A powerful grassroots movement campaigned in the ’70s and ’80s for banks to reinvest equitably in red-lined urban communities. It failed—but why?
Tag: Activism
Are There “Good-Enough” Feminists?
The way women practice feminism differs between Quebec and France, especially in how they welcome—or don’t—Muslim women.
Thelma King and the Call for Revolution
In 1963, a Panamanian assemblywoman took to Cuban radio to condemn the United States and its control of the Americas.
To Teach Shakespeare for Survival: Talking with David Sterling Brown and Arthur L. Little Jr.
“Nostalgia is not what Shakespeare represents for me; I don’t want to make Shakespeare great again. He doesn’t need that, and neither do we.”
Antiracist Praxis
Antiracism challenges us to wholly reimagine what it means to study human and inhuman conditions in their various forms.
Build Culture, Build Community, Break Fascism
On both sides of the border, artivistas—art activists—infuse their creative and political work with minority struggle and solidarity.
Mae Ngai: “We’ve Always Had Activists in Our Communities”
“Americans—whether they believe they are not racist or whether they are stone-cold racists—still struggle to see the structures of racism.”
“Redlining Does Not End”: Talking with Rebecca Marchiel on Housing and Racism
“They all wanted to imagine a different possibility of an integrated neighborhood, where folks worked together.”
“There’s No There There”: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on the Future of the Left
“We don't have a party. That doesn't mean we need one big organization. We may need a few big organizations. But we need organizations!”
Lyn Hejinian’s “Allegorical Activism”
The revelrous, rebellious writing of Hejinian—arguably our foremost poet-critic—works against our sense of psychological and political isolation.
Prison Tech Comes Home
Landlords’, bosses’ and schools’ intrusion of surveillance technologies into the home extends the carceral state into domestic space.
Thoreau in Good Faith
The writer went to Walden to reorient his world, so that the woods, rather than the town, centered his spiritual map.
How to Dream beyond Oil
Energy sources shape, rather than simply serve, our social and cultural imaginaries. Recognizing this poses a different set of challenges for how we might contend with our current planetary emergency.
Episode 5: Data & Racial Capitalism
How have data-centric systems perpetuated racial capitalism, and how have different communities, particularly in the global South, resisted this datafication?
Episode 2: Data & Labor
How has data been used to organize labor, and how do we make ourselves visible to data-centric systems?
Solidarity Is a Process: Talking with Kelly Lytle Hernandez, Josh Kun, and Destin Jenkins
“Solidarity is not a thing. There’s no formula, no exact science. There is ongoing process.”
Can the Crowd Speak?
Occupy Wall Street’s great achievement was to briefly create a community that prefigured a robust democratic culture.
How to House America
Fixing the American housing crisis will require constructing more houses, but also increasing subsidies and protections for existing tenants.
“I Can’t Make You See What I See”: Talking with Cyree Jarelle Johnson and Jesse Rice-Evans
"Writing about lupus is like writing about ghosts. What do you say about something featureless?"
Public Thinker: Jenny Price on Refusing to Save the Planet
“First: Why are we not making more progress? Second: Why do so many people hate environmentalists?”