Events

Leslie Cagan (born 1947) is an American activist, writer, and socialist organizer involved with the peace and social justice movements. She is the former national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, the former co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and the former chair of Pacifica Radio.

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Audio interview with Max Fraad Wolff, an economist based in NYC who works on the linkages between consumer debt, international financial markets and asset performance. Max is presently teaching in the New School University's Graduate Program in International Affairs.

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On HuffingtonPost

At The New School University

Audio interview with Emilio Betances, a Professor of Sociology and Latin American Studies at Gettysburg College. He has published two books on the Dominican Republic and currently does research on social movements in Latin America.

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Gettysburg College Faculty Author Series

Audio interview with Kevin Alexandar Gray, a writer and activist living in South Carolina. He managed the 1988 presidential campaign of the Reverend Jesse Jackson in the state. He is the author of Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics and The Decline of Black Politics: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.

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Counterpunch

Audio interview with Max Rameau, a long time activist and Pan-African political theorist and the author of numerous published essays and a book, Take Back the Land: Land Gentrification and the Umoja Village Shantytown.

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Take Back the Land Website

Audio interview with Jerry Joffe, a faculty member in the St. John's University program in Health Care Administration. He is the author of The Evolution of Capitalist Relations of Production in U.S. Medical Practice in Research in Political Economy; The U.S. Health Care System, A Reproduction Crisis in Radical Perspectives on Economic Theory and Policy, and articles on long term care, cealth care costs, physician productivity and health utilization.

Audio interview with Terrence McDonough, a Professor of Economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and author, editor or co-editor of Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crises; The HEAP Chart; Hierarchy of Earnings, Attributes and Priveledge Analysis; Uninhabited Ireland: Tara, the M3, and Public Spaces in Galway; Was Ireland a Colony?: Economics, Politics, Ideology and Culture in the Irish Nineteenth Century; among others.

I would have gotten this post up earlier, but Max Fraad Wolff still fired up from his panel discussion, bent my ear for an entire lunch’s worth of food-for-thought. Posting disrupted by getting a Master’s education in housing economics and by an afternoon panel.

Left Forum 2010 is off to an insanely, if not chaotic, positive start. It’s a beautiful day in downtown New York City. The bright sunshine outside is apparent in the bright ideas echoing through the halls of Pace University, and on the bright and cheery attidues of the many attendees.

I haven’t done a count, but the heft of the printed program indicates there are dozens upon dozens of panels happening throughout the weekend, stacked with hundreds of panelists, as well as a book fair, exhibition hall, art show, theater performances and the requisite motley crew of pamphleteers.

A run-down of the opening plenary speakers:

Max Fraad Wolff is an economist based in NYC and currently works on the linkages between consumer debt, international financial markets, and asset performance. Max presently teaches at the New School University's Graduate Program in International Affairs.