Kauffman, Jemison and Gerry to Speak on Sovereignty and Sustainability

Bill Kauffman, Peter Jemison and Lyn Gerry will be the speakers for a plenary session on sovereignty and sustainability, Sunday, August 9, 2009, 9:45 am — 11:15 am , on the solar stage on the Alfred University Campus Green, Alfred, NY. Bill Kauffman's talk is titled "Look Homeward, Greens: Why Localism Matters." Poetry readings by Michael Czarnecki will open and close the program.

Bill Kauffman is the author of eight books, including With Good Intentions? Reflections on the Myth of Progress in America (1998), Dispatches from the Muckdog Gazette: A Mostly Affectionate Account of a Small Town’s Fight to Survive (2003), Look Homeward, America: In Search of Reactionary Radicals and Front-Porch Anarchists (2006), which the American Library Association named one of the best books of 2006 and which won the Andrew Eiseman Writers Award, Ain’t My America: The Long Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle American Anti-Imperialism (Henry Holt/ Metropolitan/2008), which Barnes & Noble named one of the best books of 2008; and Forgotten Founder: Drunken Prophet: The Life of Luther Martin (2008). Bill is a regular contributor to the Wall Street Journal, the American Conservative, the Independent, Counterpunch and Orion. Bill is a critic of development, writes approvingly of distributism and agrarianism, and is strongly anti-corporate. He has described his politics as "a blend of Catholic Worker, Old Right libertarian, Yorker transcendentalist, and delirious localist."

G. Peter Jemison is the manager of Ganondagan State Historic Site, a recreation of a 17th-century Seneca village, located in Victor, New York. He is the editor of Treaty of Canandaigua 1794: 200 Years of Treaty Relations between the Iroquois Confederacy and the United States (2002), and the director of the film, Hanondagonyes 'Town Destroyer,' in which Seneca tribe members re-enact events of the 18th-century colonial wars and the campaign against them. Peter represents the Seneca Nation on repatriation issues, and serves on the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation and formerly served on the board of directors of the American Association of Museums. He is also an artist whose work has been widely shown for more than two decades. His paintings and drawings have shown in solo exhibitions at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo and at the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York. He was the founding director of the American Indian Community House Gallery in New York City.

Lyn Gerry is the host and producer of the Unwelcome Guests radio program about wealth, power, and peoples' resistance to the corporate world order. Unwelcome Guests is broadcast on 20 radio stations across the US, including WEOS Geneva, WXXE-FM Syracuse and Ithaca Community Radio. Lyn is a founder and collective member of the A-Infos Radio Project, and a founder of the revived Watkins Glen Farmers Market.

Michael Czarnecki is a poet and a poetry publisher from Wheeler, NY. Mike, his wife Carolyn, and their sons Grayson and Chapin operate Foothills Publishing, now in its 24th year publishing poetry.