Watch: Forum on 2022 Elections and Meeting the Moment

Last Sunday, Voices for New Democracy hosted our latest monthly political forum discussing prospects for the upcoming 2022 elections with friend, contributor, and MIT professor Phil Thompson.

Following up on his recent writings in the New Labor Forum (‘Is Now the Time to Break with the Democrats?: A Debate‘ and ‘Democratizing the Knowledge Economy: Will Labor Accept the Challenge?‘), Thompson contends that today’s moment is the one the Left has been waiting for since the 1970s, and outlined some of the key (and sometimes contradictory) trends of today’s political moment:

• The rise of the far-right, anti-democratic radicalization among the conservative movement
• Right-wing attacks on immigrants, labor, climate, and other progressive priorities
• Timid union leadership hesitant to seize power
• Long-standing weaknesses and failures of the Democratic party
• Resurgence of labor organizing among service sector workers and strong public support for unions
• Left-wing radicalization among young people and certain legacy institutions
• Progressive movements expanding and pushing local government to the left in strongholds like New York
• The growth of the knowledge economy and the possibilities it presents for organizing and the role of consumers
• And much more

Watch the full forum below.

Webinar: Brazil Elections, What’s At Stake?

Brazil’s historic upcoming elections will pit the Worker’s Party’s Lula da Silva against the far-right former President Bolsonaro, and the results will shape the future of the country and global geopolitics.

To make sense of the challenge and understand the high stakes of the elections, the Brazilian progressive legal group Crivelli Advogados is hosting a webinar this Tuesday, October 11th from 7 – 9 pm EST with political analysts and a former Minister in Lula’s government to discuss and analyze the historical moment. Live English translation will be provided, and additional details can be found below.

Click here to register for the webinar.

Panelists will be Ricardo Berzoini, former Minister of Labour, Communications and Social Security during the Lula and Dilma governments, and Fabiano Santos,  political scientist, professor and researcher (IESP-UERJ). The mediation will be by Ericson Crivelli – Labor Law and International Rights specialist.

The polls on Sunday, Oct. 2nd, revealed a more conservative and radical Congress. The initial analysis of specialists shows that if Lula is elected – even with this Congress – there will be openness to dialogue, more possibilities for negotiation and a less adverse scenario.

But if Bolsonaro is reelected, there are risks of authoritarian advancement, reduction of social security, imposition of the conservative agenda, criminalization and even persecution of both social and workers’ movements.

So, how to organize to continue resisting? And how to advance on progressive agendas?