the University of Toledo in Ohio, is the author most recently of Stop, Thief!: The Commons, Enclosures and Resistance, a collection of essays which he wrote, he says, “to join the alarm against neoliberalism which steals our land, our lives, and the labors of those preceding us.” A brilliant, passionately imaginative thinker, he used to editZerowork and was a member of the Midnight Notes Collective. His book The London Hanged is a groundbreaking history of capital punishment in the industrial era as fundamentally a punishment of capital. The Many Headed Hydra (written with Marcus Rediker) tells the sweeping tale of sailors, slaves, commoners and the hidden history of the revolutionary Atlantic. The Magna Carta Manifesto maps the history of liberty from the Great Charter and its companion, the Charter of the Forest, linking human freedom to ecological and economic well-being – and their mutual endangerment to imperial prerogatives.
Participatory economics, participatory democracy, workers’ cooperatives, the commune or collective, the bohemian camp and liberationist underground – these have been part of the radical project for centuries. Slogans “All for one and one for all” and “An injury to one is an injury to all” and “In unity” evoke ancient impulses, the spirit of cooperation that was the basis for human society and survival. Expressions of the commons, they are also – because of that – expressions of resistance to privatized, commodified, alienated life. As corporate capitalism organizes for alienation (in the temp worker, the precarious worker, the dispossessed, the telecommuter, hyperconsumer and obsessive gamer, among others; in the estrangement from nature, the threat of lock-up, or lock-out, and the illusions of social media), where do we find, how do we live solidarity? Where might the “commonist” tradition take us, in imagination and actuality?
Program and Application:
Kopkind emphasizes intersections. We encourage young people to apply who have been at work for at least a few years as political journalists/media makers or activists (or hybrids) and who are committed to this work. Although the average age tends to be about 28, age is not a hard and fast category, except that for legal/insurance reasons we cannot invite people under 21.
Participants should come prepared to discuss, assess, explore their own work/political experience in relation to the theme.
The program is entirely free, including transportation. (The 12th and 20th are travel days.) There are seminars every morning from 9:30 to 12:30; free afternoons for swims, walks, games, conversation, rest; and evening discussions sometimes with special guests, one of which is a free public event.
The emphasis is on interaction and group enjoyment. Internet use is, therefore, limited.
People must be able to commit to the full program.
Participants stay in individual cabin rooms. We arrange for travel, as well as transport from airport or bus/rail station to Tree Frog Farm, and all meals.
Interested applicants should send a letter of intent, telling us a little about their work, themselves and their politics, and explaining why they would like to come this year in particular. They should also tell us how they heard about the project.
Letters should be sent to JoAnn Wypijewski, president of Kopkind, at jwyp@earthlink.net. If anyone has questions, please don’t hesitate to email her or phone 646.498.5810. Letters of intent should include all the applicants’ contact information, phones and mailing address, and must be submitted by Saturday, June 14, 2014.
