Filtering by: politics

Timuel Black: Sacred Ground
May
19
2:00 PM14:00

Timuel Black: Sacred Ground

Legendary 100-year-old activist and historian Timuel Black discusses his new book, Sacred Ground: The Chicago Streets of Timuel Black, which chronicles the life and times of this Chicago icon. Bart Schultz, editor of the book, and Bennett Johnson, activist and publisher of Path Press, will talk with Black about his life in this event co-sponsored by Northwestern University’s Department of African-American Studies. Evanston civil rights legend Bennett Johnnson will also join the discussion. Register to reserve a seat at https://evanston.libnet.info/event/1971364

About the Speakers:

Timuel D. Black, Jr. has spent his life furthering the cause of social justice, and his two volumes of oral histories, Bridges of Memory: Chicago's First Wave of Black Migration and Bridges of Memory: Chicago's Second Generation of Black Migration, published by Northwestern University Press, chronicle black Chicago history from the 1920s to the present.

Bennett Johnson is a legendary civil rights activist and publisher in Evanston. He helped found Evanston’s branch of the Congress of Racial Equality and the Chicago League of Negro Voters. He has worked for Urban Consulting Inc. and as the president of the Evanston Minority Business Consortium He co-founded Path Press, which began publishing books in 1969 as one of the first black-owned publishers, and continues to this day.

Bart Schultz is a senior lecturer in humanities and director of the Civic Knowledge Project at the University of Chicago. He is the author of many works, including Henry Sidgwick: Eye of the Universe.

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Vote Her In: Your Guide to Electing Our First Woman President
May
18
4:00 PM16:00

Vote Her In: Your Guide to Electing Our First Woman President

Rebecca Sive's Vote Her In: Your Guide to Electing Our First Woman President addresses the unrealized dream of millions of American women: electing our first woman President. It makes the case for the urgency of women attaining equal executive political power at all levels, including the presidency, and offers a comprehensive strategy for every woman to be a part of this campaign—the most important of our lifetimes. Sive speaks with Michele Weldon, the editorial director of Take the Lead and author of Escape Points. This event is cosponsored by Take the Lead.

About Vote Her In: “inspiring, savvy and persuasive on why America needs more female leadership now. Rebecca offers not just the analysis, but the practical steps every woman and man can take to help get women into the C-suite and the Oval Office. And argues that the time to do it is now.”--Jessica Yellin, former CNN White House correspondent

About the Author: Rebecca Sive’s career has spanned executive positions − in business, government, philanthropy, academia, and the not-for-profit sector − where she has earned a reputation as a smart and inspirational women’s leadership and politics strategist, writer, speaker, and teacher. At the University of Chicago, Harris School of Public Policy, Sive was the founding Program and Academic Director of its Women in Public Leadership executive education initiative, and was a lecturer. Sive has received distinguished achievement awards from her undergraduate alma mater, Carleton College, and from the University of Illinois (from which she received an M.A. in American History), and leadership awards from the United Negro College Fund, the Jaycees, and the YWCA, among others. Sive was among the national leaders who developed women's issues agendas for Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. She was a gubernatorial appointee to the Illinois Human Rights Commission; a mayoral appointee as a commissioner of the Chicago Park District; a founding board member of the Chicago Foundation for Women; is in Feminists Who Changed America, University of Illinois Press (2006), and has served as a director of many other organizations and foundations.

About the Interlocutor: Michele Weldon is editorial director of Take the Lead, and is emerita faculty in journalism at Northwestern University, where she taught on the graduate and undergraduate levels for 18 years. She is director of the Northwestern Public Voices Fellowship through The OpEd Project, where she is a senior leader. Weldon is the author of four nonfiction books, I Closed My Eyes (1999); Writing To Save Your Life (2001); Everyman News (2008); and her latest, Escape Points: A Memoir (2015) was named one of the best books of 2015 by Booklist of the American Library Association and was a finalist in the Society of Midland Authors Literary Awards for 2015. She has contributed chapters in seven other books and anthologies. Her commentary appears regularly in outlets such as New York Times, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, CNN, Cosmopolitan, Washington Post, Huffington Post, The Guardian, Los Angeles Times, Medium, Pacific Standard, Quartz, Slate and hundreds more. Weldon co-directed TEDX NorthwesternU 2014 and competed in the 2012 Moth Story Chicago GrandSlam in 2012. She is a frequent guest on radio, TV and digital sites.

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Billionaires and Stealth Politics
May
17
4:30 PM16:30

Billionaires and Stealth Politics

In 2016, when millions of Americans voted for Donald Trump, many believed his claims that personal wealth would free him from wealthy donors and allow him to “drain the swamp.” But then Trump appointed several billionaires and multimillionaires to high-level positions and pursued billionaire-friendly policies, such as cutting corporate income taxes. Why the change from his fiery campaign rhetoric and promises to the working class? This should not be surprising, argue Benjamin I. Page and Matthew J. Lacombe: As the gap between the wealthiest and the rest of us has widened, the few who hold one billion dollars or more in net worth have begun to play a more and more active part in politics—with serious consequences for democracy in the United States. Join them as they discuss their book Billionaires and Stealth Politics. with Tony Chen of the Political Science Department at Northwestern. Cosponsored by the Northwestern University College Democrats and the Democratic Party of Evanston.

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It’s Time To Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics
May
17
7:30 PM19:30

It’s Time To Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics

The election of Donald Trump showed how the American electoral system is clearly falling apart. In It’s Time To Fight Dirty: How Democrats Can Build a Lasting Majority in American Politics, Roosevelt University political science professor David Faris offers accessible, actionable strategies for American institutional reform. Faris will discuss his ideas with John K. Wilson, author of President Trump Unveiled: Exposing the Bigoted Billionaire (trumpunveiled.com).

Presented in conjunction with the NU College Democrats.

 

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Daniel Borzutzky and Margarita Saona
May
16
7:00 PM19:00

Daniel Borzutzky and Margarita Saona

  • Evanston Public Library Community Room (map)
  • Google Calendar ICS

Daniel Borzutzky, the National Book Award-winning poet (The Performance of Becoming Human) will read from his new book, Lake Michigan, a series of 19 lyric poems imagining a prison camp located on the beaches of a Chicago that is privatized, racially segregated, and overrun by a brutal police force. Patricia Smith noted, "Borzutzky’s surreal and terrifying lakeside dreamscape—sparked by the real-world specter of the city’s infamous ‘blacksite’ interrogation warehouse—is deftly crafted and chilling in its proximity to the real.”

He will be joined by Peruvian poet and professor Margarita Saona, who will also be reading her poetry. She is head of the department of Hispanic and Italian Studies at the University of Illinois. She has published numerous articles, two books on literary and cultural criticism, Novelas familiares: Figuraciones de la nación en la novela latinoamericana contemporánea  (Rosario, 2004) and Memory Matters in Transitional Perú (Londres, 2014), two books of short fiction, Comehoras (Lima, 2008) and Objeto perdido (Lima, 2012). Corazón de hojalata/Tin Heart  (Chicago, 2017) is her first book of poems.

 

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