AMERICA BEYOND CAPITALISMI had the honor of being invited to speak to the audience of the New Economics Institute’s “Strategies for a New Economy” conference from June 8-10 at Bard College in New York:
Gar Alperovitz - Our Time in History: The Possibility of Fundamental System Change from New Economics Institute on Vimeo.
(From Monday, July 16th’s Democracy Now!)
AMY GOODMAN: [T]he keynote address was given by—at the Green Party’s National Convention, in Baltimore—by Gar Alperovitz. Gar Alperovitz is a professor of political economy at the University of Maryland, co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative, author, most recently of “America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty, and Our Democracy.”
GAR ALPEROVITZ: First I want to say is I am from Wisconsin. Some Wisconsin people back there. Wisconsin knows something about third parties. The Republican Party, original Republican Party, was a party to end slavery started in Ripon, Wisconsin and it got lost along the way, but it showed one big push on the really important issue of slavery in its early days. Fighting Bob La Follette from Wisconsin. Another historical issue that you may remember coming out of that state and starting very small and making a powerful impact. Third, if you look closely at what became the best parts of the New Deal, the labor law legislation, some parts of Social Security, some parts of health care and some parts of the other welfare programs, a lot that came up and was was incubated in Wisconsin. I am proud to be a Wisconsin guy, but the bottom line there is not about Wisconsin, it is about historical change. How you begin fighting small and you expand when the time is right, and you make an impact because the other things are failing. That is what has happened in many, many cases. Revolutions are as common as grass and world history, and they begin in rooms like this.
Available now from Chelsea Green Publishing
More info about What Then Must We Do?
Preorder now via Amazon
Preorder now via Indiebound
Agenda
Posterboard 