Center on Democracy and Organizing

07/25/2019

Common Cause, one of our summer institute fellows' organizations, has launched a new effort to ensure voters’ right to know where presidential candidates stand on practical solutions to the challenges facing U.S. democracy. The Our Democracy 2020 campaign will focus on getting every presidential candidate in the Democratic and Republican primaries to respond to a 17-question survey on democracy reform. On the website people can review the candidates and their answers -- and contact the campaigns directly to encourage them to fill out the survey.

Common Cause's 2018 congressional questionnaire helped elevate democracy as a priority issue for candidates by asking where they stood on a series of solutions, which ultimately led to the U.S. House of Representatives passing the For the People Act (H.R. 1) that deals with ethics in government, voting rights, money in politics, and gerrymandering. The 2020 presidential questionnaire aims to have a similar result in prioritizing democracy reform as key issue in the campaign to result in reform legislation being passed and signed into law in 2021.

We're asking every presidential candidate: What will you do to strengthen our democracy?

07/11/2019

: Survivor Defense as Abolitionist Praxis is a collaborative toolkit developed by Survived and Punished in order to share survivor defense strategy and document their organizing work led by Black women, women of color, immigrants, and queer/trans people who are so often erased from history.

Visit the post for more.

07/10/2019

Gotham Blog interviews Summer Institute Fellow Diane Wong about her recent photography exhibit at Pearl River Mart titled "Homeward Bound: Global Intimacies in Converging Chinatowns" and how she connects her cultural production work to being in academia.

Today on Gotham , Minju Bae interviews Diane Wong, co-curator of H omeward Bound: Global Intimacies in Converging Chinatowns , a recently-concluded exhibition at Pearl River Mart. Homeward Bound...

07/09/2019

Anchored in the experiences and lives of Filipina migrants and their families in the Philippines, Summer Institute Fellow Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez's book "The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age" critically explores the current moment under which families are forcibly separated and the reconfiguration of care in the family that is produced through the very mechanisms that disperse them around the globe—labor migration and technology.

Together but apart in a globalized world

06/20/2019

Summer Institute Fellow Diane Wong, Assistant Professor in the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University, has an article in Women's Studies Quarterly, "Shop Talk and Everyday Sites of Resistance to Gentrification in Manhattan's Chinatown." Drawing from two years of ethnographic research, archival research, and oral history interviews, Wong reveals how ordinary neighborhood spaces like Wing on Wo & Co. (永安和), the oldest store in Manhattan's Chinatown, can serve as the foundation for intergenerational grassroots action and particularly for the mobilization of women in the neighborhood.

Chinatowns have been important destination points for new and old Asian diasporic communities, however many of these neighborhoods have experienced demographic changes and major shifts in land use due to gentrification. This study examines the political implications of gentrification by focusing on....

06/18/2019

For many survivors, experiences of policing, criminalization, and incarceration are deeply intertwined with gender-based violence. Yet very little research exists about criminalization of survivors. With this Research Across the Walls guide, Survived and Punished aims to equip more people with tools, resources, ideas, and models to pursue urgently needed community-based research projects.

Visit the post for more.

06/17/2019

Hear from one of our Summer Institute Fellows! When Dr. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez landed in the U.S., a care home is what she called home. Her grandmother, the matriarch of the family and the anchor to their chain migration, cared for 6 elderly people in a care facility. Francisco-Menchavez helped her grandmother do the daily tasks of caring for elders during her childhood. Francisco-Menchavez lends her personal history and sociological perspective on the topic of caregivers’ exploitative work conditions on Reveal News' podcast on "The Unpaid Cost of Eldercare." On this podcast, Francisco-Menchavez sheds light on the socioeconomic, political and cultural reasons why caregivers like Sonia and Normita might feel bound to their exploitative employer, Rommel Publico.

Reveal’s Jen Gollan takes us into her investigation of wage theft, harassment and intimidation in the care home industry.

06/14/2019

The Food Chain Workers Alliance, another of our Summer Institute Fellows' organizations, is calling for support to pass the Farmworker Fair Labor Practices Act to give farmworkers the right to form unions, overtime pay, a true day of rest, sanitary housing, and to put them on par with other workers with respect to workers' compensation, temporary disability insurance, and the minimum wage.

Supporters can:
1. Sign the Letter - All Organizations & Individuals are welcome to sign http://bit.ly/NYSFFLSA
2. If you live in NY State, Text Farmworkers to 877877 to be connected to your legislator and tell them it's time to pass the Farmworker Fair Labor Practices Act!

Action Network

06/14/2019

“Politics is the method through which we work together to solve our collective problems; our job is to shed light on how to address those problems." A new release from the Center on Democracy and Organizing, “Epistemological Bias in the Study of Political Behavior in the United States,” marks the second in its series of white papers advocating for a major shift in the means by which scholars pursue knowledge.

A new release from the Center on Democracy and Organizing, “Epistemological Bias in the Study of Political Behavior in the United States,” marks the second in its series of four white papers advocating for a major shift in the means by which scholars pursue knowledge. “Politics is the

06/11/2019

Submissions are open for an annual $10,000 Research Prize in Public Interest Communications, given for journal articles from any discipline that exemplify driving social change through communication.

Submissions are now openThe University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications is proud to continue its annual $10,000 Research Prize in Public Interest Communications. This prize celebrates peer-reviewed research that informs the growing discipline of public interest communications.

06/06/2019

Please support this campaign by one of our Summer Institute Fellows' organizations!

Aylaliya Birru has served over four years in a California prison for assaulting her husband, who she said was physically abusive. A pardon from Governor Gavin Newsom is her last hope to stay in the U.S.

06/05/2019

Please welcome our inaugural class of Summer Institute Fellows, 34 researchers and practitioners selected from over 100 competitive applications, who are committed to learning more about engaged scholarship and collaborating to improve organizing practices!