Left Forum, June 7-9, 2013, Pace University, New York City

Venezuela Beyond Chávez II: The Grassroots Perspective

We want to examine what the death of Chávez and the actual situation means for Venezuela from a grassroots perspective of the activists and social movements that have co-created the Bolivarian Revolution of the past 14 years. What does chavismo without Chávez mean for them?

Moderator: Alejandro Velasco
Julio Rodriguez – Participatory Democracy and Community Media
Dario Azzellini - Comunas
T.M. Scruggs - Culture and Social Movements
Sujatha Fernandes – Community Organizations

Sponsoring Journal: NACLA Report & Venezuelanalysis.com


Alejandro Velasco, New York University.

Julio Rodriguez, Radio El Comunitario, Venezuela. Julio César Rodríguez is a community journalist with 15 years of experience working in community media and giving political workshops for young people. He lives in the city of Maturín in the state of Monagas in Venezuela, and holds workshops on political affairs, communications and public speaking in his community. He is a member of Radio El Comunitario FM, a community radio station in his city.

Dario Azzellini, CUNY, is a political scientist and lecturer at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria, writer and filmmaker based in Berlin and Caracas. He holds a PhD in political science from the Goethe University in Frankfurt (Germany). His research and writing focuses on social and revolutionary militancy, migration and racism, people’s power and self-administration, workers control and extensive case studies in Latin America.

T.M. Scruggs, The Real News, Until recently T.M. Scruggs was the token ethnomusicology professor at the University of Iowa. His primary research focus is on the use of music to construct social identity in the Americas. From 2005 to 2007 he lived in Venezuela, where he taught at the Universidad de los Andes in Mérida, and researched music, cultural politics and community media.

Sujatha Fernandes, Queens College. Sujatha Fernandes is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. She is the author of Who Can Stop the Drums? Urban Social Movements in Chávez’s Venezuela (Duke University Press, 2010) and Cuba Represent! Cuban Arts, State Power, and the Making of New Revolutionary Cultures (Duke University Press, 2006). Her most recent book is Close to the Edge: In Search of the Global Hip Hop Generation (Verso, 2011).