Left Forum 2010

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.

Full audio of the press conference of Reverend Jesse Jackson, born October 8, 1941 in Greenville, South Carolina, an American civil rights leader, Baptist minister, and politician whose bids for the U.S.

3:00 PM: So I am sitting here, watching Richard Wolff saunter in, admiring his olive pants and suede brown jacket, the silver chain dangling from his right wrist and clunky black loafers as only a Marxist professor could get away with. Minutes later, Wolff is traversing the complexities of class, drawing the audience in with his comical antics and energized delivery.

1:00 PM: Have a bunch of stuff sitting around that you don't use? Want to give it to someone that needs it but just can't find the right organization or person to give it to? Enter TheGiftEconomy.org.

12:50 PM: I am in the sub-basement C of Pace University. The elevator is packed, my audio gear is smashed up against a young woman's leg. She eyes me out of her periphery. An overweight, scraggly-bearded man sits in the corner of the greasy, stainless steel elevator sipping coffee, brushing food particles out of his hair. I wonder how a bagel can make its way into a man's 'do, look over to an older white woman in her 60's holding a tupperware of cheese and crackers. She sips her Starbucks. Both look homeless. It's one of those moments when you look around and feel like you have stumbled into a community hall meeting, an AA gathering, a mental institution.

Left Forum 2010 will kick off on March 19, 2010 at Pace University in downtown New York City. This year’s theme: The Center Cannot Hold: Rekindling the Radical Imagination. Headliners and big names in this wall-to-wall, three-day forum on leftist and progressive thought include Noam Chomsky, Jesse Jackson, Simon Critchley, Greg Palast, Michael Albert, Barbara Epstein, Chris Spannos, Bill Fletcher, Christian Parenti, the Yes Men and more. Dozens and dozens (and dozens and dozens…) of leftist intellectuals, activists, and journalists will be holding court in panels on a dizzying array of topics.