Chicago hosted the 1968 Democratic National Convention in the wake of the Vietnam War and protests against US imperialism. This year, Chicago will host the DNC amid the growing movement for Palestine, as the United States continues its support for Israel. Join us for a conversation with Medea Benjamin, Bill Ayers, and Eleanor Stein to talk about the similarities, differences, and how we respond when power comes to our cities. We will also explore important questions like: What did organizers learn from the political moment of the late sixties and early seventies? How should we keep momentum after the DNC?
Bill Ayers, Distinguished Professor of Education and Senior University Scholar at the University of Illinois at Chicago (retired), is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Bank Street College of Education, Bennington College, and Teachers College, Columbia University. He is an engaged scholar and a peace and social justice activist who has written extensively about social justice and freedom, democracy and education, the cultural contexts of schooling, and teaching as an essentially intellectual, ethical, and political enterprise. Bill was present at the march on the DNC of 1968 in Chicago.
Medea Benjamin is the co-founder of the women-led peace group CODEPINK. She is also co-founder of the human rights group Global Exchange, the Peace in Ukraine Coalition, Unfreeze Afghanistan (which advocates for returning the $7 billion of Afghan funds frozen in U.S. banks), ACERE: The Alliance for Cuba Engagement and Respect, and the Nobel Peace Prize for Cuban Doctors Campaign.
Medea has been an advocate for social justice for 50 years. Described as "one of America's most committed -- and most effective -- fighters for human rights" by New York Newsday, and "one of the high profile leaders of the peace movement" by the Los Angeles Times, she was one of 1,000 exemplary women from 140 countries nominated to receive the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the millions of women who do the essential work of peace worldwide. She has protested at DNCs and RNCs as a part of CODEPINK demonstrations over the years.
Eleanor Stein is a climate justice advocate and activist. She teaches Law of Climate Change and Human Rights at the State University of New York, and has taught climate change law since 2005 both there and at Albany Law School, with an emphasis on climate justice. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Sanctuary for Independent Media, a community-based justice center for the arts, science and the environment, and has been on the advisory board of Rocky Mountain Institute’s eLab initiative as well as EcoViva, a solidarity project with climate and justice communities in El Salvador.
She consults, publishes and lectures extensively on climate change and human rights, and facilitates an international conversation of regulators on accelerating the energy transition. As an administrative law judge until 2015 at New York State’s energy regulator, she adjudicated proceedings on renewable energy and energy efficiency, and mediated the post-Superstorm Sandy collaborative on climate resilience; she was project manager for the state’s Reforming the Energy Vision. In 2015 she received a Master of Laws degree with distinction in climate change law and policy from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. She has consulted for, among others, Energy Innovation, LLC, Rocky Mountain Institute, Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, the McKnight Foundation, the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies and Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. She also paints landscapes in oil. Eleanor was also part of the mass movement against the Vietnam War.
WHEN
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WHERE
Zoom
CONTACT
Danaka ·