March 16-18: Al-Awda at the Left Forum

Left Forum 2012
Occupy the System: Confronting Global Capitalism
March 16-18, 2012
Pace University
1 Pace Plaza
New York, NY 10036

The largest annual conference of a broad spectrum of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the interested public. Conference participants come together to engage a wide range of critical perspectives on the world, to discuss differences, commonalities, and alternatives to current predicaments, and to share ideas for understanding and transforming the world.

Al-Awda NY, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, will participate in two panels at the Left Forum. Please read below and join us for these panels and this important forum.

For further information:
http://www.leftforum.org/
leftforum@leftforum.org

NYPD & Capitalist Systems:
Organizing for Police Accountability across
Black, Muslim, and Latino Communities

Pace University
Room W608
Saturday, March 17th
12:00pm – 1:50pm

The NYPD is exposed yet again in its lies by promoting the racist “The Third Jihad” video to train officers to treat all Muslim communities as potential terrorists. The NYPD infact has a long history of over-policing, abuse, and surveillance in communities of color. Communities have organized for decades for accountability from police murders, daily brutality, over-incarceration, stop and frisks, and now against surveillance and racial profiling across South Asian, Arab, and Muslim communities under the War on Terror. But how does all of this work to keep the economic social order intact between rich and poor and white and non-white communities? This panel will present the key issues in communities facing the boot of both economic crisis and over-policing/enforcement as a means of social control. Panelists will also present key organizing strategies that have been effecting, challenges, and the road ahead to fight criminalization as the other side of the coin of capitalism in the U.S.

Moderator: Monami Maulik, DRUM

Panelists: Linda Tigani, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement
Prof. Ruthie Wilson Gilmore, CUNY Graduate Center
Lamis Deek, Al Awda
Rafael Samanez, VAMOS Unidos (Street Vendors Mobilizing and Organizing in Solidarity)
Fahd Ahmed, DRUM- Desis Rising Up & Moving
Nahal Zamani, Center for Constitutional Rights

Unite the Global 99% to Fight Imperialism, the Root Cause of Crisis and War
Sunday, March 18
3:00-4:40pm
Pace University
Room W520

For four years, a protracted economic crisis has raged across the entire capitalist world, destroying the lives of millions. And millions are fighting back. From Cairo to Kano, Athens to Oakland, Wisconsin to Wall Street, 2011 saw people around the world challenge the power of the 1 percent who caused the crisis. In July representatives of peoples movements from around the world came to Manila to build global solidarity against that power. The occasion was the 10th anniversary gathering of the International League of Peoples Struggle. This panel, sponsored by ILPS members in the U.S., will examine imperialism as the source of the power of the 1 percent and the root cause of the crisis. We will discuss the menace of new and wider imperialist wars. And we will talk about building peoples’ solidarity and a global united front to overturn that power and build a brighter future for humanity.

Panel Speakers Include: