An Insurgent Notes Presentation

New York City, Sunday, April 6, 2014

CUNY Graduate Center

Fifth Avenue & 34th Street

Room 5414

4 pm

David Ranney has just published his latest book, New World Disorder: The Decline of US Power (2014). Ranney, author of Global Decisions, Local Collisions: Urban Life in the New World Order (2003), argues that the global system that President George H.W. Bush first called the New World Order is now in a deep systemic crisis and has become a new world disorder. The political and economic instability that rages around the world, Ranney contends, cannot be attributed to simply a great recession. The global crisis that we face today is inherent in capitalism itself and has appeared historically again and again. Ranney lays out the source of today’s new world disorder and explains its historical precedents. He then raises critical questions about the future. As the crisis deepens, players around the world are lining up to knock the United States out of its self-proclaimed position as the most powerful nation on earth. What are some possible outcomes? Are we doomed to live through a long period of narrow political bickering, a deteriorating environment, declining living standards, permanent war, and government surveillance? Will super global corporations enforce a new and possibly brutal form of capitalism that is removed from the reach of any particular government? Will we see the frightening emergence of twenty-first-century fascism? Or will we find a way toward a global system based on liberty, equality and environmental sustainability that aims to meet the needs of humanity and the planet?

David Ranney has been a faculty member of the College of Urban Planning and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Ranney has also been a factory worker, a labor and community organizer, and an activist academic. He is the author of four books and numerous articles and monographs on issues of employment, labor and community organizing, and US trade policy. In addition to his writing, he gives lectures on economic policy and politics and also finds time to be an actor and director in a small community theatre.

He will be speaking about the major themes of his new book and answering questions from those in attendance.

For more information, contact us.