LEFT FORUM 2016

This weekend the American left will gather in New York for the annual Left Forum (May 20-22).

THIS WEEKEND SOME 4,500 progressives will gather in New York for the annual Left Forum. Established in 2005, it is the largest annual conference of the American left.

Past conference speakers have included: Cornel West, Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy, Harry Belafonte, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Bolivian Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera, Amy Goodman, Slavoj Zizekv and Oliver Stone.

There are huge number of workshops and panels at Left Forum, as well as film screenings, music, theatre and exhibitions.

This year's Left Forum comes at a time when the American left is beginning to stir. Ever more people are becoming active: from Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter from widespread demands for climate justice to the massive national support for Bernie Sanders - not despite but because he wears the label socialist.

Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything: Capitalism versus The Climate, says of Left Forum: "We need our institutional spaces. Too often, protests and movements rise up and are beaten back or the other side just waits us out. The longer standing homes of left politics are extremely important. And it’s up to all of us to keep these spaces alive. Left Forum is a place to think big, to dream big, to make big demands and take big actions - the kind of actions that will shift the public imagination and change our sense of what is possible. When that happens, we will win."