International

We are now in the midst of an epoch of death and mass extinction. Conventional approaches are failing. Social and ecological regeneration must be rooted in communities of liberation and solidarity. The new book, Between Earth and Empire: From the Necrocene to the Beloved Community, by celebrated philosopher and educator John P. Clark explores significant recent progress in this direction, including indigenous movements of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Democratic Autonomy Movement in Rojava, in West Papua, and many more. Longtime human rights activist, educator, organizer Matt Meyer joins this conversation with his own work on international and intersectional organizing. This is a call to arms for the rebirth of a libertarian and communitarian social imaginary, and the flourishing of a free cooperative community globally. Join us!

Scores of political commentators have been recently suggesting, humorously but also earnestly, that we are currently living through a second "Gilded Age," an era in U.S. history when, as now, public concerns included rampant technological shifts, "massive wealth inequalities, hyperpartisanship, virulent anti-immigrant sentiment and growing concern about money in politics." (Edward T. O'Donnell, "Are We Living in the Gilded Age 2.0?" www.history.com/news/second-gilded-age-income-inequality )  The pushback against the first Gilded Age, of course, included what we now sometimes call the Progressive Era. Taking this idea as a starting point, our Roundtable will ask: What can current grassroots activists learn from 20th century organizing experiences about building a viable Left Alliance? Panelists will foment a broad-ranging discussion on subjects that may include the imbalance of wealth and power, migration and immigration law, environmental justice, reparations for slavery, interference in Latin American countries by U.S. moneyed elites, and current fights for gender and class equity of all kinds.

The Green New Deal proposal has reframed social issues as ecological issues, and ecological issues as political issues. This panel explores the Green New Deal as a political battlefield, a space within which different ideas, proposals, and possibilities for managing the future come into play. We explore the role of agriculture, the global south, resource extraction, and paths to a sustainable and just future in light of the reshaping of the political battlefield through the Green New Deal proposals.

Accusations of anti-Semitism against notable figures and progressive movements both in the US and abroad have gained huge currency in the Trump regime. Recent attempts to destabilize the Left and ramp up Islamophobia - targetting the BDS movement, UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, and more recently, Muslim Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib - have escalated against a background of anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim murders perpetrated by the Far Right. Speakers will analyze why this is happening now and how the Left can counter this weaponization.

A panel-led discussion on the Venezuelan Left Opposition’s perspectives on the grave political and economic crisis facing the country. Venezuela has undergone a catastrophic economic recession over the past 6 years accompanied and exacerbated by sanctions aimed at crippling the regime’s ability to carry out international trade and access credit. This crisis seemed to peak in 2019, with the self-proclamation and Western recognition of Juan Guaido as interim president. However, as the Venezuelan Left Opposition reminds us, our activism against imperialist intervention need not include defense, justification or faith in the Maduro government. To them, Maduro represents a coalition of military, bureaucratic, entrepreneurial and corporate interests legitimized by the social advances of the Chavez years, that has imposed austerity measures and issued an onslaught against workers, peasants and indigenous peoples under the cover of hyper-inflation and the crisis cast as an “economic war”. Our panel seeks to flesh out, the nature and sources of the crisis in Venezuela through discussion of the programs and critiques issued by diverse bodies in an uncoalesced Left Opposition (Partido Socialismo y Libertad, Marea Socialista, Observatorio Venezolano de Ecología Política, Centro de Investigación y Formación Obrera, El Libertario, among others). We want to elucidate how the Venezuelan tragedy is experienced and perceived across the working class of the country, and how different unions and coalitions are carrying out attempts to break the Government-Opposition binary to allow for the emergence of independent Socialist politics. The purpose of the panel is to bring to the US Left the appeals of our comrades in Venezuela, and inspire a discussion about our pending tasks here in the US to stand in solidarity with the Venezuelan people. We believe that a simple defense of the legitimacy of the Maduro government is not only insufficient, but counter-productive to the project of the self-emancipation of the Venezuelan working class

Sanctions are among a range of coercive instruments used by the United States government to achieve its foreign policy goals. Often presented as a diplomatic and peaceful alternative to direct military engagement, sanctions ironically can have just as devastating outcomes. They may also be seen as a prelude to actual kinetic warfare, strategically deployed to weaken targeted governments and/or their populations’ morale. Indeed sanctions may even create the very "humanitarian crises" to which they were allegedly responding. Addressing the situations of Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela, this panel addresses the origins, implementation, and impact of US-imposed sanctions. It will also consider both popular and state-based resistance to sanctions in both the United States and in the targeted countries.

This panel will review and discuss the economics and political background leading to the decline and fall of the US empire.

Trumpism and other far-right forces are now powerful and growing worldwide, and Stalinist totalitarianism is being enthusiastically embraced by youth. In this session, panelists will address various aspects of this resurgent authoritarianism, discussing their nature and causes, and what to do in response. The speakers represent a diversity of color and gender. There will be ample time for dialogue among speakers and with the audience. Jason Stanley, Yale University philosopher, will present on themes from his bestselling book How Fascism Works (Random House, 2018). Journalist Bill Weinberg of CounterVortex (https://countervortex.org) will discuss the continuing “red-brown” convergence. Andrew Kliman, a Pace University economist, will present evidence on Obama-Trump voters’ right-wing authoritarianism. Anne Jaclard, Organizational Secretary of Marxist-Humanist Initiative, will discuss the turn to neo-Stalinist (“tankie”) politics among some youth. Eric Andrian, a Black, London-based, activist and writer for With Sober Senses, participating via Skype, will explore what Marxist-Humanism brings to the fight against authoritarianism.

In this session we will explore the rising movement to dismantle “Francafrique,” a particularly destructive form of neocolonialism that affects 14 countries in Africa, and influences many more. Propelled into popular awareness by French activist and economist François-Xavier Verschave in his 1999 bestseller La Françafrique: le plus long scandale de la République, the critique of Francafrique has been popularized within the French left through various efforts including La France Insoumise movement and Jean Luc Melenchon’s 2017 presidential campaign. With leading strategists and organizers from throughout some of the most misunderstood parts of the continent, the panel puts modern-day resistance and decolonization struggles into historic contexts which gives hope for the future. With discussion of best-practice tactics, unity across borders, and collective visions of and end to all forms of colonialism — direct, economic, cultural, gendered, and otherwise — we will explore new ways forward for solidarity and Pan-Africanism.

This panel will feature African diaspora activists from Benin, Cameroon, Gabon, DRC, Chad and Ambazonia who are working in close relationship with grassroots home-front movements against French neocolonialism. Questions we will seek to unpack include: What is happening on the ground in these countries? What is the historical context of these struggles? What is the role of Francafrique in the issues people are mobilizing around? What are the limits of the critique of Francafrique? How does the critique of Francafrique relate to critiques of other colonial and neocolonial influences, and other forms of oppression within the fabric of these societies? What coalitional work is going on to bring these voices together internationally? What forms of international solidarity are needed?

We are honored to dedicate this panel to the late Bill Sutherland, unofficial ambassador between Kwame Nkrumah’s pan-African movement and the African American civil rights movement, in this the year of his centenary. The panel will feature Matt Meyer, co-author with Sutherland of Guns and Gandhi in Africa: Pan-African Insights on Nonviolence, Armed Struggle and Liberation, one of the few texts which has sounded the alarm about Francafrique to the English-speaking world.

Steve Bannon counseled Bolsonaro’s campaign. Germany’s AfD cooperates with US climate change deniers. Italy’s Salvini and Hungary’s Orban are preparing a far right cooperation to be elected European Parliament. Obviously, there is a far Right international arising. What do we know about their cooperation and what can progressives do to confront them? This panel will bring perspectives from Germany, Europe, the US, and Brazil to understand right wing internationalism and their networks.