In These Times Magazine recently wrote a profile of LeftRoots, “Socialists of color to the front“: LeftRoots doesn’t see itself as the final home of this 21st-century socialism. Rather, it is “attempting to lay the groundwork for the launching of a political instrument in the future,” Kümm says. LeftRoots, she says, is a way to […]

The introduction of the first-ever issue of Out to Win! LeftRoot’s journal that explores strategy to win socialist liberation from the perspective of leftists on the frontlines of movement struggles inside the belly of the beast.   Click here to download the full edition   Liberatory strategy in this moment Any discussion of strategy to […]

In the summer of 2018, for the third consecutive year, LeftRoots had the great privilege to send some of its cadres to study with the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) in Brasil. This powerful, mass social movement of rural workers has fought for land reform and social transformation since its founding in 1984. It also runs a […]

In December, 2017, three LeftRoots cadres—Merle Ratner, NTanya Lee, and Rose Brewer—got to spend a few weeks on women’s delegation to Vietnam, one of the few surviving 20th century socialist experiments. On April 19, 2018, the three of them, along with LeftRoots compas Cathy Dang and Juliet Ucelli, hosted a national LeftRoots hangOut to talk […]

Marking a key milestone in its development, LeftRoots held its first National Congress in Oakland, California from February 15 to 18, 2018. Roughly 200 LeftRoots cadres travelled from various corners of the United States to attend. In preparation for the Congress, these cadres had been participating in rigorous study, discussion and debate over an initial […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

On February 15, 16, and 17, LeftRoots is holding its first national congress. Members from across the country are gathering to identify, discuss, and debate the key features of the current moment, the strategic implications of those conditions, and how LeftRoots and its members can continue to develop and grow to make decisive interventions to […]

The centuries-old battle against white supremacy in the United States claimed another life, another hero, this weekend. On Saturday, August 12, James Alex Fields murdered Heather D. Heyer as part of his participation in the white “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fields smashed his car into a peaceful crowd of anti-racists, […]

In the fall of 2016, three LeftRoots cadres—Alex, Paige, and Ying-sun—got to spend seven weeks studying at the Escola Nacional Florestan Fernandes (ENFF), the national school of Brazil’s Movement of Landless Peasants (MST—Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem Terra). On April 6, 2017, the three of them hosted a national LeftRoots hangOut to talk about their experience. This […]

On the morning on November 4, 2016 police and military forces raided the National School Florestan Fernandes (ENFF), which is the leadership development school of the Brazilian Landless Workers Movement (MST), where social movement leaders from around the world are currently gathered to study and build together. Three community organizers who are members of LeftRoots […]

By Steve Williams, co-founder and National Secretary of LeftRoots. Ideas for the Struggle should be required reading for all organizers, political activists and would-be revolutionaries in these troubling and challenging times. Knocking on doors of people we don’t know. Facilitating meetings where strangers gather to share their problems and find solutions together. Crafting campaigns and […]

by Linda Burnham July 11, 2016 A thick strand in the history of U.S. policing is rooted back in the slave patrols of the 19th century. Patty rollers were authorized to stop, question, search, harass and summarily punish any Black person they encountered. The five- and six-pointed badges many of them wore to symbolize their […]

LeftRoots member, Jonathan Kissam, from Vermont, weighs in on the Bernie Sanders debate. The Bernie Sanders campaign has provoked widespread interest and debate on the U.S. Left, such as it is. This article is a contribution to that debate from the perspective of a left organizer who has been active in trade union and community […]

by Cynthia Peters, LeftRoots Cadre Member Much of the organizing in the U.S. is guilty of focusing on short-term outcomes, not thinking about how the work is developing the people who are doing it. There’s an apartment building in Dorchester that used to be a safe and affordable place to live for working-class families in […]

by Riad Azar and Saulo Colón Originally published in New Politics, summer of 2015. Kali Akuno served as the coordinator of special projects and external funding for Jackson Mississippi’s late Mayor Chokwe Lumumba. He is co-founder and director of Cooperation Jackson as well as an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. He was interviewed […]

By Steve Williams. Published by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, New York Office, May 2015. Download the PDF here » With corporate profits rising along with the number of children living in poverty, the state-sanctioned killings of Black civilians, the record-number of deportations of undocumented immigrants and the irrefutable evidence coming crisis caused by capitalism’s addiction […]

by N’Tanya Lee, Cinthya Muñoz, Maria Poblet, Josh Warren-White, and Steve Williams on behalf of the LeftRoots Coordinating Committee We are living in times of great instability and crisis. Everywhere there are troubling signs of collapse: mass shootings; widespread unemployment; potentially irreversible ecological devastation; and the consolidation of wealth into fewer and fewer hands. The […]

With thousands descending on Ferguson today to demand justice for Michael Brown, a creator of #BlackLivesMatter thinks now may be the time to win long-term victories. BY JULIA WONG Originally published in In These Times Thousands of activists are expected to converge on Ferguson, Missouri starting Friday, October 10, for a “Weekend of Resistance” to […]

We need a radical and grounded Left LeftRoots is a national formation of social movement organizers and activists who want to connect grassroots struggles to a strategy that can win liberation for all people and the planet. Mass organizations must be central features of strong and vibrant social movements, and Left cadre formations are as well. […]

In August 2014, the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung—New York Office brought together 100 leaders of the Left from across the United States, Canada, and Europe for an “un-conference” on Mapping Socialist Strategies. A number of LeftRoots members were there, sharing our ideas and learning from the amazing comrades in attendance, and are featured in this video.

By N’Tanya Lee and Steve Williams The need to develop a strategy that can cohere the different parts of our movement has never been clearer. Both of us have been shaped by years of organizing the young, homeless people, and working-class African Americans and Latinas. After each spending more than a decade building different organizations […]

By N’Tanya Lee & Steve Williams More Than We Imagined is the final report of a year-long project called Ear to the Ground, co-directed by Steve Williams and NTanya Lee. Over nine months, more than 150 social justice organizers in 30 communities across the country were asked to reflect on the nature of this moment […]

by Spencer Resnick & Jonathan Bix Originally published in Jacobin Magazine, August 2013 Our long march through the institutions is not to reform them, but to transform the common sense they uphold. With the 2008 financial crisis, the supposedly sturdy foundation of finance capital shook and nearly crumbled. Millions of working-class Americans saw their wealth, […]

By Steve Williams Published by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, New York Office, March 2013. Download PDF in English here » Download PDF en Espanol here » When protesters around the world took to the squares and streets beginning in late 2010 from Tunisia to Chile, from Egypt to Spain, from Greece to the United States, leftists […]

By Maria Poblet Originally published by Organizing Upgrade, July 2012. I’m pretty sure the first time I heard the word “Anti-Intellectualism,” I said “that word is so elitist!” Luckily, I was in the company of one of my greatest teachers, June Jordan. After giggling uncontrollably (her giggle-fests were legendary), she asked me what I thought […]

By Josh Warren-White, September 2006 This paper, written in 2006, studies what was then a relatively new model of community organizing that is Left and revolutionary. The study looks at what the main tenants of this organizing model are; what historical organizing traditions and models it evolved out of or drew from; and what this model’s implications […]

By Maria Poblet As a Left community organizer in the United States, working with oppressed and exploited people in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, I have benefitted greatly from Amílcar Cabral’s work and thought. I am part of a broader growing political tendency that is building a working class base for the Left […]