Come to Socialism 2009: A New Left for a New Era

Socialism 2009; A Weekend of Revolutionary Politics, Debate, and Entertainment from RedReel on Vimeo.


Building a New Left for a New Era
Socialism 2009
Revolutionary politics, debate and entertainment
June 18-21, Chicago
July 2-5, San Francisco
http://www.socialismconference.org

The world economic crisis has shattered the free-market consensus that has dominated politics for the last generation. Meanwhile, the end of the conservative era and the election of the first African American president have raised expectations among working people that long overdue change is coming. With capitalism in crisis, even some in the corporate media are admitting that Karl Marx was right.

There has never been a better time for those who want to see fundamental change to get together to debate, to discuss and organize for a new society—a society based on the needs of the many instead of the whims of a few. In other words, there has never been a better time to organize a new socialist left to meet the challenge of this new era.

That’s the purpose that Socialism 2009—expanded to two sites this year—has set for itself. Gather with activists from all over to take part in dozens of discussions about changing the world: How can we stop the economic madness? Can we end racism? What kind of organization do we need? What would a future socialist society look like?

Yes we can organize for socialism in the 21st century! Si se puede!

Featured Speakers:

MICK ARMSTRONG, Socialist Alternative, Australia;
ROSE AGUILAR, host, Your Call, KALW,91.7FM;
IAN ANGUS, editor, Climate and Capitalism;
DAVID BACON, author, Illegal People;
NORA BARROWS-FRIEDMAN, co-host, Flashpoints Radio, KPFA;
BARBARA BECNEL,director of Stan Tookie Williams Legacy Network;
ROBERT BRENNER, author, The Economics of Global Turbulence;
DENNIS BRUTUS, longtime anti-apartheid and global justice activist;
PAUL D’AMATO, author of The Meaning of Marxism;
NEIL DAVIDSON, University of Strathclyde, Scotland;
MIKE DAVIS, author, In Praise of Barbarians;
SAM FARBER, author, Origins of the Cuban Revolution;
LAURA FLANDERS, host, GRITtv;
JOEL GEIER, associate editor, International Socialist Review;
TIKVA HONIG-PARNASS, co-author, Between the Lines;
DR. JESS GHANNAM, Al-Awda Right of Return Coalition, Free Palestine Alliance;
ANAND GOPAL, Kabul correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor;
JAMES GREEN, author, Death in the Haymarket;
DAHR JAMAIL, author, Beyond the Green Zone;
BRIAN JONES, performing Howard Zinn’s play Marx in Soho;
CLAUDIO KATZ, author, Las disyuntinvas de la izquierda en America Latina (the challenges of the Latin American Left);
NATIVO LOPEZ, president, Mexican American Political Association;
ALAN MAASS, editor, Socialist Worker;
DAVID McNALLY, New Socialist Group, Canada;
MARLENE MARTIN, Campaign to End the Death Penalty;
ANURADHA MITTAL, director, the Oakland Institute;
CHINA MIEVILLE, author, Un Lun Dun and Between Equal Rights: A Marxist Theory of International Law;
DERREL MYERS, Campaign to End the Death Penalty and Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation;
CHRISTIAN PARENTI, The Nation, on Afghanistan;
JOHN RIDDELL, co-editor, Socialist Voice (Canada);
HEATHER ROGERS, author of Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage;
JEFFREY ST. CLAIR, co-editor of CounterPunch.org and author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Green to Me: The Politics of Nature;
MARTIN SANCHEZ, consul general of Venezuela, San Francisco;
LANCE SELFA, author, The Democrats: A Critical History;
AHMED SHAWKI, editor, International Socialist Review;
CINDY SHEEHAN, founder, Gold Star Families for Peace;
BARRY SHEPPARD, author of The Party: the Socialist Workers Party, 1960-1968;
SHARON SMITH, author of Subterranean Fire and Women and Socialism;
LEE SUSTAR, labor editor, Socialist Worker;
SHERRY WOLF, author, Sexuality and Socialism;
KEEANGA-YAMAHTTA TAYLOR, editorial board of International Socialist Review;
DAVE ZIRIN, author, A People’s History of Sports;
SOCIALISTS from France, Greece, Venezuela, Brazil, and many more!

What you’ll find at Socialism 2009: More than 100 meetings, a bookfair, films, entertainment, and parties.

Check out http://www.socialismconference.org to register and for more information about schedule, housing, and childcare.

Sponsored by:
The Center for Economic Research and Social Change
Publisher of the International Socialist Review and Haymarket Books.

Co-sponsored by:
The International Socialist Organization
Publisher of Socialist Worker

What to the slave is the Fourth of July?

But, such is not the state of the case. I say it with a sad sense of the disparity between us. I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary! Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth [of] July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn. To drag a man in fetters into the grand illuminated temple of liberty, and call upon him to join you in joyous anthems, were inhuman mockery and sacrilegious irony. Do you mean, citizens, to mock me, by asking me to speak to-day? If so, there is a parallel to your conduct. And let me warn you that it is dangerous to copy the example of a nation whose crimes, lowering up to heaven, were thrown down by the breath of the Almighty, burying that nation in irrecoverable ruin! I can to-day take up the plaintive lament of a peeled and woe-smitten people!...

Fellow-citizens; above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, "may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!" To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then fellow-citizens, is AMERICAN SLAVERY. I shall see, this day, and its popular characteristics, from the slave’s point of view. Standing, there, identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible, which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery-the great sin and shame of America! "I will not equivocate; I will not excuse;" I will use the severest language I can command; and yet not one word shall escape me that any man, whose judgment is not blinded by prejudice, or who is not at heart a slaveholder, shall not confess to be right and just....

Allow me to say, in conclusion, notwithstanding the dark picture I have this day presented of the state of the nation, I do not despair of this country. There are forces in operation, which must inevitably work The downfall of slavery. "The arm of the Lord is not shortened," and the doom of slavery is certain. I, therefore, leave off where I began, with hope. While drawing encouragement from the Declaration of Independence, the great principles it contains, and the genius of American Institutions, my spirit is also cheered by the obvious tendencies of the age. Nations do not now stand in the same relation to each other that they did ages ago. No nation can now shut itself up from the surrounding world, and trot round in the same old path of its fathers without interference. The time was when such could be done. Long established customs of hurtful character could formerly fence themselves in, and do their evil work with social impunity. Knowledge was then confined and enjoyed by the privileged few, and the multitude walked on in mental darkness. But a change has now come over the affairs of mankind. Walled cities and empires have become unfashionable. The arm of commerce has borne away the gates of the strong city. Intelligence is penetrating the darkest corners of the globe. It makes its pathway over and under the sea, as well as on the earth. Wind, steam, and lightning are its chartered agents. Oceans no longer divide, but link nations together. From Boston to London is now a holiday excursion. Space is comparatively annihilated. Thoughts expressed on one side of the Atlantic are, distinctly heard on the other. The far off and almost fabulous Pacific rolls in grandeur at our feet. The Celestial Empire, the mystery of ages, is being solved. The fiat of the Almighty, "Let there be Light," has not yet spent its force. No abuse, no outrage whether in taste, sport or avarice, can now hide itself from the all-pervading light. The iron shoe, and crippled foot of China must be seen, in contrast with nature. Africa must rise and put on her yet unwoven garment.

One of the most inspiring and powerful speeches in US history.