[act-ma] 11/19 (Tonight!) Populism! Peril or Promise in US Politics? 7:00 Eastern

[Suren Moodliar]

Populism!
Peril or Promise in US Politics
Zoom Conference, November 19, 2020, Thursday, 7:00 p.m. (Eastern)
or join the Facebook Livestream

[Facebook Livestream: https://www.facebook.com/ShelterAndSolidarity]
[Get Zoom Link: http://ShelterAndSoldarity.org/join]

We will take a deep dive into the history, myths, practices, and legacies
of popular politics and “small-d” democracy in the United States with
scholar and public historian Michael Lansing.
The populist tradition is a significant, controversial, and often
misunderstood strain of U.S. history. Lansing’s book, Insurgent Democracy:
The Nonpartisan League in North American Politics (University of Chicago
Press, 2015), explores an important example of this tradition. The
Nonpartisan League (NPL), a candidate-endorsing political organization that
emerged in the 1910s in the rural Midwest, rural West, and Prairie
Provinces, embodied an innovative commitment to people power in formal
politics. In North Dakota, where it briefly took over, the NPL established
a state-owned bank, a state-owned mill, and a state-owned grain elevator.
All three endure today. Despite those innovations, the League has passed
almost entirely from our collective memory.

As a public historian, Lansing writes and presents on the complicated
legacies of popular politics, linking them to current movements and issues.
Most recently, his opinion pieces in MinnPost and the Washington Post
explored their connections to the history of racialized policing as well as
the recent uprising in Minneapolis.

Michael J. Lansing
Michael Lansing completed his Ph.D. in history at the University of
Minnesota and is an associate professor of history at Augsburg University
in Minneapolis, where he also teaches in the Environmental Studies program.
His current book project, Enriched: Industrial Carbohydrates and the Rise
of Nutrition Capitalism, is a history of factory-processed grains and the
corporate propagation of a political economy that demarcates the way we
understand, make, and eat food.

Join us for an interesting, stimulating, and wide-ranging conversation.

Sponsors: Community Church of Boston, encuentro5, Hard Ball Press, *Socialism
and Democracy*