Building a Movement of Debt Resistance 

Sunday, June 1 | 10:00am-11:50am | Room 1.92 

Chaired by Kylie Benton-Connell; with Andrew Ross, Ohyoon Kim, Jim Costanzo, and Max Cohen 

Contrary to what economists are saying, the debt crisis is not over. The creditor class wants us all to perform a lifetime of debt service. How do we build a debtors movement capable of mass economic disobedience? The panelists, all active with Strike Debt, will discuss the movement challenges and the alternatives to predatory credit. 
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In Defense of Bad Art

Sunday, June 1 | 10:00am-11:50am | Room 1.93 

Chaired by Jason Farbman; with Ben Davis and Sarah Jaffee

From Detroit's threat to auction off its public art collection, to the all out assault on art programs in schools across the country, the age of austerity has brought with it an erosion of the already few accessible points of entry into the art world available to working class people. The end result has been a narrowing of an already narrow field, leaving the museums and galleries catering exclusively to the wealthy, and the ranks of today's artists thinned of members of the 99%. If we're to reverse this tide it will require a spirited defense of Bad Art, and an unapologetic demand that public funding be restored and expanded.

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US "Dirty" Wars, Targeted Killings and Secret Operations Supercede Military Occupations, but Are still Illegitimate 

Sunday, June 1 | 10:00am-11:50am | Room L2.85 

Chaired by: Debra Sweet, with Nick Mottern, Ben Kuebrich, Ed Kinane, Medea Benjamin, Paki Wieland 

More than twelve years into the "war on terror," the CIA and Pentagon war planners are increasing emphasis on special operations and targeting killing, with open discussion of targeting US citizens. International law has gone by the wayside, as have constitutional protections of citizens.
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Does the Left Exist?: Global Perspectives - Part 2 

Sunday, June 1 | 12:00-1:50pm | Room 1.71 

With Martin Cortes, Marcus Grätsch, Carlos Frade, Bruno Bosteels, Rose Kim

This extended panel will examine the presence of, potential for, and limits on revolutionary political movements in key countries around the world. Countries examined will include: Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Ukraine, Argentina, and the United States. 

Sponsored by: Situations: Project of the Radical Imagination 
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Changing Climates: A Collective Presentation of the Yale Working Group on Globalization and Culture 

Sunday, June 1 | 12:00pm-1:50pm | Room 3.78 

Chaired by Michael Denning; with Jorge Cuéllar, Sigma Colón, David Minto, Edward King, and Tao Leigh Goffe 

Changing Climates: Weathering the Everyday and the Cultures of the Anthropocene. Climate is a keyword in contemporary culture, serving as an interface between natural history and cultural history; cultural studies might be thought of as a kind of "climate science," studying cultural climates, the atmospheres informing and generated from sexual mores, political opinions, and social tensions. In this collective presentation, the Working Group on Globalization and Culture explores the cultural meanings of climate, from the climate determinisms of empire to the climate control of consumer culture. Originally a term describing spatial divisions of the earth, climate is increasingly used to denote our relationship to our material, social, and affective environments, spheres, spaces, and times in which agency is present yet disembodied. The panel encompasses the ways climate and weather are imported into these quotidian structures of feeling and perception, as well as exploring the intersection of geologic histories and cultural histories. 
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Registering Class in 21st Century Socialist Strategy 

Sunday, June 1 | 12:00pm-1:50pm | Room L2.84 

Chaired by: Greg Albo; with Arun Gupta, Bryan Palmer, and Vivek Chibber

In his landmark essay on 'Reform and Revolution' in the 1968 Socialist Register, Andre Gorz wrote that 'the power to initiate a policy of reforms is not conquered in Parliament, but by the new dynamic of struggle that a new relation of forces makes possible'. This calls today for a sharpened conceptual apparatus to apprehend the changing composition of both capitalist and working classes in recent decades. This panel brings together three of the authors in the 2014 Socialist Register to discuss this. 

Sponsored by: Socialist Register 
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Rethinking Rosa Luxemburg: Pathways from Capitalism to Socialism 

Sunday, June 1 | 12:00pm-1:50pm | Room 1.75 

Chaired by: Paul Le Blanc, with Peter Hudis and Jen Roesch 

The growing impact of Rosa Luxemburg's writings has begun to inform current discussions and debates on the nature of global capitalism, ways of thinking about alternatives to capitalism, and practical strategies to get us from "here" to "there." As Verso publishers, with the support of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, begins to make available in English The Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg (a collaborative project under the editorship of Peter Hudis), it is to be expected that this process will deepen and accelerate. In this session, Luxemburg's thought will be presented as a dynamic totality – involving a specific and still-relevant critique of the capitalist economy, a rich conceptualization of what a genuine socialism might look like, and an intensely practical-minded approach to the politics of reform and revolution.

Sponsored by: Verso; Haymarket Books
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Occupy Wall Street and Labor 

Sunday, June 1 | 3:40pm-5:40pm | Room 1.109 

Chaired by David Berger, with Virgilio Aran and Jackie DiSalvo 

This panel will explore the relationship between the Occupy movement, especially in New York, and labor, organized and unorganized. This panel will discuss the history of this relationship, which predates the actual occupation of Zuccotti Park. it will touch on the dynamics and high points of that relationship, such as the protection of the park by members of unions and the united May Day march in 2011. It will also discuss grass-roots labor organizing efforts that have been going on for several years, which the Occupy movement has been working with, such as that of the Hot and Crusty workers, who, under the auspices of the Laundry Workers Center, won an important victory last year. Members of the panel will include Eleanor Rodgers of Occupy Kensington and Socialist Alternative, Oscar Ramirez and Maggy Crecencio from the Laundry Workers Center and Greg Dunkel, a long-term member of the Occupy Wall Street Labor Outreach Committee 
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Registering Reform and Revolution: 50 Years of The Socialist Register 

Sunday, June 1 | 3:40pm-5:40pm | Room L2.84 

Chaired by Leo Panitch; with David Harvey, Zillah Eisenstein, Barbara Epstein, and Bhaskar Sunkara 

The Socialist Register has long been what Mike Davis once described as "the intellectual lodestone for the international left'. The theme of this year's Left Forum has been the central concern of Register since it was founded by Ralph Miliband in 1964; indeed the 1968 volume featured Andre's Gorz famous essay, "Reform and Revolution", where the concept of structural reforms was first introduced. This panel bring together a highly distinguished roster of of socialist intellectuals - Zillah Eisentsein, Barbara Epstein, David Harvey, Bhaskar Sunkara, chaired by Leo Panitch, co-editor of the Register since 1985 - to discuss the Register's 5five decade long contribution to reform and revolution, and where to go with it today. 

Sponsored by: Socialist Register 
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Special Bonus!

Zizek Delenda Est

Saturday, May 31 | 3:20-4:50pm | Room 1.89

Chaired by: Jacob Levich, Hannah Wolfe, Molly Klein, and John Steppling

Is Slavoj Zizek a US propaganda psyop? I want to ask my comrades on the left to consider the possibility. After years of research, I have come to the conclusion that Zizek is a charlatan posing as a "Stalinist" to both discredit communists by performing a caricature Bolshevik and simultaneously, to smuggle fascist ideas including old fashioned Aryan supremacism and 19th century race theory, back into public discourse disguised as radical left critique of liberalism. I zill focus on how he exploits his radical left image to spread imperialist propaganda and disinformation. I'll trace the origins of the Zizek Industry to his first anointing by the New Left Review, then under the control of Croatian Nationalists and Tudjman supporters, as the Balkan Leftist who would initiate, in 1990, the dominant strain of imperialist propaganda about Yugoslavia, and yet further back to his career as an antiMarxist dissident and Slovene ethnic nationalist. I will discuss the way he has influenced a generation to the point where now right wing and reactionary ideas as well as pure white house disinformation and propaganda are routinely packaged as hip "lefty" and "radical" thought.

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