Political and Social Movements

Wondering why we're experiencing abortion bans and attacks on birth control? The birth rate is plunging in the U.S.: It's a spontaneous birth strike! In other countries, panic over low birth rates has led governments to underwrite childbearing and childrearing with generous universal programs, but in the U.S., women have not yet realized the potential of our bargaining position. When we do, it will lead to new strategies for improving the difficult working conditions U.S. parents now face when raising children. Join Jenny Brown, in discussion with Laura Tanenbaum, on her new book, Birth Strike: The Hidden Fight over Women’s Work (PM Press, 2019).

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!

From white nationalists to male tribalists, and from Christian theocrats to Patriot movement activists, the U.S. far right has made dangerous gains in recent years. These “insurgent supremacists” bolster established systems of oppression but also challenge the existing political order in real ways. Antifascist researcher Matthew N. Lyons will outline the major far right currents, their ideologies and goals, their interconnections and tensions with the Trump administration, and some key lessons for antifascist work.

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A proper material analysis of the world requires constant engagement with developments in science and philosophy. This panel hopes to explore the ideas how complexity science, evolution, computation, sync, and similar scientific and philosophical insights might inform today's left politics. The presentation will start with a discussion of basic principles of complexity theory such as linear vs non-linear systems, replication, feedback, emergent behavior, and sync. Within this framework we will look at some example phenomena in today's political discourse such as individual and systemic racism, third party politics, comparative revolutionary processes, and how complex systems inform debt unionization.

The Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung New York Office welcomes Victor Grossman for a discussion of his new memoir A Socialist Defector: From Harvard to Karl-Marx-Allee. The circumstances that impelled Victor Grossman, a U.S. Army draftee stationed in Europe, to flee a military prison sentence were the icy pressures of the McCarthy Era. Grossman—a.k.a. Steve Wechsler, a committed leftist since his years at Harvard and, briefly, as a factory worker—left his barracks in Bavaria one August day in 1952, and, in a panic, swam across the Danube River from the Austrian U.S. Zone to the Soviet Zone. Fate—i.e., the Soviets—landed him in East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic. There he remained, observer and participant, husband and father, as he watched the rise and successes, the travails, and the eventual demise of the GDR socialist experiment. A Socialist Defector is the story, told in rare, personal detail, of an activist and writer who grew up in the U.S. free-market economy; spent thirty-eight years in the GDR’s nationally owned, centrally administered economy; and continues to survive, given whatever the market can bear in today’s united Germany. Having been a freelance journalist and traveling lecturer—and the only person in the world to hold diplomas from both Harvard and the Karl Marx University—Grossman is able to offer insightful, often ironic, reflections and reminiscences, comparing the good and bad sides of life in all three of the societies he has known. His account focuses especially on the socialism he saw and lived—the GDR’s goals and achievements, its repressive measures and stupidities—which, he argues, offers lessons now in our search for solutions to the grave problems facing our world. This is a fascinating and unique historical narrative; political analysis told with jokes, personal anecdotes, and without bombast.

When the yellow vests movement began in November 2018 following the Macron government’s decision to raise the tax on diesel, it was characterized by many, including those on the far left, as being a movement of the extreme right - anti-immigrant and anti-ecological. It was a movement that existed outside the major urban centers. It was also outside the unions and political parties that would usually be associated with any significant mobilization. But far from being a minority movement, it is made up of a significant portion of the French population: the poorer sections of the working class, retirees and women. The movement gained widespread support as it demonstrated on the exclusive Champs de Elysees in Paris and battled the police for the right to put forward its grievances. It was made up of hundreds of local “headquarters” with people meeting on the “roundabouts.” Recently General Assemblies, grouping members or representatives into broader regional bodies have been formed to discuss the direction of their movement. This panel will discuss the political developments within this movement and how the extreme left can engage this new movement that has the possibility to challenge the mechanisms of power.

Information technology, the most powerful communications and data system in human history, not only plays a central role in revolutionary work, it's our main tool for building the society we want to see. For three years, left-wing activists from all over the United States have met in 27 regional convergences to forge a unified program of action around technology -- the Points of Unity Around Technology. That program is now being presented to our movements for full discussion and, hopefully, endorsement. In this encounter, we will present the program (in a five minute video), hear the reactions of a panel of leading activists and then open the conversation up to you. This is your opportunity to join in a conversation that could prove central to the revolution we all want and the survival of the human race depends on.

How has President Trump been so successful for so long at maintaining extensive ultraright grassroots support? Speakers will examine the recently deceased neo-Nazi figure Lyndon LaRouche and how his legacy was adopted by the Trump movement, the ways in which a Red-Brown convergence strengthens Trump and how Polish nationalist anti-Semites have been challenged on the streets of New York City.

The win of SYRIZA in the Greek elections is in the centre of interest of social movements, trade unions and progressive political forces in Europe. SYRIZA has announced to cancel the Memorandum and replace it through a program for a Productive Reconstruction as early as it will be in power. The vicory of SYRIZA has inspired similar movements in other European countries. In Spain a new political formation emerged from the social movements. Together with the "Left Unity" the traditional party of the radical Left has attained more than 20 percent of the votes at the European elections. It took many of its inspirations from SYRIZA. This opens not only for Greece and Spain, but for the whole of Europe a new perspective. What conclusions do different social and political actors draw? What new possiblities for achange in Europe does this offer? These are two the main research questions of the network transform! europe which is the political foundation of the Party of the European Left.