Town Hall Seattle Civics Series

Democracy in a Hotter Time calls for reforming democratic institutions as a prerequisite for avoiding climate chaos and adapting governance to how Earth works as a physical system. To survive in the “long emergency” ahead, the book suggests ways to reform and strengthen democratic institutions, making them assets rather than liabilities. Edited by David W. Orr, this collection of essays proposes a new political order that would enable humanity to thrive in the transition to a post-fossil fuel world. Orr gathers leading scholars, public intellectuals, and political leaders to address the many problems confronting our current political systems. Few other books have taken a systems view of the effects of a rapidly destabilizing climate on our laws and governance or offered such a diversity of solutions. These thoughtful and incisive essays cover subjects from Constitutional reform to participatory urban design to education; together, they aim to invigorate the conversation about the human future in practical ways that will improve the effectiveness of democratic institutions and lay the foundation for a more durable and just democracy. David W. Orr is Professor of Practice at Arizona State University and Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics Emeritus at Oberlin College. He is the author of eight books, including Dangerous Years: Climate Change, the Long Emergency, and the Way Forward and Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse. He is a founder of the Atlanta Environmental Symposium, the Meadowcreek Project, the Oberlin Project, the journal Solutions, and of the State of American Democracy Project. He headed the effort to design, fund, and build the Adam Joseph Lewis Center which was named by an AIA panel in 2010 as “the most important green building of the past thirty years.” His current work at Arizona State University is on the repair and strengthening American democracy. Buy the Book Democracy in a Hotter Time: Climate Change and Democratic Transformation Third Place Books

In his new book, Decade of Disunion, Robert W. Merry explores the critical lessons from the 1850s when the United States faced a growing crisis over slavery. The Mexican War’s vast new territories sparked debates on expanding slavery, clashing with the 1820 Missouri Compromise. Key events such as the Compromise of 1850, the 1854 repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the 1857 Dred Scott decision, and John Brown’s 1859 raid heightened tensions, leading to violent conflicts and further division between North and South. Merry focuses on the contrasting roles of South Carolina and Massachusetts. South Carolina, reliant on slave labor, debated secession, while Massachusetts became an antislavery stronghold, questioning the Constitution’s role in abolishing slavery. These states’ actions widened the national divide, making disunion inevitable. In December 1860, South Carolina’s secession following Abraham Lincoln’s election triggered the South’s departure from the Union. Through the lens of key figures, Merry underscores the fragile nature of democracy and the continuous effort required to sustain it. Robert W. Merry spent 45 years in Washington, D.C., as a Wall Street Journal reporter and executive at Congressional Quarterly, including 12 years as CQ’s president and editor-in-chief. After CQ was sold to the Economist, he also served as editor of the polemical magazines The National Interest and The American Conservative. He is the author of six books on American history and foreign policy, including the forthcoming Decade of Disunion: How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861. Buy the Companion Book Decade of Disunion: How Massachusetts and South Carolina Led the Way to Civil War, 1849-1861 Third Place Books

Sequim––a quiet, coastal community just a couple hours away from Seattle––may seem like an unlikely microcosm for the rise of far-right politics. And yet, political journalist Sasha Abramsky has closely followed small-town communities, including Sequim, and argues that places like these have directly influenced current national politics. How could small-town USA be so instrumental in today’s political climate, including Donald Trump’s 2024 Republican presidential nomination? Abramsky argues that the far-right have worked to take control, using suspicion, conspiracy, and bigotry, and forming alliances of QAnoners, anti-vaxxers, Christian nationalists, and militia supporters within small towns across the country. Stemming from his latest book, Chaos Comes Calling, he investigates the rise of the far-right, telling the parallel stories of recent years in two communities: Shasta County, California and Sequim, Washington. The ultimate fates of these two towns were different though. Abramsky shows how Sequim has returned to less extreme political views, while Shasta County has descended further into intolerance and divisiveness. He highlights the differences between the communities, including the efforts to organize against the far-right movement. Places like Sequim may be small, but they may have huge ramifications in the national political scene. Abramsky believes there’s a path forward from polarization that threatens to break apart communities, and towns as close as Sequim can show us how. Sasha Abramsky is a long-time political journalist and book author who has spent the last thirty years exploring the American political and social justice landscape. He has written extensively on poverty, criminal justice, immigration, and the rise of hard-right and alt-right political movements. Buy the Book Chaos Comes Calling: The Battle Against the Far-Right Takeover of Small-Town America The Elliott Bay Book Company

Some Americans fear the Federal Constitution falls short in addressing democratic threats, yet it’s long been revered for its ideals of liberty and equality. Join us at Town Hall Seattle for a discussion with Aziz Rana, Michael Hardt, and Jaleh Mansoor about Rana’s book, The Constitutional Bind, exploring how this flawed document gained mythic status and its impact on society. Rana contends this reverence emerged in the 20th century alongside US global dominance, shaping both domestic and foreign policy. Discover how this cultural phenomenon has hindered meaningful change while silencing an array of movement activists — in Black, Indigenous, feminist, labor, and immigrant politics — who struggled to imagine different constitutional horizons. Gain insights into alternative constitutional futures at this thought-provoking event in collaboration with Red May. Aziz Rana is an American legal scholar and author who currently serves as Richard and Lois Cole Professor of Law at Cornell University specializing in American constitutional law. Michael Hardt teaches political theory in the Literature Program at Duke University. He is co-author, with Antonio Negri, of the Empire trilogy and, most recently, Assembly. He is co-director with Sandro Mezzadra of The Social Movements Lab. Jaleh Mansoor is an associate professor of art history at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, where she teaches modern and contemporary art history with an emphasis on Post WWII European art. Presented by Town Hall Seattle and Red May. Buy the Book The Constitutional Bind: How Americans Came to Idolize a Document That Fails Them Third Place Books

Over the past decade, charitable crowdfunding has exploded in popularity across the globe. Sites such as GoFundMe, which now boasts a “global community of over 100 million” users, have transformed the ways we seek and offer help. When faced with crises—especially medical ones—Americans are turning to online platforms that promise to connect them to the charity of the crowd. What does this new phenomenon reveal about the changing ways we seek and provide healthcare? In Crowded Out, Nora Kenworthy examines how charitable crowdfunding so quickly overtook public life, where it is taking us, and who gets left behind by this new platformed economy. Although crowdfunding has become ubiquitous in our lives, it is often misunderstood: rather than a friendly free market “powered by the kindness” of strangers, crowdfunding is powerfully reinforcing inequalities and changing the way Americans think about and access healthcare. Drawing on extensive research and rich storytelling, Crowded Out demonstrates how crowdfunding for health is fueled by—and further reinforces—financial and moral “toxicities” in market-based healthcare systems. It offers a unique and distressing look beneath the surface of some of the most popular charitable platforms and helps to foster thoughtful discussions of how we can better respond to healthcare crises both small and large. Nora Kenworthy is Associate Professor at the University of Washington Bothell. She is the author and editor of several books, and her writing has appeared in the American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, PLOS One, Scientific American, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. Marcus Harrison Green is a columnist for The Seattle Times. A long-time Seattle native, he is the founder of the South Seattle Emerald, which focuses on telling the stories of South Seattle and its residents. Buy the Book Crowded Out: The True Costs of Crowdfunding Healthcare The Elliott Bay Book Company

Government-backed guarantees, from bailouts to bankruptcy protection, help keep the private sector in business in our nation’s economic system. What if the same were true not only for businesses but for individuals as well?  In her new book The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy, Natalie Foster, co-founder and president of the Economic Security Project, invites readers to envision a future where things like housing, health care, higher education, family care, inheritance, and an income floor are not only attainable for everyone but guaranteed by our government. The book blends economics, business, public policy, and social justice and calls for a shift from unchecked capitalism to a country that serves all of its people. The Guarantee examines the changes in government guarantees over the past decade, from student debt relief to the child tax credit expansion. Foster’s vision for a new American Guarantee draws from real-life experiences as well as collaborations with activists and visionaries. The Guarantee argues not only that new policies are possible, but that they are ready to implement in twenty-first-century America. Natalie Foster is a leading architect of the movement to build an inclusive and resilient economy. She is the president and co-founder of Economic Security Project and an Aspen Institute Fellow, and her work and writing have appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, Time, Business Insider, CNN, and The Guardian. Natalie speaks regularly on economic security, the future of work, and the new political economy. Natalie previously founded the sharing economy community Peers and co-founded Rebuild the Dream with Van Jones, and served as Digital Director for President Obama’s Organizing for America — a leading partner in winning transformative healthcare reform. A daughter of a preacher from Kansas, Natalie draws on the values of community, dignity, and optimism to build a better America. The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy is her first book. Angela Garbes is the author of Essential Labor: Mothering as Social Change, called “a landmark and a lightning storm” by the New Yorker. Essential Labor was named a Best Book of 2022 by both the New Yorker and NPR. Her first book, Like a Mother, was also an NPR Best Book of the Year. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, New York Magazine, and featured on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah and Fresh Air with Terry Gross. A first-generation Filipina American, Garbes lives with her family on Beacon Hill. Buy the Book The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America's Next Economy Third Place Books

Traffic, parking, gas prices, miles per gallon- many casual concerns might enter your mind when you get into your car and go out into the world. But what happens when your concerns are not casual but constant, and they start with figuring out whether you can even access where you’re trying to go in the first place? One-third of people living in the United States don’t have a driver’s license, yet live in a system that doesn’t prioritize people who don’t or can’t drive. In her book When Driving is Not an Option: Steering Away From Car Dependency, Anna Letitia Zivarts sets out to explain why factoring nondrivers into planning decisions and improvements across our transportation system will create a better quality of life for everyone. Drawing from interviews with involuntary nondrivers from around the United States and from her own lived experience, Zivarts explores the realities nondrivers face in a car-centric society. The majority of involuntary nondrivers nationwide are disabled, lower income, unhoused, undocumented, formerly incarcerated, very young, or elderly. These populations face significant financial and accessibility barriers attempting to navigate a transportation system that suffers from a major blind spot towards them- it’s a system designed and run by people who can drive. When Driving is Not an Option evaluates the human health, environmental, and quality-of-life costs of our current systems and what changing them to be more equitable and accessible could look like for everyone- car user or not. In conversation with cycling policy leader Barb Chamberlain and fellow disability advocate Tanisha Sepúlveda, Zivarts touches on levels of change that could create expansive impacts- from accessible and affordable transit and housing to promoting diverse leadership, from sidewalk connectivity to creating more opportunities for biking, scooting, and wheeling. By acting on the needs of nondrivers who are frequently excluded from the conversation, Zivarts posits that more supportive structures and healthier, climate-conscious communities could be right around the corner. Anna Zivarts is an author, organizer, disability advocate, and low-vision nondriver. She launched and currently serves as the Program Director of the Disability Mobility Initiative at Disability Rights Washington. She represents disabled nondrivers on the Washington State Active Transportation Council and previously served as the equity and accessibility expert on NHTSA’s Pedestrian and Bicyclist Safety Program Assessment teams for Kentucky and Maryland. Barb Chamberlain is the Director of the Active Transportation Division of the Washington State Department of Transportation. She is a long-time proponent of active transportation safety, equity, and accessibility, previously serving as the executive director of the nonprofit Washington Bikes. Her work has been recognized with regional, state, and national awards. Tanisha Sepúlveda is a program coordinator for Empower Movement WA, a coalition of BIPOC and disabled mobility advocates supported by Disability Rights Washington and Front and Centered. Buy the Book When Driving Is Not an Option: Steering Away from Car Dependency The Elliott Bay Book Company

Technology pioneers like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft (to name a few) are woven into the fabric of Seattle’s economy. Yet, on a day-to-day basis, how much do you think about what these techno giants mean for the future of our world? With such enormous amounts of influence and money, how are these powers shaping our world today? Economist and journalist Loretta Napoleoni digs into these questions. At the dawn of the digital revolution, people thought the internet was going to be the great equalizer, a global democratic force. Napoleoni argues that instead, Wall Street funded a new breed of capitalists, the “Techtitans,” who embraced rapid, transformational change while stripping their workers of rights and enriching themselves. Those who control and own the technology are the absolute masters, in Napoleoni’s eye. In her book, Technocapitalism: The Rise of the New Robber Barons and the Fight for the Common Good, Napoleoni describes how these phenomena are the beginning of a new world model, born in a period of extraordinary change and acceleration––from the FTX collapse to AI, private space companies to the war in Ukraine, from inflation to the environmental impacts of EV car batteries. The ubiquity of techno giants in Seattle makes it easy to forget what kind of power resides in this city. Napoleoni wants to shed light on the kind of power it really is, and how we can fight against it for our common good to address today’s challenges. In the mid-70s Loretta Napoleoni became an active member of the feminist movement in Italy, and later studied as a Fulbright Scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, DC. She began her career as an economist and went on to work as a London correspondent and columnist for La Stampa, La Repubblica, and La Paîs. Napoleoni is the author of the international bestsellers Rogue Economics: Capitalism’s New Reality and Terror Incorporated: Tracing the Money Behind Global Terrorism. She has served as Chairman of the countering terrorism financing group for the Club de Madrid, and lectures regularly around the world on economics, money laundering, and terrorism. Ross Reynolds loves conversation and learning. He hosted a public radio news/talk show on KUOW Seattle called The Conversation for 13 years. He’s also been a radio program director, news director, and executive producer of community engagement. He is a public event convener, moderator, and interviewer. Buy the Book Technocapitalism: The Rise of the New Robber Barons and the Fight for the Common Good Elliott Bay Book Company

In April 2020, when the world was in the early months of COVID-19, you may remember the televised concert that Lady Gaga hosted called “One World: Together At Home.” This star-studded show was put together by Global Citizen, an international social justice organization that used the program to promote and support healthcare workers and the World Health Organization. The program was remarkable in harnessing pop culture to promote social justice issues. Michael Sheldrick, a co-founder of Global Citizen, believes leaders must adopt concepts like this to tackle the challenges in today’s fractionalized culture. Drawing from real-life examples, Sheldrick shares this strategy in his book, From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World. Sheldrick identifies key characteristics of successful change makers: they are leaders who are practical implementers, connectors, and networkers. Sheldrick also has concrete advice, such as avoiding demands for unwavering loyalty and winning arguments at all costs. He outlines step-by-step tools to foster connections and cooperation and examines past and current movements that have made lasting impacts. Sheldrick believes that it’ll take huge social changes to make an impact on today’s biggest challenges. Lady Gaga’s online concert in April 2020 was one example of how Sheldrick puts this into action. Now, he wants to share his toolkit with individual changemakers, philanthropists, professionals, corporate foundations, and students. These are the people, Sheldrick argues, who can drive the real solutions in our tumultuous world. Michael Sheldrick is a policy entrepreneur and Co-Founder and Chief Policy, Impact, and Government Affairs Officer at Global Citizen, where he spearheads campaigns to eradicate extreme poverty by rallying support from governments, businesses, and foundations. With a unique career bridging pop culture and policy, he has collaborated with renowned artists like Beyoncé, Coldplay, Lady Gaga, and political figures including Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Sheldrick has co-produced influential social campaigns and events like the Global Citizen Festival in New York and the Guinness World Record-winning virtual concert One World: Together At Home, reaching millions worldwide and securing over forty billion in commitments. Dr. Paulin Basinga leads the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s work in Africa. Previously, as the foundation’s director of health for Africa, Paulin led a team that developed and implemented country plans to advance the foundation’s health priorities in Africa. Earlier, he was the foundation’s country director in Nigeria, where he re-established critical partnerships and advanced the foundation’s health, nutrition, agriculture, gender, and financial inclusion priorities and aligned them with the Nigerian government’s Human Capital Development Agenda. Buy the Book From Ideas to Impact: A Playbook for Influencing and Implementing Change in a Divided World The Elliott Bay Book Company

Have you ever thought what #FakeNews might have looked like 200 years ago?  While we may be experiencing a new era of disinformation, the tactics aren’t necessarily original. Drawing from their latest book, Stories Are Weapons, journalist and science fiction author Annalee Newitz traces back in history how disinformation, propaganda, and violent threats — all elements of psychological warfare — have evolved into tools of today’s domestic culture wars. Newitz argues that America has a deep-rooted history with psychological operations. Beginning with Benjamin Franklin’s Revolutionary War–era fake newspaper, then the nineteenth-century wars on Indigenous nations, Newitz follows disinformation to its peak of today’s online influence campaigns. Newitz zeroes in on conflicts over race and intelligence, school board fights over LGBTQ students, and campaigns against feminist viewpoints to show how damaging our cultural storytelling can be. Newitz argues that, in each case, specific groups of Americans are singled out and treated as enemies of the state. Newitz also shares their insights from speaking with the researchers and activists who are pushing against these stories, working toward psychological disarmament and cultural peace. Since #FakeNews isn’t a new concept, Newitz believes we can learn from history and build a better story. Annalee Newitz is a journalist and author of science fiction and nonfiction, including the national best-seller Four Lost Cities. They write for the New York Times and New Scientist and co-host the Hugo Award–winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. They live in San Francisco. Lindy West is the co-host of the NPR podcast Text Me Back and author of the movie newsletter Butt News. She is a former contributing opinion writer for The New York Times, and is the author of Shit, Actually, the New York Times bestselling memoir Shrill, and the essay collection The Witches Are Coming. Her work has also appeared in This American Life, The Guardian, Cosmopolitan, GQ, Vulture, Jezebel, and others. She is the co-founder of the reproductive rights destigmatization campaign #ShoutYourAbortion. Lindy was a writer and executive producer on Shrill, the Hulu comedy adapted from her memoir. She co-wrote and produced the independent feature film Thin Skin. Buy the Book Stories Are Weapons: Psychological Warfare and the American Mind Third Place Books