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“When capitalism ends, humanity begins” is the statement that opens each Capital’s End event. Judging from the group’s frank open-mic discussions and diverse attendance, humanity seems alive and well. The weekly meetings at Lawrenceville’s Istanbul Grille have taken place every Sunday night since October, aiming to unite Pittsburgh’s anti-capitalist community.
“It’s supposed to get people thinking about alternatives to capitalism,” says Russ Fedorka, an artist who designed the group’s “Capital’s End Clock.” The hands of the clock are moved depending on how much recent world events signify capitalism’s decline. (Things like economic depressions and the 2008 bank bail-out are noted on the clock’s circumference.)
Each evening has a theme. After a drum circle, local artists, musicians, poets and activists perform or give presentations to stimulate discussion. At the heterosexism-themed event, on Dec. 17, presenters included a bisexual soldier who’d served in Iraq, and music came in the form of an opera aria.
“The themes are anything that challenges current perspectives,” says Angelle Guyette, one of the 30 or so people in attendance. The fiction-writer suffered a brain injury recently and will present at an ableism-themed Capital’s End on Feb. 24.
“We bring issues to people that they don’t necessarily know about,” says Capital’s End founder, Indiana University of Pennsylvania sociology professor Harvey Holtz. “There’s tremendous diversity in the anti-capitalist movement in Pittsburgh but it’s really segregated and isolated. If we bring all the disparate groups together, we can do something much larger than what they might do alone.” And not just anti-capitalists, Holtz adds: “I would hope to attract any progressives — anyone who thinks that the system needs a great deal of change.”
Attendees can BYOB, buy Turkish food from the restaurant and share anecdotes on stage. “It’s not a meeting: It’s a social space that people really enjoy being in,” Holtz says. “People go up to the microphone who wouldn’t usually go up.”
The theme of the Jan. 6 Capital’s End is democracy. “I’ll be asking, ‘Is democracy circumscribed by money, and what is real democracy?'” Holtz says. “We only have two parties and they both represent capitalism. I have a saying: ‘Two parties, one caterer.'”
Holtz’s key aim is to generate new ideas. “People should spend more time outside of electoral politics building movements to affect those within it,” he says.
This article appears in Jan 2-8, 2013.
Capitalism has brought the US to be the most successful, wealthy and powerful nation in the history of the world. Socialism/Communism/Dictatorships have never been successful. If you want the basics in life, Russia, China, Iran or Greece is the place for you. While the idea of these failed forms of government sounds great on it’s surface, the unintended consequenses as usual destroys those idea’s in real world conditions. When you have no incentives to succeed, human nature allows for people to be lazy or give up trying because their is no benefit. The US has led the world with the best technology and inventions for 100 years. The can do American spirit is what makes this country stand out. Any other form of government only leads to mediocrity. That is why our current course of easy to get on government programs and out of control debt that will destroy this country and it will continue to get worse on it’s present path. Want socialism/communism/dictatorship rule. Please feel free to move to another country. I doubt anyone of these members of this group will actually move and live in the environment they so badly wish for. This group will continue to live in their bizzare little dream world and thankfully will have NO affect on the rest of the population.
Capitalism is the problem not the solution. Its clear to so many who are now disenfranchised of the privileges that were once taken for granted as quantifying the substance of our civil rights. Most later 20th century Americans had come to feel secure enough in their “constitutional rights” that the very fabric of the constitution was put on a shelf and rarely referenced by the general public. In this climate of collective ignorance, the rights of the average citizen were increasingly rendered impotent and non-applicable to grand capitalistic scheme of things. Only the few reminded the many of the growing threat that BIG money posed to their civil and constitutional rights. BIG money is another name for free market capitalism. Free market capitalism is what every American is taught to honor, uphold, and die for. The grand folly of capitalism is that the corporate capitalists at the top of the free market will stop at nothing to gain control over the masses in order that their growth agenda plunder forward, scourging the earth and all its inhabitants in its path; creating wars when needed, destroying the environment when needed; cheating the people when needed. The colossal abomination lies in the fact that a great body of good and hard working people get the short end of the stick, while a handful of arrogant elitists determine, their fate; their plight, their agony; their defeat, their survival. pv