“An emergent left, fueled by youth movements that have been stripped of their illusions about the promises of neoliberal capitalism and globalization, urgently needs to add a renewed and radicalized internationalist vision to its agenda. Here again, the youth may be beginning to show the way. A Vision for Black Lives, the platform produced by The Movement for Black Lives, is exemplary in its insistence upon linking the domestic depredations of police violence, the prison industrial complex, and systematic racism to US imperialism abroad.
Most famously, this has taken the form of an unstinting support for the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, a stance that has occasioned much hand-wringing and head-shaking among liberal supporters, as well as the withdrawal of support from some previously sympathetic liberal groups. Against the common coalition-building strategy that begins from the least common denominator, The Movement for Black Lives shows the way by beginning from the necessary….If an emergent left, led by these and other youth movements, were to truly begin from such internationalist principles, then perhaps the days ahead may not turn out to be as dire as this horrible election would lead us to believe.” (From “Internationalism after Trumpism,” *Jadaliyya*, December 1, 2016)
Occupation: Professor
University: Kingsborough Community College & CUNY Graduate Center
Organization(s): CUNY for Palestine, MLA Members for Justice in Palestine, Students for Justice in Palestine, Jadaliyya, Brooklyn Institute for Social Research
Anthony C. Alessandrini is Professor of English at Kingsborough Community College-CUNY and is on the faculty of the MA Program in Middle Eastern Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center, where he is also a member of the Committee on Globalization and Social Change. He is the author of *Frantz Fanon and the Future of Cultural Politics: Finding Something Different*; the editor of *Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives*; and the co-editor of *“Resistance Everywhere”: The Gezi Protests and Dissident Visions of Turkey*. He is a Co-Editor of *Jadaliyya E-Zine* and is on the faculty of the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research.
He is currently trying to write a book about the political role that cultural criticism might play today, starting from the idea of the community college as the site from which we might re-think our ideas of what public education might look like. As a faculty member at Kingsborough Community College since 2005, his teaching and research have been dedicated to the development of an anti-racist pedagogy and practice. He has been a proud member of a number of anti-racist, anti-war, and anti-occupation coalitions, including Students for Justice in Palestine, and is currently a member of CUNY for Palestine. He is constantly inspired by his students, and by youth movements throughout the world.