Left Forum 2016 - Cooperation Jackson: Countering the Confederate Assault & the Struggle for Economic Democracy in Jackson Mississippi with brandon king and Rukia Lumumba

Left Forum 2016
John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Friday, April 1st is the launch of “Operation Jackson Rising”. Operation Jackson Rising is a grassroots effort to stop the Confederate Spring being ushered in by Governor Phil Bryant and the neo-confederate, Tea Party dominated state Republican Party. The Confederate Spring is an onslaught of reactionary legislation, being forced on Black, Indigenous, immigrant and working class communities in Mississippi and throughout the south. This assault is an effort to impose a neo-liberal social order that seeks to reestablish an open racial hierarchy, patriarchal dominance and hetero-normative hegemony. It is explicitly seeking to criminalize more sectors of the Black working class, to openly and legally discriminate against LGBTQI individuals, to privatize public education and eliminate any semblance of Black or ethnic studies, and reduce the scale and scope of the government to privatize essential goods and services by eliminating taxes and reduce revenues. Cooperation Jackson has been working with the Coalition for Economic Justice which is specifically focused on combating the aspects of the Confederate Spring that are seeking to seize Jackson’s strategic assets and destroy Black political power in the city. This panel/workshop session will also provide some basic education, and give a context to the struggle for economic democracy in Jackson Mississippi and Cooperation Jackson's role as a vehicle designed to actualize economic democracy in Jackson, Mississippi.

Panel/Workshop Topics: Political Economy And The Current Crisis, Political And Social Movements, Culture and Everyday Life
More Panel/Workshop Information

Diversity of Perspectives: 
This panel/workshop session will allow space for a diversity of perspectives relating to economic democracy, self-determination, solidarity economy, and shared economy. We will also connect how white supremacy, colonization, and austerity to the current context of a confederate assault.

About Left Forum 2016: Rage, Rebellion, Revolution: Organizing Our Power
"Today's left generates an increasingly bold and resonant criticism of contemporary capitalism and the severely compromised everyday life that it produces. From Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter and the Fight for $15; from escalating climate justice and gender freedom demands and the movement against mass incarceration to the massive national support for Bernie — not despite but because he wears the socialist label: left critique is going big. Something profound is shaking.

The fuel for radical social transformation is all around us. From the streets and from offices; from campuses, factories, and stores, we see a growing rage against the system coming from those left behind and left out. People have had it. But we know too well that rage can easily feed the dangers of right wing populism, fascism, militarism, and gun violence in the U.S. and around the world.

Rebellion, too, stalks the institutions that perpetuate a ruthless and violent system. Rebellion is inevitable when people live in a dehumanizing and contradictory society. But rebellion can fuel the right as well as the left — from “Know-Nothing” style populism to positive reforms like higher wages, and from movements to end the racist dimensions - and transform the institutional purposes - of policing in our country, all the way up to a revolutionary alternative. The future depends on what we envision and build today, and on how we ride this wave.

We know that we can do better than capitalism and its state violence and endless bullshit. We reject the corporate dominance that corrupts our politics while delivering depressions, unemployment, and austerity. Folks all around the world share our disgust at the grotesque inequalities of today’s corporate system: its discriminations against and oppressions of vast populations, and its destruction of our environment. They sense that there are better alternatives. At Left Forum, we come together to imagine and hash out these alternatives, and to organize our power to make them real.

There is a lot to build on, and a lot to build. See you at Left Forum!"
- via leftforum.org

Left Forum 2016 Coverage
Provided by: Deep Dish TV
Producer: Brian Drolet
Cinematography: Ron Myrvik
Live Stream: Matt Hopard
Editors: Ron Myrvik and Rebecca Centeno