Social Movements Archives - Public Seminar

Democracy

American Democracy in Crisis: Q & A on Tocqueville, Douglass, Dewey, and Arendt

Liberal institutions, abolition democracy, and civic virtue

February 1, 2023 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb, Juliet Hooker, William Milberg, James Miller and Deva Woodly

If we think about the way that liberalism anchors democracy, it largely relies on rights and institutional design. Just as a descriptive matter, it’s the case that the institutions that have been designed and the regime of rights that has been conceived, including the regime of human rights that has ...

American Democracy in Crisis: Q & A on Tocqueville, Douglass, Dewey, and Arendt

Activism

Turning Art into a Political Weapon

Scholars Terri Gordon-Zolov and Eric Zolov discuss the aesthetics and significance of the Chilean estallido

September 21, 2022 • by Terri Gordon-Zolov, Eric Zolov and Jordi Mariné Jubany

Wearing protest iconography was also a way to support the movement. And it was potentially risky. You could wear a handkerchief to cover your eyes from tear gas or to make yourself more anonymous or you could wear a green scarf to support reproductive rights. ...

Activism

The Walls of Santiago

How the Joker and Pikachu become symbols of the Chilean social uprising, in an excerpt from Terri Gordon-Zolov and Eric Zolov’s new book

September 21, 2022 • by Terri Gordon-Zolov and Eric Zolov

Humor provided a powerful weapon in the ﬁght to topple the civic-military dictatorship. The radical deprivation of human rights during the Pinochet regime had secondary costs, among which were the loss of a sense of freedom, spontaneity, and overall well-being. ...

Activism

Breaking Through for LGBTQI Rights

Movements fighting homophobia and transphobia in Venezuela offer an example of organizing that successfully joins forces across ideological and partisan lines

May 16, 2022 • by Daniel Fermín, Richelle Briceño and Yendri Velásquez

We have to understand that the ones who are in these spaces are the ones who can create change, be it positive or negative....

Politics

Why We Should Rethink the Distinction Between “Institutional” and “Contentious” Politics

Movements and parties do not begin as separate kinds

March 30, 2022 • by Elisabeth Clemens

It was not so long ago, perhaps a few decades, that inquiry into movements and political parties lived within separate disciplines. Aspiring political scientists who were interested in movements might have found themselves forced to make careers in sociology. Until recently, political sociologists were focused on protests and revolutions, paying ...

Why We Should Rethink the Distinction Between “Institutional” and “Contentious” Politics

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 Blob and the Mob: On Grand Strategy and Social Change

In an excerpt from Rethinking American Grand Strategy, Beverly Gage examines how statecraft and social movements intersect

December 8, 2021 • by Beverly Gage

Means and Ends As other essays in this collection demonstrate, the idea of “grand strategy” emerged out of the world of military affairs. Under the famous rubric identified by British historian B. H. Liddell Hart, “strategy” was what generals did, while “grand strategy” fell to politicians and statesmen, charged not only with winning ...

Liberal institutions, abolition democracy, and civic virtue

A literary look at Brexit shows us how words have always changed the world

Scholars Terri Gordon-Zolov and Eric Zolov discuss the aesthetics and significance of the Chilean estallido

How the Joker and Pikachu become symbols of the Chilean social uprising, in an excerpt from Terri Gordon-Zolov and Eric Zolov’s new book

Movements fighting homophobia and transphobia in Venezuela offer an example of organizing that successfully joins forces across ideological and partisan lines

Movements and parties do not begin as separate kinds

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

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

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

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

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

In an excerpt from Rethinking American Grand Strategy, Beverly Gage examines how statecraft and social movements intersect

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