The Democratic Party and the Left (5/15/24 panel)
On May 15th, 2024, the UChicago chapter of the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel titled "The Democratic Party and the Left."
Panel Description:
Since the 2016 and 2020 Sanders’s campaigns, the Millennial Left has largely pursued its politics within or in relationship to the Democratic Party. However, since Biden’s election in 2020, the Left has displayed increasing discontent with the Democratic Party, most notably with the recent Israel-Gaza war. There are new calls to “break” with the Democratic Party, for instance with the epithet for Biden as “Genocide Joe.”
The present discontent with the Democratic Party recalls the New Left protest of the 1968 Democratic National Convention over the Vietnam War. It also raises the original alliance of the Left with the Democratic Party in the 1930s Popular Front during the New Deal.
What is the Democratic Party? What is the history of the Left’s relationship with the Democratic Party, both during the Millennial Left and its deeper history? What is the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party? Should the Left “break” with the Democratic Party? How has the Left attempted to do this historically, how successful were those attempts, and what would it mean today?
Panelists:
Jamal Abed Rabbo, a PhD graduate from the University of Chicago whose research centers on the relationship between Islamic Law and Christian hegemony in the 15th Century. Rabbo is also a member of the Class Unity Group, which, in 2023, became independent of the DSA.
(This panelist asked to remain anonymous), an indigenous student and organizer with Dissenters
Peter Orris, leader of the Harvard chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society in the 1960s.
Sam Mitrani, associate professor of history at the College of DuPage, author of The Rise of the Chicago Police Department: Class and Conflict, 1850-1894, and a member of The Spark, a Trotskyist organisation in the working class.
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The Platypus Affiliated Society organizes reading groups, public fora, research, and journalism focused on problems and tasks inherited from the "Old" (1920s-30s), "New" (1960s-70s) and post-political (1980s-90s) Left, for the possibilities of emancipatory politics today.
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