Historians and the Current Crisis: Old/New Ideas for Organizing against Wealth and Power

Scores of political commentators have been recently suggesting, humorously but also earnestly, that we are currently living through a second "Gilded Age," an era in U.S. history when, as now, public concerns included rampant technological shifts, "massive wealth inequalities, hyperpartisanship, virulent anti-immigrant sentiment and growing concern about money in politics." (Edward T. O'Donnell, "Are We Living in the Gilded Age 2.0?" www.history.com/news/second-gilded-age-income-inequality ) The pushback against the first Gilded Age, of course, included what we now sometimes call the Progressive Era. Taking this idea as a starting point, our Roundtable will ask: What can current grassroots activists learn from 20th century organizing experiences about building a viable Left Alliance? Panelists will foment a broad-ranging discussion on subjects that may include the imbalance of wealth and power, migration and immigration law, environmental justice, reparations for slavery, interference in Latin American countries by U.S. moneyed elites, and current fights for gender and class equity of all kinds.
Participants
Ph.D. Classics (Columbia University, 1994). Adjunct Instructor, Montclair State University, Montclair, NJ (2006-present): Latin, Classical Civilization: Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the Classical World; Ancient Greek Theater Production; Troy and the Trojan War; Homosexuality in the Classical...
Read moreJoshua Murray is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University. Together with Michael Schwartz, he recently published the book *Wrecked: How the American Automobile Industry Destroyed Its Capacity to Compete,* a "historical-sociological analysis of the downfall of the auto...
Read moreMichael Herman Schwartz (born May 9, 1942) is an American sociologist and prominent critic of the Iraq war. He is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in New York, where he also serves as faculty director of the Undergraduate College of...
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