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Video: The Next System & the Academy

A recording of the 4/21 event helping kick off Earth Day to May Day.

On Wednesday, April 21st, 2021, hundreds of leading policymakers, innovators, community organizers, and academics came together to take up the challenge of preparing our society for a transition to a system that provides the best outcomes for all.

Keynote: Representative Mark Pocan

Congressman Mark Pocan (2nd CD, Wisconsin) is the co-founder and Co-Chair of the House Labor Caucus, where he works to advance the needs of the labor movement, combat the issues facing working families, and connect legislators directly with unions and union leaders. He is also the Co-Chair of the Congressional Cooperative Business Caucus. In the 117th Congress, Representative Pocan serves on the House Appropriations Committee and three of its subcommittees, as well as on the House Education and Labor Committee.

For more information: https://pocan.house.gov/

Panelist: Kali Akuno

Kali Akuno is a co-founder and co-director of Cooperation Jackson and co-editor of “Jackson Rising: the struggle for economic democracy and black self-determination in Jackson, Mississippi.” Akuno served as the Director of Special Projects and External Funding in the Mayoral Administration of the late Chokwe Lumumba of Jackson. His focus in this role was supporting cooperative development, the introduction of eco-friendly and carbon reduction methods of operation, and the promotion of human rights and international relations for the city. 

For more information: https://cooperationjackson.org/cop-delegation-bios/2015/9/16/kali-akuno

Panelist: Gar Alperovitz

Gar Alperovitz has had a distinguished career as a historian, political economist, activist, writer, and government official. For fifteen years, he served as the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland, and is a former Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge University; Harvard’s Institute of Politics; the Institute for Policy Studies; and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution. Alperovitz is the co-chair of The Next System Project, a project of The Democracy Collaborative and is the author of critically acclaimed books on the atomic bomb and atomic diplomacy and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, The Nation, and The Atlantic among other popular and academic publications. 

For more information: https://garalperovitz.org/

Panelist: Peter Knowlton

Peter Knowlton was a member of the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE) for 34 years until his retirement in 2019. He first became active in the labor movement in the late 1970’s as a union cab driver, rank and file activist, and organizer in Minneapolis, MN and one of the leaders of an unsuccessful effort in the early 80’s to transform the 600 worker Yellow Cab Company into a worker owned and operated cooperative. He joined the UE as a Field Organizer in the mid-80’s, became President of the UE Northeast Region in 2001, and elected UE General President in 2015. As UE was a predominantly manufacturing union he was actively involved in numerous plant closing fights and efforts to save and transform workplaces, often times with an eye to worker owned enterprises. A lifelong political activist he has been active in the anti-war and student movement, environmental, and Native American solidarity movements. He lives in the town of Dartmouth on the southern coast of Massachusetts.

For more information: https://www.ueunion.org/ue-policy/peter-knowlton 

Panelist: Mike Strode

Mike Strode is a writer, urban cyclist, facilitator, and solidarity economy organizer with the Kola Nut Collaborative residing in southeast Chicago. The Kola Nut Collaborative is Chicago’s only time-based service and skills exchange (otherwise known as a timebank) providing an open platform for mutual aid, community organizing, and network weaving. Prior to launching the Collaborative, he worked with Black Oaks Center for Sustainable Renewable Living to develop the Healthy Food Hub, a food sovereignty initiative which connects farmers in the historically Black farming community of Pembroke Township to food insecure communities throughout Chicago. The Collaborative recently launched their newest initiative to develop a network of Chicago-based facilitators trained in a method known as the Offers and Needs Market in order to embed this resource sharing practice within local organizations. Strode also serves on the boards of the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network, Dill Pickle Food Co-op, and Co-op Power.

For more information: https://ussen.org/member/mike-strode/

Academic Response Panelist: Amy Best

Amy L. Best is Professor of Sociology and Chair in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University. Her research focuses on the study of youth, identity formation, culture, and social inequalities, with a particular interest in how gender, ethnicity, sexuality, race and class differently shape the social experiences of contemporary American youth. She is interested in qualitative and feminist approaches to social research and program evaluation. Best is author of “Prom Night: Youth, Schools and Popular Culture” (2000 Routledge), which was selected for the 2002 American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Award and “Fast Cars: Cool Rides: The Accelerating World of Youth and Their Cars” (NYU Press 2006), and editor of “Representing Youth: Methodological Issues in Critical Youth Studies.” (NYU Press, 2007). Her most recent book is “Fast Food Kids: French Fries, Lunch Lines and Social Ties” (NYU Press, 2017), which was selected for a 2018 Morris Rosenberg Award by the DC Sociological Society.

For more information: https://soan.gmu.edu/people/abest

Academic Response Panelist: Diane Fujino

Diane Fujino is a professor of Asian American Studies and former director of the Center for Black Studies Research at UC Santa Barbara. Her research examines Japanese and Asian American radical history as shaped by Black Power and Third World decolonization. Her latest books are, “Nisei Radicals: The Feminist Poetics and Transformative Ministry of Mitsuye Yamada and Michael Yasutake,” and “Black Power Afterlives: The Enduring Significance of the Black Panther Party.”  Her earlier books focus on Yuri Kochiyama, Richard Aoki, and Fred Ho.  Fujino argues for a racialized gendered analysis of Yuri Kochiyama’s leadership, situated as “centerperson leadership” in, “Want to Start a Revolution: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle.” She has been featured on Democracy Now!, KPFK, KPFA, WBAI, NPR, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribute, Hyphen magazine, Rafu Shimpo, and community and scholarly venues. Fujino is currently organizing with a new project, Cooperation Santa Barbara.

For more information: https://www.asamst.ucsb.edu/people/diane-c-fujino

Moderator: Ben Manski

Ben Manski is Assistant Professor of Sociology at George Mason University. He studies the participation of ordinary people in the deliberate constitution of their societies. Manski’s work takes in social movements, law, politics, climate and ecology, and the corporation, focusing on democracy, democratization, constitutionalism, next system studies, and he has published widely on these themes. He has a JD from the University of Wisconsin (2005), a PhD from the University of California Santa Barbara (2020), and is an Institute for Policy Studies Associate Fellow, Next System Project Research Fellow, and a Critical Realism Network Associated Fellow. Manski founded, co-founded, or helped instigate many pro-democracy mobilizations and organizations, including the Democracy Teach-Ins (1996), 180/Movement for Democracy and Education (1998), Liberty Tree Foundation for the Democratic Revolution (2004), Move to Amend (2010), Wisconsin Wave (2011), and the Global Climate Strikes (2014). He practiced public interest law for eight years and managed national non-profit organizations, direct action campaigns, and political campaigns and parties for twenty five years.

For more information: https://www.benmanski.com/

April 21, 2021

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