A panel comprised of Vice Presidential candidate Melina Abdullah, Rising Majority’s National Director Loan Tran and acclaimed writer, activist and analyst Bill Fletcher Jr. will kick off an hour of small group conversation as Radical Elders sponsors an exploration of the topic confronting us all: “Elections: what they mean and what we do.”
September 18. 2:00 pm U.S. Eastern time, 1:00 pm Central, Noon Mountain and 11:00 am West Coast time. You need to register to get the link:
Register: https://radicalelders.net/register-for-sept-18-gathering/
(btw, you *can* absolutely invite all your friends and colleagues. Just share the registration link with them. It works for everyone.)
The Harris nomination has animated the Democratic Party’s campaign and yet it’s always clear that this is a party of the ruling class. We don’t make a revolution by voting for Kamala. So what do we do? How do we look strategically at these elections? How important is it to create an environment in which we can more easily organize in the coming, critical years?
How do we strategize the “down-ballot” elections? What’s best for our movement and, more pertinent for us, *what’s most useful and productive for elders in this society*?
Does being an elder change the way we approach elections?
We’re going to talk about all of this. We’ll have our panel for a half hour and these are people who have been doing a lot of thinking and talking about this issue…one of them is running in the elections! Look at this!
VVeteran activist, organizer, teacher, syndicated columnist, author, former president of TransAfrica Forum, Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies and so much more…Bill Fletcher Jr. is one of this country’s most respected commentators and recently he’s been commenting quite a bit on this topic. He’s someone you’ll want to hear.eteran activist, organizer, teacher, syndicated columnist, author, former president of TransAfrica Forum, Senior Scholar with the Institute for Policy Studies and so much more…Bill Fletcher Jr. is one of this country’s most respected commentators and recently he’s been commenting quite a bit on this topic. He’s someone you’ll want to hear.
Melina Reimann Abdullah is the Vice-Presidential candiate on the Cornell West Presidential ticket. She’s the former chair of the department of Pan-African Studies at California State University, Los Angeles, a leader in the Black Lives Matter movement and active in all kinds of other struggles and coalitions. What’s the role of an alternative candidate? We’ll hear from one about that.
Rounding out our panel: Loan Tran. After migrating with their family from Vietnam, Loan quickly became an activist leader in the lgbtq+ movement through high school and college and went on to lead many campaigns and coalitions around all kinds of issues…-particularly in North Carolina where they’ve lived pretty much continuously since migrating. Now, Loan’s the National Director of Rising Majority, one of the most exciting political developments in recent years: a huge coalition effort designed to build a strong, anti-racist left with a revolutionary strategy by 2050. They just had a full discussion about elections at Rising Majority and we know Loan is anxious to share some of that thinking with us.
But the main activity is conversation among the attendees in break-out groups — we’ll prepare some questions to help get people started and then you have an hour or so to talk, share your thinking, listen to each other, identify your agreements. Then we’ll all report back and RE will make a statement about what came out.
We expect no agreement but we’re looking forward to a lot of clarity. So we need you. The RE members are coming but we want all our friends, all movement people, everyone who knows us and cares about this issue. You don’t want to miss this and we need you to be part of it. We’re asking that you register so we know who’s coming.
Elections: what they mean and what we do. September 18. 2:00 pm U.S. Eastern time, 1:00 pm Central, Noon Mountain and 11:00 am West Coast time.
Register: https://radicalelders.net/register-for-sept-18-gathering/