The New SPACE

• The New School for Pluralistic Anti-Capitalist Education (New SPACE) is a new anti-capitalist educational project dedicated to developing and advancing ideas for liberatory social change. Together with the new movements for global justice, we believe that "another world is possible" -- a world free from the domination of capital and free for the flowering of human powers and talents.

  The New SPACE holds that free dialogue and the protection of dissenting views are essential for the development of liberatory ideas and for forging real unity among those struggling for liberation. We reject the suppression of dissenting views and individuals in the name of "unity," convinced that such suppression is antithetical to the working out of real unity. "Freedom," as Rosa Luxemburg reminds us, "is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently." Accordingly, one distinguishing aspect of our mission is to create an educational space -- not existent at present -- in which pluralistic dialogue and dissident perspectives are respected and encouraged.

  The New SPACE will be a place for exploring challenging questions that today's movements confront, such as: How do we build non-hierarchical movements that can sustain themselves? How can such movements safeguard grass-roots democracy? How do consciousness and ideas relate to movements for social transformation?

  Resolutely anti-authoritarian and non-sectarian, the New SPACE brings together anarchists, humanist Marxists, and others. All those who share our mission and goals are invited to join us as students, teachers, and partners in the development of this project. In particular, we will encourage and facilitate the participation of women, people of color, GLBT people and others who face exclusion and discrimination. We also envision a new space that young people, without ties to the old Left, will find welcoming. We seek, through our classes and other activities, to create an environment in which youth, working people from diverse backgrounds, intellectuals, and activists can dialogue and collaborate in order to make sense of, and transform, our world.

  
  New York City
  November 8, 2004