New Strategies for the Obama Era: Are YOU Ready?

Barack Obama’s election and the Democratic Congressional majority signal new opportunities and new challenges in a period when our nation and the world are suffering a series of disastrous wars, the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression, and potentially catastrophic environmental degradation, including global warming.

As President Obama’s election demonstrates, real change comes from below, from our efforts for greater peace, justice and environmental sustainability. In a new era, we need new movement strategies to stop wars and violent conflicts and to guarantee ourselves and others meaningful security. This requires peace, a dynamic economy, universal access to health care, and a clean environment.

This is a critical moment for peace, justice and environmental movements; a time to organize and lead the Obama Administration and Congress to deliver the changes that we and the world need.  Unfortunately, the composition of the Obama cabinet, other senior appointments, and some of his policy commitments are sources of deep concern. President Obama intends to escalate the war in Afghanistan and Central Asia, to increase the size of the U.S. military, and to leave tens of thousands of “residual forces” in Iraq. His economic stimulus package has been criticized as inadequate, and there is much to do to protect the environment.

The Obama Administration and Congress  will deliver some of changes that we and the world need, but powerful grassroots pressure on the new Administration and Congress will be required if our hopes for change are to be realized.

To provide clear and profound visions, campaigns, and movements for change, the American Friends Service Committee, Tufts University’s Peace and Justice Studies Program, and a growing number of co-sponsoring organizations have organized “New Strategies for the Obama Era: Are You Ready?”  This New England-wide, multi-generational movement conference will be held the weekend of March 27-29. “New Strategies” will provide strategies, information, analysis, campaigns, resources and networking essential to build the movements needed to impact and lead Washington. As the slogan has it, “When the people lead, the leaders will follow.”

As our list of speakers and workshops indicate, “New Strategies” will be an extraordinary and critically important opportunity for our movements. Please join us if you can, and help us get the word out and around. Please complete the registration form that can be found on the conference flyer or web page, and please share this news about the conference with others.

*A youth caucus will be held on Sunday, March 29^th for young leaders of today.  Participants in the caucus will have the space to connect with one another, reflect on their power in the Obama Administration, and strategize campaigns for the future.

The conference will provide an opportunity for in-depth exploration and campaign development for three priorities:

Featured speakers include:

Noam Chomsky, renowned author and linguist
Bill Fletcher Jr., radical trade unionist
Zia Mian, of the Woodrow Wilson School of Policy, Princeton University
Joseph Gerson, author and veteran peace activist
Raed Jarrar, half Iraqi and half Palestinian architect and political analyst
William Moomaw, director of the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy
Anna Galland, of MoveOn.org
Emily Kawano, of the Center for Popular Economics
Phyllis Bennis, of the Institute for Policy Studies
Arjun Makhijani, of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research
Tom Hayden, renowned peace activist and prolific writer