Building from the Left: Strategies to Disrupt the Right
How can the left develop more robust strategies to undermine and disrupt the powerful ascendance of the U.S. Right? How can the left learn from its history and the present moment to build a transformative intersectional social justice agenda that encompasses reproductive justice, LGBTQ liberation, racial and immigrant justice, civil liberties, and economic justice?
In the aftermath of the midterm elections, Cara Page (Activist-in-Residence 2016-2018), Tarso Luís Ramos (Executive Director of Political Research Associates and Activist-in-Residence 2016-2018), and Pooja Gehi (Executive Director, National Lawyers Guild) will discuss intersectional strategies to build long-term resistance. Speakers will present research and tactics, and pose critical questions on how to strategically engage in electoral politics while holding down and moving forward a radical, long-term social justice agenda.
Following the conversation, Janet Jakobsen will moderate a Q&A with the audience, including questions from our community submitted prior to the event. Please share your questions below.
About the Speakers
Cara Page is a Black Feminist Queer cultural/memory worker, curator, and organizer. Over the last twenty-plus years, she has fought for LGBTQGNC and People of Color liberation, and organized in the Southeast with movement builders such as SONG, Project South, and the Atlanta Transformative Justice Collaborative and has built with many organizers, healers and cultural workers across the country. As an Activist-in-Residence, Page continued her decades-long study on historical and contemporary eugenic practices and medical experimentation to shape a public discourse on the historical and contemporary role of eugenic violence as an extension of state control and surveillance on Black and Immigrant communities; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Transgender, Queer, and Gender Nonconforming people; people with disabilities; and Women of Color. Using transformative justice strategies to confront and shift the practices of the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC), Page’s work reveals the centrality of traditions of collective safety and wellness to political liberation.
Pooja Gehi has worked for immigrant and racial justice, trans and queer liberation, transformative justice, youth leadership, and cross-movement coalition building throughout her life. Currently, she serves as the Executive Director of the National Lawyers Guild. For over eight years, she worked as a Staff Attorney and Director of Immigrant Justice at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP). There she provided direct legal services to hundreds of low-income transgender and gender nonconforming clients, and achieved major victories like access to transition-related healthcare for New York State Medicaid recipients through litigation and coalition work. Pooja’s scholarly work focuses on social movements, the devolution of criminal and immigration systems, and the intersections of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nationality. Her recent work has appeared in the Berkeley Asian American Law Journal and Harvard Journal of Law and Gender.
Tarso Luís Ramos is Executive Director of Political Research Associates. Under his leadership, PRA has expanded existing lines of research documenting right wing attacks on reproductive, gender and racial justice by launching several new initiatives on subjects that include the export of U.S.-style homophobic campaigns abroad, the spread of Islamophobia, and the Right’s investment in redefining religious liberty toward discriminatory ends. Before joining PRA, Ramos served as founding director of Western States Center’s Racial Justice Program, which works to oppose racist public policy initiatives and support progressive people of color-led organizations. As director of the Wise Use Public Exposure Project in the mid-’90s, he tracked the Right’s anti-union and anti-environmental campaigns.
Details and Accessibility
This event is free and open to the public. RSVP is preferred but not required. The venue is accessible to people with mobility disabilities. Please contact BCRW for additional accessibility needs.