Left Forum 2009 got underway last night at Pace University in Manhattan, New York. The annual gathering of leftist scholars, thinkers and activists' opening night featured a radical talk from the University's Provost (!), followed by a panel of presentations.
Typically, there were too many speakers for one panel -- five -- and, inevitably, each and every speaker went over the alloted time. There were no complaints from this audience member when Adolph Reed Jr. pursued digression after digression -- interspersed with tragi-humorous anecdotes -- en route to making a powerful argument that the U.S. Left's crisis is not one of ideas, but of organizing. He lamented the paralysis that seems to afflict the Left between the quadrennial cycle of presidential elections -- "After all, I write the same column in the Progressive every four years," Reed joked.
Our friends from Zmag recorded the whole opening session, and we'll share the link once that's online.
After the session, there was an after party at the U.S. headquarters of the English speaking world's largest radical publisher, Verso. Prefiguring a post-capitalist future, Verso provided an open bar...
