Left Forum 2017 - Sunday Closing Plenary

 

Beyond Capitalism: Where to Go From Here

This is a panel from the 2017 Left Forum, held June 2 - 4 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The conference theme was "The Resistance."

From the Organizers:

Questions, challenges and oppositions confront the economic system today more than at any time in the last 70 years. Millions now see capitalism as a major cause of the problems/crises activating social movements. An alliance among capitalism’s victims, critics and those social movements is emerging. This plenary will explore the ways and means to develop that alliance into a major political force for change.

Moderator:

Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor and publisher of Jacobin.

Panelists:

Christian Parenti recently joined the Economics Program at John Jay College as an associate professor. His books include Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence (2011); The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq, (2004); The Soft Cage: Surveillance in America from Slavery to the War on Terror (2002); and Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis (2000/second edition 2008). He has reported extensively from Afghanistan, Iraq, and various parts of Africa, Asia, and Latin America for The Nation, Fortune, The London Review Books, The New York Times, and other publications.

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne). Wolff was also regular lecturer at the Brecht Forum in New York City.

Karina Garcia is a Chicana organizer and educator originally from southern California, and the daughter of working-class Mexican immigrants. She works as a reproductive justice trainer, traveling around the country to help Latina activists fight for reproductive health, rights and justice. As a student activist Karina led a campaign to confront and shut down the anti-immigrant fascist Minutemen Project on her campus and nationwide, founding the group Lucha. As a NYC high school math teacher, she organized students and coworkers to protest against budget cuts, the Iraq war, police brutality and anti-immigrant laws. She is a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a founder of the Justice Center en el Barrio and a board member of Damayan Migrant Workers Association.

Paul Sliker is a media consultant and political and economic justice organizer who has advised several world-renowned economists, institutions, and non-fiction authors. He was on the operations team of Team Bernie NY, which became an umbrella organization for many volunteer-run groups throughout New York City. Paul is currently an editor and commentator at DemocracyAtWork.Info, the Chair of the Politics Committee and a member of the Coordinating Committee at Democracy at Work - New York (D@WNY). Democracy at Work 501(c)3 is a non-profit that advocates for worker cooperatives and democratic workplaces as a key path to a stronger, democratic economic system.

Tascha Van Auken co-founded (in July 2015 )the grassroots group Team Bernie NY, which became an umbrella group for the many volunteer-run groups throughout New York City. Team Bernie NY focused specifically on field work, contacting voters and identifying supporters for the nine months prior to campaign staff arriving in NYC. Grassroots groups successfully identified over 49,000 Bernie supporters by the time the campaign landed in NY for the primary. Tascha is currently a part of The Electoral Working Group for the NYC chapter of DSA (Democratic Socialists of America), and is focused specifically on helping the field team build the structure necessary to scale and win local elections.

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Left Forum 2016 - Black Liberation & the Sanders Groundswell: Prospects for Left Unity

 

This is the Saturday Night Plenary from the 2016 Left Forum, held May 20 -22 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The conference theme was "Rage, Rebellion, Revolution: Organizing Our Power."

Moderators:

Bhaskar Sunkara and Glen Ford

Panelists:

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor is a writer, public speaker and activist living in Philadelphia. She writes on Black politics, housing inequality and issues of race and class in the United States. She is the author of the forthcoming From Black Lives Matter to Black Liberation, published by Haymarket Books in Fall 2015. She is an Assistant Professor at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University.

Kshama Sawant is an activist who brings a passion for social justice to her work. As a member of the Seattle City Council, now in her second term, 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.

August H. Mintz is a professor of political science and African American and African Studies at the University of Minnesota, August H. Nimtz is the author of several books including Lenin’s Electoral Strategy (2014) and Marx, Tocqueville and Race in America (2003). His essays on Marxism, race and politics have appeared in leading journals and publications and have been translated into many languages.

Debbie Bookchin is an investigative journalist, author, and former press secretary to U.S. Congressman Bernie Sanders. She has published in The Nation, Atlantic Monthly, HarperCollins' Best Science Writing and many other venues. She is coauthor of The Virus and the Vaccine (St. Martin’s Press, 2004) and recently coedited and introduced a new book of essays by her father, Murray Bookchin, called The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy (Verso Books, 2015).

Download the audio at the a-Infos Radio Project.