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Email: media@leftforum.org
A unique phenomenon in the U.S. and the world, Left Forum convenes the largest annual conference of a broad spectrum of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the interested public. Conference participants come together to engage a wide range of critical perspectives on the world, to discuss differences, commonalities, and alternatives to current predicaments, and to share ideas for understanding and transforming the world. The conference is held each spring in New York City. The following speakers have just been announced for the 2012 conference:
RoseAnn DeMorois executive director of the National Nurses United, the nation's largest union of nurses. DeMoro is also executive director of the California Nurses Association, which is well known for igniting the campaign that upended one of the world's most famous celebrity politicians, Arnold Schwarzenegger, dropping his public approval from 70% to 35% in the polls. Under DeMoro's stewardship, NNU and CNA is also renown as the leading national advocates of single payer/Medicare for all healthcare reform. Over the past year, NNU has led a national campaign calling for a tax on Wall Street also known as the Robin Hood tax and has supported the Occupy Wall Street movement with nurses first aid stations from New York to San Francisco.
Marina Sitrinhas been active in occupy movements worldwide. She is the editor ofHorizontalism: Voices of Popular Power in Argentinaand author ofEveryday Revolutions: Horizontalism and Autonomy in Argentina(forthcoming). She is a lawyer and postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Globalization and Social Change at the City University of New York. She is also a student, teacher, dreamer and militant. Her books touch upon issues of state practices of cooptation and repression in relation to social movement mobilizations to build autonomy and direct democracy. |
William Stricklandspent his early years of political activism working as the Executive Director of the Northern Student Movement, the northern analogue of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee; working for the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party; and working on the Harlem rent strikes in the 1960s. During this time, Strickland also worked with Malcolm X, whom he knew from his childhood days. A graduate of Boston Latin School, Harvard College, Harvard University, he currently is the Director of the Du Bois Papers Collection at W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst where he also teaches political science. |
William Tabb is the author of The Restructuring of Capitalism in Our Time (Columbia University Press, 2012), Economic Governance in the Age of Globalization (Columbia University Press, 2004), and The Amoral Elephant: Globalization and the Struggle for Social Justice in the Twenty-First Century (Monthly Review Press, 2001). He taught economics at Queens College and economics, political science and sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center. He was the Visiting Scholar at Kansai University Osaka, Japan and the Visiting Professor Economics at University of California, Berkeley. He was also founding host and for many years did the "Behind the Economic News" program at WBAI Pacifica Radio.
"If JD Vance sincerely gave a whit about working families in America, he would have shown up in the Senate a week and a half ago and voted for my proposal to expand the Child Tax Credit," said Sen. Ron Wyden.
The Democratic chair of the Senate Finance Committee on Sunday called Sen. JD Vance "a phony" after the Republican vice presidential candidate proposed more than doubling the Child Tax Credit—less than two weeks after skipping a vote on legislation that would have expanded the benefit.
"If JD Vance sincerely gave a whit about working families in America, he would have shown up in the Senate a week and a half ago and voted for my proposal to expand the Child Tax Credit and help 16 million low-income kids get ahead," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who helped craft the compromise bill that passed the House in February but failed to overcome a GOP filibuster in the Senate earlier this month.
Some members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the upper chamber, voted against the measure because—in addition to boosting the Child Tax Credit (CTC)—it would have extended significant corporate tax breaks, a trade-off aimed at securing Republican votes.
Vance (R-Ohio), a self-proclaimed "pro-family" lawmaker, missed the vote because he was visiting the U.S.-Mexico border. Wyden said Sunday that former President Donald Trump's running mate "didn't even care enough to use his platform to call on his Senate Republican colleagues to support" an expansion of the CTC.
"What kept him away while we were voting? He was busy posing for photos on the southern border—another issue he and Donald Trump pretend to care about while they block real solutions for political gain," said Wyden. "Bottom line, the guy's a phony."
In an interview aired Sunday, Vance toldCBS' "Face the Nation" that he supports more than doubling the CTC and eliminating the regressive phase-in that leaves the poorest families ineligible for the program.
Such changes would resemble those enacted in 2021 under the American Rescue Plan (ARP), Democratic legislation that GOP lawmakers unanimously opposed. The measure passed before Vance was elected to the U.S. Senate.
The ARP's expansion of the CTC lapsed at the end of 2021 due to opposition from Republicans and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, quickly erasing the brief reduction in child poverty that followed the law's passage.
Earlier this month, Vance falsely claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris—the Democratic presidential nominee—"is calling for an end to the Child Tax Credit." Harris cast the tie-breaking vote that allowed the ARP to advance in the Senate.
Bloombergnoted that Vance "went on three network political talk shows Sunday after a shaky start on the GOP ticket, damaged in part by resurfaced comments in which he belittled Democrats, including Vice President Kamala Harris, as 'childless cat ladies.'"
Harris' campaign has hit back forcefully. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Harris' running mate, slammed Vance for skipping the CTC expansion vote in a recent social media post.
"In Minnesota, we're cutting poverty and strengthening families with our Child Tax Credit," Walz wrote, referring to a state program that's been described as the most generous in the nation. "You'd think JD Vance would be eager to do the same nationally. Except he skipped a vote to pass the federal Child Tax Credit expansion yesterday. Give me a break with that pro-family talk."
"U.S. funding of Israeli genocide is ballooning as the Israeli army uses ever more lethal bombs," said Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, said Sunday after bombing that killed 100 people, mostly civilians, in Gaza City.
The office of the Palestinian Authority's president is holding the U.S. government responsible for a weekend bombing in Gaza that killed an estimated 100 people, including at least 11 children. The victims of the attack on the al-Tabin school were blown to 'pieces,' according to video evidence and on-the-ground reporting, when U.S.-provided missiles were fired on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.
In the wake of the attack that stirred global outrage and condemnation Saturday, the Palestinian presidency's spokesperson Nabih Abu Rudeineh condemned the massacre and said the PA held the Biden administration "responsible for the massacre due to its financial, military, and political support for Israel."
Rudeineh demanded the U.S. pressure the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cease indiscriminate attacks that have left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians dead, wounded, and displaced over recent months. In addition, he said, the U.S. must conform to international law by ending its "blind support" to Israel "that leads to the killing of thousands of innocent civilians, including children, women, and the elderly."
As Common Dreams previously reported, the bombing of the al-Tabin school complex came just hours after the U.S. State Department announced the release of $3.5 billion in military aid for Israel and made new weapons transfers available to help refresh the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stockpiles.
"U.S. funding of Israeli genocide is ballooning as the Israeli army uses ever more lethal bombs," said Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on Palestine, in an online post Sunday. "The ones used yesterday in the Al-Tabin School massacre sliced bodies to the point of making them unrecognizable. They are now identified by weight: 70kg bag = 1 adult. Revolting."
The head of Gaza's Government Media Office told Al Jazeera that the three bombs dropped on the school weighed 2,000 pounds each, matching the size of the MK-84 munitions provided by the thousands to the IDF by the United States over the last year.
"Another day of horror in Gaza, another school hit with reports of dozens of Palestinian killed among them women, children and older people,” said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN relief agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA), Saturday in response to the attack. "It's time for these horrors unfolding under our watch to end. We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm. The more recurrent, the more we lose our collective humanity."
The UN human rights office said the latest attack was "at least the 21st strike on a school, each serving as a shelter, that the UN [the agency] has recorded since 4 July. These strikes have resulted in at least 274 fatalities, including women and children."
Responding to claims by the IDF that the bombing was aimed at militants it claimed were using the facility, OHCHR said in a statement that "co-location by armed groups of military objectives with civilians" does not release Israel from its "obligation to comply strictly with [international humanitarian law], including the principles of proportionality, distinction and precaution when carrying out military operations. Israel, as the occupying power, is obliged to provide the population it has forcibly displaced with basic humanitarian needs, including safe shelter."
Asked about the situation in Gaza on Saturday, Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee for president, said during a campaign stop in Phoenix, Arizona that she and President Joe Biden have been working "around the clock" to secure a ceasefire deal that would see the fighting end and Israeli hostages held by Hamas returned safely.
Specifically about Saturday's bombing of the school complex, Harris said, "Yet again, far too many civilians have been killed."
"Yet again, there are far too many civilians who've been killed. Israel has a right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas. But as I have said many, many times, they also have, I believe, an important responsibility to avoid civilian casualties."
-- Kamala Harris on Gaza pic.twitter.com/Ir0bysiFT9
— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) August 10, 2024
Despite global outrage over Saturday's attack, the Israeli military overnight Sunday issued new evacuation orders for southern Gaza.
"This is our final chance to secure a deal that will save lives," said one family member. "Netanyahu continues to trade on the lives of hostages in exchange for maintaining his seat of power."
Thousands marched in the streets of Israeli cities on Saturday to demand that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu end his sabotage of negotiations that would see an end to the fighting in Gaza and the release of hostages held by Hamas for over nine months.
As human rights defenders and world leaders condemned the Israeli government throughout the day over the latest "heinous" massacre of innocent civilians in Gaza—this time at another school-turned-shelter in Gaza where an estimate 100 people or more were killed by IDF missiles overnight—family members of hostages were among those who accused Netanyahu of keeping the carnage going in order to maintain power.
In Tel Aviv, demonstrators held up signs that read: "Crime Minister!"; "Bring Them Home!"; and "Bibi, Stop Wasting Time!"
Einav Zangauker, identified by Haaretz as the mother of hostage Matan Zangauker, accused Netanyahu of using victims like her son "as pawns to preserve his power."
With the United States, Qatar, and Egypt trying to hold a new round of talks next week, Zangauker said that Israel has "reached a crucial moment" that Netanyahu must not be allowed to sabotage.
"This is our final chance to secure a deal that will save lives," she said. "Netanyahu continues to trade on the lives of hostages in exchange for maintaining his seat of power."
While the heads of Arab nations have told President Joe Biden he must put more of a squeeze on Netanyahu in order to compel him towards a deal, Israel's own defense chiefs have indicated Netanyahu does not want any such deal.
The assassination of Hamas' leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month by Israel was one clear signal that negotiations—for which Haniyeh was a key player—is not how the Israelis under Netanyahu want to proceed.
Meanwhile, news on Friday that the Biden administration was releasing another $3.5 billion in military aid and weapons sales for Israel indicated that the U.S. president is not applying any pressure on the prime minister ahead of next week's talks.
Ghadir Hani, an anti-war leader in the Standing Together and Women Wage Peace organizations, spoke at a demonstration in the town of Caesarea on Saturday where she said that in addition to the safe return of Israeli hostages, a deal is "also necessary for the sake of the thousands of innocents in Gaza, whose agonized deaths breaks the heart of everyone in whom humanity remains."