the left has at times done a masterfully self destructive job when it's allowed various parochial factions and schisms to dominate their message often these a leader insists that all those on the left should follow their particular version of a leftist truth as they engage in a battle of egos to prove whose message is the purest version of that tarion bullying left has managed to turn off large segments of the general populace to their cause often treating them as objects of their derision as they dehumanize them in their formulas and objectified arguments at times there seems to be an almost cannibalistic death wish among factions of the left to divide and conquer a burgeoning movement that could make large progressive differences for vast segments of the population can the left ever really get together is a question the left and others have often asked throughout its history and today a clear unified humane and inclusive left vision is needed perhaps more than any other time in recent human memory i'm extremely pleased to have in the radical imagination an incredibly talented organizer and strategists that has taken on the challenge of channeled a challenge that sometimes entails saving the left from itself he's the koch ordinator of the left form which is the largest annual gathering of the progressive left in north america and some think in the democratic industrial world pulse we see one of the founders of the form once pointed out that if it hadn't been for the hedge of mama control of the media this large gathering of the left would have been a fascinating mainstream newspaper story for the general public practically every major progressive left and socialist thinker has appeared at left form at one time or another in one or more of its reincarnations i'm so grateful for his taking time off from an incredibly hectic schedule to be with us and tell us how he's bringing the left together in this year's life form at john jay college june  bringing the left together but you do it magnificently and tell us a little about what it what it is to to operate in this way to try to bring the left together how do you define experience in organizing pick events and also small events and many other things that was really and direct or actually from my kind of direct activists kind of movement organizers you were in berlin for we were reaching out to a lot of people exploring by ourself what is left actually what is still there and who can we basically link up with and it wasn't new cells in two thousand and one where i basically figured out that there is this thing called left form which at that point i thought was already going on for what a little while but you know internet made it possible that i learned about the left for not through normal media of course but that was the st time that i discovered the le didn't know so much what happened in the years two million two thousand and twelve all the details of the discussions but i learnt that the left form was smaller in size mean in bali and you could feel it very much because some of the progress if young people came over to europe and migrated and yeah i met some america from the united states they were just fed the germany reunification so to say right or the takeover by the western elite of the eastern german territory and the people there the rise of nationalism and fascism and violence are being set on fire and people died in the ninety's and i come from a neighborhood where a lot of working class people live from lot of migrants in my school a hell of friends from many different experience i think then most american so called progressive as radicals and you you start working with form and what do you find here what do you what did you you try to figure out what where you where you sort of fit in and in the left scene here in america and who did you begin to identify with what made sense to you and how did the left forearm help you in that in that journey yeah  your opening remarks were are very important to me because i always try to understand it's why don't why do people don't go along with each other although they have almost similar viewpoints ok for him to to bring this into a reality and again maybe we should for the audience just break this down a little bit this is an annual gathering there are hundreds of different panels right how does one you know develop a panel or how does one get to be part of this event as concretely concretely it's like and how do you define what is appropriate in the sense that fits into that form let's say of left thinking who  we in germany would use this for bringing together different churches ok manic approach between the catholic in the protest church for example to get those to after you know reformation to five hundred years ago to talk about ecumenical approaches not only christians more than this right i mean bring all the churches together and stop the hatred towards each other and for it to work more together and this can be applied for a diverse left as well where within the left there was or is a lot of you know tensions fightings going on how this one involved you know by you know filling out a panel mission single individual applications for doing a workshop because there are risks that workshop my basically not happen because you're stuck in traffic you can't make it for whatever the way the things where we want to go to and these are set up in various plenary force where we want to fight against this to say again i'm sorry and one officer subsumes is against resistance against what i mean against billionaire class right so there's a lively debate within that that theme even defining again what resistance is what might be what we should be resisting and and then possible proposals or actions to bring about what we imagine is necessary radical measures and then what happens is you you  that right so you had themes and how many panels are you going to have it's every year it's around four hundred and this year because we had so many technical difficulties too i think it's and i think because of every day kind of organizing work right and what present a panel on this for example this year it seems to be a little different because this trump administration actually really facts the whole program in some level so that this needy grady often very person now changes interest something completely different everyone needs to position himself or herself and i think that that some people might not really know what should what kind of panel should i do i need some time to figure out what's actually really going on what is the right strategy and tactics and i think st this goes into the will be handled or debated out in the own organization or the own fraction of those people rather saying i present this in public at salesforce you know what i say yeah it's all this kind of that's what i feel right now what is going on so the numbers of a little down but it's still three hundred and fifty dollars and plus that's and we get the most of the complaints we get is actually that we have two people really trying to figure out what the hell is going on and what do we do about this as you say this is quite a morphed into what a more democratic more diverse group of younger would you say over the last ten years or so likely racially down i think in this country i knew about this before i came over a little bit but now feeling and seeing it by myself how the whole racism in this country is basically the every day every day life experience from for a large majority of people that is you can clearly see the that the left needs to do something to reach out more left i mean really everyone needs to get engaged in this that would change not only getting younger people and but specifically bringing those oppressed those people who have been oppressed since a couple of one hundred  this country to be more active and to reach out and and get them to see that they have a form yes it's that they are part of this and need larger changes and challenges and it's not because of and we push c school to prison pipeline is there hope in this group or not and if so how do we make it happen that those people either on the one hand feel comfortable with have a safe space and have the means to do what they wanted to getting the means is very rare and i think it's so important because so many of the people you're talking about have never really experienced any of this and as you aspect of of the struggle how do you incorporate more and diverse and more as you say exploit and dominated people into this yeah but but by at least trying to get and one pointed to some keynote speakers on to the form that happen nowhere in the previous years to change at least a big influence in their diversity something it's in for five thousand dollars people event if you want to reach out to the community you have to go into the community it's not sending an e mail or tweet or something like this a real activist and a  good you know organic intellectual need to be present at the space where the people live and work to get them organize left form is too small to handle this i mean who's communicating with eight thousand people every you would ask how they are in the bronx right if i have to sit in the office in midtown and that's already that's a very strong contradiction i would love to go somewhere else if we would have more people will that the diversity at the left form is not as people want it would like to see it it's not it's not the lego world it's a lack of capabilities ok resources the organizational  so that's that's in it and and again not just in new york city this is something that perhaps could be also organized of what we have enough you have enough to do just three in the york city but there's thoughts of expanding  deliberately created something we talked before the show a little mention the sixty's and the sixty's where in my mind i haven't participated was born in one hundred and seventy four but what i learned is it was an explosion  life so basically there is no rules on how to my sexuality for example there is no rule on how to how i have to or no one can tell me of how i have to behave at the workplace for example or in college or whatever there was an explosion in almost every aspect of cultural explosion opening up possibilities and i think there's a backlash or what we would call the recuperation in the late sevent of these aspects of becoming yet in a creative and producing human being who wants to be someone who actually makes a difference and who wants to work for the better of changing the world for example this has been turned into a business model and the university i can yeah so it has been turned into a business model and getting your m b a while your sociology  of marketing character so we sell ourselves on the market and we compete and that's what happens when of course the working class always competing against each other but competing in in job environment in a factory where many people actually doing that same kind of you know movement with their hands in manual labor for example  perform and money jobs specifically in all the offices you have to perform you have to be a nice person you have to be carrying a lot of it in your own you have to fit in and you have to market yourself and that's clearly seen in the characters but there are some characters out there who are way evil and we're and we are all fighting insults and we're doing this on a collective manner i think that this situation in leads more to the fact specifically is the lack of resources and the missing radical imagination that you don't need always to speak resources usually it's the work itself which gets you out of any yeah you know struggle it isn't about money about that yeah but if it's going to be alternatives that support that you know they force but which one with some individual saying that it's more important to secure their own lifestyle and make sure that the big bucks coming in over the years five o'clock five panels on technology and revolution for example on election ron how all this happened like you know the discussion on stolen elections and gerrymandering and things like challenging state repression we want to talk about  friday is resistance to the state friday is more the ok then our saturday whole bunch of panels etc etc does it's a state of the movement so it is a movement so let's just state it's maybe too much but aspects what happens in the last couple of struggle which happened in standing rock but the whole history about how indigenous people have been treated here for example and what kind of movement day they are and by now because there is movement going on and i remember the peace movement in germany that we already had two cells one to seven to say shit the empire world will respond on this and that will be a brutal response and that the reason why the german for many many only the woman's march itself but also that and standing rock a lot of women's took over so the question on that panel will be he said new is a shift is that change going on in our movements and i think it with wrote a book about direct actions based on her experience of the last i think four thousand and fifty years it's a very well written book she will sit there and participate in that huge discussion on things i forgot to mention that on friday we would get a message from who just came out of prison  panel that afternoon with james gilligan who's been on the show number two as well as call hartley and ben the lead psychiatrist and carl courses psychologist the colombian activist and the drug war so we're going to be talking about closing down rikers and ending the drug war to responding to structural violence so that will fit in nicely as well  have to do something new and we need to enter transform a nation which has we never been seen in that that men ever before because the objective conditions seem to be like that we're going to stink that we don't change the way that's it that's it so there's a discussion going on about changing the production process and creating new formations political formations which are so necessary specifically in united states and learning from failures from the past and trying to at least get out the motivation for working together to build the things we need to will too get that this in this program as well and i try to do that by having a number of spiritual progressive so on to we hope very shortly to have reverend william barber on more mondays repairing the breach i think it's of important to mention again very ecumenical but this moral dimension standing in the gap standing in the breach to offer the sort of moral integrity to a cornel west would say a morally constipated  society so i think we're talking about that as well and also so many people from other parts of the world will be there yes very international right that country as well i mean all i mean all i have to tell you here you are you make you say from berlin and you within the relatively short period of time you have become one of the form and so on and i try really to bring people together and the only thing i do and we do is basically to provide his base and to get minister let's say the roaring movement  in a space what more important is what we all need to learn is can we can we push our egos aside and form decision making processes in an organisation of  question of leadership will be handled differently than it has been in the past this is a very important question to learn as a movement and also as an organization and not to get again dealing with all the factions and perhaps opening up the board some more as well i mean make it more open more transparent so that that's a reflection as well of the different struggles and more in general more and more people get involved right right right right and that has to be candid all leaders shift and give away some influence and power to the new young for that's a different question there's a lot of things to be learned you cannot just shift power like this that needs to be training happen as well so into general relations you know i mean i have a lot of things to learn from you the core question and every every nation i think it is a key and i respect you so much for what you're doing and i appreciate so much your comments and i know you're been so busy and i really love you very much for taking the time it's been our tradition here to support life form and we want to continue that dialogue because we don't have any choice the left has to get it right and the progressive forces really need to put their energies together and offer the alternative to literally save humanity so again markets thank you so very very much one what we only have about a few seconds but tell us again much this is jim verraros we'll see you next week again on the radical imagination thank you marcus so very very much