Speakers:

Alan Sears, author of The Next New Left, member of Toronto New Socialists

Patti Dalton, London Common Front & President of London and District Labour Council

Umair Muhammad, author of Confronting Injustice, Jane-Finch Against Poverty

Chris Ramsaroop, activist with Justicia for Migrant Workers

Why is the left not growing at a time of naked attacks on workers, the poor, migrants, indigenous people, young people and women. Democracy, even in its limited official form, is being undermined. Imperialist warfare is on the rise. Things are bad and getting worse.

We need a renewed left, yet that is not what we tend to be seeing around us. The book The Next New Left makes the case that lefts require renewal because of dramatic changes in life, work and political projects that eliminate old sites of organizing and forms of collectivity. Thirty years of neo-liberal restructuring have dramatically transformed workplaces, communities and government policies. The left needs to orient itself to this terrain, through and open-ended and experimental method and a more integrative ecological, anti-racist, feminist, anti-colonial and queer class politics.

This panel of activists from a variety of movements will critically assess these arguments in developing strategies for left renewal.