Barack Obama

The Millennial Left is dead

October 1, 2017 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Those who demand guarantees in advance should in general renounce revolutionary politics. The causes for the downfall of the Social Democracy and of official Communism must be sought not in Marxist theory and not in the bad qualities of those people who applied it, but in the concrete conditions of the historical process. It is not a question of counterposing abstract principles, but rather of the struggle of living social forces, with its inevitable ups and downs, with the degeneration of organizations, with the passing of entire generations into discard, and with the necessity which therefore arises of mobilizing fresh forces on a new historical stage. [Read More]

Millenials Barack Obama Bernie Sanders Donald Trump Black Lives Matter Occupy Wall Street

Black politics in the age of Obama

June 1, 2013 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON MAY 6, 2013, the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a conversation on “Black Politics in the Age of Obama” at the University of Chicago. The speakers included Cedric Johnson, the author of Revolutionaries to Race Leaders: Black Power and the Making of African American Politics (2007) and The Neoliberal Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, Late Capitalism, and the Remaking of New Orleans (2011); and Mel Rothenberg, a veteran of the Sojourner Truth Organization and coauthor of The Myth of Capitalism Reborn: A Marxist Critique of Theories of Capitalist Restoration in the USSR (1980). [Read More]

Black politics Barack Obama

Black Politics in the Age of Obama

May 6, 2013 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A panel event held in Chicago at the University of Chicago on May 6, 2013. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Transcripted in Platypus Review #57 Panelists Michael Dawson Cedric Johnson Description The reelection of Obama presented a problem for the American left. Lost was the hopeful rhetoric of transforming society for the better, and as it became clear that Obama’s administration had returned to “politics-as-usual,” the left began to cynically appraise the purported gains made in his first term. [Read More]

University of Chicago Barack Obama Post-racial society

Sexual Freedom and the History of the Left

February 14, 2013 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A teach-in led by Chris Cutrone at the University of Chicago on February 14, 2013. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Description The political and cultural Left, which stand for increasing the scope of freedom, have shifted positions historically on issues of sexuality. For instance, where once the Left challenged marriage and family norms in society, there has been a turn to advocating participation in predominant institutions, for instance gay marriage: there has been some conflict in LGBTQ circles over the politics of gay marriage, whether it should be advocated in certain ways or at all by the Left. [Read More]

Gay marriage LGBTQ Barack Obama Sexual liberation

The Future of the Status Quo

The Left after the Election

December 6, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

A panel event held on December 6, 2012, at New York University. Video Recording Panelists Ben Campbell (The North Star) Annie Day (Revolution) Chris Maisano (DSA, Jacobin) Bhaskar Sunkara (Jacobin) Moderated by Tana Forrester (Platypus Affiliated Society). Description This past US election season saw an array of positions on the Left concerning the outcome that might follow from either major party’s victory. Among them, there were some who openly supported the incumbent Barack Obama as the lesser of two evils, others who opposed him by casting a vote for another candidate, and still others who followed the abstentionist line by not voting at all. [Read More]

/2012 election DSA Election Electoral politics Jacobin Barack Obama RCP The North Star

Lessons from the election

December 1, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

IN A STRANGE WAY, the debate over whether the American left should support the Green Movement in Iran resembles the arguments that took place in progressive circles before the 2008 presidential elections in the United States, and that reemerged in the recent midterm elections. Those in the Obama camp either believed him to be their savior, taking his every word as gospel, or, if they had a more sober political outlook, simply resorted to some version of the tired “lesser of two evils” argument. [Read More]

Election Green Movement Iran Mir-Hossein Mousavi Barack Obama

Book Review: Adolph Reed Jr. and Kenneth W. Warren, eds., _Renewing Black Intellectual History_

September 12, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2010 IN A 2005 COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS, Howard Zinn urged the graduates of Spelman College to look beyond conventional success and follow the tradition set by courageous rebels: “W.E.B. Dubois and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Marian Wright Edelman, and James Baldwin and Josephine Baker.”1 At first, Zinn’s lineage feels like an omnium-gatherum. Compare Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary” militarism to Marian Edelman’s milquetoast non-profit advocacy –“by any grant-writing or lobbying necessary” – and the incoherence stands out. [Read More]

Adolph Reed Jr Barack Obama Booker T. Washington Franz Boas Howard Zinn Identity Politics Kenneth Warren Malcolm X Race Reconstruction W.E.B. Dubois Zora Neale Hurston

The American Left and the "Black Question:"

From Politics to Protest to the Post-political

March 20, 2010 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Platypus panel held at Left Forum 2010 in New York City, Pace University, March 20, 2010. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Benjamin Blumberg’s comments are transcribed in Platypus Review #19 Panelists Tim Barker, Columbia University Benjamin Blumberg, Platypus Affiliated Society Pamela Nogales, Platypus Affiliated Society Chris Cutrone, Platypus Affiliated Society, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, University of Chicago Description One catch-phrase that has flown in the wake of the successful election of Barack Obama is “post-racial,” raising the question of the degree to which America has overcome racism. [Read More]

Left Forum 2010 Barack Obama Racism

Labor struggles today

A report on a recent civil disobedience action in Chicago

October 10, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON SEPTEMBER 24, 2009, approximately 900 Chicagoans rallied on the sidewalks in front of the Park Hyatt Hotel near the Magnificent Mile. At the height of rush hour, about 200 members and community allies of UNITE HERE Local 1, Chicago’s hospitality workers’ union, arrived at the scene and blocked all four lanes of Chicago Avenue by sitting down in rows and linking their arms. As the demonstrators chanted “Whose streets? Our streets! [Read More]

AFL-CIO Chuck Hendricks Labor Barack Obama SEIU Unite Here Workers United

Progress or regress?

The future of the Left under Obama

May 15, 2009 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON DECEMBER 6th, 2008, a panel discussion titled Progress or Regress? Considering the Future of Leftist Politics Under Obama was held in New York City. The Panelists were: Chris Cutrone of Platypus; Stephen Duncombe, a professor at the Gallatin School at New York University and author of Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy (2007); Pat Korte of the new Students for a Democratic Society (SDS); Charles Post of the Detroit-based organization Solidarity; and Paul Street, author of Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (2008). [Read More]

Adolph Reed Bayard Rustin Exchanges Martin Luther King Barack Obama Pat Korte Paul Street Stephen Duncombe