[Peace-discuss] [Discuss] Public Forum Invitation: What is Socialism?

[David Johnson]

James,

 

I had heard that your wife was invited to be one of the speakers.

Is that the case ?

 

David Johnson

 

From: Peace-discuss [mailto:peace-discuss-bounces at lists.chambana.net] On Behalf Of James Kilgore via Peace-discuss
Sent: Sunday, March 06, 2016 6:46 PM
To: David Green
Cc: CUCPJ Discuss; Peace-discuss List
Subject: Re: [Peace-discuss] [Discuss] Public Forum Invitation: What is Socialism?

 

Five male speakers, really?

James




James Kilgore
Research Scholar
Center for African Studies
University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign)

Author of  <http://www.understandingmassincarceration.com/> Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People's Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time

 

 

On Sun, Mar 6, 2016 at 6:39 PM, David Green via Discuss-CommunityCourtwatch <discuss-communitycourtwatch at lists.chambana.net> wrote:

https://www.facebook.com/events/762579180539887/?action_history=null

 

The local Prairie Green Party and the Bernie Sanders campaign is organizing a forum with local scholars and activists to address the politically pertinent question: “What is socialism?”

Our motivation extends from the current political context; from debates about socialism in relation to the intersections of class, race, and gender; from debates about “social democracy” vs. “democratic socialism”; from debates about anarchism in the wake of the Occupy movement; from the ongoing struggles of the labor movement; and from debates about practical challenges to capitalism and socialist vision as articulated, for example, at jacobinmag.com.

The references below are among those that motivated me to suggest organizing this forum:

 <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/erik-olin-wright-real-utopias-anticapitalism-democracy/> Erik Olin Wright argues that capitalism can be “tamed” and “eroded” in “the only viable options” in building “real utopias.” He defines “tamed” and “eroded” in specific, programmatic ways.

 <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/olin-wright-real-utopias-socialism-capitalism-gramsci-lenin-luxemburg/> Dylan Riley respectfully but sharply responds to Wright that “The basic problem is that Wright tells us nothing about what is still the central task of any viable strategy for winning socialism: destroying the entrenched political and economic power of the capitalist class.”

 <https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/12/hilary-wainwright-feminism-socialism-womens-liberation-england/> Hillary Wainwright has recently asserted that: “I’m repeatedly shocked by the fact that the relevance of feminism for the rethinking of socialism hasn’t been taken on board, and that the Left has trudged on as usual, making its usual mistakes, pretty much as if feminism had never really done more than put women on the agenda. The Left adopted policies toward women, but has not carried out a fundamental rethink of socialism, which is what I felt feminism was enabling us to do.”

 <http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/ta-nehisi-coates-blackwashing-reparations-brand-and-last-refuge-scoundrels> Bruce Dixon, a writer at the Black Agenda Report and an activist in the Green Party, has responded critically to Ta-Nehisi Coates advocacy for reparations for African-Americans: “I'm a lifelong socialist, somebody who believes political mountains can and must be moved. But when proponents of reparations don't even try to discuss what the needed political coalitions might look like, what sectors of society we need to win over to make reparations happen, or how many years or decades all this might take, are they acting like a political movement, or like something else? What kind of political movement advances no measures, discusses no plans, takes no responsibility for advancing its own just cause? The answer is that movements don't behave like that at all. But brands do.”

 


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