Precarity: The American Way
The myth of American Exceptionalism is well-understood to be just that, a myth. But the pandemic-induced national recession has thrown into high relief the true American Exceptionalism: life lived in a constant state of precarity. Precarity propelled by low-wage labor, the gig economy, unattainable rent, ruinous medical debt, and privatized education, all cast against a background of a crumbling welfare state. Join us as we explore the interactions of economic policy and big capital as it maps onto race and gender in the United States and the strategies of social justice movements building an alternative vision for political economy.
This webinar is the fourth in PRA’s ongoing series It’s Not Over Yet.
Watch the recording here.
For this roundtable discussion, we were joined by:
- Aislinn Pulley is a co-executive director of the Chicago Torture Justice Center founded out of the historic 2015 reparations ordinance for survivors of Chicago police torture. Aislinn is also a cofounder of Black Lives Matter Chicago. She was an organizer with We Charge Genocide, a founding member of Insight Arts, a cultural non-profit that used art for social change, and a member of the performance ensemble, End of the Ladder. She is a founder of the young women’s performance ensemble dedicated to ending sexual assault, Visibility Now, as well as the founder and creator of urban youth magazine, Underground Philosophy.
- Jessica Quiason is a Deputy Research Director at ACRE: Action Center on Race and the Economy. She uses research to help build campaigns that dismantle corporate power and lift up people of color and low income people. She is proud to have worked at 1199SEIU and the Alliance for a Greater New York, and alongside labor unions, progressive coalitions, and think tanks as a consultant, supporting organizing campaigns and progressive political reform at the city and state level. She also loves to cook for others as she strongly believes fostering community and solidarity is easiest when food is involved.
- Gabriel Winant is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Chicago. His book The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America was published this year, and his writing about work, inequality, and capitalism in modern America has appeared in The Nation, The New Republic, Dissent, and n+1.
Read the full transcript here.
Watch the recording here.