The climate crisis and mass incarceration are two crises that have shared roots and affect many of the same communities, yet are often talked about and organized around as separate issues. What connects them? How can we talk about them in ways that resonate and advance solutions to both?
Dr. Tanya Golash-Boza's book Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap explores how redlining, incarceration, anti-blackness, and gentrification have resulted in DC becoming an extremely unequal city. She presented her book...
In this "Edges in the Middle" talk, philosopher and political theorist Achille Mbembe and series host Bayo Akomolafe explore liberal democracy, its limitations, and its possible futures. Transcript Sara Grossman: Welcome everyone. My name is Sara...
Our public discourse is seeded with dangerous and counterproductive ideas concerning national security that are so deeply embedded we may often be unaware that we, as story tellers, are invoking or reinforcing them in our own narrations. Thus, over...
One of the hidden aspects of the Black Panther Party in the California Bay Area was its contributions to the nascent disability rights movement in the 1970s. In 1977, the Party famously supported a 26-day occupation of a federal building in San...
How do we catch people where they fall? How do we respond to this crisis in a way that doesn’t reinforce its architecture? What kind of politics is being summoned at this time? In this November 16 conversation that was part of our Democracy &...
On Nov. 15 OBI's Global Justice team hosted this hour-long livestream to mark the launch of the Climate Displacement and Resilience Database. The team provided background on the database, demonstrated how other researchers and organizations can use...
Othering & Belonging Institute Director john a. powell opens up OBI's first O&B Conference in Berlin with an introduction to the Institute's framework. Transcript Christiana Bukalo: Hello. Hi everyone. Good morning and welcome. As you might be able...
On Friday, Sept. 22, we hosted a 90-minute virtual event to mark the launch of our Islamophobia Reading Resource Packs for the Asia-Pacific region and Europe, which featured the publications' authors
On Thursday, July 27 we hosted a panel to mark the release of our research brief, “ Climate Refugees: Facts and Findings, and Strategies for 'Loss and Damage.'” This panel discussed ideas to strengthen and bridge movements for climate refugee...
This June 11 panel of thinkers and organizers from the Solidarity Council on Racial Equity talks about how solidarity makes a difference in the lives of people impacted by the US Supreme Court ruling to ban affirmative action. It included Maria...
On July 6 our Democracy & Belonging Forum hosted its latest installment of The Edges in the Middle series where OBI Global Senior Fellow Bayo Akomolafe spoke with Minna Salami and Professor Madhulika Banerjee about the changing body of democracy, the...
Author and community organizer Leah Rothstein presents her new book (co-authored with Richard Rothstein) during a presentation prepared for OBI staff on July 6, 2023. The presentation was facilitated by OBI Assistant Director Stephen Menendian. Learn...
In this Monday, July 3 livestream we heard from some of the country's leading legal scholars about the significance of the recent Supreme Court decision banning affirmative action at public and private universities.
In this June 14 event organized by our Democracy & Belonging Forum and the German Marshall Fund of the United States as part of our (Un)Common Threads conversation series, we explored the strengths and challenges of city governments pursuing anti...
RSVP Here We hope you'll join us for the second installment of our Arab Women & Feminist Visions for Equity and Belonging webinar series. This second event will focus on the role of Arab women and feminists from the region...
On Monday, March 24, 2025 OBI Director john a. powell and researchers tried to contextualize the current moment our world is experiencing in a 90-minute virtual conversation. They looked at what is driving the rise of authoritarianism across the...
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