This is the right time to talk about why we need a new economic system and how to get there. This is the time to talk about and build socialism here and around the world .

To meld practice and theory on this issue are Zwelinzima Vavi, General Secretary, of the South African Federation of Trade Unions (“SAFTU”), founded in 2017, and which is the second largest of the country’s main trade union confederations, with at least 21 affiliated trade unions organizing 800,000 workers, working to create an independent, campaigning and democratic trade union federation who shall defend if need be with their lives the fighting independence of their revolutionary and socialist oriented federation

Kali Akuno is a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson and  served as the Director of Special Projects and External Funding in the Mayoral Administration of the late Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson, MS. His focus in this role was supporting cooperative development, the introduction of eco-friendly and carbon reduction methods of operation, and the promotion of human rights and international relations for the city. Kali also served as the Co-Director of the US Human Rights Network.

Gar Alperovitz has had a distinguished career as a historian, political economist, activist, writer, and government official. For fifteen years, he served as the Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland.   Among his many achievements is having been the architect of the first modern steel industry attempt at worker ownership in Youngstown, Ohio. 

He is also the president of the National Center for Economic and Security Alternatives and is a co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, a research institution developing practical, policy-focused, and systematic paths towards ecologically sustainable, community-oriented change and the democratization of wealth.

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Getting Serious About the Next Economic System

with

Gar Alperovitz, author, What Then Must We Do?  and The Next American Revolution: Beyond Corporate Capitalism and State Socialism

In an era when systemic critique of the economic and political institutions of the United States is poised on the edge of mainstream consciousness: the realities of a changing climate, an irrationally destructive financialized economic system, a long and steady historical trajectory concentrating political power along with wealth, are becoming impossible to ignore. How can we consciously come together around this opportunity to offer a coherent vision of what a "next system" might look like? Gar Alperovitz is a leading proponent and practician of local socialized Alternatives to the current economic system. He here summarized some of the  concrete experiments in social change happening and being proposed across the country including Worker cooperatives, municipal and state economic enterprises, state and municipal banks, land trusts, and single payer health insurance and lays out a new initiative to expand visibility and support for an alternative economic system: The Next System Project : New Political-Economic Possibilities for the 21^st Century.

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The Building Blocks for a Just Economic System
with
Ed Whitfield,  Co-Managing Director of the Fund for Democratic Communities  speaks and writes on issues of cooperatives and economic development while continuing to be interested in issues of war and peace, as well as education and social responses to racism and is active in the call by the Southern Grassroots Economies Project (SGEP) to develop a Southern Reparations Loan Fund

More and more people are disenfranchised from and disenchanted by our economic system with its long and steady historical trajectory concentrating political  power along with wealth amongst the few, and a monstrous apparatus of prisons and policing that are increasingly prevalent.  And, Ed Whitfield is one of the theoreticians/activists who offers us a coherent vision of what building a "next system" might look like.  Whitfield talks about his work in the South and beginning to build for a far for equal and justice society.

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What Then Must We Do?
withGar Alperovitz, author, What Then Must We Do?  and The Next

American Revolution: Beyond Corporate Capitalism and State

Socialism 

While there's been no shortage of commentary about the structural crisis plaguing the American economic and political system, from wage stagnation and chronic unemployment to unchecked corporate and state power and growing inequality, analyses that offer practical, politically viable solutions to these problems have been few and far between. Gar Alperovitz is a rare and stunning exception. Through his new book and film and his research and his activism, Alperovitz highlights efforts already under way in thousands of communities across the U.S., from co-ops and community land trusts to municipal, state, and federal initiatives to organize and democratize capital.  Alperovitz marshals years of research to show how bottom-up strategies can work to check monopolistic corporate power, democratize wealth, and empower communities.

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http://archive.org/stream/BuildingBridgesBeyondCorporateCapitalismAndStateSocialismWithGar

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America Beyond Capitalism:
Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty and Our Democracy
With
Gar Alperovitz, Professor of Political Economy, University of Maryland
and co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative

As discontent with the economic and political status quo mounts in
the wake of the "great recession," Gar Alperovitz's “America Beyond
Capitalism” suggests a bottom-up effort currently already underway
in communities across the U.S., which point in the direction of,
among other things worker-owned cooperatives, and community
land trusts, supported by policies and resources from municipal,
state and federal government. Ongoing economic pain is likely to
continue to inspire such initiatives to demand further action to
democratize the ownership of capital, so that ownership goes to
the 99% in new ways rather than to the top 1%.”

http://www.archive.org/stream/AmericaBeyondCapitalismWithGarAlperovitz
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