Activism Archives - Public Seminar

Interviews

The Myth of Plastic Recycling

Judith Enck on the failures of US regulation and the grassroots movements demanding accountability in her new book, The Problem With Plastic

April 9, 2026 • by Judith Enck and Katya Wack

When a Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, in 2023, most people saw a news story about a toxic spill, a controlled burn, and a small town blanketed in chemical smoke. What far fewer realized was that the substance deliberately set on fire was vinyl chloride: the building ...

Activism

Putting Everything on the Line for the Palestinians

An eyewitness report from Israel

March 4, 2026 • by Mitchell Abidor

I spent the summer of 2025 in a state of rage about events in Israel. Every day, I read in the liberal daily Haaretz of settler attacks in the West Bank on Palestinians and the Israeli activists who were defending them. Rage has long been my normal state, but I ...

Putting Everything on the Line for the Palestinians

History

Honest Truths From Wrongful Deaths

In an excerpt from Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War: The Movement to Stop the War on Terror, the author surveys how left-wing intellectuals responded to 9/11

December 3, 2025 • by Jeremy Varon

The first war the United States fought following 9/11, I argue, was a “war of interpretation” over the root causes and deep meaning of the attacks themselves. Below is a section from the first chapter of Our Grief Is Not a Cry for War (University of Chicago Press, 2025), in ...

History

From William Lloyd Garrison to Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

A brief genealogy of nonviolent resistance

November 18, 2025 • by Bennett Parten

In 1959, Martin Luther King Jr., then only 30 years old and fresh off leading the Montgomery bus boycotts, traveled to India to pay homage to one of his heroes, the late Mahatma Gandhi. Over the course of five weeks, King met with Indian heads of state, spoke with some ...

From William Lloyd Garrison to Tolstoy, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr.

Art & Design

Imperfect Images

Sohrab Hura on slowing down time in a survey show at MoMA PS1

October 2, 2025 • by Alexandra Chaves and Sohrab Hura

Sohrab Hura began his career in film and photography documenting social issues across India and has been a full-time member of Magnum Photos since 2020. Over the years, his practice has expanded to include publishing, drawing, and writing in an ongoing investigation into the relationship between the personal and the ...

Psyche

“Masc Only”

When gender conformity is enforced everywhere from laws to dating apps, opacity becomes a site of resistance

September 30, 2025 • by Yann Phesans

A gay man lowers his voice in the boardroom. A trans woman is detained at border control when her appearance does not match her passport photo. A nonbinary teenager avoids mirrors. A butch lesbian is asked to leave the women’s changing room for “making others uncomfortable.” These are not moments of ...

Activism

The Revolutionary Street Art of Bangladesh’s 2024 Uprising

In Dhaka, layers of graffiti offer a timeline of hope

September 29, 2025 • by Rayna Salam

Inspired by a popular insurrection against Sheikh Hasina’s increasingly autocratic 15-year tenure as prime minister of Bangladesh, in July 2024, US-based Bangladeshi artist Debashish Chakrabarty produced and circulated online more than 100 posters illustrating the symbols, martyrs, and demands of the movement. He urged protesters around the world to copy ...

The Revolutionary Street Art of Bangladesh’s 2024 Uprising

Activism

On “Reconnecting with Nature” as a City-Dweller

An education in wheelbarrows, pin oaks, and herring gulls

September 10, 2025 • by Chrisaleen Ciro

A few weeks into my time here in NYC back in the fall of 2021, I volunteered at an urban farm in East Harlem. The crew of volunteers was diverse—some of us had experience growing food and others didn’t. At the time, I had worked on farms and market gardens ...

On “Reconnecting with Nature” as a City-Dweller

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence–Based Aesthetics of Dissent in Turkey

AI offers an opportunity for protest in a political environment where even seemingly innocuous content can carry risks

June 18, 2025 • by Selin Bengi Gümrükçü

The ongoing protests in Turkey, triggered by the detention of Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, following the annulment of his university diploma by Istanbul University, constitute the largest cycle of political mobilization Turkey has witnessed since the Gezi Park protests in 2013. Even though the mayor was in prison, his party, ...

Artificial Intelligence–Based Aesthetics of Dissent in Turkey

Activism

“The Amazon Is Not a Warehouse”

A conversation with Dionéia Ferreira on the Amazonian Transdisciplinary Network

May 8, 2025 • by Dionéia Ferreira, Eduardo Staszowski and Renata Zampronio

Dionéia Ferreira is a scholar, environmental activist, and community leader in southern Amazonas, Brazil, where she plays a key role in weaving together RETA, the Amazonian Transdisciplinary Network. RETA connects local communities, women leaders, researchers, and legal actors across the territory surrounding the BR-319 highway—a controversial infrastructure project at the ...

Activism

Memorials Against Violence in Mexico

A conversation on memory activism for truth and justice

March 25, 2025 • by Alexandra Délano Alonso, Natalia Mendoza and Benjamin Nienass

Since 2006, Mexico has seen more than 300,000 murders and more than 110,000 people disappeared. Faced with a constant increase in violence, activists have turned to a new strategy: collective actions and demands centered around the work of memory. In their new book Las Luchas por la Memoria Contra las ...

Activism

If Eviction Is Personal for Us, It Should Be Personal for Our Landlords Too

A conversation on Abolish Rent

March 21, 2025 • by Gabriela Rendón, Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis

How do we remake our cities for the people who actually live in them? Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis, two cofounders of the largest tenants' union in the country, propose an answer in their new book, Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis (Haymarket, 2024). In November 2024, the authors and ...