Left Forum

Our Story

Continuing a tradition begun in the 1960’s, Left Forum convenes the largest annual conference in the United States of a broad spectrum of Left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the interested public. Conference participants come together to share ideas and offer critical perspectives on the world; to network and strengthen organizational ties; to better understand commonalities, differences, and alternatives to current predicaments; and to develop dialogues about social transformation and Left, progressive, radical, and social movement building. Featured speakers have included Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Arundhati Roy and Slavoj Zizek. Each year Left Forum has 1,000+ speakers, and involved 4,000 attendees and more than 350 panels.

Beginning with the celebrated Arab Spring and the explosive revolts in Greece and beyond uprisings against dictators, crony capitalism, corporate greed and neo-liberal state austerity regimes have spread across the globe. Tactical innovation in the new movements from Tahrir Square to Madison, Wisconsin are breaking down old barriers in the fight for a better future for the world’s people and the planet.

Although it has been a long time coming, the Occupy Wall Street movement’s message is clear: one percent of people living in the wealthiest nation in the world have grabbed most of the country’s wealth and used it to corrupt politics, while unemployment, mortgage foreclosures, strangling student debt and rising poverty grip the rest of the population. The world is changing, the people are rising, and new possibilities for the Left are emerging.

As it has done for many years, the conference gather civil libertarians, environmentalists, anarchists, socialists, communists, trade unionists, black and Latino freedom fighters, feminists, anti-war activists, students and people struggling against unemployment, foreclosure, inadequate housing and deteriorating schools from among those active in the U.S. and many other countries, as well. We will again share our activities and perspectives with special attention to all that has changed in recent years and what it means for the prospects of progressive change.

Once a year, the Left Forum creates a space to analyze the great political questions of our times. Activists, intellectuals, trade unionists, movement-builders and others come together to identify new strategies for broadening the anti-corporate capitalist movement. In the wake of a persistent crisis of the international economic and political system, a new left politics in the United States and around the world is taking shape. Will the mass movements in Egypt, Greece, Latin America, the United States and elsewhere further extend their participatory democratic, community-building, non-capitalist, and caring forms of struggle into the institutions of everyday life? Will the movements confront and disrupt the complicity of neo-liberal state elites with corporate capital? Are there alternatives to the increasingly brutal capitalist system on the horizon? Join us in exploring such questions and moving forward left agendas for social change.