A Teach-In featuring faculty from Yale’s African American Studies department and the program in Ethnicity Race and Migration.
Speakers will contextualize these events and the erosions of democracy in the US by examining the revitalization of democratic ideals by the excluded, marginalized, and oppressed.
Mass mobilization in response to government malfeasance is a core component of democratic politics. In the 2020 election, Black organizers registered, educated, and mobilized voters in response to policies intended to disenfranchise Black voters (such as curtailing early voting, requiring ID at polling places and ending same-day voter registration), and “swung” Georgia on January 5th.
The democratic practice of protest can also be captured and subverted for antidemocratic ends as we saw with the mobilization of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6th. The disturbing images of an angry, violent mob roving through the inner chambers of the Capitol sent shockwaves around the world. In this teach-in, faculty contextualize these events and the erosions of democracy in the US by examining the revitalization of democratic ideals by the excluded, marginalized, and oppressed.