Environment

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!

My Mis-Education in 3 Graphics documents the filmmaker’s darkly humorous journey through the mind-boggling constructs of mainstream economics. Critics offer some clear-sighted alternatives to the dominating economists' beliefs and models. The film is a visually fun satire deconstructing the current orthodox version of "the dismal science". Filmed introductory economics course lectures and interviews with economists reveal the enormous rift between the economic textbook models and the filmmaker’s and other critics’ understandings of economic reality. The first part of the film explores how mainstream economics (mis)represents markets, the next is a presentation of their befuddling model of the firm, and the final section, on macroeconomics, points to some of the major issues hidden by the models: financial debt’s contribution to inequality, and the unaccounted for destruction of the natural world. Mainstream economists such as N.Gregory Mankiw, George Borts, Timothy Taylor, and Lawrence Summers are critiqued by Herman Daly, Michael Hudson, Randall Wray, Richard McIntyre, Richard and Max Wolff, Robert Pollin, Nancy Holmstrom, Richard Smith, Costas Panayotakis, Doug Henwood, John Foster, Susan Feiner, and Stephen Marglin.

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.

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.

Bring your poems of peace, social justice and resistance to our annual Left Forum open mic! The Radical Poets Collective is a group of poets who are also activists and dissidents across a range of movements for social change, from immigration to Israel-Palestine, Syria, climate change, Marxism, the Black Lives movement and more. Poetry, as an expression of the radical imagination, challenges society, empowers us in speaking truth to power, and inspires us to action, bringing hope to those who are hopeless and self-empowerment to those who have felt helpless. Come to learn more about us and what we do, and then read your poems along with us as we read ours.

Jazz and Self Determination 4 is the continuation of discussions focused on the socio-political components within the Jazz idiom. The free jazz movement of the 1960's and 70's are the primary focus with the primaries of this activity providing the narrative. The first installment premiered at Left Forum 2018 and the second took place at The People's Forum, March 10, 2019. The topics include: formations of collectives, independent record labels, underground festivals, gender, working conditions for musicians and the black arts movement. Althea SullyCole is the co host as occurred on Left Forum 2018. The panelists include: Greg Tate, Basir Mchawi, Ahmed Abdullah, Ted Daniel, Jeremiah Hosea and William Parker.

Blocking U.S. imperialism’s regime change agenda focused on Venezuela and Iran should be a priority for the left. Our panel will discuss both the historical context for this threat and the critical relevancy to the global anti-imperialist/climate and energy justice movements. The debate in the left regarding Maduro and the course of the Bolivarian Revolution is secondary, on one side is Trump/Pompeo/Bolton/Elliot Abrams (the war criminal from the Reagan era) and their appointed "president" Guaido, on the other side is the right of self-determination of Venezuela free of criminal imperial aggression/economic warfare/sanctions and the continuing threat of armed intervention. We should note U.S. involvement in the 2002 failed coup. Considering Iran, the sordid history of U.S. intervention goes back to the 1953 CIA-instigated coup removing Mossadegh. Now Iran is once again a target of regime change, with the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear agreement and imposing new sanctions raising the danger of a reprise of the catastrophic Iraq war. Militarized fossil capital wants control of the world’s biggest oil reserve found in Venezuela’s Orinoco deposit and likewise the fourth largest reserve in Iran. Extracting this oil will drive us to catastrophic climate change (C3). Only by blocking the imperial agenda will the ecosocialist-inspired Bolivarian Revolution have the chance to use a small fraction of its conventional oil reserve as an energy supply for solarization of Latin America, as well as a revenue source for its social transformation, thereby creating a model for a cooperative global regime for preventing C3.

First Daughter and the Black Snake” follows the efforts by Winona LaDuke, famed Native American environmentalist and executive director of Honor the Earth, in her battle—successful to this point—to stop development of several pipelines that would cut across Indian reservations in northern Minnesota, jeopardizing food and water sources for the Ojibwe tribes, while trampling treaties now a century and a half old.

“First Daughter” was produced by award-winning photographer and filmmaker Keri Pickett, an award-winning American photographer, author and filmmaker whose work explores love, family and community. Keri will discuss the film after the showing.

In Los Angeles today, transit and climate racism demand racial and environmental justice. The Labor/Community Strategy Center is carrying out a Free Public Transportation/Stop MTA Attacks on Black Passengers Campaign but there is virtually no white or progressive support as the racial (racist) divide In Los Angeles continues as Black and Latino communities struggle alone while most white people talk about Trump, Bernie, Wall Street, but do not challenge their own or societal racism. This is a chance to change those dynamics. We are demanding Free Public Transportation/No Cars in L.A., No Police on MTA Buses and Trains, No Police in L.A. Schools, Stop MTA Attacks on Black Passengers/Stop U.S.

Genocide Against Black people. This panel will feature lead organizers Channing Martinez, Barbara Lott-Holland, India Tate, and Elmo Gomez in conversation with Strategy Director Eric Mann and the audience about how we can work together to actually win those demands over the next 2, 5, and 10 years—starting now. The discussion will focus on how all of us can get involved, through pressure on MTA board members Mayor Garcetti, Supervisors Mark Ridley Thomas, Sheila Kuehl, Janice Hahn, and Hilda Solis. Raise funds, hold house parties, go door to door, do social media, show up at MTA board meetings, really get involved in this historic movement and historic struggle.