LEFT FORUM 2014: REFORM
AND/OR REVOLUTION
Left Forum 2014
May 30 – June 1, 2014
Imagining a World
with Transformative Justice
The world remains mired in the 7th year of capitalist
crisis. The celebrated "recovery" benefits only the few who generated
the crisis, while endless economic declines beset its victims, the vast
majority. Economic, political and cultural inequalities deepen inside every
country. Class divisions sharpen. Social injustice brings us all to breaking
points.
Big business and the rich maximize social controls to
protect and preserve their dominance. Everywhere they and their politicians
impose austerities while reserving public resources to bail out banks and other
failed mega-corporations. Capitalism's "new normal" for most people
features poor job and income prospects, unsustainable debts, ecological
decline, and right-wingers aiming to deflect social discontent against their
usual scapegoats.
Human and natural resources wasted and abused expose this
system's immense social costs. Even as the environmental crisis reaches epic
proportions, the forces of capital either sit idly by or actively oppose
serious measures to address it. We can surely do better than this system. The
1% have managed the crisis for their benefit.
The question is whether we can now solve the crisis and
build a system that serves instead the 99%. This question is on the minds of
millions now, more than at any time in half a century. The Left Forum 2014
offers a place for us to explore and debate our common needs for reforms, a
revolution, or both.
As the system fails so many so badly, activists for
democracy, sustainability, equality, and the abolition of oppression and
exploitation increasingly grasp their shared demand for basic social justice.
Fifty years of anti-communism, anti-radicalism, hesitant social criticism, and
activists' mutual suspicions are fading into irrelevance.
Pressing questions loom for justice-seeking social forces:
What is to be done today when a reform brings us one step forward, while
leaving other important struggles worse off in the process? What type of
movements will it take to overcome such challenges? What type of institutions, systems
and societal conditions are possible when transformed conditions of justice no
longer take the forms of, "the aggrieved speaking to the grievance
alleviators"? How do these issues raise the question of the relation of
reform to revolution? More than ever, people know that a new and different
world is urgently needed. How do we get there from here: reforms, revolution,
or strategic combinations of both?
Please come analyze, debate, build, ally, and strategize at Left Forum, 2014.
Download the Theme: http://www.leftforum.org/files/Left-Forum-2014-Theme.pdf
Register for the conference – here while
early discounts last
Call for Panels/Workshops: Download or
forward – here
LEFT FORUM: http://www.leftforum.org
Please Forward Far and
Wide
**END**
‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands &
Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs
Posted here by Glenn
Rikowski
Glenn Rikowski at Academia: https://independent.academia.edu/GlennRikowski
All that is Solid for Glenn
Rikowski: http://rikowski.wordpress.com
Glenn Rikowski on Facebook at: http://www.facebook.com/glenn.rikowski
Volumizer: http://glennrikowski.blogspot.com
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