some kind of decision-making and action. process that we can , start to manifest, what that future might look like. one thing we have seen and we were talking about before the panel, we had a great conversation. we said we wished we could be up there right now talking. the ways in which current politics, particularly having a black president, what an existential breakthrough that was for people in spite of the results of that. it is not one thing, it is multiple things at the same time. what has come out with the black lives matter movement is some kind of glimmer beyond this political system. some kind of glimmer beyond capitalism. ms. taylor: sort of what i was speaking to before, then need for people to understand what our history is. to be reconnected with that particularly the history of radicalism and struggle. so much work it goes into disconnecting us from that history. it is one way too thick about the schools crisis. our youngonly robbing people of the basic education but we think about what passes for history in this country. it underlines the point even more dramatically. beyond history lessons and all that which i think is important, we have to have a sense for what is different right now. and the new challenges this political moment present to us in a way i think we are all still in the process of trying to figure out. what does it mean to have this movement emerge in the context of the highest concentration of black political power in american history? that actually break of the blackition freedom struggle where historically african-americans across class lines have been pushed together in a common about black ideas freedom and black liberation? what does that mean now when you baltimoreck mayor in mobilizing the military to crush and put down a black rebellion? how does that change what we have historically thought about what the black freedom struggle represented? book we canhistory look to to solve that question. that is something we have to figure out in the current a moment. there has to be a balance of both. knowing the traditions of our movement but also we have to understand the contemporary dynamics. on effects of neoliberalism our political movements. the effects of the enshrinement of black political power on our movements. we have to deal with those new questions as well. [applause] in thinking about the left, what are some of the strengths and weaknesses of transformative political movements today. ms. taylor: perhaps one of the is the problems we have continued division between just, i inequality and will stick with this one, racial inequality. more generally, questions of oppression. i will be controversial perhaps. that in thet context of some of the left's enthusiasm for bernie sanders's run for president. i understand that. i answer that that. there is a candidate who's actually willing to talk about poor people as something more than a prop. you thinkk that when about the quickness with which sections of the left could be willing to jettison justice for sanderse, which bernie is committed to the state of israel. or you think about the lack of response around a black lives matter, the one interview he did on this question was to begin by speaking about how difficult it is to be a police officer in the united states. in the rush to embrace a candidacy that rightfully talks about the problems of economic inequality in this country, who has veryut little to say about the questions of racial oppression in nothing to say about the issue of american imperialism, that is a problem for the left. the inability to integrate those two things into a coherent is happening in the world today. we have to talk about a boat race and class. we can't continue to separate issues of racial inequality from issues of economic inequality. in some ways, if you look at the development of the political st'sment, the more significant, occupy, which failed to integrate issues of racial oppression. even though people were trying and there were efforts to do that, they had difficulty and degrading and analysis of racial oppression into our understanding of economic inequality. you have seen the black lives matter movement begin to address some of that gap. activists and people who have been involved in the organizing have not confine themselves to the narrow issue of police brutality. today have been able to connect issues of policing with issues of poverty and inequality in the neighborhoods where black people are concentrated. in some ways, that is the product of what king said was ce of the black movement itself. it crystallizes more than any other struggle in the u.s. the contradictions of american capitalism. struggle shows more than anything me problems of andsm, militarization, commercialism in american society. that is why it has often be the -- been the lack struggle that is the pivot to social movements in general. you can begin to see the makings of that the black lives matter movement which has been able to highlight racial inequality and put it in a context of growing economic inequality in the u.s.. [applause] >> what is really interesting has been that the economic piece has been left out. putf, let'sea body cameras on them. that peopleideas have not really endorsed. part of this conflict and the difficulty talking about both race and class at the same time is something that may come through in this conversation that african-american people have been vocal about ongoing ly which is about liberation. the assimilation techniques that it haslack president, been about liberation, liberation from race itself. how do you get out of that situation of being racialized, dehumanized? is it i driving a bmw? all these levels are there to this. it is always somehow articulated understanding, for liberation. you mentioned palestine. i work on a lot of palestinian issues. i am involved in them and care a lot, very deeply about them. you hear liberation mentioned as part of that struggle. liberationally hear articulated as part of the process for white americans. it makes it very difficult. theay be that understanding, the self understanding does not feel necessarily like something one would need or desire to be liberated from. also until weible can articulate that common mayct of liberation itself, be those are liberations from different forms of racial is ization, understanding the way the class conversation is racialized, we will not be able to formulate something that is cohesive. idea of sure about the organizations coming together on the ground and doing work on different campaigns and that ever generating something that is cohesive. i have a feeling that is going to come from a human transformation of some sort. transformation in the way we understand our identities. i'm not sure we can view that without a struggle for liberation. i wonder if that struggle also everyone intty much this room in various ways. if we can look toward that together as a way to move forward. [applause] ms. franklin: we have a few minutes left. we are having these conversations about theories and ideologies around the left. let's ground it a little bit. can.ple sentence if you maybele one sentence -- one with a lot of semicolons. what do you see as the national presence of the left? the national politics of the left? formational organization of the left? is there anything you can name as the on the ground of the left? i said in one sentence. now it is going to be three words. ms. taylor: i don't know if you can identify a single grouping, a single idea. i think we are at the beginning in thislding the left country. it is not to say people haven't been doing this work for many years, but it is in a different context. we are looking at the development of the most important social movement in ofs country since the end the last iteration of the black freedom struggle. that changes everything. whatever people think they were over the last several years, which i think has actually been important because it means we are not reinventing the wheel, we are not starting from scratch. we have to raise our horizons and think bigger. really quick in terms of the previous question, one of the big challenges is how do we get bigger. how do we build a much bigger more powerful left. i think that means looking at it not as white people need to look toward these movements in an ultra stick. white people need to do the rest of us the favor of getting involved as if it is some sort of moral crusade. we have to see how our fates are tied together. some are on the bottom and being tread into the ground. it is within the context of bill gates, billionaires trying to future.everyone's if you are not part of the 1%, things are not looking good for you in the u.s. moniker in some ways symbolize that process. but it is also true. we have to figure out on what organizingwe unity. it is not on the basis of telling other people their issues are unimportant and they need to wait until we deal with the meat and potatoes economic issues. it is not that at all. seedyd to make everyone fight against racism is central. the fight against sexism is central. all of that is central to our struggle and that is how we are going to build the type of unity and unified movement we need to ires on the billiona literally trying to destroy the planet. that is the future of our movement. [applause] ms. franklin: if you can do it in one sentence. : i think it is a challenging question. i'm not sure i can answer it in one sentence. there is no real way to define the current left and that might be part of what we need to struggle with right now. it is many things, many different organizations, and theres working, is not one sentence or coherent way to define the left right now. [applause] franklin: let's give it up for our panelists. [applause] ms. franklin: we are going to another speaker back up on stage. i would like to welcome him as well as mr. ford and another. i want to interrupt these proceedings to give a shout out. it is not to any member of my family. i want to shout out to people who have been organizing to keep the center open. [applause] ofich is a beacon revolutionary organizing open to everyone in the public. we are not trying to monopolize this space. well we are talking about monopolies, i want to make a quick observation. being a person who travels through asia, africa, and latin america, do you know what i see what american or european committees go there? they are not terrified of socialism. there are horrified of real capitalism. their problem is they go to these places and try to set up a monopoly. in thed a company store 60's and 70's. in the 80's, they flipped it back and talked about how they would help the people. buy -- resources would we are going to have a conversation about establishment, revolutionary politics, and please welcome glenn ford and charles. [applause] >> often, when people say a tate fails, the economic system is always the scapegoat. sten you find a capitali state that fails, the regime is blamed. tell me in your opinions. process. did capitalism fail in america? yes, no, why? capitalism is defined by catastrophe followed by better times, certainly for the employers. it is boom and bust. the contradictions of the system do accumulate. they have been acumen waiting for a long time. the ability of the system to export those contradictions, like by forming colonies around land,rld, stealing instituting slavery in getting the labor, that has allowed capitalist boom and bust economy to export its contradictions. you can't do that forever. now we are in what i think is a time of fatal decline. with finance capital hegemonic. call all theey shots. these are people who make nothing but want to monetize and control everything. capitalismrisis of is possibly the hegemony of the financial class. they certainly don't know how to do anything in terms of organizing the world. they don't have the long-term visions. profit.for the maximum in so make multiple mistakes all of the time. there say dear is that the u.s. savior is thatir the u.s. military is as large as all the others in the world. this tends to encourage wild capitalists to more adventures which lead to more which they think can be papered over by the military might of the u.s. that is not working. i think it accelerates the decline of the system. [applause] >> i worry i am going to give an unsatisfying answer. i think everybody deserves to live here and have their family live decently. we have an economic system that makes that in possible. i think socialism is the name for what will replace this terrible system. i know people call what we have capitalism and which we were more capitalist. i'm not going to your eyes about how the endgame will play out. i am just going to say i'm going to stay close to struggles where somebody's going to get $15 an hour and leave the deeper analysis to comrades like glenn ford. most of the states that are failing are being made to fail by the efforts of the u.s. the most want to fail states that are working for the people. they would like venezuela to fail. they have been trying to make cuba fail for more than 50 years. they are willing to cause chaos in whole regions in order to make regimes fail. onnect people from one another. the greatest source of chaos and destruction and i am talking about of the social variety is u.s. imperialism. largely, theg that largest impetus is because their hold on the world economy is slipping. they are not the centers of production, the production of real things in the world. to have the banks in london and in new york and europe and elsewhere somehow control the production that goes on in china, india, and brazil from afar with the help of the u.s. military does not work if you are the place that produces things. there is going to be political power that also accrues. that weighs against the dominance of the u.s.. they become desperate and they try to overthrow everybody. immortal technique: this is an interesting question. represents --rd lenchner represents bernie sanders. thet of people will say democratic party is the corporate left as they have been called whereas the green party and other grassroots are more grassroots. what is the strategy for dealing with the party in this instance? lenchner: i don't believe the democratic party is a thing. it is a group of interest groups that cooperate during election time. some of those groups they represent, corporations, are fighting for things like tpp. they fight for imperialism. they do things that we would disagree with. other parts of the party are fighting to have more rights for unions and increase wages for low income workers. rights for working families. those other parts of the democratic party in my opinion should not be conflated with the other parts. i think it is carl davison who talks about a six party system, not a two party system. there are four elements of the democratic party. i think i am part of one of those elements and a bernie sanders is the champion of that section. i'm going to do what i can to support him because i want that faction to be victorious over the corporations. ford: he may think there are six parties but he tells us to vote for one of them. managingwith our editor, bruce dixon, who described the bernie sanders role as that of a sheepdog who sheet back into the democratic party. back in the day in georgia, we a,alled this phenomenon we called it fattening frogs for snakes. fed tomp frogs would be the corporate snake, hillary clinton. party ishe democratic a snake pit. i think it is a trap especially for black people. the previous two panels, i want to add something to that wonderful discussion. left, and about the it's a real constituent parts, black folks are at the core of that. theave to understand that black polity in the u.s. and the white polity are different qualities. ideologically they are different. i did a study of 10 years ago blackund self-selected conservatives, black people who said they were conservatives, turned out to be on most issues to the left of self-selected white liberals. liberals,ted black black folks who call themselves liberals, were actually white adicals. the black polity is the most progressive left leaning in the u.s. there was a study done by a think tank out of san francisco. i think it was called where the left lives. the social scientist who was running the study assumed, even though he was not going to let his assumptions affect the study, he assumed the cities that had the strongest left would be to him the usual ones. .ambridge, massachusetts madison wisconsin. san francisco. fromhen the data came in his study, he found the most left-wing cities were detroit and d.c. and new orleans. because that is where the left lives. democratic party, sitsig business duopoly, like a grotesque sumo wrestler on top of the black community squeezing the radicalism out of it, that is a serious situation. situation in which virtually all of the civic organizations, the urban league and an aa cp, our annexes of the democratic party. not to mention al sharpton's national action network. democratic party pervades the and yet it isy, far to the right of the black community. democratic operatives represent a right-wing of the black community. the democratic party is actually a clear and present danger in black america to the expression of a left wing worldview. [applause] immortal technique: i know that you to bank may disagree with certain characteristics of the democratic party. occurain of events that to take power out of the community. one thing you probably both agree on is the appropriation of movements by the democratic party, there are corporate elements. the actual cost of what that is on the people. stop, the question is how you stop these appropriations of certain issues like for example the way hillary has tried to appropriate immigration by meeting with dreamers and saying i am the representative of immigrants? the way the democratic party has tried to monopolize the gay rights movement as if they are the only people who support it? similar to the way rand paul has been all of the sudden according to cnn the champion of civil rights. youras if you look at candidate, if only more -- carefully more than rand paul. mr. lenchner: the first answer brings me back to the glory days of occupy wall street, when you to experienceg by the assemblies and feel the power of the movement. show up.d maybe nobody would take their e-mail address or name. opportunities to bring people in and build power -- they were few and far between. when we think about how to evaluate a social movement, it is not addressed to those who remain after those folks have left. we can sit in a small circle and decide, we are the good ones, the best ones, what have we done wrong that those people have left? want those people who left to be giving that answer. we talked about the co-opting of social movements, people voting with their feet to do something different than what we want them them, why didask you do that? how could we be better? what did we do to make participation in the left less something that they want to do and more something they are willing to consume briefly and then walkway from? one answer, and this would be the answer of politicians who get elected, is find the issues that are generally popular and turn them into legislation and make changes in people's lives. that is called winning. mr. ford: we are talking about co-opting, how we can prevent the democratic party from co-opting let's say the civil rights movement and other liberation movements of the 60's? we saw with the 50th anniversary of the march on washington all of these civic organizations i talked about and all of the democrats in congress basically giving the stage to the current to have a joint show and reinterpretation of said thehat basically part ofghts movement that decade was triumphant. it led to the glories of having the first black president in the white house. the second half of the decade was of course not talked about at all. in the second half of the decade, we had through a combination of police repression and an effort successful among certain elements of black , to shut down the mass glass roots movement to who had beeneople allowed through the triumph of businesshts to enter and politics. to maximize their new opportunities. this is where we get what we call at black agenda report the black leadership class. people who don't want to transform society, they just want to be part of the existing structures. they want to be mayor but they don't want to have a new kind of city. they don't want to examine how one can build a city that is worthy of having a majority black or latino population. they just want to be mayor. they just want to be a general in the u.s. military, no matter how many people end up getting killed by the u.s. military. this is where the split occurs. when we see the 1963 commemoration, the commemoration we are seeingrch, a kind of political celebration of that group's elevation. the folk who won office. folks wholusion of ways ares that in many more insecure than folks were in the 60's. youister taylor said, combat this co-optation by telling the truth about history. [applause] speaking ofhnique: history and the mythology of america, one of the most important things people do in this country when they get elected in the general election is to distance themselves from the extremists in their own party. bill clinton called this the moment.ouljah he got into an argument with a woman rapper talking about violence, racism, rape and murder in the ghetto, please not caring. no clinton came after her to say, you are a racist -- bill clinton came after her to say, you are a racist. obama had to distance himself from a man he had gone to church with for 20 years. republicans do this from people community whoased went too far. to does bernie sanders need distance himself from? a morewe want revolutionary kind of person, who did they have to throw under the bus? premise of throwing someone under the busting to be confronted in general? [applause] it is a loaded question. mr.ll just ask for a moment sanders has asked my advice for the primary. advice is to let him know a large part of his base would never have voted who are disillusioned with politics. tom figure hi .ut how to unleash that power i think that kind of a flip would be a refreshing change that would advance issues significantly whether or not he primary.sful in the in terms of who he should throw under the bus after defeating clinton, no one. he will be driving the bus and no one has to be thrown under it. don't have a degree in throwing folk under the bus, but i think this is germane. we should talk about folks who are trying to distance themselves in the last two bay years of the obama presidency from the president and from the way they behaved to the president over the last six years. on his way out the door, you have people who many folks consider to be of the left left in08 when the floated. imploded.the left now describing their behavior as constructive criticism when we know, certainly on the black side, they were part of a mob that wanted to squelch any kind of dissent from the coming of the black messiah, obama. folks are distancing themselves from the administration, jus anticipating he will be gone and that folks will have to look at the last eight years and there catastrophic blows that have been dealt. and someone is going to have to they were in fact in support of the austerity president. whoupport of a president two weeks before being sworn into office said all the entitlements would be on the table. circled supported -- the wagons around him and defended him at any cost well he basically conducted a republican light administration. they are going to have to answer for that. they are hoping to distance themselves but i can tell you we have taken down all of their actions. we took in names. we are not going to let any of them escape their past. [applause] immortal technique: i know that this is a more politically driven panel but i wanted to ask each of you a personal question so we could close with that. in light of all the horrible things we have seen in , and this ferguson question is obviously to you. campaign, oranders you yourself, you don't have to answer for them, we are not attribute everything he has done to you, but what is the official position about the andk lives matter movement involvement in those types of grassroots race oriented politics? how are yout, affected by that? we talked about the white left, you being obviously a white leftist. what was the position where you felt you had to become involved in those types of things? this question became more pointed last week. there is an article in vox.com talking about the silence of bernie sanders, even though on civil rights legislation he has hen on the right side, hasn't spoken out in a way that resonates in the way we come to demand and expect from folks who are going to be our champion. would like to see a movement push him to change and being more inclusive. not in a way that he hits the right notes to put a checkbox by certain issues. i mean as a candidate, i see him as needing to follow the people that need to change most of all. i see the role of people like me including platforms where instead of us having to rely on what bernie the candidate says, we can fill our own platform with what our hopes and aspirations are and push a bernie sanders campaign forward to foment that. that is what democracy is. that is a break from the paradigm of being dependent on what your candidate does and says. i am done with that. mr. ford: the role of the avement is not to focus on democratic politician and then pushed him or her. it is to change the relationship of forces on the ground using the power of the people. expect thosecan forces of the democratic party and the republican party, which represents the capitalists and power, will move against them. all the energies that are expended in trying to appeal to the sensibilities and sensitivities of people who work parties areos wasted. the president has invited families of victims in many of the young organizers of the new movement to the white house in -opt them. to co he has spoken to them as if he is a sensitive person. , it has not worked. what we need to be focusing on is what the administration actually does. while the president makes all of noises and says trayvon could have been my son, the justice department has taken tory opportunity it had argue before the supreme court. every occasion it has argued in and policelice departments that have used excessive force. that is the fact that matters, not whether obama is a sensitive guy. obama might possibly be someone who you could talk to over a beer. that is not going to change the way the united states will treat people who defy the authority of the police. the authority of the state itself. immortal technique: ladies and gentlemen, please give a round .f applause for our guests thank you gentlemen. it has been an honor. [applause] immortal technique: we were going to have some last words. i cannot fill his shoes. i just want to say to everybody who came out, thank you very much. i prepared a brief statement, but i see people are leaving so i don't want to prevent you from going to whatever hummus bar you are headed to. to stop you from getting in your rickshaw and going home. i don't want to disturb your lovely evening. please. say, it is very important for me to talk about how i learned about the paradigm of these politics and i will get out of here quickly. and when i was taught the left was this idealistic fantasy world where we dream about the impossible. we fantasize about utopia, an end to racism, free food and health care for everyone. end to war. i was taught the right wing was the voice of reason. and then i looked at the world. i realized the people who commit andcide and murder, rape, kill are not the people who disobey orders. they are mostly the people who obey the orders the way they were written and to do. i learned the right left the rightn america, left paradigm in america was a joke that stopped being funny decades ago. i learned that if a quote unquote mainstream media can be incribed as a liberal media, other words if you are a liberal media and it is your job to reinforce the illegal actions of the government that has practically abandoned democracy and is camped out in front of despotism's door like a child for sneakers or an adult for i think it is important to take a hard look at the mythology of america. as long as we believe in the mythology of america without confronting the historical truths -- we talk about socialism and communism like they are the worst thing in the world. yet study history. taxes up to 90% after world war ii. we had to get the economy back on track, so there was free college. cuny used to be free. he give it up for that. [applause] on fox, oncenique: in a while, i love to watch them rant. going crazy about socialism, communism. really? the government paying for things? like a post office? a police department, fire department? paying a premium for having them come and put out a fire? mythologies i was taught. this sort of relationship was destroyed by the history i read and the living history i experienced through average ordinary people that gave their lives for the movement. the revolutionary movement that bird every revolutionary who has existed on the planet. it didn't come from a planning book or a brochure. it came from someone's actual life. revolutionaries were people that saw something they could not stand for. people,ugh it is those i'm going to stand with them. even though i'm not a palestinian, i will stand with the palestinian's. even the line not gay, i will stand for someone else's equal right to marriage. even though we have seen the country become something else than what it was explained to us as children, that is the definition of confronting the mythology. saying, columbus did not discover america. that is absurd. we need to take him on the maury show. america, you are not the father. want to say one last thing. the only reason i am nervous this time is because my family is here. they have never come to anything of mine. i want to tell you guys i love you and i and everything i am and will be because someone took the time to love me and care about me. [applause] immortal technique: i want to say also we are on the right side, ladies and gentlemen. illegal war, anti-drone, antiracism, anti-sex discrimination. give ourselves a round of applause for being on the right side of every issue in this country. [applause] shertal technique: and now, is going to sing for us the national anthem. please. ms. franklin: he is a little too silly for me. i know we are short on time but there are two things i wanted to share. we talked about black lives matter and a black folks go into the street. know important for us to for the past 40 years, we have been in a counterrevolution. within the counterrevolution, often times black folks are seen as the center of oppression. let's make it clear, black folks have been at the center of having revolutionary thoughts and theories and have been at the core of making and breaking a what we see is the counterrevolution. they have been the trailblazers. not only do we have black liberation, we also have a revolution. i want to make that clear when we think about black lives matter. at the always been occasion to fight back. thinkcond piece which i is important, and i do on an everyday basis. when we think about building a national left organization, what is central to me is organized. reallyversation didn't get that deep into who is going and knocking on doors. who is talking to our young folks, exposing them to different ideologies in the truth. exposing them to the years of miseducation they have been exposed to. if there is one thing i want you to leave with, it is not simply we have had these debates but that that means nothing if we do not take it to the street and involve our people. if we do not have this room filled in the next year. it to theing, take street. organized. build. if we do not build, we do not grow. if we don't they are planning to fight back. only be ableo not to respond, but think ahead. and we cannot just, when something happens we were's aunt. we have to be the ones to prevent it. have a great night. -- was something happens, we have to respond. immortal technique: a big round of applause for our host and moderator. ashley franklin and immortal technique. if we could give a big round of applause to the working class people who have to clean this place up after we leave. and the people who set up all of the microphones and lights and staff sitting up there and the dude with the camera was not moved in an hour. i see you buddy. rob: big love to our panelists. and madams. pamela brown. give it up. you could do better than that. glen ford. charles lenchner. the reverend. and stanley, we wish you well and good luck. >> one thing to remember about presidential presidents is that they are the exception. [laughs] >> thank you all for coming today. this is a wonderful event. it's been said that heaven is a library. if that's the case, heaven has gone outside and we are in heaven if the book festival. >> an article trying to shoe that we have this red-blue map.

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