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<p><span style="font-size:36px;"><span
style="font-family:georgia,serif;"><strong>LEFT
FORUM 2017: THE RESISTANCE</strong></span></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:28px;"><font face="georgia,
serif"><b>June 2nd to June 4th, 2017</b></font></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:28px;"><font face="georgia,
serif"><b>John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New
York City</b></font></span><br>
</p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-size:28px;"><span
style="font-family:georgia,serif;">A powerful
resistance is taking shape in the U.S. Mass
spontaneous protests fill the streets and the
opposition to the Trump regime heralds an era of
civil unrest the likes of which America has not seen
for decades. The protesters’ immediate object is the
new president and the singularly dangerous and
reactionary regime he leads, but it has the
potential to move beyond Trump to address the system
that produced him. Most important of all, the
budding resistance is thinking through questions of
power, strategy, and tactics. We find ourselves
faced with unprecedented dangers and disorienting
shocks but also with massive opportunities
– openings for building the movements for justice
and liberation and pressing for fundamental
transformations.</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-size:28px;"><span
style="font-family:georgia,serif;">The dangers are
easy to name – the ascendance of the highly
organized, racist, misogynist right to an office in
the White House; Republicans in lockstep, ready to
fulfill their dream of the final dismantling of the
public sector and the welfare state; an
authoritarian American president looking to find
like-minded thug cronies across the globe to make
deals to vacuum out the last iotas of resources and
profit from a planet in deep crisis. Sadly, Trump’s
most institutionally powerful opponents are those
who desire a return to the glory days of cold war
with Russia, not to mention the military
manufacturers, contractors, and
press operations for whom war and conflict remains
the most profitable racket. Other opponents are the
Democrats, useless even when they haven’t just
totally ignored a populist moment to ensure the
nomination of probably their least popular, most
militaristic, and big-money friendly candidate over
a popular socialist who could, no doubt, have beaten
Trump at his own game.</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-size:28px;"><span
style="font-family:georgia,serif;">It goes without
saying that none of these institutional forces
favors labor, communal ownership, race freedom, or
ecological healing. As rival powers tear themselves
apart fighting over the last remaining wealth of a
broken system, we must find our leverage and build
our power in this new, unstable situation.</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-size:28px;"><span
style="font-family:georgia,serif;">These past few
years have seen the rise of major protest movements,
and America’s decades-long slide to the right has
been arrested. The population is polarized, but more
radical on both sides than we’ve seen in a very long
time. On our side, direct action, especially among
the brave fighters at Standing Rock, garners wide
support. A democratic socialist got very close to
the White House. Young Americans favor socialism
over capitalism. The Black Lives Matter movement has
forged an interracial coalition against police
brutality and state sanctioned race murder. And
millions of formerly docile centrists and liberals
are being
radicalized by the regime’s newly bold expression of
power and profit politics – without even the
ideological patina of the “free market” or
“democracy” to paper over anti-worker and
militaristic policies at home and abroad. Perhaps
most important, people are talking general strike.</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-size:28px;"><span
style="font-family:georgia,serif;">In short, the old
“reasonable, responsible” regime of exploitation has
broken down. These are radical times. Which means
they are times with great possibilities for real
radicalism. Still, the left forces are inchoate,
without mass mobilization organizations and
searching for strategies that can build raw power
and generate victories. Our task is to help
organize, nurture, and shape the raw resistance that
is exploding across America – and help to build what
may come in its wake.</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-size:28px;"><span
style="font-family:georgia,serif;">What lessons have
we learned from the last year or so? What is the
status of the strategy of working within the
Democratic Party rather than forming a new party
organized to represent the interests of the working
class? Where is rank and file – and especially
international – labor organizing today? Do the
social identities that structure the everyday life
of workers impede class organization – or do they
point the way to the most militant varieties of it?
Where can we find the leverage for our movements
when great powers battle? How do we engage in the
kind of robust international labor organizing that
we know is both
the key to workers’ power and the antidote to the
anti-immigrant right ascendant in so many places
today? Most important, how will we build the three
structures that we know we need – radical cultural
interventions that craft a lefty common sense; a
political party for working class people, and, most
important, the economic ability to bring production
and reproduction to a halt through mass coordinated
strike action.</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-size:28px;"><span
style="font-family:georgia,serif;">This is where
Left Forum 2017 comes in. The strength of LF has
always been its ecumenical inclusion of many
perspectives, many groups, fighting on many fronts.
Together, we will craft a united front moving in
diverse but coordinated ways toward what we all know
we need – international, multiracial, non-gendered
working class power. As the largest gathering of the
U.S. left, we come together this year to debate, to
plan, to strategize, to build. We will engage the
key questions – historical, analytical, theoretical,
strategic – and forge the path ahead together. Our
work has never been more important.</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-size:28px;"><span
style="font-family:georgia,serif;">To this end, Left
Forum will be organized from the start around the
key substantive issues in shaping the resistance. We
are calling for all panels to submit to particular
panel tracks. Each track will have a number of
panels and should end either with a concrete
organizing session or with a more informal social
gathering where people can strategize, enjoy each
other’s company, and craft explicit next steps. This
year, it is more important than ever that when we
gather as a thousands-strong, non-sectarian left
convergence, the conference helps us move as a broad
front to the next crucial steps. We expect to have a
record number of
panel submissions and the truth is, there are only
so many available rooms. Panel track organizing will
be decentered but discriminating, so BRING YOUR A
GAME. The moment demands nothing less from all of
us.</span></span></p>
<p style="text-align: justify;"><span
style="font-size:28px;"><span
style="font-family:georgia,serif;">We have no choice
but to organize now to fight the reactionary assault
on hard-won rights and freedoms, from unionization
to civil rights to abortion. We must move from
symbolic protest to materially effective resistance.
We need to identify pressure points in the system
and push them. We must think seriously about
crafting a new political party in the United States.
But we must also simultaneously be working toward
the broader set of changes – from a system based on
alienation, abstraction, and exploitation to one
based on human freedom and possibility – that
animates all our struggles and that unites us as a
left.</span></span></p>
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<p><strong><span style="color:#FFFFFF;"><span
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Conference!</em><br>
Left Forum 2017!</span><br>
June 2nd - 4th<br>
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John Jay College of Criminal Justice<br>
The City University of New York<br>
524 W. 59th Street, NYC</span></strong><br>
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