“Join us on Saturday 17th February for the Arise day school “A World to Win – Socialist Solutions for the Crises” and together let’s build the fightback in 2024.”
By Sam Browse, Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas
As the crisis in the Middle East threatens to engulf the region, the climate emergency demands ever more urgency, and the economies of the Global North are held in the grip of continuing stagnation and decline – all while the Tory Government doubles down on a politics of racism and bigotry, and an agenda that puts profits before people and planet – activists will gather in Central London on the 17th February to learn about the roots of the interlocking crises – and, crucially, debate the fightback.
The Day School, hosted by Arise Festival, will feature discussion of the global crisis of capitalism, with John McDonnell and the economists Ozlem Onaren and Michael Roberts. Rather than further real terms pay cuts, slashing public services and seemingly endless assaults on the social security net, they will ask what are the socialist alternatives to the neoliberal consensus that has stifled economic debate in the UK since the 1980s?
While that consensus has long endured, it has not gone uncontested. From Black Lives Matter, to climate protests and the wave of inspiring strike action that has ignited across the country, Tory Ministers have attempted to limit our resistance – with attacks on the right to protest, strike and vote. They are even attacking the right to boycott human rights abusers. Holly Turner of NHS Workers Say No, the BFAWU’s Sarah Woolley, Aisha Malik-Smith, Young Labour Disabled Members Officer, and Josh Freestone of Socialist Future will lead discussion on how we continue to beat back the ruling-class offensive – and renew and strengthen the fightback in 2024.
The Day School comes at a watershed moment in British foreign policy, and a pivotal time in the struggle of the Palestinian people for their liberation. At the time of writing, over 25,000 have been killed by Israel’s bombing of Gaza and tens of thousands more have been brutally injured. As South Africa takes the Israeli government to court with charges of genocide, the Global North looks on in acquiescence to the war crimes committed in Palestine. At this critical moment, the day school will bring together Peter Leary of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Labour NEC member, Jess Barnard, and Mish Rahman, Labour NEC & Momentum NCG member, to ask can there be a just peace for Palestine?
While the crises become even more acute and the ruling class intensifies its struggle against working and oppressed people everywhere, our solidarity must know no bounds or borders. TSSA General Secretary, Mayam Eslamdoust, CND’s Kate Hudson, Arise Festival’s Matt Willgress, Sinn Féin’s Mairéad Farrell TD, and Gabriel Rodriguez of the International Transport Workers’ Federation will make the case for global justice – and that if we organise the resistance, we have a world to win.
Join us on Saturday 17th February for the Arise Day School “A World to Win – Socialist Solutions for the Crises” and together let’s build the fightback in 2024.
- “A World to Win – Socialist Solutions for the Crises” – the Arise Festival Day School takes place all day Saturday, February 17th in Central London. You can register your place, see the line-up and find out more here.
- Sam Browse is an organiser for Arise – A Festival of Left Ideas and a regular contributor to Labour Outlook. You can follow him on Twitter/X here.
- You can follow Arise Festival on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter/X; and listen to the Arise Festival podcast on Spotify.
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