Saturday, May 30, 2015

Left Forum 2015 - Saturday Evening Event


 
From the 2015 Left Forum, held May 29 -31 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The conference theme was "No Justice, No Peace: Confronting the Crises of Capitalism & Democracy."

From the Organizers:

The 2015 Left Forum will take place in a period of excitement and challenge. Police violence is now being contested by a popular upsurge of protest and resistance. From the recent Syriza victory in the Greek elections and movements against austerity throughout Europe to the spread of horizontal-democratic politics around the world, and from the nationwide activism arising out of Ferguson and the Black Lives Matter movements, to the growing momentum to end the Cuban embargo, recent events and left politics are shaping up to be pivotal. How do these movements raise the question of confronting and ending the crises of capitalism and democracy? What type of movements will it take in the United States to overcome such challenges and where are they forming on the ground, and what is their scope? What type of institutions, systems and societal conditions are possible here, when transformed conditions of justice no longer take the forms of, “the aggrieved speaking to the grievance alleviators”? The Saturday evening event turns the exploration of these issues towards a discussion of social transformation as it has arisen, and can arise in the U.S. in relation to the Black Lives Matter, anti police-violence and anti police-militarization justice movements, among others.

Introductory Remarks:

Kristin Lawler (Member, Left Forum Board of Directors and Host for the Evening) is associate Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at College of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx. Her first book, The American Surfer: Radical Culture and Capitalism, was published by Routledge in 2011 and examined the politics of American surf culture during the twentieth century. She is a member of the editorial collective of the journal Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination; her work has been published there as well as in several edited collections, Z Magazine, and the digital forum of the Social Science Research Council. Dr. Lawler received her Ph.D. from the CUNY Graduate Center and worked as a staff organizer for the PSC, the CUNY faculty union. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children, and she is currently at work on a book on slacker culture and the labor movement.

Moderator/Interlocutor:

Paul Jay is CEO and Senior Editor of The Real News Network with HQ in Baltimore. TRNN is independent of political parties, viewer supported and not-for-profit. TRNN does not accept advertising, government or corporate funding. This funding model allows for uncompromising broadcast journalism. Its mission is to be a daily video news service, online and on television, engaging a mass audience in solving the critical problems of our time. Prior to TRNN, Jay was for ten seasons the creator and executive producer of CBC Newsworld's flagship debate programs Face Off and CounterSpin, an award winning filmmaker, and founding Chair of Hot Docs! Documentary Film Festival.

Featured Speakers:

Alicia Garza is an organizer, writer, and freedom dreamer living and working in Oakland, CA. She is the Special Projects Director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance, the nation’s leading voice for dignity and fairness for the millions of domestic workers in the United States, most of whom are women. She is also the co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter, a national organizing project focused on combatting anti-Black state sanctioned violence. Alicia's work challenges us to celebrate the contributions of Black queer women's work within popular narratives of Black movements, and reminds us that the Black radical tradition is long, complex and international. Her activism reflects organizational strategies and visions that connect emerging social movements without diminishing the specificity of the structural violence facing Black lives.

Glen Ford is Executive Editor of Black Agenda Report (BAR) and Black Agenda Radio. He founded the Black Commentator which he left to found BAR with Bruce Dixon and Margaret Kimberley. BAR provides news, commentary and analysis from a Black Left perspective.


Kshama Sawant is an activist who brings a passion for social justice to her work. As a member of the Seattle City Council, she has been a voice for workers, youth, and the oppressed. After earning her PhD in economics, Kshama moved to Seattle and began teaching at Seattle Central Community College, Seattle University, and the University of Washington Tacoma. She joined Socialist Alternative in 2009, and since then has helped organize demonstrations for marriage equality, participated in the movement to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and was a leading presence in the Occupy Movement. In November 2013, she defeated a 16-year incumbent Democrat to become the first socialist elected in a major US city in decades and the only Councilmember in Seattle outside the Democratic Party establishment. Kshama has consistently used her position to expose the ties between powerful corporate interests and a majority of the city's politicians - all Democrats. After being at the forefront of the movement that won a $15/hour minimum wage, Kshama helped win critical funding for homeless people in the City budget last year. She is up for re-election this year.

Makayla Gilliam-Price is a 17 year old Baltimore activist. Makayla founded the youth justice organization, City Bloc, and also organizes with Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, a youth led, grassroots think-tank which advances the public policy interest of Black people in Baltimore. She is a rising senior at Baltimore City College High School.

Thenjiwe McHarris is with the US Human Rights Network. She has spent her entire political and professional career challenging the injustices that imprison people and their communities in a life of poverty or one behind bars. She has worked on a number of campaigns including those that addressed state repression around the world, the transfer of military equipment and technology, capital punishment, excessive use of force by law enforcement, and poverty. McHarris began her political career calling for an end to policies and practices that contributed to acts of torture committed by law enforcement and currently helps to coordinate efforts to hold the US Government accountable for violating international human rights law.

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

Left Forum 2015 - Empire in Crisis: Uniting the Struggles to Defeat Racist State Terror, Austerity, and Endless War


 
This is a panel from Session 4 of the 2015 Left Forum, held May 29 -31 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The conference theme was "No Justice, No Peace: Confronting the Crises of Capitalism & Democracy."

Note: The lights in the room (and the entire building) went out shortly after the one hour mark.

From the Organizers:

The global system of capitalism has created an endless crisis for working class people. For people of color, this crisis is even greater, as racist police brutality terrorizes communities across the US. Combined with cuts in education and basic services, mounting state violence has reached genocidal proportions for communities of color and poor people. Meanwhile, the US has fought wars in seven countries since 2008, bringing a crisis of endless wars by direct bombing or proxy. All for the purpose of profits for an increasing desperate system.  This panel will connect these major issues as the symptoms of one system in crisis, imperialism. We will discuss how we can practically unite these struggles to fight back and win a world of social justice and peace.

Panel Chair:

Ramiro Funez is an organizer with the revolutionary socialist young people's organization FIST (Fight Imperialism Stand Together) as well as the Honduran Resistance (FNRP).

Panelists:

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire and Workers World Newspaper. He is a long-time activist in Detroit and been active in struggles against racist austerity, bankruptcy, and the ongoing effort to put a moratorium on housing foreclosures.

Sara Flounders is the Co-Coordinator of International Action Center

Teresa Gutierrez is a Workers World Party Secretariat Member as well as an organizer of the May 1st Coalition for Workers and Immigrants Rights.

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

Left Forum 2015 - Corporate Dominance: Our Debt-Money System and the Trans-Pacific Partnership


May 30, 2015

This panel from the 2015 Left Forum focused on the workings of our debt-money system and its connection to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Termed a "free trade" agreement, it in fact creates a mechanism that allows multinational corporations to sue sovereign governments.

Panelists:

Paula Pace is a practicing mediator and facilitator. She formerly worked as an attorney with the Legal Aid Society and the Attorney General and also taught junior high school in NYC public schools. She has been active in "Local Futures," an organization that both provides a structural analysis of globalization and its effects and promotes local, sustainable development.

Sue Peters has been a student of monetary history since 2008, and has spoken publicly on the topic at colleges and civic groups. She graduated from NYU with a degree in history and from Bank Street College with a degree in education, worked for 32 years on Wall Street as a systems analyst, and has been applying her expertise to the money system. She is a member of the American Monetary Institute.

Don Butterfield graduated with degrees in architecture and engineering and served as a naval officer from 1955 to 1958. He has run a small practice in architecture and engineering since 1969. He became familiar with monetary reform when he read The Lost Science of Money. After joining the American Monetary Institute he did further research on the history of money in the United States. He is an active advocate of debt free sovereign money, and strongly opposes the TPP.

Related Link: American Monetary Institute

Left Forum 2015 - The Climate Mobilization: A Route to Reclaiming Democracy and Preventing Ecological Collapse


 
This is a panel from Session 2 of the 2015 Left Forum, held May 29 -31 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The conference theme was "No Justice, No Peace: Confronting the Crises of Capitalism & Democracy."

From the Organizers:

Without a decisive break from business-as-usual politics, scientists warn that accelerating global warming threatens both economic and ecological collapse in a matter of decades. To secure a climate that supports organized human societies for the rest of the 21st century, it will now take nothing less than a rapid, wartime-level economic effort to transition the world's nations to 100% clean energy, adapt to unavoidable disruptions, and begin the long process of withdrawing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. Whatever we call this response to our unprecedented crisis — a Green New Deal, a Marshall Plan for the Earth, a WWII-scale Climate Mobilization — how can we build the critical mass of public will that makes a just post-carbon transition possible in the United States? Is it possible to mobilize an intense bloc of citizens behind such an ambitious platform by 2016? Panelists will discuss The Climate Mobilization, a growing national campaign to accelerate the American climate movement toward the mobilization we need.

Margaret Klein Salamon, PhD, is co-founder and director of Climate Mobilization. Klein earned her doctorate in clinical psychology from Adelphi University and also holds a BA in social anthropology from Harvard. Though she loved being a therapist, Margaret felt called to apply her psychological and anthropological knowledge to solving climate change. Her writing can be viewed at The Climate Psychologist

Left Forum 2015 - Entertainment Superpower: Media Technology and the American Empire


This is Session 1 from the 2015 Left Forum, held May 29 -31 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The conference theme was "No Justice, No Peace: Confronting the Crises of Capitalism & Democracy."

From the Organizers:

This panel will explore Hollywood and entertainment technology as an organ of U.S. cultural, political, economic, and military dominance. For example, U.S. military surveillance, targeting, and weapons systems use technology, which was primarily developed for motion pictures and entertainment software (or the consumer electronics market). U.S. military hegemony is based on the ability of the U.S. Navy to dominate the world's oceans (due partially to the superior numbers and technology of US naval vessels), augmented by U.S. dominance in space-based reconnaissance technology, which is made possible by entertainment software consumers and movie-goers worldwide. The U.S. media and entertainment sectors are the only American sectors that boast a surplus balance of trade with nearly every nation in the world. Information clearinghouses and data heuristics from social media are now part of an exploding U.S. private industry in league with the U.S. Intelligence Community and law enforcement.

Panel Chair:

Alexa O'Brien is a investigative journalist. In 2013, she was shortlisted for the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism in the UK for her coverage of Chelsea Manning’s court-martial, and she had written extensively on the technical cross fertilization between entertainment and defense industries.

Panelists:

Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer prize winning journalist and author. He will speak to the social and political impact of Hollywood movies like “American Sniper”. He recently wrote a review of the film entitled, “Killing Ragheads for Jesus”.

Tim Shorrock is a Washington-based investigative journalist and author. He will speak about the role of U.S. private intelligence companies in mass surveillance as well as Sony Corporation's ties with the U.S. Department of Defense and the Rand Corporation in the context of the movie, "The Interview" about the assassination of the leader of North Korea.

Ray Nowosielski is a national security journalist and documentary filmmaker whose covers the CIA. He was threatened with violating the Intelligence Identities Protection Act for his journalistic work uncovering the identity of a woman reportedly behind the CIA Global Jihad Unit and drone kill list program. He will speak to Hollywood’s portrayal of the CIA and the war on terror in films like Zero Dark Thirty.

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

Friday, May 29, 2015

Left Forum 2015 - Opening Plenary: Syriza, Podemos, Left Bloc & the Left: A European Revolutionary Politics?


This is the Opening Plenary from the 2015 Left Forum, held May 29 - 31 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The conference theme was "No Justice, No Peace: Confronting the Crises of Capitalism & Democracy."

From the Organizers:

The opening plenary will focus on anti-austerity politics, alliances, and national and international political potentials and challenges emerging in Europe and impacting the world. Speakers will question and address the revolutionary dimensions of these developments - in the context of a mass-based political, economic, cultural, ecological, race, gender, and class struggle-illuminating politics - of electoral, left, and social movement organizing.

Eduardo Maura teaches Philosophy and History of Aesthetic Ideas at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Elected member of the Citizen Council of Podemos, he is co-responsible for the area of Culture and works in the Political Secretariat.

Leo Panitch is a Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy at York University. He has been the editor of The Socialist Register since 1985 and is a regular contributor to publications such as the Guardian and Jacobin. He has spoken extensively on air on the current crises and mobilizations in Europe, and he is currently engaged with Syriza members inside and outside of the government. He is the author of many books including Working Class Politics in CrisisAmerican Empire and the Political Economy of Global FinanceIn and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown, and co-authored with Sam Gindin The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of the American Empire.

Caterina Principe is a Portuguese activist living in Berlin, Germany and studying her Masters in Gender Studies. She has been a key activist in the anti-precarity movement in Portugal as well as part of the Blockupy Platform in Germany. She is both a member of Bloco de Esquerda and Die Linke and has inside knowledge about different left organizations in southern Europe. She is currently a consulting editor for Jacobin Magazine, and has been spending the last months in Greece reporting on and analyzing the political developments.

Konstantino Tsoukalas is Doctor of Literature and Humanities at the University of Paris. He has served as Professor of Sociology at the universities of Paris, Thessaloniki and Athens, Scientific Director and later Chairman of the Board of the National Centre for Social Research, President of the Union of Greek Sociologists, President of the Hellenic Association of Political Science and visiting scholar at the Universities of Princeton, New York University, Columbia, Iztapalapa Mexico City, Istanbul, Paris and the Department of Economics of University of Athens. He has published multiple articles and books, his most recent publication being The Naked Queen: The Works and Times of Economic Discourse. He is a member of the Greek parliament since the January 2015 elections.

Laura Flanders (Moderator/Interlocutor) is Executive Producer and host of The Laura Flanders Show. She was the founder and host of GRITtv with Laura Flanders on Free Speech TV and The Laura Flanders Show on Air America Radio. She is currently a contributing writer to The Nation and a regular contributor to MSNBC. Her books include BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species, Blue GRIT: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians.

Kristin Lawler (Member, Left Forum Board of Directors and Host for the Evening and Interlocutor) is associate Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at College of Mount Saint Vincent in the Bronx. Her first book, The American Surfer: Radical Culture and Capitalism, was published by Routledge in 2011 and examined the politics of American surf culture during the twentieth century. She is a member of the editorial collective of the journal Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination; her work has been published there as well as in several edited collections, Z Magazine, and the digital forum of the Social Science Research Council. Dr. Lawler received her Ph.D. from the CUNY Graduate Center and worked as a staff organizer for the PSC, the CUNY faculty union. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children, and she is currently at work on a book on slacker culture and the labor movement.

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

Left Forum 2015 - Against the Narrative: Independent Media and The Left


 
This is Session A from the 2015 Left Forum, held May 29 -31 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The conference theme was "No Justice, No Peace: Confronting the Crises of Capitalism & Democracy."

From the Organizers:

Mainstream & corporate media set a narrow agenda in the US and abroad, marginalizing any voice that speaks for justice, peace, democracy, local autonomy, environmental protection and more. This panel focuses on the goals, gains, and ground game of the independent media and the current state of setting and speaking an agenda counter to the mainstream narrative

Panel Chair:

Julianna Forlano is the creator, host, & executive producer of the primetime news/talk show, The Julianna Forlano Show, heard on WBAI 99.5 FM in New York City and nationally via The Pacifica Network & The Progressive Voices Radio Network. Ms. Forlano is also the host and creator of the award winning multi-platform political news satire series, Absurdity Today. Ms. Forlano teaches in the Department of Television & Radio at Brooklyn College.

Panelists:

Paul Jay is Senior Editor of The Real News Network with HQ in Baltimore. TheRealNews.com is daily video news, non-profit, supported by viewers. It does not accept advertising, government or corporate funding. Its mission is to engage a mass audience in solving the critical problems of our time. For ten years Jay was executive producer of CBC Newsworld's flagship debate programs Face Off and CounterSpin, is an award winning filmmaker, and founding Chair of Hot Docs! Documentary Film Festival.

Glen Ford is a veteran journalist and the Executive Editor of BlackAgendaReport.com.

Eddie Conway is a former Black Panther, for forty years a political prisoner, and now with The Real News Network.

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Trebbe Johnson - Radical Joy for Hard Times



Endicott, NY; May 19, 2015

Trebbe Johnson, author and founder of Radical Joy for Hard Times, claims that we need to broaden our definition of environmental activism in 6 ways. The new activism must be: 
  • Handy
  • Rooted in the present, even as we work for the future
  • Able to accept that people feel grief when the places they love are destroyed
  • Able to transform that grief
  • Local and small as well as global and large
  • Fun
One way to begin doing this is to pay attention to the places among us that have been damaged.

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

UNAC Conference 2015 - Their Power vs. Ours: Challenging the Warfare State


 
This is Panel 6 (the Closing Plenary) from the Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad Conference, held May 8 -10, 2015 in Secaucus, NJ and sponsored by the United National AntiWar Coalition (UNAC).

Followed by: Greetings From International Guests

Submit an application for your organization to join UNAC.

Panel Co-Chairs:

Joe Lombardo, Co-Coordinator, UNAC
Mari Matsuo, Antiwar & Social Justice Activist

Presenters:

Malik Mujahid, Muslim Peace Coalition
Dr. Mazeda Uddin, South Asian Fund for Education, Scholarship & Training
Cynthia McKinney, Former Six-Term US Congresswoman
Peter Van Buren, Author & US State Dept. Whistleblower
Cheri Honkala, Anti-Poverty & Human Rights Advocate
Dr. Ghias Moussa, Syrian American Forum
Ann Wright, Ret. US Army Colonel; Gaza Freedom Flotilla
Chris Nineham, UK Stop the Wars Coalition
Elizabeth Byce, New Democratic Party of Canada, Socialist Caucus
Elsa Rassbach, Co-Founder, German Drone Campaign

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

Sunday, May 10, 2015

UNAC Conference 2015 - Challenging Imperialist Wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen & Beyond


 
This is Breakout Session 3 from the Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad Conference, held May 8 -10, 2015 in Secaucus, NJ and sponsored by the United National AntiWar Coalition (UNAC).

Panel Chair:

Judy Bello, Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones & End the Wars

Presenters:

Johnny Achi, Coordinator, Arab Americas for Syria
Ray McGovern, Antiwar Activist, Former CIA Analyst
Cynthia McKinney, Former Six-Term U.S. Congresswoman
Bill Dores, Vice Chair, International League of Peoples' Struggle

Saturday, May 9, 2015

UNAC Conference 2015 - Tribunal on the Militarization of the Police & Structural Racism


 
This is Panel 5 from the Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad Conference, held May 8 -10, 2015 in Secaucus, NJ and sponsored by the United National AntiWar Coalition (UNAC).

Panel Co-Chairs:

Sara Flounders, International Action Center
Imani Keith Henry, Equality for Flatbush Project (E4F)

Presenters:

Michelle Kamal, Mother of Abdul Kamal
Manzoor Cheema, Muslims for Social Justice, NC
Margaret Stevens, Director, Urban Issues Institute
Kevin Zeese, Activist, Organizer with Popular Resistance
Jane Ledesma, East Flatbush CopWatch
Marilyn Zuniga, Teacher from Orange, NJ
Larry Holmes, People's Power Assemblies
Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou, Author, Activist, Pastor FOR Organizer in Ferguson

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

UNAC Conference 2015 - The Cost of Endless War & Austerity


 
This is Panel 4 from the Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad Conference, held May 8 -10, 2015 in Secaucus, NJ and sponsored by the United National AntiWar Coalition (UNAC).

Panel Co-Chairs:

Ana Edwards, Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality
Christine Marie, Connecticut United for Peace

Presenters:

Shafeah M'Balia, Black Workers for Justice, North Carolina
Ramiro Funez, National Popular Resistance Front of Honduras
Antonia Juhasz, Author, Activist, Oil Energy Expert
Lawrence Hamm, People's Organization for Progress
Clarence Thomas, ILWU Local 10
Rolandah Cleopattrah McMillan, Raise Up for $15, Virginia
Andre Francois, USW 8751, Boston School Bus Drivers Union

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

UNAC Conference 2015 - Free Political Prisoners


 
This is Panel 3 from the Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad Conference, held May 8 -10, 2015 in Secaucus, NJ and sponsored by the United National AntiWar Coalition (UNAC).

Panel Co-Chairs:

Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report
Jeff Mackler, Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

Presenters:

Alejandro Molina, Editor, USA on Trial
Pam Africa, Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mark Burton, Criminal Defense & Civil Rights Attorney
El-Hajj Mauri' Saalakhan, Coalition Against Political Imprisonment
Sharmin Sadequee, Prisoners & Families Committee, NCPCF
Lynne Stewart, Human Rights Lawyer, Former Political Prisoner

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

UNAC Conference 2015 - Kathy Kelly Speaks with Nick Mottern


 
Nick Mottern (KnowDrones.com) interviews well-known peace activist Kathy Kelly on drone warfare and related topics.

This interview took place at the Stop the Wars at Home and Abroad National Conference, sponsored by the United National AntiWar Coalition (UNAC), and held in Secaucus, NJ, May 8 -10, 2015.

Related Link: Voices for Creative Nonviolence

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

UNAC Conference 2015 - Confronting State Terrorism, Domestic & Global Policing


 
Secaucus, NJ
May 8 -10, 2015

This is a Breakout Session from the Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad Conference, held May 8 -10, 2015 in Secaucus, NJ and sponsored by the United National AntiWar Coalition (UNAC).

Panelists: Nick Mottern, Kathy Kelly, & Debra Sweet

Includes some lively and interesting discussion by audience members.

Related Links:

Voices for Creative Nonviolence
KnowDrones
The World Can't Wait

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

UNAC Conference 2015 - Ray McGovern's Statement on Drone Warfare


 
Secaucus, NJ
May 8 - 10, 2015

An impromptu statement by ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern at the 2015 United National AntiWar Coalition (UNAC). In the second half he explains why he left the CIA and became an antiwar activist.

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

UNAC Conference 2015 - Endless Imperial Wars


 
Secaucus, NJ
May 8- 10, 2015

This is Panel 2 from the Stop the Wars at Home & Abroad National Conference, sponsored by the United National Antiwar Coalition.

Co-Chairs: Judy Bello, Lucy Pagoada

Panelists & Guests (In Order of Appearance):

Susan Abulhawa, Author "Mornings in Jenin"
Johnny Achi, Coordinator of Arab Americans for Syria
Joel Andreas, Author of "Addicted to War"
Abayomi Azikiwe, Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Bernadette Ellorin, Chairperson, BAYAN USA
Glen Ford, Executive Editor, Black Agenda Report
Bruce Gagnon, Coordinator, Global Network against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
Irina Koval, Patriot+ Foundation, Odessa, Ukaine
Ray McGovern, Antiwar activist and former CIA Analyst
Phil Wilayto, Virginia Defenders for Freedom Justice & Equality
Kaylee Knowles, People's Power Assemblies, NYC

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

Alison Weir: Against Our Better Judgment


 
Binghamton University
May 5, 2015

The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel

Alison Weir discusses her new book, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel, which documents the history of the Israel Lobby in the U.S. Weir will also discuss the root of the current violence in Israel-Palestine, distorted media coverage of the region, and why US taxpayers continue to send Israel nearly $10 million per day. A Q&A session followed her talk.

Alison Weir is executive director of If Americans Knew, a research and information-dissemination institute that focuses on Israel-Palestine. Weir first began to study the U.S.-Israel relationship after traveling to the Middle East as an independent journalist in 2001. She has lectured internationally on the American connection to the region, and her essays and articles have appeared in a number of books and magazines. Weir appeared on C-SPAN as a speaker at the historic National Summit to reassess U.S.-Israel "special relationship" in March of 2014. She is currently working on part two of Against Our Better Judgment, which will examine the U.S.-Israel relationship from the 1950s up until the present day. She resides in the Bay Area.

Sponsored by: Students for Justice in Palestine - Binghamton University