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.
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:
Activists, community organizers and grassroots leaders have vowed to continue to demonstrate against plans to pass the Dakota Access pipeline adjacent to the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, near Cannon Ball, North Dakota. Acting on an order from president Trump, the Army Corps of Engineers said it would grant the easement that Energy Transfer Partners needs to finish the final stretch of the pipeline. It also canceled an environmental review the Corps said it would undertake while President Barack Obama was still in office. Some might say the resistance fight was lost!
This plenary attempts to answer the following questions; did or does resistance alone work towards the ultimate goal of social change? Women seemed to be at the forefront of the Standing Rock struggle, are women rising up and taking the lead in our social struggles? The Women's March in January 2017 saw massive protests around the country and around the world. On March 8, women from 30 countries participated in the Women's Strike; organization for a May Day general strike is building on that momentum. Could this be a sign of things to come? Do we need more than resistance? What are the lessons learned? How can we build a global movement of resistance which brings together movements fighting similar issues and eventually leads to a new society?
Moderator:
Felipe Coronel, known asImmortal Technique, is a recording artist, filmmaker, writer, and activist. Hailing from Peru, by way of Harlem, New York, he is one of the highest selling independent artists putting forth a combination of globally themed revolutionary music with a gritty reality based street Hip-Hop. Not only is he an artist, but also a human rights advocate having traveled to places like Haiti & Afghanistan to provide relief through various non-profits. He has also participated in several teaching workshops for adult prisons and juvenile facilities. As the President of Viper Records, with 4 full studio albums, 3 mixtapes, with over 250,000 records sold, he has the Hip-Hop community highly anticipating his 5th studio album, The Middle Passage.
Panelists:
Tithi Bhattacharya teaches South Asian history at Purdue University. She is a long time activist for Palestine and writes extensively on Marxism and gender. She is a national organizer for the International Women's Strike.
Cinzia Arruzza teaches philosophy at the New School in NYC and she is a feminist and socialist activist. She is the author of Dangerous Liaisons. The Marriages and Divorces of Marxism and Feminism (2013) and she was one of the national organizers of the International Women's Strike on March 8th.
L.A. Kauffman is the author of Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism. She has spent more than thirty years immersed in radical movements as a participant, strategist, journalist, and observer. Kauffman was the mobilizing coordinator for the huge New York protests against the Iraq War in 2003-04. Her writings on American radicalism and social movement history have been published in The Nation, n+1, The Baffler, and many other outlets.
Madonna Thunder Hawk is a member of the Oohenumpa band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and is grandmother to a generation of Native American activists. She was an original member of the American Indian Movement, a co-founder of Women of All Red Nations (WARN), and is currently the Lakota People's Law Project's principal organizer and Tribal Liaison. Madonna has been featured in several documentary films including the recent PBS series We Shall Remain. Through her work, Madonna builds alliances and support for Child Welfare among South Dakota's tribal leaders and communities.
Nancy Romer is a climate and food justice activist. She was professor of psychology at Brooklyn College for 42 years and was active in anti-racist, feminist, union and anti-war organizing at CUNY. She was a founder of the Brooklyn Food Coalition and has travelled extensively and written about peasant and agricultural movements, in South America, Central America, the Indian subcontinent and the US. She learned first hand how agribusiness and the financialilzation of food, land and water have destroyed peasant farms and communities and has contributed to climate change through mass deforestation. She travelled to Standing Rock in November working in one of the many cooking tents. She serves on the New York Steering Committee of the April 29th DC March for Climate, Jobs and Justice and an active member of the Environmental Justice Committee of Professional Staff Congress-CUNY (AFT #2334), She is a recently retired TIAA investor and active in the TIAA anti-Land Grabs and Deforestation campaign.
This is a panel from Left Forum 2017, held June 2 - 4 at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. The conference theme was "The Resistance."
From the Organizers:
The converging crises of fascism, endless war, climate change, mass migrations, and economic/racial/gender oppression create unprecedented urgency for united, radical action – in the street and in the voting booth. At previous Left Forums – and over the past many decades – progressives have debated the merits of working to “reform” the Democratic Party versus building a united independent radical political front.
Chris Hedges is an author, critic and was a foreign correspondent for nearly two decades for The New York Times, The Dallas Morning News, The Christian Science Monitor and National Public Radio. He is the author of the bestsellers American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy, the Triumph of Spectacle and War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. He writes an online column for Truthdig.
Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK and the co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange. She has been an advocate for social justice for more than 40 years. Described as "one of America's most committed -- and most effective -- fighters for human rights" by New York Newsday, and "one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement" by the Los Angeles Times, she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide. She received numerous prices, including: the Martin Luther King, Jr. Peace Prize from the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Peace Prize by the US Peace Memorial, the Gandhi Peace Award, and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation Award. She is a former economist and nutritionist with the United Nations and World Health Organization.
Dr. Jill Stein, Green Party 2016 Presidential Candidate
Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Her Freedom Rider column appears weekly in Black Agenda Report, and is widely reprinted elsewhere. She maintains a frequently updated blog as well as at http://freedomrider.blogspot.com. Ms. Kimberley lives in New York City
Linda Thompson, Left Elect (Not actually a panelist, but she said a few words at the end.)
Note: The Left Forum asked me to film and stream their nightly plenaries, and with only 20 minutes between the scheduled end of this panel and the start of the next plenary, I was unable to stay to the end. If I had I would have missed the start of the plenary. As it turned out I was able to film the presentations, missing only the Q&A.
You can see a complete, if somewhat glitchy, livestream of this panel here.
This is a panel from Left Forum 2017, held June 2 - 4 at John Jay College in New York City. The conference theme was "The Resistance."
From the Organizers:
Most Americans have never recovered from the recession of 2008 and the outsourcing, mechanizing, robotizing and computerizing of their jobs. Men’s salaries and working conditions have been deteriorating since the mid 1970s. Women’s salaries have increased to 77% of men’s low salaries. Americans are emotionally depressed. We consume 50% of the world’s psych meds and 80% of the world’s heroin. Suicides addiction obesity and other social ills have increased. Too many are in despair. This panel explains what happened, why it happened and what to do about it.
Moderator:
Betsy Avila, Executive Director at Democracy at Work
Panelists:
Richard D. Wolff was educated at Harvard, Stanford and Yale. Richard. D. (Rick) Wolff is the author of the Economic Update program which appears on WBAI and 80 other radio stations nationwide. He speaks and writes nationally and internationally for Democracy at Work. The latest of his many books are Capitalism Hits the Fan, Democracy at Work a Cure for Capitalism, with David Barsamian, and Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens. He publishes as a regular columnist for Truthout as well as numerous other publications.
Dr. Harriet Fraad is a mental health Counselor and hypnotherapist in private practice in New York City. She speaks and writes on the intersections of economic and personal life in America today. She appears on WBAI the first week of every month on Economic Update with Rick Wolff. Her work can be found in Truthout, Logos, Tikkun, RM, The Psychohistory Journal, at her website harrietfraad.com and on the website of Democracy at Work. Her latest contribution to a book will appear in August 2017 in Knowledge and Class: Marxism Without Guarantees (Routledge, 2017).
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:
So many political movements continue to labor towards the creation of a just world, following decades of struggle. Yet the existence of an all-powerful security state with fascist tendencies has exerted its power to advance its agenda for absolute control at every turn. This security state hijacked our government into a corrupt institution run by and for oligarchs and corporations who conduct their business through the policy of war abroad and repression at home. A new strategy for resistance is required and time is short. The declassification of 28 pages from the Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 and passage of The Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) has returned focus to the cover up of the 9/11 attacks and hypocrisy of the U.S. alliance with Saudi Arabia. Following a few steps further exposes collusion by members of the Bush administration, intelligence agencies, identifiable Deep State entities, and mainstream media. These developments have led to a new phase of 9/11 litigation. Come learn how analysis of even this one area of 9/11 evidence reveals the geo-politics of the U.S.-Saudi relationship and its effect in destabilizing the Middle East. This understanding is essential to exposing the war on terror as a tool of the criminal Deep State.
Reading List:
"Visas For Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked The World" by J. Michael Springmann, "The New Pearl Harbor by David Ray Griffin", the 28 Pages from the Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11, Washington's Blog article - http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2016/05/5
Moderator: Sander Hicks
Panelists:
Les Jamieson has studied the alternative research into 9/11 since November, 2001. He has been publicly active as a 9/11 truth activist and organizer since January of 2004, spending countless days at Ground Zero doing public outreach and education as well as many other locations throughout New York City, informing people from all over the world about the discrepancies in the official 9/11 story. Les attended two of the four 9/11 Commission hearings, and five hearings by the NIST investigation into why the buildings collapsed, which has given him an up close realization of the depth and scope of the official cover-up. Beginning October 2014, Les spearheaded an effort to generate grassroots support for legislation to release the 28 pages from the Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11, as well as mobilize public support for the passage of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA). For the 15th anniversary of 9/11 this past September, Les co-organized a weekend symposium called "9/11 Justice In Focus". Les has chaired panels on the 28 pages at the Left Forum in 2015 and 2016.
Barbara Honegger, M.S. has served in high-level positions in the Federal Government, including White House Policy Analyst, Special Assistant to the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, and Director of the Gender Anti-Discrimination Task Force at the Department of Justice. Following her Washington service, Ms. Honegger was Senior Military Affairs Journalist at the Naval Postgraduate School, the premiere science, technology and national security affairs graduate research university of the Department of Defense. Ms. Honegger is a whistleblower who first reported on “The October Surprise” which sabotaged the campaign of Pres. Carter and enabled Ronald Reagan to become president. She has also been a major contributor to efforts exposing the implausibility of the official narrative on 9/11.
Jane Clark is in private practice handling Texas Workers’ Compensation cases, Probate, and general legal practice including personal injury, collections, domestic relations, and criminal law with 26 years of experience in these areas. She has her law degree from the University of Idaho Law School (Moscow), a Masters Degree from Texas A & M University in Biochemistry & Biophysics (College Station), and worked for the famed Professor Emeritus, Dr. Joseph Nagyvary from Budapest, Hungary on cancer research at TAMU. Ms. Clark spent years with major JFK researchers from 1980 to present working with Lawrence Teeter, Esq. (now deceased) on research into the RFK assassination in Teeter's position as Counsel for Sirhan Sirhan. Ms. Clark was lawyer for JFK Lancer, the major conference held in Dallas every year in November for JFK Assassination researchers from around the world. She now serves as Chair of the Lawyers' Committee For 9/11 Inquiry.
J. Michael Springmann is an attorney and former diplomat who lives and works in Washington, DC. He holds two degrees in international affairs in addition to his law degree. Springmann spent nine years as a diplomat—five in Germany, two in India, and nearly two in Saudi Arabia with the US Department of State. Prior to leaving the Department, he served in its Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He has belonged to a number of Arab and Muslim organizations and has received a Pro Bono Attorney of the Year award from the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Now a writer and political commentator, Springmann is also the author of Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World, which discusses America’s destabilization of the Balkans, South and Southwest Asia, and North Africa to achieve international objectives. Michael's site is www.michaelspringmann.com.
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:
As crony capitalists and corporate behemoths work to suck the last iota of profits and resources from a planet in crisis, they make intensified use of strategies like border walls, militarized policing, surveillance, incarceration, deportation, and the racism that garners support for them, to repress and re-channel dissent. But today we also see the rise of movements that challenge these repressive institutions and discourses, linking them with the exploitation they enable and with racial, gender, and class politics at home. Join us as we explore these obstacles, as well as, the movements and strategies that have been employed to challenge them.
Moderator:
Best-selling author, Laura Flanders interviews forward-thinking people about the key questions of our time on The Laura Flanders Show, seen weekly on KCET/LinkTV, FreeSpeech TV and in English & Spanish on teleSUR (also available as a podcast). A contributing writer to The Nation magazine and a regular guest on MSNBC, she is the author of six books, including The New York Times best-seller, BUSHWOMEN: Tales of a Cynical Species, and Blue GRIT: True Democrats Take Back Politics from the Politicians. The Laura Flanders Show aired on Air America Radio from 2004-2008 prior to which Flanders was the founding host of Your Call on public radio in San Francisco, and founder of the mediawatch program, CounterSpin. She has a long record of media appearances, from Real Time with Bill Maher to The O’Reilly Factor. For more, follow @GRITlaura or visit LauraFlanders.com.
Panelists:
Puerto Rican community activist Oscar López Rivera has been widely recognized as the “Mandela of the Americas” since several Latin American heads of state bestowed that title upon him at the 2015 Organization of American States summit. At age 74 and after more than thirty-five years behind bars, upon release on May 17, 2017, Lopez Rivera had the distinction of being the longest-held political prisoner in the history of Puerto Rican-US colonial relations. Born in San Sebastian, Puerto Rico in 1943, López Rivera moved to the US with his family at age 14. As a young adult, he was drafted into the US military and sent to fight in the front lines of Vietnam, where was awarded the Bronze Star for heroic service. Politicized by his experiences in Vietnam and the active social change movements he encountered upon his return home to Chicago in 1967, Lopez Rivera became involved with many community empowerment groups—eventually helping to found the award-winning alternative Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School. Along with his brother Jose, López Rivera also helped found Chicago’s Puerto Rican Cultural Center. Aware of the developing revolutionary processes in Puerto Rico and throughout the world, he eventually decided to join the clandestine movement.
Arrested in 1981, López Rivera (and his colleagues arrested in 1980 and 1983) declared themselves to be anti-colonial combatants entitled to the protection of international law, challenging the jurisdiction of the U.S. courts to criminalize their efforts against colonialism, a crime against humanity. Once imprisoned, López Rivera faced years of torture which he has termed “spiriticide,” including sensory deprivation, more than twelve years of solitary confinement, and subjugation to the super-maximum security practices of the prisons-within- a-prison at Marion and ADX Florence. López Rivera nevertheless became a prolific writer and a proficient artist, painting portraits and tributes to his native homeland. López Rivera has authored countless articles which have inspired many generations; in the last years before release, he helped produce two books of writings, Between Torture and Resistance (PM Press, 2013), and Cartas a Karina (CAK Project, 2016). A transcendent figure in contemporary Puerto Rican life, Oscar Lopez Rivera’s plan for life after prison is to develop the Fundación Oscar López Rivera- Libertá, which will deepen the unity and work for decolonization which has been the cornerstone of his entire life.
Glen Ford is a veteran of more than 45 years in broadcast, print and Internet journalism. A former Washington Bureau Chief and White House, Capitol Hill, and State Department correspondent, Ford co-founded and hosted “America’s Black Forum,” the first nationally syndicated Black news interview program on commercial television. He also launched and owned the radio syndications “Black World Report,” “Black Agenda Reports,” and “Rap It Up,” the first national hip hop music show. He has worked as a radio newsman in Washington, Baltimore, and Atlanta, Columbus and Augusta, Georgia, and produced over 1,000 radio and TV commercials.
In print, Glen Ford has edited or served as staff reporter for three newspapers, two of them dailies; was national political columnist for Encore American & Worldwide News magazine; founded The Black Commentator and Africana Policies magazines; and authored “The Big Lie: An Analysis of U.S. Media Coverage of the Grenada Invasion” (IOJ, 1985).
On the Internet, Ford co-founded BlackCommentator.com in 2002 and BlackAgendaReport.com (BAR) in 2006. He is currently executive editor of BAR, a weekly magazine of “news, commentary and analysis from the Black left.” Along with co-host Nellie Hester Bailey, Ford hosts and produces the weekly, one-hour Black Agenda Radio program on the Progressive Radio network. He also produces two weekly radio commentaries that air on approximately 40 radio stations.
Jeremy Scahill is one of the three founding editors of The Intercept. He is an investigative reporter, war correspondent, and author of the international bestselling books Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield and Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He has reported from Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the former Yugoslavia, and elsewhere across the globe. Scahill has served as the national security correspondent for The Nation and Democracy Now!.
Scahill’s work has sparked several congressional investigations and won some of journalism’s highest honors. He was twice awarded the prestigious George Polk Award, in 1998 for foreign reporting and in 2008 for Blackwater. Scahill is a producer and writer of the award- winning film Dirty Wars, which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award.
Sekou Odinga is a Muslim, citizen of the Republic of New Afrika, former member of the Black Panther Party/Black Liberation Army (BPP/BLA), and for 33 years a u.s. held Political Prisoner of War. Sekou helped establish and was a leader of the Party’s Harlem/Bronx chapter before being targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. He escaped arrest and trial as one of those targeted in the 1968 New York Panther 21 case. Forced underground, Sekou was sent to Algiers to help establish the Party’s international section. In the mid-1970s, he returned to the states and continued to struggle underground until his capture on October 23, 1981. Convicted in both state and federal court, Sekou served twenty-eight years in federal prison on two counts of the federal Racketeering Influence Conspiracy Organization ACT (RICO) and the liberation of Assata Shakur. In 2009, he reached a mandatory release date and was "paroled" to New York State to begin serving a 25 to life sentence for the attempted murder of six NYPD. Five years later, a legal victory resulted in a parole hearing and his November 25, 2014 release from Clinton Correctional Facility.
Sekou continues to work on behalf of and advocates for the release of more than a dozen u.s. held Political Prisoners of War from the revolutionary movements of the 1960s and ‘70s. He is a founder and member of the Northeast Political Prisoner Coalition, and has spoken on panels, at conferences, and on university and college campuses across the country. He has been featured in and contributed to numerous anthologies, including the forthcoming Look for Me in the Whirlwind: From the Panther 21 to 21st Century Revolutions (PM Press, 2017), and has been interviewed extensively in print and radio. Sekou is available for public speaking on various topics, including political/mass imprisonment, the Black Liberation struggle, and more.
Molly Crabapple is an artist and writer living in New York. Her memoir Drawing Blood was published by HarperCollins in December 2015. Her work has been described as “God’s own circus posters,” by Rolling Stone, but beneath the lavishly detailed surface, it engages injustice and rebellion.
Because of Molly’s 2013 solo exhibition, Shell Game, a series of large-scale paintings about the revolutions of 2011, she was called “an emblem of the way that art could break out of the gilded gallery” by The New Republic. In 2015, Molly Crabapple was awarded Yale Poynter Fellowship, and received a Front Page Award for her art of rebel-held Aleppo. Her art also earned her a 2014 Gold Rush award, and she was shortlisted for a 2013 Frontline Print Journalism Award for her internationally-acclaimed reportage on Guantanamo Bay.
Molly is a contributing editor for VICE and has written for The New York Times, The Paris Review, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, CNN and Newsweek. Her published books include Discordia (with Laurie Penny; Random House, 2012) on the Greek economic crisis and the art books Devil in the Details and Week in Hell (IDW 2012). Molly has been called “equal parts Hieronymus Bosch, William S. Burroughs and Cirque du Soleil,” by The Guardian; “THE artist of our time” by comedian Margaret Cho, and “a brilliant and principled artist” by BoingBoing. She spent four years as the staff artist of The Box, one of the world’s most lavish (and notorious) nightclubs. Molly has taken her sketchbook from burlesque halls to refugee camps, always with a skeptical eye for power.
Molly is the illustrator of Matt Taibbi’s New York Times bestseller, The Divide. She has collaborated with Spike Jonze to create backdrops for the 2013 YouTube Music Video Awards, and with Esperanza Spalding on projections for her concerts. She created art for Patton Oswalt’s DVD, Tragedy Plus Comedy Equals Time.
She regularly speaks to audiences around the world, at institutions such as The Museum of Modern Art, The London School of Economics, and Harvard and Columbia Universities. Her works are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, The Barjeel Foundation and The New York Historical Society.
Linda Sarsour is a working woman, a racial justice and civil rights activist, every Islamophobe’s worst nightmare, and a mother of three. Ambitious, outspoken and independent, Sarsour shatters stereotypes of Muslim women while also treasuring her religious and ethnic heritage. She is a Palestinian Muslim-American and a self-proclaimed “pure New Yorker, born and raised in Brooklyn!”. She is also named among 500 of the most influential Muslims in the world, most known and well respected for her intersectional coalition work and building bridges across issues of racial, ethnic and faith communities.
Sarsour has been active in many organizations including the Arab American Association of New York, The Justice League NYC, and she is a co-founder of MPOWER Change and Muslims for Ferguson. She has been at the forefront of major civil rights campaigns including calling for an end to unwarranted surveillance of New York’s Muslim communities and ending police policies like Stop and Frisk. She was co-chair of the 2017 Women's March, as well as, the Day without a Woman protest and strike. She has won numerous awards and honors include being named a “Champion of Change” by the White House. Sarsour was introduced to New York Times readers as a political force who, in their words, is “mixing street smarts, activism, and her Muslim identity” and profiled on the front page of the New York Times Metro Section as a “Brooklyn Homegirl in a Hijab.”
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).
This is a panel 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."
This is a panel 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."
From the Organizers:
The Sanders campaign has drawn tens of thousands into massive, enthusiastic rallies for "a political revolution against the billionaire class". Grassroots organizations like "Labor for Bernie," "People for Bernie" and "#Movement4Bernie" swelled around the country. How do we continue the fight against the billionaire class after the primaries? Do we need a new party for the 99%? Can this be a step towards revitalizing the labor movement? Come discuss these questions and more with leaders of the movement.
Panel Chair:
Bryan Koulouris is the National Organizer for Socialist Alternative.
Panelists:
Charles Lechner is with People for Bernie.
Philip Locker is the national spokesperson for Socialist Alternative and a founder of #Movement4Bernie.
Micah Landau is with Labor for Bernie.
Kshama Sawant is Seattle's socialist City Councilmember. She was initially elected in 2013 as an open socialist fighting for a $15 an hour minimum wage. After Kshama initiated the "15 Now" movement, Seattle became the first city in the country to win 15, and that victory rapidly spread to other cities across the country. Kshama was re-elected in 2015 with widespread labor support while she campaigned for housing justice. She spoke alongside Bernie Sanders at rallies addressing thousands in Seattle.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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 Crisis, American Empire and the Political Economy of Global Finance, In 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.
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.
Left Forum 2011 Pace University, NYC March 18-20, 2011
What is the "Tea Party," and how and why did this movement exercise so much leverage in the 2010 midterm elections? What role did the media play in the movement's rise and electoral success? And how can leftists and progressives use their own media to counteract the propaganda that has fueled right-wing mobilization for decades?
* Adele Stan - Washington Bureau Chief, Alternet
* Frances Fox Piven - CUNY Graduate Center
* Glen Ford - Black Agenda Report
* Laura Flanders - GritTV
* Richard Kim - The Nation
A discussion from Wisconsin natives and leaders as well as national progressives about the amazing uprising in Madison, WI and what it means for the progressive movement.
* Austin King - SEIU
* Ben Manski - Liberty Tree
* Elizabeth Wrigley - Field—Teaching Assistant Association, International Socialist Organization
* John Nichols - The Nation
* Monica Adams - Freedom Inc.
* Sarah Manski - Journalist, CEO of PosiPair.com, Wisconsin Wave organizer
* Chris Spannos - ZNet, Panel Moderator
* David Porter - SUNY/Empire State College
* Horace Campbell - Black Commentator; Syracuse University
* Nada Matta - New York University Panel Abstract from the Left Forum 2011 Website:
Beneath recent uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa exists a rich history of regional radicalism, direct democracy, and self-organization. The panelists explore recent events in Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia within the context of today's struggles, possibilities for their self-emancipation and conditions specific to each of these countries.
