Join us for the second in our Toward Belonging dialogue series for a discussion on hopes and fears in a COVID world. This conversation will use new research findings from More in Common on how COVID-19 is impacting perceptions of solidarity, division, and belonging. We will also share insights on the impacts of COVID-19, the rise of anti-racist movements around the world, and the vulnerabilities of democracies to declining trust. There is a window of opportunity that we can try to seize. The impact of the pandemic on social cohesion, othering, and belonging, is not predetermined.
The global COVID-19 pandemic has exposed deep fractures in societies across the globe. But in bringing much of daily life to a stop for millions, it has also shown us the power of community and solidarity at a local level. New connections have been made, and the possibility of change has come alive, even amidst tragedy and division.
On July 16, join the Toward Belonging partners for a conversation led by More in Common on fresh insights from a new study of how COVID-19 has shifted public perceptions in Europe and the United States.
Leaders from More in Common will share their new research based on surveys, interviews, and group conversations involving around 14,000 people undertaken in late June and early July, and will facilitate a livestream conversation on how these new findings can help move us past division and toward new formations of solidarity and bridging.
Featuring presentations from:
Tim Dixon, Co-founder of More in Common, a social entrepreneur and economist who has helped start several social movement organizations around issues such as modern-day slavery, the Syrian crisis, the Colombian peace process, economic inequality, gun control, and civic participation; and,
Míriam Juan Torres, Senior Researcher, More in Common. Míriam has conducted field studies in West Africa and worked for UNHCR in Ghana and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia.
And responses and conversation with:
john a. powell, Director of the Othering & Belonging Institute and a Professor of Law, African American, and Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley; and,
Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of "Losing My Cool" and "Self-Portrait in Black and White. He is a contributing writer at the New York Times Magazine, columnist at Harpers magazine, and a 2019 New America Fellow.
The Toward Belonging initiative is a partnership with the Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, More in Common, Counterpoint UK, Sciences Po Paris, and Queen Mary University of London, and a growing network of social change partners. This initiative was formed to connect work across geographies and disciplines that can mount a challenge to rising authoritarianism, widening inequality, and politics based on hate, exclusion, and division, and offer ideas and solutions for a world based on belonging, cohesion where we take care of our planet and insist on a world where there is no “them,” only a new and bigger “we.”
Details about this initiative and all events in this series at belonging.berkeley.edu/towardbelonging
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