Webcast Archives

This lecture takes a look ahead at the leading challenges and opportunities facing American democracy in this moment.

To help us break down this weekend's victory of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in the 2020 presidential race, we are honored to have local hero and Black feminist activist Alicia Garza. Alicia Garza is an organizer and political strategist based in Oakland, California, where she is the principle at the Black Futures Lab and the Black to the Future Action Fund. She is, along with Opal Tometi and Patrisse Cullors, the co-creator of #BlackLivesMatter and the Black Lives Matter Global Network.

America is more politically polarized now than at almost any other time in our history. Dean Henry E. Brady of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy is studying that polarization and what, if anything, can be done to reverse it. He explains how changing political priorities, technology, and partisan media have all played a role in bringing us to a point where Republicans and Democrats don't even want their children to marry people from the other party.

What just happened? What happens next? As Americans wake up to a still uncertain presidential race, we take on these critical questions as we both look back to the election and its outcome, while beginning to plan for what is to come from the immediate needs for political mobilizations to long term visions of what kinds of politics are needed.