Left Forum starts this Friday June 2 at John Jay in NYC with a smokin hot opening plenary on “Challenging State Repression” at 7:15 PM. With Laura Flanders, Molly Crabapple, Glen Ford, Sekou Odinga, Linda Sarsour, and Jeremy Scahill. Plus a skyped in greeting from Oscar Lopez Rivera.

The Saturday plenary, “State of the Struggles,” features thinkers and organizers on the cutting edge of revolutionary direct action (Standing Rock and International Women Strike), and Sunday’s plenary with Rick Wolff, Bhaskar Sunkara, and others, addresses where we go from here.

Here are the panels I don’t want to miss, listed by the groups that organized them:

Situations: https://www.leftforum.org/programs?title=&field_host_sponsor_value=&field_abstract_value=&field_panel_track_value=&combine=pelias

Jacobin: https://www.leftforum.org/programs?title=&field_host_sponsor_value=jacobin&field_abstract_value=&field_panel_track_value=&combine=

Campaign for Peace and Democracy: https://www.leftforum.org/programs?title=&field_host_sponsor_value=&field_abstract_value=&field_panel_track_value=&combine=sheehan

Verso’s panel on anti-fascist organizing in the age of Trump: https://www.leftforum.org/sessions/anti-fascist-organizing-age-trump

Zero Books’ panel on the rise of the racist right and protofascism: https://www.leftforum.org/sessions/kill-all-normies-4chan-and-tumblr-trump-and-alt-right

AKNY Greece Solidarity: https://www.leftforum.org/programs?title=&field_host_sponsor_value=AKNY&field_abstract_value=&field_panel_track_value=&combine=

And the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College: https://www.leftforum.org/sessions/resisting-nypd-gang-policing

Plus powerful panels on labor organizing like this one: https://www.leftforum.org/sessions/forms-worker-militancy-contemporary-organizing

This is just some of the amazing stuff on offer this weekend — there are 370 panels in all. Powerful film screenings like Norman Lear’s America Divided and Clean In, Black Box Theater programming like Upsurge, and tons more. And don’t forget the Verso loft party on Friday night and Rebel Diaz’s #theUngovernables show on Saturday night at May Day space with Dead Prez and others.

You can download the whole program guide here:https://www.leftforum.org/sites/default/files/LEFTFORUM_2017_ProgramGuide.pdf

(I wrote the theme statement a couple months ago but I think it still holds up.)

I am proud to be one of the organizers of this year’s Left Forum and if you are on the left and in New York City, I’ll probably be seeing you this weekend! You can catch me moderating a panel on the Labor Party on Sunday at 3:40 and also at the table for my collective, the Institute for the Radical Imagination. Solidarity.