"The Democratic Party and the Left" (5/30/24 panel)

On May 30th 2024, the Northwestern chapter of the Platypus Affiliated Society hosted a panel titled "The Democratic Party and the Left."
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?
Speakers:
- John D'Emilio - Professor Emeritus of History and Women's and Gender Studies at UIC, biographer of Bayard Rustin
- Patrick Quinn - involved in the Civil Rights Movement, the SWP, the anti-Iraq War movement, a founding member of Solidarity, DSA member
- Progressive Labor Party
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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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