Roundtable Discussion: The Movement for Black Lives: We Do We Go from Here?

This Thursday, 2 July (12pm-1pm), Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation will host a roundtable discussion revolving around the ongoing Black Lives Matter mass movement for racial justice. Drawing on lessons from both the ongoing mass mobilization for racial justice and the history of racial inequality in the United States, the roundtable will focus particularly on far-reaching, effective solutions to address these pervasive, systemic inequalities. The panel will feature leading scholars on these questions, including Megan Ming Francis from the University of Washington, Saida Grundy from Boston University, Elizabeth Kai Hinton from Yale University, and Kellie Carter Jackson from Wellesley College. Leah Wright Rigueur from Harvard Kennedy School will moderate the discussion.

For more information and registration, please visit: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/events/movement-black-lives-where-do-we-go-here

On the Importance of (Re-)theorizing Black Civic Engagement

Civic engagement has long stood as a central concept in social science scholarship, especially in the American social and political contexts. Indeed, many scholars have argued that civic engagement – i.e. involvement of individuals or groups in actions that promote the improvement of and change in their communities – has played a key role in democratic development and success. The beneficial effects of civic engagement at the individual, community and societal levels have also been widely acknowledged.

However, as Candice C. Robinson (PhD Candidate in Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh) stresses in this important recent article,  much of existing civic engagement scholarship draws primarily on the experiences of White individuals. Laying out the ways in which previous scholarship fails to account for how structural inequalities within societies, organizations and associations impact forms of, and possibilities for, civic engagement among Black Americans, Robinson calls for a (re-)theorization of civic engagement that encompasses Black Americans’ experiences. Such (re-)theorization of Black civic engagement, in turn, holds great potential in advancing scholarship about and understandings of racialized dynamics in social movement mobilization.

Indigenous Movements and Resistance in Chile

A wave of popular uprisings has swept over Latin America in the past few months. While “taking it to the streets” is not uncommon in the region, what seems unique to these recent uprisings is both their scope and intensity. In Chile, for example, what started as discontent over an increase in the price of public transport quickly turned into the largest protests in the country since the revolts against Pinochet’s dictatorship in the 1980s.

The ongoing Chilean protests quickly came to symbolize opposition against wider injustices related to steep and rising inequality, cost of living, and lack of economic opportunity. While these large-scale protests have no central leadership or single union, group or organization behind them, the country’s indigenous populations, namely the Mapuche, have played a particularly visible role in the uprisings. In the following piece, Patricia Rodriguez, Associate Professor of Politics at Ithaca College, draws on her research with Christian Martínez Neira and David Carruthers to give an insightful account of the role that indigenous movements and resistance play in these recent popular mobilizations and the territorial, political and cultural claims they articulate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/11/11/chilean-protesters-are-waving-mapucho-flag-whats-mapucho-flag-whos-hoisting-it/