Panel held on December 6th, 2009, at the University of Chicago.
A moderated panel discussion and audience Q&A bringing together three leading figures of the Pakistani labor movement to talk about workers rights, women’s rights, the struggle to organize in the shadow of the Taliban, and the impact of the ongoing war in Afghanistan on the workers of Pakistan. These topics will be explored in light of the increasingly pressing need to reconstitute an international Left.
Panelists:
Rubina Jamil
President, Working Women Organization; and Chair, All Pakistan Trade Union Federation
Atiya Khan
Platypus Affiliated Society; and PhD candidate in History at the University of Chicago
Introduced and moderated by Spencer Leonard, Platypus Affiliated Society; Editor-in-Chief, The Platypus Review; and Collegiate Assistant Professor in the Social Sciences, University of Chicago
Background reading:
The Failure of Pakistan: A Concise History of the Left
The Poverty of Pakistan’s Politics
“However difficult the task of grasping and confronting global capital might be, it is crucially important that a global internationalism be recovered and reformulated. . . .
The Left should be very careful about constituting a form of politics that, from the standpoint of human emancipation, would be questionable, at the very best, however many people it may rouse.”
— Moishe Postone, “History and Helplessness” (2006)
A moderated panel discussion and audience Q&A on issues of global capital, imperialism and war, possibilities for progressive political opposition, and the problems and tasks for the Left in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 world raised by the invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. Held on January 30th, 2007, in Chicago.
Panelists: Kevin Anderson (News and Letters), Chris Cutrone (Platypus), Nick Kreitman (new Students for a Democratic Society), Danny Postel (OpenDemocracy.net), and Adam Turl (International Socialist Organization).
Transcript in Platypus Review #25 (Click below):
