Deva Woodly Archives - Public Seminar

Podcast

Black Resistance, Black Joy

In Episode 37, conversation with political theorist Christopher Paul Harris about his new book, To Build a Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care

September 13, 2023 • by Claire Potter

To Build a Black Future: The Radical Politics of Joy, Pain, and Care (Princeton University Press, 2023) draws on Christopher PaulHarris’s own experiences as an activist and organizer to analyze contemporary Black struggle and places that struggle in the long history of Black oppression, resistance, community making and joy....

Activism

The Power of Black Feminist Pragmatism

Why the Black Lives Matter movement is the best alternative to the anti-democratic, white supremacist, authoritarian capture of the United States

January 20, 2022 • by Deva Woodly

The Black Lives Matter movement is not a “new social movement” that focuses on cultural transformation while eschewing policy intervention, nor is it fashioned after “old style,” “traditional” social movements that attempt to move policy while deemphasizing the need for deep changes in public understandings of the problems facing polities ...

Activism

On Coming to Terms

What form should a “post #BlackLivesMatter” movement take?

January 19, 2022 • by Christopher Paul Harris

BlackLivesMatter” world, it won’t be one where the current constellation of movement organizations simply disappear or become ineffective in their attempts to bring Black people closer to liberation....

Activism

Reckoning with Deva Woodly’s Reckoning

What kind of coalition must the Left forge in order to defeat Trumpism and whatever comes after it?

January 18, 2022 • by Sidney Tarrow

Black Lives Matter was not born in the streets, even if it sometimes moved there following the police murder of Michael Brown in 2014, and again after the killing of George Floyd in 2020. But the movement, after these intense episodes of protest and direct action has not stayed in ...

Reckoning with Deva Woodly’s <em>Reckoning</em>

Activism

The Promise of Black Lives Matter

How to sustain a popular movement that can dismantle structural racism in America

January 18, 2022 • by Maneesh Arora

How can BLM activists and other allied individuals and organizations capitalize on the outrage they are precipitating by bringing first-time protesters into the fold? Moreover, how can they help people who are concerned about racial inequality—motivated to do something about it and already thinking structurally—to also act structurally? ...

Activism

We Are a Reckoning

Deva Woodly introduces her new book, Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements

January 17, 2022 • by Deva Woodly

This nation is mine. Mine to claim. Mine to hold to account. Mine to participate in reshaping. So I tell an American story because it is my story to tell....

Democracy

The Chauvin Verdict and Common Sense

Further reflections on democracy and social justice

April 29, 2021 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I am relieved by the verdict and, of course, I’m not alone. We knew that Chauvin was guilty as sin: the racist, apparently remorseless, cold blooded killer of George Floyd. It was clear as day, common sense. But common sense has failed us when it comes to American policing and ...

Activism

Wired Politics

Social media is crucial to organizing modern protests: It is also a vulnerability

June 4, 2020 • by Claire Potter

Nowadays, I try not to watch the cable news shows. There are other ways to get information about the demonstrations engulfing the United States, and my neighborhood in Manhattan, following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020. I text friends in the community for updates ...

Feature

Gray Memory

On a Self-limiting Collective Imagination

April 13, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” So wrote Milan Kundera. Years ago, I found in his bold assertion confirmation of the findings of my first major research project on the sociological dynamics of cultural freedom. I would like to think my study of ...

Blue Monday

Backlash Blues

A reflection on democracy in the streets of Sacramento

April 2, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

"I merely took the energy it takes to pout, and I wrote some blues." -Duke Ellington On the evening of Sunday, March 18 Stephon Clark was shot to death by officers of the Sacramento Police Department responding to a report that a young black man had been seen vandalizing cars in ...

Feature

Good News

On the American elections, Public Seminar and civility and subversion

November 10, 2017 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

I am feeling better this week. The election results were heartening, from top to bottom, from the high profile governor races in Virginia and New Jersey to the defeat of a most right wing county executive in Westchester, New York (close to home and very significant for me and my ...

Feature

Trumpism – How Should the Left Respond?

Dissent Editors and Contributors Debate how the Left can defeat Trump

February 10, 2017 • by Julia Ott

Dissent editors and contributors debated how the left can defeat Trumpism. Featuring: Bhaskar Sunkara is editor and publisher of Jacobin magazine. Nancy Fraser is a professor of philosophy and politics at The New School for Social Research and author, most recently, of Fortunes of Feminism: From State-Managed Capitalism to Neoliberal ...