Paul Street is speaking alongside panelists Lance Selfa (of Socialstworker.org and International Socialist Review), Glen Ford (Executive Director Black Agenda Report), and Pam Chamberlain of Political Research Associates in a Left Forum panel on “Understanding and Responding to the Tea Party Threat” at Pace University in lower Manhattan (NYC) at 10 AM, Room E308. Here is a brief description of key panel questions from the Left Forum Web site: Popular Resentment Abhors a Left Vacuum: Understanding and Responding to the Tea Party Threat” will examine a number of interrelated questions: * How do we explain the resurgence of the US Right, reflected in the rise and triumph of the Tea Party phenomenon in 2009 and 2010 and in the 2010 mid-term elections? * How should we understand “the Tea Party” as a social and political phenomenon? Is it really a grassroots, independent and anti-establishment popular movement (as it has been portrayed in dominant mass media)? Is it a racist development? Militarist? Proto-fascist? * What role have corporate and political elites and corporate media played in the rise of the Tea Party phenomenon? * How severe is the threat to democracy, social justice, and livable ecology posed by the Tea Party? What are the future prospects of the Tea Party? * How should left progressives respond to the Tea Party phenomenon and the broader threat posed by the resurgent right in the Age of Obama?” I will draw many of my comments from my new book (co-authored with Anthony DiMaggio): Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics
