Following yesterday’s video abstract from Matt Baillie Smith and Katy Jenkins (their paper, Existing at the Interface, is about Indian NGO activists as ‘strategic cosmopolitans’), and before we announce the recipients of this year’s Antipode Foundation Regional Workshop and Scholar-Activist Project Awards (they’re all about collaboration, engagement, and more ‘public’ geographies), we’re happy to be able to plug one of the conference themes for the 2013 Los Angeles AAG meeting, Activist Geographies: Struggles for Social and Environmental Justice, with a message from AAG President, and ex-Antipode editor, Eric Sheppard…

Los Angeles has become known US-wide as a place where diverse social and activist groups and movements have undertaken innovative struggles around such issues as conditions of work, immigration, borders, transportation, prisons, and environmental justice. Geographers at places such as the University of Southern California, the University of California, Los Angeles, and California State campuses, have worked closely on, and with, such movements. These times of burgeoning activism in cities worldwide, from the Arab awakening to the occupy movements, and of academic interest in activist research in and beyond geography, make Los Angeles a particularly appropriate place for a focus on activist geographies. Activist geographers, wherever they work, are encouraged to organize sessions to share research and learn from one another.

I hope that progressive geographers will take advantage of this moment.