[Fdu] ​Left Forum Conference 2017: The Resistance

[Cynthia Wright]

*Register Now! Early Bird Rate Starts at $20! 
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*LEFT FORUM 2017: THE RESISTANCE*

*June 2nd to June 4th, 2017*

*John Jay College of Criminal Justice, New York City*

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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*/Don't Miss This Year's Conference!/
Left Forum 2017!
June 2nd - 4th

John Jay College of Criminal Justice
The City University of New York
524 W. 59th Street, NYC*


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