Black Protest Archives - Public Seminar

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

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? ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: An Archive of a Crisis

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

June 11, 2020 • by Lindsay Atnip, Benjamin Bernard, Audrey Borowski, Jonathon Catlin, Andrew Cole, Ayça Çubukçu, Benjamin P. Davis, Jodi Dean, Stephanie Degooyer, Christina Heatherton, Shannon Hoff, Bonnie Honig, Stephen Hopgood, Siddhant Issar, Joy James, Martin Jay, Susan Kang, Mark Kingwell, David Lloyd, Vincent Lloyd, Mac Loftin, John Lysaker, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Lissa McCullough, Zein Murib, Yasemin Sari, Mohammad Salama, Sarah Schulman, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Martin Shuster, Dara Z. Strolovitch, Enzo Traverso, Moira Weigel and Rocío Zambrana

A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In a spirit of both open inquiry and political advocacy, and inspired by the response of readers to our own “Theses for Theory in ...

Sentencing the Present: An Archive of a Crisis

Activism

What Is to Be Done?

Three scholars of democracy respond to the protests

June 4, 2020 • by Eli Zaretsky, Jeffrey C. Goldfarb and Elzbieta Matynia

I believe this extraordinary nationwide mobilization is the best answer possible to the Democrats who engineered the destruction of the Sanders primary campaign -- I mean Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, James Carville, James Clyburn, Pete Buttigieg, and the innumerable reporters and media “experts” who from the beginning insisted ...

Theory & Practice

Sentencing the Present: Part Five

Critical conversations in a time of crisis

June 4, 2020 • by Benjamin Bernard, Jonathon Catlin, Benjamin P. Davis, Jodi Dean, Shannon Hoff, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Zein Murib, Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Rocío Zambrana

This is the final seminar of the "Sentencing the Present" series. For previous seminars, see part one, part two, part three and part four. A sentence is protean: It can describe, question, or cry out. A sentence is critical: In passing judgment, it names wrongs, makes decisions, and declares publicly. In ...

Activism

The Anti-Racist Uprising in Brooklyn

A report from the streets

June 3, 2020 • by Natasha Lennard

Since March, sirens have become a consistent soundtrack where I live in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights. For weeks, this was the sound of ambulances, ushering thousands to nearby hospitals from the predominantly African American area, hard hit by the pandemic. But in recent days, the sirens have carried a different meaning. Night ...

Politics

Has Trump’s Reichstag Moment Finally Arrived?

An authoritarian leader wielding the violent power of the state is a hallmark of fascism

June 2, 2020 • by Jeffrey C. Isaac

“I am mobilizing all available federal resources, civilian and military, to stop the rioting and looting, to end the destruction and arson, and to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans,“ Trump declared, while police fired tear gas against protesters demonstrating outside the White House. “If a city or state refuses ...

Has Trump’s Reichstag Moment Finally Arrived?

Feature

Sadism in Poland

The proposed abortion bill was an attack on women, nothing else

October 20, 2016 • by Helena Chmielewska-Szlajfer

Since the beginning of Law and Justice Party (PiS) rule in Poland, the right-wing government has accustomed Poles to regulations that counter the principles of democracy (e.g. the Constitutional Tribunal) or human decency (nepotistic hires). This time, however, PiS has taken a step further, deciding to support a bill proposed ...