Southern California Socialist Conference

Building a Revolutionary Alternative to War, Crisis, and Racism

 

Saturday, November 8^th - Noon to 9:00 PM

United Teachers Los Angeles** Building

3303 Wilshire Blvd (cross street: Berendo)

Two blocks west of the Wilshire/Vermont Red Line Stop

 

Guest Speakers:

 

Laila Al-Arian

is a freelance journalist and co-author, with Chris Hedges, of Collateral Damage: America’s War Against Iraqi Civilians (Nation Books, 2008). She has written for The Nation, USA Today, United Press International, The Huffington Post, and The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

 

Paul D’Amato

A revolutionary socialist for over 30 years, Paul D’Amato is the managing editor of the International Socialist Review (www.isreview.org) and is the author of The Meaning of Marxism, published by Haymarket Books (www.haymarketbooks.org).  Paul writes a regular column, also called The Meaning of Marxism, for Socialist Worker newspaper (www.socialistworker.org).

 

Michael Schwartz

Michael Schwartz is a Professor of Sociology at Stony Brook University and author of War Without End: The Iraq War in Context, published by Haymarket Books.  Michael is also a regular contributor to several progressive online and print publications, including Against the Current, Z Magazine, Asia Times, www.TomDispatch.com, and www.MotherJones.com.

 

Registration:

 

$10 - all day

$5 - single session

 

Schedule:

 

(All sessions include a period for open discussion among the audience.)

 

Opening Plenary: (Noon)

 

Capitalism in Crisis: Building the Revolutionary Alternative

Speaker: Paul D’Amato

 

Breakout Session I: (2 p.m.)

 

Socialists and Unions

From the nineteenth century fight for the eight-hour day to the sit-down strikes of the 1930s to the rank-and-file movements of the 1970s and today, unions have always been a critical front in the fight for workers’ rights, and socialists have been at the heart of the union movement. However, today the labor movement has been severely weakened by three decades of a ruling class offensive against the working class, both in the United States and internationally. Find out why working people today still need unions to bring us together to fight, and why we need socialist organization to win.

Why does capitalism go into crisis?

The economic meltdown of 2008 is easily the worst crisis to face the capitalist economic system since the Great Depression of the 1930s.  Mainstream economists always try to describe these crises as the avoidable result of bad government policies or unusually corrupt business practices.  Socialists, on the other hand, see economic crisis as an inbuilt feature of the capitalist system.  The bosses’ beloved free market lurches into chaos over and over again, each time causing millions of ordinary people to face unemployment, poverty, homelessness, and hunger.  Can the madness of the capitalist “business cycle” be explained?

 

The New Deal and the 1930’s

In school, we are taught that President Franklin Roosevelt responded to the Great Depression by passing a host of programs to help working people — known as the “New Deal.”  The truth is quite different: FDR’s priority was rescuing big business, and it took massive and hard-fought struggles by working people to gain the Social Security, unemployment insurance, and union rights that came out of the 1930s.  Socialists and Communists played a key role in these struggles.  What can we learn from the 1930s about how to fight for working people in a time of economic crisis?

 

Breakout Session II: (4:30 p.m.)

 

What’s wrong with the war on terror?

 

40 Years Since the Blowouts: Lessons of Chicanismo

 

Do Americans consume too much?

 

Why We Need a Revolutionary Party

 

Closing Panel: (7 p.m.)

 

Resisting Empire at Home and Abroad

Part of a national anti-war speaking tour (www.resistingempire.org)

Speakers: Laila Al-Arian, Michael Schwartz, and local activists

 

Sponsored by:

 

Socialist Worker newspaper (www.socialistworker.org)

Haymarket Books (www.haymarketbooks.org)

International Socialist Organization

 

**UTLA is not a sponsor of this event.

 

For more information, please call the Los Angeles branch of the International Socialist Organization at (213) 309-2713 or email: lacityiso@yahoo.com