Making Worlds Bookstore

Remaking Democracy Book Talk and Performance April 5, 2026 • 3-5 PM .us
5100 Umbria St, Philadelphia, PA 19128
Suggested Donation: $6-60
free book with $20+

Join coauthors Danielle Chynoweth and Elizabeth Adams, PhD—alongside performer Samantha Rise and Malav, publisher of Common Notions Press—for an interactive workshop celebrating Remaking Democracy: How We Make the Worlds We Want, a guidebook for social change.

This two-hour event blends art, performance, and participation to explore how we can imagine and build more just futures. Featuring live performances throughout, the workshop connects creative expression with movements for social change.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Elizabeth Adams, PhD, is a composer, teacher, and caregiver. She produces anti-capitalist music concerts and worked on education and housing justice with Free University NYC & Crown Heights Tenant Union. She teaches at the School for Designing a Society.

Danielle Chynoweth is a media justice and housing rights leader working to end homelessness as an elected official. She co-founded Urbana’s Independent Media Center and worked at Prometheus Radio Project to expand community media.

ABOUT THE GUESTS
Samantha Rise is a Philadelphia-based, non-binary songcatcher and performer blending music, improvisation, and social justice. Their work invites vulnerability, healing, and connection—grounded in the belief that music is our birthright.

Malav Kanuga is founding editor and publisher of Common Notions Press, director of Making Worlds Cooperative, as well as a researcher, writer, and media activist.

Join us for a teach-in on Andean resistance movements in Bolivia and Peru on Sunday, November 23rd at 3 PM . Through talks, discussions, and hands-on activities, we’ll explore how Indigenous peoples, workers, and communities have resisted extractive systems, advanced reforms, and navigated the shifting tides between progress and rollbacks. This gathering brings together the Andean diaspora and allies to reflect, share, and imagine how these struggles can inspire solidarity and action today.

About the facilitators:

Miguel Z. and Christine V. are members of the Andean diaspora in Philadelphia and active participants in local community organizations. They both have studied at the Abolition School and are passionate about sharing histories of Andean resistance. Miguel and Christine are excited to connect these stories to contemporary struggles and engage the community in learning and reflection.
miguel.vargas

Join us for a community dialogue on Zohran Mamdani's historic win for New York City Mayor. What are the challenges, perils and opportunities for the left opened up by this victory? Hosted by Left Voice Magazine and anchored by a panel discussion between Michael Regan, Juan Cruz Ferre, and Francesca Maria.

This Friday, November 14th at 6 PM at Making Worlds.

Has there ever been “traditional marriage” in America? The belligerent myth of “traditional marriage” obscures a rich history. Join us for a seminar-style discussion focusing on experiments in marriage practices in the nineteenth-century U.S. Even in the petticoated, corseted nineteenth century, women and men embraced diverse practices around s*x, family, and labor—from Shaker celibacy to Mormon polygamy. We’ll use these stories to help us think through conundrums of gender and change in the present.

Wednesday, November 19 at 5 PM at Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center!

About the Facilitator: Anna Apostolidis is a PhD student in the history department at UPenn. Her academic work focuses on the cultural, legal, and political history of consent in the early American republic. She is passionate about using history as a tool for contextualizing and challenging the present.

Black people have been central to the development of democracy in the United States. From the abolition of slavery to the hard-won victories of the Civil Rights Movement, the struggle for Black liberation has not only advanced the cause of justice—it has fundamentally shaped the Constitution itself. The 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments—cornerstones of civil rights—are the enduring legacy of this fight for freedom, equality, and citizenship.

Today, the eruption of ICE raids, the eradication of DEI initiatives, and the dismantling of the Department of Education amount to an all-out assault on these hard-won rights. Unprecedented in many respects, this is the latest chapter in a long history of reactionary racism at every level of government. What these attacks share in common is a concerted effort to eviscerate the protections guaranteed by the 14th Amendment.

In this timely and urgent lecture series, movement lawyer Ewuare Osayande provides a critical overview of this protracted struggle. Join us for a powerful conversation that connects the past, confronts the present, and charts a path toward a truly democratic future.

Thursday, November 20th at 5:30 PM at Making Worlds Bookstore & Social Center.

Hello everyone! Unfortunately, P.E. was injured a couple of days ago and can't make the trek down to Philly. We are cancelling the event.

You can still drop by Making Worlds to pick up a copy of the book. We hope is recovering well!

Saturday, November 15 at 6 PM
Tongues in Color Read for Peace

Given the multiple faces of a grieving and debilitating world, a group of international poets have joined forces to produce a moment of healing through poetry. Hailing from different corners of the world, the women are united in their voice for peace. The time will be allotted for a welcome meditation, individual reading of featured poets, audience discussion of the theme(s) proposed and a healing circle.

With readings from:

Carole Metellus, Haīti
Katherine Antarikso, Indonesia
Alina MacNeal, Poland
Faleeha Hassan, Iraq
Anjoli Santiago, Puerto Rico
Daniela Johannes, Chile

Sunday November 16th 4p to 6p
The Future of Revolution: Jasper Bernes in conversation with Arturo Castillon

How might a twenty-first-century revolution against class society succeed?

Communism comes from the future, but its hopes haunt our past. Reading revolutionary history from the Paris Commune to the George Floyd Uprising by the light of communist theory, from Marx to C. L. R. James, The Future of Revolution illuminates the possibilities for overcoming class society in the twenty-first century.

Jasper Bernes lives in Oakland and teaches in the English Department at the University of California, Berkeley. A regular contributor to the Field Notes section of the Brooklyn Rail, he is the author of The Work of Art in the Age of Deindustrializationand two books of poetry, We Are Nothing and So Can You and Starsdown.

Arturo Castillon is a writer, independent researcher, and high school teacher living in Philadelphia. With Shemon Salam, he is co-author of several texts which appeared in The Revolutionary Meaning of the George Floyd Uprising (Daraja, 2021) and The George Floyd Uprising (PM Press, 2023). Other works include “Policing and Resistance in Philadelphia” in Black Quantum Futurism: Space-Time Collapse II (The AfroFuturist Affair/House of Future Sciences Books, 2020) and “Bury Me Not in a Land of Slaves” (Fragments Distro, 2019).

Join us Friday, November 7th at 6 PM for the launch of Sheena King's Submerged: On Healing from Abuse While Navigating a Lifetime of Imprisonment. This book is a raw, harrowing memoir anchored in revolutionary and transformative love. Sheena is presently serving a life sentence at SCI Muncy in Muncy, PA, so this book launch and celebration will feature special audio readings from Sheena herself and stickers signed by Sheena so people can get a signed copy, plus in-person discussion with her advocates, support network, and family including Rikeyah Lindsay from Straight Ahead, Valerie Kiebala, Rosanne Harth, and Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center, poet and author Steve Bloom (and Sheena's editor), Sheena's daughter, Keeva King, and possibly others. Join us to celebrate the release of Submerged which offers essential insights for all who want to understand and participate in the growing movement for alternatives to incarceration.

Sheena King is presently serving a life sentence at SCI Muncy in Muncy, PA, where she is an advocate for incarcerated women, with degrees in religious studies and Christian counseling. She is the published author of a book of poems and journal entries titled UnHeard Soul and 3Sum. Her poems and essays have been published in journals including Let's Get Free, Daughters, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Pittsburgh Peace and Justice Newspaper, Prison Health News, Centers for Wisdom, and Tenacious. Her work has also appeared in several anthologies, including International Library of Poetry, and Interrupted Life: Experiences of Incarcerated Women in the United States. Her newest book is Submerged: On Healing from Abuse While Navigating a Lifetime of Imprisonment (PM Press, 2025).

Cosponsored by PM Press and the Abolitionist Law Center.

World Poetry Books welcomes one of Greece’s most radical poetic voices, Jazra Khaleed to read from and discuss his English-language debut The Light That Burns Us, an unapologetic indictment of the wrongs faced by immigrants, by a rudderless young European generation, by leftist activists in a Greece and a Europe blighted by neoliberal policies of deregulation and privatization.

Jazra Khaleed is an Athens-based poet, translator, and filmmaker whose works focus on issues of working-class experiences and cultures, homeland and origin, immigration and war, and are an indictment of racism, social injustice, and classism in contemporary Greece. He has published four collections of poetry and his work is widely translated into European and Asian languages. English translations of his poems have appeared in The Guardian, Los Angeles Review of Books, World Literature Today, and elsewhere. He is a founding editor of the Athenian poetry magazine Teflon and specializes in translating political and experimental poetry into Greek. His short films have been featured at international film festivals. The Light That Burns Us is the first book of his poetry to appear in English translation.

Khaleed will be joined by Ahmad Almallah, Philadelphia-based Palestinian poet, whose collection Border Wisdom (2023) is a meditation on borders and displacement, and whose latest work Wrong Winds (2025) considers the impossible task of being Palestinian in the world today.

Tomorrow we will be calling in to our friends in North and South Gaza for updates on the critical medical situation. Both medical professionals have been volunteering at remaining hospitals, with limited access to medication and barely any medical equipment left.

A Q+A form will be sent in advance and they will answer our questions and provide updates from the dire situation. Funds raised from this event will be used to enact a field hospital and provide urgent care to the neighborhood.

Our speakers are Nada, 20 year old 4th year nursing student, Al Shifa hospital + Yusuf, 21, 5th year medical doctorate student.

Our next two writer's room meetups with Renya are on Wednesday, November 12th and Wednesday, November 26th from 4:30 PM - 6:30 PM. Yes, you can bring anything you're working on! Scripts, short stories, poems, theses--if you are a writer looking for a little support and community, please drop in.