Audio: Left Forum 2010

Audio interview with Terrence McDonough, a Professor of Economics at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and author, editor or co-editor of Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crises; The HEAP Chart; Hierarchy of Earnings, Attributes and Priveledge Analysis; Uninhabited Ireland: Tara, the M3, and Public Spaces in Galway; Was Ireland a Colony?: Economics, Politics, Ideology and Culture in the Irish Nineteenth Century; Mind Your Own Business: Economics at Work; Social Structures of Accumulation: the Political Economy of Growth and Crises. His current interests include globalization, American and Irish economic history, and economics education for labor and community groups.

Further Resources:
Centre for Innovation and Structural Change (CISC), NUI Galway, Ireland

Audio interview with Jerry Joffe, a faculty member in the St. John's University program in Health Care Administration. He is the author of The Evolution of Capitalist Relations of Production in U.S. Medical Practice in Research in Political Economy; The U.S. Health Care System, A Reproduction Crisis in Radical Perspectives on Economic Theory and Policy, and articles on long term care, health care costs, physician productivity and health utilization.

Audio interview with Max Rameau, a long time activist and Pan-African political theorist and the author of numerous published essays and a book, Take Back the Land: Land Gentrification and the Umoja Village Shantytown.
Further Resources:
Take Back the Land Website
Take Back the Land: Land Gentrification and the Umoja Village Shantytown

Audio interview with Kevin Alexandar Gray, a writer and activist living in South Carolina. He managed the 1988 presidential campaign of the Reverend Jesse Jackson in the state. He is the author of Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics and The Decline of Black Politics: From Malcolm X to Barack Obama.
Further Resources:
Counterpunch
Books by Gray

Audio interview with Emilio Betances, a Professor of Sociology and Latin American Studies at Gettysburg College. He has published two books on the Dominican Republic and currently does research on social movements in Latin America.
Further Resources:
Gettysburg College Faculty Author Series

Audio interview with Max Fraad Wolff, an economist based in NYC who works on the linkages between consumer debt, international financial markets and asset performance. Max is presently teaching in the New School University's Graduate Program in International Affairs.
Further Resources:
On HuffingtonPost
At The New School University

Audio interview with Leslie Cagan, an American activist, writer, and socialist organizer involved with the peace and social justice movements. She is the former national coordinator of United for Peace and Justice, the former co-chair of Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, and the former chair of Pacifica Radio.
Further Resources:
United for Peace and Justice
On Facebook

Audio interview with Orie Lumumba, an organizer with the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), a group of individuals and organizations in New York organizing for the freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal based on the evidence showing he is innocent.
Further Resources:
Free Mumia Website

Audio interview with Lois Gibbs, the founder and director of the Center for Health, Environment, and Justice. Lois, one of the world's foremost environmental activists, has guided CHEJ's efforts to provide critical organizing and technical assistance to thousands of communities engaged in their own environmental struggles across the country. She has received numerous honorary doctorates, the Goldman Environmental Prize, the Heinz Award, and many other honors.
Further Resources:
Center for Health, Environment, and Justice
The Heinz Awards

Audio interview with Joel Shufro, Executive Director of NYCOSH (New York Committee for Occupational Health and Safety). For nearly forty years, NYCOSH has fought for worker health and safety in every major trade and area of New York.
Further Resources:
NYCOSH Website

Audio interview with Richard Grossman, a man that lectures widely on issues of corporate power, law and democracy. He is co-author of Fear at Work: Job Blackmail, Labor and the Environment and Taking Care of Business: Citizenship and the Charter of Incorporation as well as former co-director of the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy and co-founder of the Daniel Pennock Democracy Schools at the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.
Further Reading:
Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy

Audio interview with Kenneth Levin, a Professor of Economics for Borough of Manhattan Community College. He has lectured in several countries and around the United States. His most important work involves clas structural issues of start-up firms in high-tech industry. Levin is known for developing a theory of both "enterprise hybrids" and "alternative growth dynamics." He also holds a license as a Certified Public Accountant. As a consultant, he has provided valuation analysis of intangible assets, and expert witness testimony on behalf of non-profit organizations.
Further Resources:
Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMMC)
Video: "New Spin on the Economic Crisis"

Audio interview with Hilary Wainwright, a leading researcher and writer on the emergence of new forms of democractic accountability within parties, movements and the state. She is also editor of Red Pepper, a British new left magazine. An updated edition of her book, Reclaim the State: Adventures in Popular Democracy was published in December of 2009.
Further Resources:
Red Pepper Magazine
Transnational Institute
Books by Hilary Wainwright

Audio interview with Danny Schechter "The News Dissector," a man who has been offering a counter narrative to news and perspectives on global issues, politics and culture since l970 on radio, TV and, for the last decade, on his blog, NewsDissector.com. Danny edits MediaChannel.org, writes this daily blog as well as articles, commentaries, polemics, screeds, rants and books. His latest book is PLUNDER and he is now making a film on the economic crisis that the book explores.
Further Resources:
News Dissector Blog
Film: In Debt We Trust
Film: Plunder

Audio interview with Bill Fletcher Jr., a longtime labor and international activist and the former President and chief executive officer of TransAfrica Forum, a national non-profit organization organizing, educating and advocating for policies in favor of the people's of Africa, the Carribbean and Latin America. Fletcher is also a founder of the Black Radical Congress, is a Senior Scholar for the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. and until recently, was the executive editor of BlackCommentator.com.
Further Resources:
BlackCommentator.com
Book: Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice

Audio interview with James Gray Pope, a Professor of Law at Rutgers University. A former worker in the metal trades, Pope was an active member of the International Association of Machinists and the Industrial Union of Marine and Shipbuilding Workers. He has written numerous articles about worker's rights, constitutional law, and labor history.
Further Resources:
Rutger's Law School
Video: "In the Shadow of Anti-Labor Law"

Audio interview with Mike Bonanno, co-founder of the Yes-Men and a co-Director of The Yes-Men Fix the World.
The Yes Men are a group of culture jamming activists who practice what they call "identity correction" by pretending to be powerful people and spokespersons for prominent organizations. From their offices in Milwaukee, they create and maintain fake websites similar to ones they want to spoof and then accept invitations received on their websites to appear at conferences, symposia, and TV shows. They express the idea that corporations and governmental organizations often act in dehumanizing ways towards the public. Elaborate props are sometimes part of the ruse, as shown in their 2003 DVD release, The Yes Men.
Further Resources:
The Yes Men Website

Audio interview with Greg Palast, author of the two New York Times bestsellers, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and Armed Madhouse. When Palast, an investigator of corporate fraud and racketeering, turned his skills to journalism, he was quickly recognized as, "The most important investigative reporter of our time" (Tribune Magazine) in Britain, where his reports first appeared in The Guardian newspapers and on BBC television. Palast's investigations can be seen on BBC Television Newsnight, Democracy Now! and at www.GregPalast.com.
Further Resources:
Greg Palast Website
Books By Greg Palast

Audio interview with Steve Brier, Professor of Urban Education in the History department at the CUNY Graduate Center, founder of the American Social History Project and co-author of the "Who Built America?" multimedia curriculum in History.
Further Resources:
American Social History Project
Multimedia: Who Built America?

Audio interview with Jeremy Glick, the co-editor of Another World is Possible: Conversations in a Time of Terror, Professor of English at Hunter College, and currently working on a book on dramatic and operatic representations of the Haitian Revolution.
Further Resources:
Hunter College
Book: Another World is Possible
Video: Jeremy Glick on Bill O'Reilly

Audio interview with Muhammad Ahmad, the former Field Chairman of the Revolutionary Action Movement and founder of African People's Party in the 1970's. Muhammad worked closely with Malcolm X, Amiri Baraka, James and Grace Lee Boggs and Kwame Ture (Stokely Carmichael). He is the author of We Will Return in the Whirlwind, African Americans Since 1900, and Selected Writings, Volume 1. He is a member of the Philadelphia Community Institute of Africana Studies and of N'COBRA.
Further Resources:
Books by Muhammad Ahmad
N'COBRA
Revolutionary Action Movement

Audio interview with Brian Tokar, an ecological activist and author, director of the Institute for Social Ecology, and a lecturer at the University of Vermont. He is the author of The Green Alternative and Earth for Sale, edited two books on the politics of biotechnology and co-edited the forthcoming collection, Crisis in Food and Agriculture: Conflict, Resistence and Renewal (Monthly Review Press). He is active in the climate justice networks Climate SOS and the Mobilization for Climate Justice.

Further Resources:
Books by Brian Tokar
Climate SOS
Mobilization for Climate Justice