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Sunday Evening Plenary:
Barbara Bowen, Kshama Sawant, and Rob Robinson
Amy Goodman: moderator and interlocutor
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Everyday Revolutions and Transformative Organizing:
Dialgoues, Strategies, Hope, and Trust
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A dialogue in three parts – with audience questions
with a welcome from Dolores Canales
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Barbara Bowen is a professor of English at Queens College and the Graduate Center of The City University of New York (CUNY). She taught for fifteen years before becoming president of the Professional Staff Congress/CUNY. A scholar of 17th-century English literature and African-American studies, Bowen earned her Ph.D. at Yale and has published numerous works in her field. Throughout her academic career, she also worked in progressive political movements and as a labor organizer. Bowen’s election as president of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) in 2000 was as part of a collective of faculty and staff with deep roots in progressive politics. The PSC represents 25,000 faculty members and professional staff at CUNY and the CUNY Research Foundation. A fierce opponent of accommodating to economic austerity, Bowen has been an outspoken critic of Albany’s failed strategy of disinvestment in CUNY and reliance on increased student tuition. She is a principled and articulate labor leader, pressing city’s labor movement to challenge Wall Street. |
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Kshama Sawant is an activist who brings a passion for social justice to her work as a public servant. As a member of the Seattle City Council, Kshama pledges to be a voice for workers, youth, the oppressed and the voiceless. After earning her PhD, Kshama moved to Seattle and began teaching at Seattle Central Community College, Seattle University, and the University of Washington Tacoma. In 2012, Kshama ran as a Socialist Alternative candidate for WA State Legislature and surprised everyone by winning 29% of the vote. The momentum continued in her campaign for Seattle City Council where she boldly ran on a platform of fighting for a $15/hr minimum wage, rent control and taxing the super-rich to fund mass transit and education. In November she defeated a 16-year incumbent Democrat to become the first socialist elected in a major US city in decades.
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Rob Robinson is a member of the Leadership Committee of the Take Back the Land Movement and a staff volunteer at the National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI). After losing his job in 2001 with a fortune 500 company, he spent two years, homeless on the streets of Miami and ten months in a New York City shelter. He eventually overcame homelessness and has been in the housing movement based in New York City since 2007. In the fall of 2009, Rob was chosen to be New York City chairperson for the first ever official mission of a UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Adequate Housing. He has worked with homeless populations in Budapest Hungary and Berlin Germany and is connected with housing movements in South Africa and Brazil. He works with the European Squatters Collective, International Alliance of Inhabitants, Landless People’s Movement and the Movement of People Affected by Dams and is a member of the Steering Committee of the USA Canada Alliance of Inhabitants. He is a member of the Board of the Left Forum. |
| Amy Goodman is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on over 1,200 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s Meet the Press.Goodman is the first journalist to receive the Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’ for “developing an innovative model of truly independent grassroots political journalism that brings to millions of people the alternative voices that are often excluded by the mainstream media.” She is the first co-recipient of the Park Center for Independent Media’s Izzy Award, named for the great muckraking journalist I.F. Stone. The Independent of London called Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! “an inspiration.” PULSE named her one of the 20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009. |
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Dolores Canales is a founding member and organizer with California Families Against Solitary Confinement (CFASC) and on the Advisory Board of CURB (Californians United for a Responsible Budget) and mother of John Martinez, who has spent the past 13 years in Solitary Confinement in Pelican Bay SHU prison. Since the July 2011 Hunger Strike Dolores and numerous other family members have been actively involved in raising awareness to the issues of solitary confinement and mass incarceration in California. Dolores herself is a formally incarcerated, very productive member of society, and spends her free time advocating on behalf of prisoners and their families. Dolores was awarded the Family Unity Award by Legal Services of Prisoners with Children.
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Celebrating 10 Years
Left Forum 2014,
May 30 – June 1
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
The City University of New York
524 West 59th. Street, New York, NY, 10019
  
leftforum.org|leftforum@leftforum.org
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