Frances will be speaking with Bill Fletcher who is a socialist and a leader of the Black Radical Congress. The themes of the meetings are the regroupment of the international left. Below is the text of a leaflet which is being distributed.We hope to use this trip to build further links with socialists in the USA and to promote Frontline and 'Imagine', the recent book by Tommy Sheridan and Alan McCombes.
Howie Hawkins is also on the platform, from the Green Party, we are carrying an article he has recently written on the Green Party after the Nader campaign in the next issue of Frontline which will be out very soon.
Saturday, April 14
Hewitt Auditorium
41 Astor Place
(Nr. Cooper Union, 3rd Ave & 7th St.)
7:00 p.m.
Speakers:
Frances Curran, Scottish Socialist Party
Bill Fletcher, Black Radical Congress
Howie Hawkins, Green Party
Herman Rosenfeld, Rebuilding the Left Initiative, Canadian Auto Workers
Respondents: Kit Wainer, Solidarity; Juliet Ucelli, Freedom Road
Socialist Organization
Organized by: New York Socialist Alliance Project and Committee to Elect
Gloria Mattera;
Sponsors: Solidarity, Freedom Road Socialist Organization, Left-Turn,
Description:
The mass protests against neoliberalism in the last year and a
half have united a wide range of social movements. Students and
steelworkers marched together in Seattle, and there -- as well as in
subsequent protests in Prague, Melbourne, and later this month in
Quebec and Mexico City -- environmentalists, women's groups,
indigenous peoples and many others found common cause.
In the U.S. a variety of movements united behind the banner of
presidential candidate Ralph Nader, and here in New York various efforts
at unity, such as the Same Boat Coalition, have united around issues and
explored electoral joint work.
In January representatives of grassroots organizations from around the
globe met at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil to declare
"another world is possible!" The politics of this meeting was more
defined, more clearly left, than a coalition of movement groups in the
streets -- but not yet an explicitly socialist regroupment.
Which brings us to the question facing socialist organizations in the
U.S.: can the convergence of activists in action around the globe -- a
convergence in which the left has played an important role -- encourage
greater unity among socialists (and thus in turn reinforcing our
effectiveness within broader movements)?
U.S. socialists have engaged in dialogue about the possibilities of
regroupment for over a decade, and several socialist groups in fact
define their primary mission as pursuing such regroupment. But what will
it take to move this project forward?
Porto Alegre itself is a hopeful sign. So too are several recent
developments in Europe: the joint electoral slate of the LCR and LO in
France, the formation of Socialist Alliances throughout England to run
candidates, the meeting of the European Left in Portugal, and the
formation (and early successes) of the Scottish Socialist Party.
The Scottish Socialist Party (SSP) is already cutting into the support of
Tony Blair's Labour Party in the working class districts in Glasgow and
Clydeside. Frances Curran (SSP's International Officer) will be speaking
on how the Scottish left is forging unity and how the SSP has, with others,
advanced the building of socialist alliances across Europe.
In Canada, the rightward drift and decline of the NDP, (Canada's Labor
Party), has resulted in the emergence of the Rebuilding the Left initiative
last fall.
Herman Rosenfeld, education director of the Canadian Auto Workers, will
describe what's happening there.
Speakers from the U.S. include Bill Fletcher, (Black Radical Congress); Howie
Hawkins (Green Party), as well as commentators from Solidarity and Freedom
Road Socialist Organization. The evening will be chaired by Sean Sweeney,
representing the New York Socialist Alliance Project.