What if I told you that from the elected officials who manage the affairs of the bourgeoisie, to principled socialists who’ve soldiered on in proletarian struggles for decades, many figures in LA’s contemporary political landscape trace their lineage to radical organizations of the ’60s and ’70s?

The August 29th Movement, Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, El Centro de Accion Social Autonomo, East Wind — many of these groups were explicitly socialist organizations who organized largely along racial/ethnic lines and were part of what scholars call the Third World Left.

What were the material conditions and economic arrangements that shaped the development of these organizations? What kind of work did they undertake, and what fruit did it bear? How did their internal structures influence their external capacities? How did they relate to different class forces within nationalist movements? Through both firsthand accounts and secondary sources, this class session explores these questions as well as what all this means for socialists working in LA today.

Join the DSA-LA Political Education Committee for our fourth class of the Political Education Committee's 5-Part Night School Series: Lost Angles Legacies of LA's Third World Left on Thursday, August 27 at 6PM.

Each session features a brief, informal presentation followed by facilitated discussion designed to engage all levels and connect current events to foundational socialist concepts and debates.