Local Left Turn Collectives

Left Turn is more than a magazine. We are a network of activists and organizers committed to strengthening our movements for social justice by creating non-sectarian forums—in Left Turn magazine, on www.leftturn.org, and through face-to-face gatherings for reflection, information sharing, and strategizing around the oppressive systems we are trying to tear down and the alternatives we are building.

We create these forums through a collective committee structure of folks who work on the website, editing the magazine, distributing the magazine, finance and fundraising, soliciting advertising for the magazine, and managing subscriptions. In places where there is a critical mass of people who work with Left Turn, we organize local collectives. Local Left Turn collectives work together to realize the mission of Left Turn in a number of ways.

Local Left Turn collectives organize public events, forums, and movement strategy conversations on pressing issues facing our movements. For example, in 2004 Left Turn members in New York organized the Life After Capitalism conference. More recently the New York collective helped produce public forums on “Rethinking Solidarity” about the role of US activists working in solidarity with movements in Latin America and co-organized a tour on the Zapatista’s “Other Campaign” in several East Coast cities. The New York collective also held several public forums about the challenging relationships between nonprofits, foundation funding, and social movements featuring speakers who wrote for our “The Revolution Will Not Be Funded” issue. In San Francisco, the local collective we co-hosted with the Center for Political Education a discussion between organizations that work against the prison industrial complex.

Local collective members support each others’ political development by meeting together for political discussions on relevant topics such as anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism and the 2006 uprisings in Mexico. We make our reading lists and discussion questions available on our website as a resource for other groups gathering for political discussions.

Local Left Turn collectives support Left Turn through fundraising, tabling, and local distribution of Left Turn magazine.

Occasionally, Left Turn collective members will participate in coalitions or other organizing work as Left Turn members, although most people who work with Left Turn are involved in various movements as individuals or members of other organizations.

Currently, there are Left Turn collectives in the San Francisco Bay Area and in New York City.

Local Left Turn collectives:

New York City
nyc(at)leftturn.org

San Francisco Bay Area
bayarea(at)leftturn.org