Left Forum in March

This year’s Left Forum in New York City will take place March 19-21 at Pace University, near City Hall.

Titled “The Center Cannot Hold: Rekindling the Radical Imagination,” the Forum will include participants from across North America and around the world. A spectrum of left groups from this country and abroad will be represented, including social-democratic movements and parties and some from a more revolutionary perspective.

The Forum usually attracts many young people looking for socialist answers. This year’s forum, which has panels of interest to Workers World readers, unfortunately coincides with important anti-war protests in Washington.

Fred Goldstein, Workers World contributing editor and author of “Low-Wage Capitalism,” is participating this year, for the first time, in a panel together with Brenda Stokely, a founder of the Million Worker March Movement, and Berna Ellorin, chairperson of BAYAN-USA. The panel, “How to fight disappearing jobs and falling wages: labor strategies in the epoch of low-wage capitalism,” will focus on labor strategies both domestically and internationally.

Among the 17 other panels focusing on working-class struggles, one is called “Building the power of immigrant workers in NYC’s vast food industry.” Another is called “The awesome power of union democracy and its implications for dramatic social change,” which includes a member of the new leadership of New York City Transport Workers Union Local 100, as well as a leader of the Teamsters’ UPS strike of the late 1990s.

Some 16 panels focus on student struggles. “The fight for public higher education in NYC” features Larry Hales, national coordinator of FIST (Fight Imperialism, Stand Together), and Claudia O’Brien of the City University of New York Campaign to Defend Education. “Politics of the contemporary American student left” features Easton Smith, a Sarah Lawrence College student and organizer for UNITE HERE. Students and faculty from San Francisco State University’s Freedom School are offering “The case of California: coming soon to schools near you,” which provides an opportunity to hear from some of the originators of the new student movement.

A relative handful of panels address issues of special concern to women, but one is compelling: “Feminism seduced: how global elites use women’s labor and ideas to exploit the world.” One panelist, sociology professor Hester Eisenstein of CUNY, is well known and respected for her contributions to a Marxist approach in this field.

“Organizing against budget cuts and austerity in NYC” features representatives of Teachers for a Just Contract, a movement within the United Federation of Teachers, the largest union in New York. Other panelists include members of CUNY’s Professional Staff Congress and the Take Back Our Union grouping that recently won leadership of TWU Local 100.

There is buzz surrounding a panel sponsored by Venezuelanalysis.com, an English language online newspaper based in Caracas: “Venezuela’s proposal to launch a Fifth Socialist International.” Panelists include Clara Irrazabal of Venezuelanalysis and Vanessa Davies of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, as well as others from the U.S. social-democratic left and the World Social Forum.

The panel on “U.S. interventionism in Latin America” features the Venezuelan Ambassador to the U.S., Bernardo Alvarez. Another panel is called “Lessons from Venezuela: achievements and failures,” also sponsored by Venezuelanalysis. Other panels discuss Latin America, Indigenous Peoples, the Middle East and South Asia.

The headline speakers are Jesse Jackson on March 19 and Noam Chomsky on March 21. Other notable speakers on various panels include City Council Member Charles Barron and Pakistan expert Tariq Ali.