Michael Kebede, Policy Council for the ACLU of Maine, will reflect on the reckoning that the mass movement currently roiling America has meant for established advocacy groups like MCV and the ACLU. He will reflect on the disjuncture, and possible complementarity, between policy advocacy and social movements and upheavals. He will draw on the scholarship of sociologist Nancy Whittier, who argued that social movements don’t disappear but go into abeyance; the political theory of Adolph Reed Jr., a critic of foundation-driven advocacy; the intersectionalism of Kimberle Crenshaw; and the strategic insights of Alicia Garza, Opal Tometi, and Patrice Cullors.
