Building in Context

Movements Across Generations

Sponsors: Resistance in Brooklyn; Catalyst Project; Institute for Multiracial Justice; Southerners on New Ground (Invited)

Program for the US Social Forum , June 27th – July 1st, 2007

Because building an intergenerational mass movement means building across many social justice movements, we have an obligation to learn from the specific struggles waged over the years across the U.S. and the world. This panel brings together five organizers to learn from our own history as well as each other's. Collectively, the speakers span the past fifty years of U.S. grassroots
mobilization in both urban and rural areas for civil rights, global justice, anti-racist solidarity, Puerto Rican independence, and queer and trans liberation. We will use a moderated discussion to delve into what strategies, tactics, and organizational forms have informed our victories or limited our accomplishments. The different urgencies and possibilities reflected in the speakers' different geographies and political experiences provides the opportunity to build those places where we meet across issues and identities in creating successful, broad-based radical movements.