The HBS hosts ask Dr. Linda Alcoff just how close to the edge of the bed is the United States sleeping?
A year and a half ago, as an angry, armed mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building in what was, thankfully, an unsuccessful insurrection attempt, many of us watching the event unfold on television asked ourselves: is democracy itself in peril? This is, of course, a question we should have been asking for many years prior to Jan 6, 2021. And it is a question we should still be asking. At the federal level, an activist and regressive Supreme Court is aggressively chipping away at the rights of citizens, and an almost perpetually-stalemated Congress refuses to act on real existential threats (like climate change, COVID, and income inequality). At the state level, more than half of the legislatures have restricted voting rights, gun regulation, and protections for BIPOC, women, LGBTQ people, and the poor. States’ legislatures are busy gerrymandering districts, under-funding public education, over-funding police, and extending corporate welfare tax benefits carte blanche, while at the same time refusing to raise the minimum wage for workers, mitigate the affordable housing crisis, repair crumbling infrastructure, or exhibit even the most minimally-decent concern for the good of their citizens. Meanwhile, the average U.S. citizen is sick, indebted, demoralized, underinformed (or misinformed), and disillusioned. Why vote? Why care? What has democracy done for me lately? Today, we’re going to be talking about the peril(s) that democracy is facing, how we should think about them, and what, if anything, we can do about them.
We are honored to be joined by Linda Martin Alcoff, Professor of Philosophy at Hunter College and CUNY Graduate Center. Prof. Alcoff is the author, most recently of Rape and Resistence: Understanding the Compoexities of Sexual Violation and *The Future of Whiteness
In this episode, we talk about the following topics, authors, creations and ideas:
- The film Everything Everywhere All at Once
- The White House announcing that it is not yet time to declare a climate emergency
- Summer Treacle cocktail
- Mike Pence calls for all states to outlaw abortion
- Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism
- Close to two-thirds of people in living in the United States are living paycheck to paycheck
- Daniel Immerwahr, How to Hide an Empire
- The United States’ treaty that gave rights to dig and maintain the Panama Canal
- Who built the canal?
- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia
- What does the U.S. constitution say about a constitutional convention?
- The constituent assembly in Ecuador that produced a new constitution
- The [Constitutional Convention in Chile](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitutional_Convention_(Chile)#:~:text=The%20Constitutional%20Convention%20(Spanish%3A%20Convenci%C3%B3n,carried%20out%20through%20Law%20No.) that also produced a new constitution
- The non-democratic origins of democracy, particularly as Jacques Derrida argues
- The post-apartheid Constitution of South Africa
- Reverend Barber’s Poor People’s Campaign
- The independent state legislature theory
- The lifespan of written constitions
- The overturning of Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision
If you enjoy listening to Hotel Bar Sessions podcast, please be sure to subscribe, submit a rating/review, and follow us on Twitter @hotelbarpodcast and Facebook!
You can also help keep this podcast going supporting us financially on our Patreon page. We have several different levels of support available and every little bit helps!
