Left Forum, NYC, US, June 7 – 9

[jondwhite]

conference information

A unique phenomenon in the U.S. and the world, Left Forum convenes the largest annual conference of a broad spectrum of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the interested public. Conference participants come together to engage a wide range of critical perspectives on the world, to discuss differences, commonalities, and alternatives to current predicaments, and to share ideas for understanding and transforming the world. The conference is held each year in New York City.

participate 

Left Forum 2012 featured Michael Moore, RoseAnn DeMoro, Cornel West, Chris Hedges, Marina Sitrin, M1, Nnimmo Bassey, and Wally Shawn. It involved 4,500 attendees, 1,300 speakers and over 400 panels. Left Forum is the culmination of the creative efforts of hundreds of people who engage the gamut of volunteer activities, from helping generate artistic events and panels, to outreach and involvement of a rainbow of organizations and individuals.

 

PANEL SUBMISSION IS NOW OPEN!              submit a panel here 

» Panel topics span a great variety of issues.  Panels offer engaged forms of dialogue, debate and/or interaction between panelists and audience and at times, have an activist, organizing or strategy making focus.  You can refer to the events pages page to look at past panel topics and titles.

» In designing your panel we ask you to try to ensure that panelists represent and engage diverse political standpoints on any particular topic, and that panelists represent a range of political and cultural identities (e.g., race, gender, age, and class diversity).  We also ask that you integrate the conference theme into the panel proceedings.

» In order to accommodate as many panels and panelists as space will allow we limit local and regional panelists to two panels. Requests for additional panel participation can be made by emailing panels@leftforum.org and explaining your request.  If you have any problems submitting a panel please email panels@leftforum.org or call (212) 817 2002/2003.

» Panel submission is now open. The deadline for panel submission will be posted soon. We do however  ask that you submit your proposals—even in a nascent form—as soon as you can, as the later the panel is submitted the harder it is to attend to all aspects of its administration.

panel formats

» We encourage a range of panel styles and panel chairing and facilitation processes. These include:

a. The traditional panel form: This form has a chair person who provides an introduction for the speakers and the topic; facilitates the audience question and answer session; and mediates any disputes or similar occurrences. Depending on the number of panelists, panel presentations should be timed to allow about half of the session for audience participation (e.g., for four panelists each talk should be about 12 minutes). A similar form can designate a person or two in a discussant or respondent role. In this case the panel presentations should be fewer or shorter and the respondent can develop a critique, and/or raise pertinent issues and questions.

b. Roundtable or moderated dialogue format: this form can include short presentations by all panelists, 5 minutes for example, followed by questions that engage panelists and/or allow them to interact with each other, and/or panelists can ask each other questions; This is followed by audience participation.

c. Workshop style panels: this can vary from a format where a facilitator or group of facilitators involve all participants right away, e.g., through introductions and group dialogue focused on particular questions, strategies or issues. It can include sessions focused on dialogues about political practices, trainings, and question and answer sessions.

panel tracks 

» Panel tracks identify and pull together sets of panels and workshops that address major issues, themes, or areas of activism and dialogue from a variety of angles—from the local to the global, and the practical to the theoretical. Tracks enable panel organizers to deepen a particular issue or theme, and as well, to plan out a series of panels or workshops that "start and go somewhere" (e.g., with an introductory panel starting off the track and more detailed or involved panels following the introductory session, concluding with a wrap up session).

 panel size and facilitation

» Every panel must have a chair person. if the session is facilitated through collective processes, facilitators can be listed under the Chair category.  

» The chair person can also be a presenter. 

» Minimum  number of participants per panel is three (including a chair person). For the panel format where each speaker presents for a certain lenght of time (as compared to some workshops formats) panels with more than five speakers often leave too little time for audience discussion and panel interaction.  We recommend that panels have no more than five speakers and that panel chairs provide up to half of the panel session time for audience discussion.

panel registration (all panelists must register for the conference)

» In order to cover conference costs we require that panelists register for the conference. We ask panel organizers to make sure that all speakers on their panel (discussants, etc.) are registered (click here to register now) . If you have scholarship requests, contact us at register@leftforum.org.

» We invite foreign participation but unfortunately cannot pay for travel costs for panelists or provide translators at this time.

[jondwhite]

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The North Star at Left Forum by The North Star on May 27, 2013 The North Star is growing; this means new collaborators, new topics, a new website, and hopefully new readers — more on this soon. It also means that we’ve organized three panel discussions for this year’s Left Forum. Stop by if you’ll be at the Left Forum, at Pace University in New York, June 7-9 — register here. Left Third-Party Organizing: Challenges and OpportunitiesSunday, June 9, 12:00pm – 01:50pm, Room W211 Carl Davidson (Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism)Tim Horras (Philly Socialists)Ursula Rozum (Green Party)Seamus Whelan (Socialist Alternative)Chair: Ben Campbell In an age of two-party domination and neoliberal hegemony, what opportunities exist for left electoral politics through third party campaigns? Why and when should leftists focus on third party campaigns, as opposed to Democratic Party primaries? Where should the left focus its electoral resources, and how might it overcome division? Should third-party politics be thought of in terms of consciousness-raising, or is the left in a position to affect public policy by taking power? The Crisis of Capitalism: Five Years LaterSunday, June 9, 03:00pm – 04:50pm, Room E307 Radhika DesaiDoug HenwoodLeo PanitchChair: Ben Campbell The financial crisis of 2008 seemed to mark an inflection point for capitalist accumulation. How does the post-2008 period compare to that of pre-2008? Is global capitalism still in crisis? How does or did this crisis compare to past crises of capital, and how has or will global capitalism recover, if at all? How will this all depend on ongoing struggles of resistance? The North Star: Strategies on Renewing the Radical LeftSunday, June 9, 10:00am – 11:50am, Room E316 Luke ElliottTim Horras (Philly Socialists)Siobhan WatersAmy WuestChair: Dario Cankovic Recognizing that understanding and changing the world must be a collective and comradely effort, The North Star aims to serve as a space for open and rigorous discussion and debate with an aim to contribute to the reconstitution of the radical left. To this end, we’ve brought together editors and participants of The North Star project to discuss some of the questions that need to be asked and answered in order to renew a radical left with real political muscle. What is the state of the radical left in the wake of Occupy? What is the immediate task of the radical left in the United States? What lessons, positive and negative, are to be learned from past and present organizations, movements and struggles? What is our role as self-identified ‘radical leftists’ in building and advancing these organizations, movements and struggles? What are the relations between theory and practice, academia and activism, socialism and democracy, science and socialism? How should these relations impact strategy and struggle? 

[jondwhite]

Quote:

Groups with tables inside: CCDS DSA some Ecosocialist project, probably new? Green Party ISO (thru Haymarket Books) Kasama Project News and Letters Platypus People Not Profit (anarchist group [?] that's unfamiliar to me) RCP (thru Revolution Books) SEP SP-USA US Friends of the Soviet People Workers World Party Groups with tables outside: Internationalist Group League for the Revolutionay Party Socialist Alternative Spartacist League United Front Against Austerity (supporting nationalization of the Federal Reserve, a sales tax on all Wall Street transactions, 0.75% student loan interest rate. Seem to want the Democratic Party to go back to being its New Deal coalition self, and focus less on "divisive social issues." http://againstausterity.org/) Workers International League No tables, but saw individuals: FRSO(ex-Refoundationist) One Struggle Solidarity Supposedly people from Workers Power (US) were also there, but I didn't see them. Peter Moody

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