Category: Uncategorized
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Anti-War Sentiment Surges at No Kings 3
Yesterday, millions of people across the US participated in over 3000 events as part of the third No Kings Day. My team and I collected surveys from 198 people who were randomly selected from the thousands who assembled for the No Kings 3 event in Washington, DC, which was organized by the local group FreeDC.…
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Are We Expecting Too Much of No Kings 3?
Obsessing over magic numbers won’t save us; we have to save ourselves. Next weekend–on March 28th–the third No Kings Day will take place across the US. Organizers have been sharing this amazing map of the more-than-3000 planned events that have been scheduled for the day (the image below is from their website on 3/19). Like…
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What I learned studying the social consequences of the LA Wildfires
This week, my paper on wildfire displacement (co-authored with Julie Gonzalez) was published at Environmental Research Climate. The paper summarizes our efforts to understand the social consequences of wildfires after the LA Wildfires in January 2025. Our goal was to study the ways that people personally and collectively experience the effects of wildfire and what…
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Building Solidarity in this Deeply Divided Moment
Much of my research on social movements and protest has focused on understanding who protests and how they’re connected to one another. Since we know that pushing back to power requires movements that span identities, orientations, and social classes, some of that work looks particularly at solidarity and intersectionality. We are now in year 2…
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Why Targeting Activists Will Backfire
As I mentioned in my last installment, the federal government has been increasing its surveillance of activist groups that focus on immigration and more. There are numerous accounts of the Trump Administration working to limit the rights of Americans to assemble and observe federal agents in order to document their actions, or what I call…
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Earth to Trump: You Can’t Cancel Climate Change
Yesterday, President Trump eliminated the endangerment finding that classified greenhouse gases as air pollutants. This finding was the basis for federal climate policy in the United States and made it possible to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Without it, the rules that regulate emissions standards for vehicles, power plants, and fossil fuel…
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Introducing the Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast:
Real talk about what’s broken and how to fix it. The Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast is LIVE! In the first episode, I speak with Rachel Carmona and Tamika Middleton from Women’s March about the Free America Walkout and what’s next for Resistance 2.0. For details on how to watch or listen to the conversation, go here.…
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Resistance 2.0 Pushes Back
This weekend, I published a piece in The Guardian that discusses how activists participating in the Resistance to the second Trump Administration are getting more confrontational. In it, I discuss data collected from participants in the Free America Walkout on January 20th that shows how Resisters (yes, most participants in the walkout continued the trend…
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Remaining Awake through this Social Revolution
Lessons from MLK that can help guide us in these precarious times: In honor of Dr. King, I want to talk today about one of his lesser known speeches: a commencement address he delivered at Oberlin College in June 1965 (so over 60 years ago). The title of the address is “Remaining Awake Through a…
