Identity Politics

Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Event Description The political and cultural Left, which have stood for increasing the scope of freedom, have historically shifted positons on issues of gender and sexuality. For instance, where once the Left challenged gender and family norms in society, there has been a turn to advocation participation in predominant institutions, for instance in legal reforms and the medical industry: there has been some conflict in LGBTQ circles over the politcs of the trans identity, whether it should be considered a subjective development or an objective condition, and further if it should be considered at all by the Left. [Read More]

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]

AT THE LEFT FORUM hosted by New York’s Pace University in April of this year, a panel discussion was held on the subject of Politics of the Contemporary Student Left: Hopes and Failures. Organized by Alex Hanna of United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS), the panel consisted of Pam Nogales of Platypus, Carlos J. Pereira Di Salvo of USAS, and Laurie Rojas of Platypus. What follows is a transcript of each panelist’s formal presentation and the subsequent Q & A session. [Read More]