OPENING PLENARY | 10:00AM - 11:20AM
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We find ourselves in an exciting time. In 2016, socialism is no longer the taboo word it once was. More and more people are joining social movements and demanding a better world. This renewed discussion has led us to the question of what socialism looks like today; what it is, what it isn't, what it could be. In that spirit, our opening panel is titled "Socialism in the 21st Century". The idea behind this is that while we must look to history to guide us we often get caught up in arguments of the past and lose sight of our common goal; a future society based on human need and not based on the unending drive for profit. Our speakers have been invited to present on why socialism is relevant today and why it is our way forward.
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Vijay Prashad
Trinity College Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, journalist, commentator and a Marxist intellectual. He is the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and Professor of International Studies at Trinity College. Prashad is the author of seventeen books. In 2012, he published five books, including Arab Spring, Libyan Winter (AK Press) and Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today (The New Press). Two of his most well-known books, Karma of Brown Folk (2000) and Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting (2002), were chosen by the Village Voice as books of the year.
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Jorge Marin
Venezuela Solidarity Committee Jorge Marin has been very active over many years in the Martin Luther King Boston
Bolivarian Circle and currently one of the Co-chairs of the Boston Venezuelan Solidity Committee. Boston-area activists founded the Venezuela Solidarity Committee on March 5, 2016. The new group will support self-determination and the rights of all historically oppressed peoples in Venezuela and oppose any form of US intervention. In addition to serving as a media resource, activities will include education, lobbying, sister-city programs and campaigns such as supporting the CITGO Heating Oil Assistance Program. The group aims to expose and refute attacks on Venezuela’s programs for social justice, support human rights and advocate strict constitutional processes for political change in the country. |
Cynthia Peters
Left Roots Cynthia Peters is long-time community activist and leftist. Her current organizing home is with City Life/Vida Urbana (clvu.org) and The City School (thecityschool.org), and she does her left-building work with LeftRoots (leftroots.net). For many years, she helped organize the Boston-area Radical Organizing Conference, which was designed to bring activists together to think together about how to do our reform work in a way that forwards radical social change. She is also a writer and editor of a social justice magazine for adult learners (changeagent.nelrc.org), and mother of two adult daughters.
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CLOSING PLENARY | 2:30PM - 4:00PM
SOCIALISM AND THE SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Socialists have long thought that the Owl of Wisdom flies after the work of the day is done… that theory follows from practice… And then we close the circle again. Our final plenary reflects on what we have taken from the workshops and just as importantly to know how we may apply the lessons and realize the values that we have celebrated today.
But socialists don’t like to leave things to chance. Closing this celebration of our movement, we have three organizers who are daily building the broad working class movement with direct accountability to their struggles. Fittingly they represent broad issues that we address: education, transportation, immigration, global justice, antiracism, and police accountability. Even though ecological concerns are not directly represented on this panel, the global justice, transportation and immigration concerns all speak the living relationship of working people to the problems of health and of environment.
But socialists don’t like to leave things to chance. Closing this celebration of our movement, we have three organizers who are daily building the broad working class movement with direct accountability to their struggles. Fittingly they represent broad issues that we address: education, transportation, immigration, global justice, antiracism, and police accountability. Even though ecological concerns are not directly represented on this panel, the global justice, transportation and immigration concerns all speak the living relationship of working people to the problems of health and of environment.
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Yamila Hussein
Boston Plan for Excellence |
Patricia Montes
Centro Presente |
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Dr. Hussein is a recent graduate of the doctoral program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on the politics of education and knowledge production. Her doctoral thesis examined the relationship between nationalism and formal education, particularly how the Palestinian search for national liberation influenced their educational discourse during the 1970s, when Palestinians had no control over educational policies. Dr. Hussein teaches on the role of schools in sustaining and/or challenging systems of oppression and privilege and the position of teachers as cultural workers, intellectuals and agents of change.
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Patricia Montes is the executive director of Centro Presente, one of the longest standing immigrant-led, immigrant rights organizations in Massachusetts. Under Patricia’s leadership, Centro Presente has consolidated its charge into a membership driven organization dedicated to building the power of organized Latin American immigrants, including electoral participation. Patricia is a recognized immigrant rights leader and a tireless advocate for just economic and social policies, including a just U.S. immigration policy. She serves on the Executive Board of Alianza Américas and the Women's Pipeline for Change, a group that supports progressive women of color as they enter, navigate and move up the pipeline to political leadership. Patricia is an immigrant from Honduras, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism.
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Claude St. Germaine
Boston School Bus Drivers Claude St. Germaine is an officer in the union and also the leader of the Boston Chapter of Famni Lavalas, who deposed Haitian President Aristide's party in exile.
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Nino Brown
Mass Action Nino Brown is a native New Yorker hailing from Brooklyn. In Brooklyn he was an organizer with the People Power Movement, The Women's Press Collective, The ANSWER Coalition, and CopWatch: People's Patrol Units. This is his second year in Boston where he is going to school and teaching 2nd grade. Nino was a founding member of Mass Action Against Police Brutality, an organization that formed out of the rebellion in Ferguson and the nascent media dubbed "Black Lives Matter Movement." Mass Action Against Police Brutality (MAAPB) organizes community forums, classes, and discussions, on the origins of the police. Nino Brown has played a leading role in the essential work of an education committee. It is MAAPB intent to popularize the information not too often revealed about the police as an instrument of state power and how it is mired with racism, sexism, and exists to maintain the system of class exploitation in order to make a profit for the moneyed classes.
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