Featuring:

Dante Barry, Executive Director - Million Hoodies Movement for Justice

Yong Jung Cho, Campaign Coordinator - 350.org

Varshini Prakash, Regional Networks Coordinator - Divestment Student Network

Alexandra Flores-Quilty, President - United States Student Association

Austin Thompson, former Millennial Program Coordinator, SEIU (moderator)

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The years since the financial crisis have seen an explosion in popular movements worldwide. From DREAMers to the Occupy movement to those against the Keystone XL pipeline and for Black Life, people—particularly millennials—have stepped in to fill what many are calling a “Democracy Deficit.” 

During #NewEconomy Week alone, a Million Student March (Nov. 12) will demand free higher education and a forgiveness of student loan debt, as Our Generation Our Choice (Nov. 9) convenes an unprecedented cross-movement civil disobedience for racial, climate and immigrant justice in Washington DC.

In the lead-up to the 2016 election, the rise of anti-establishment candidates like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump has exposed the United States’ full-blown crisis of leadership, and opened up real possibilities for a new way of doing politics—one guided from below, and ready to commandeer elected power to provide people with the basic rights that so many lack: food on the table, dignified work and a walk home free of police hararssment. 

Internationally, movements against austerity have translated into electoral victory, from the growth of Podemos and related municipal parties in Spain, to Jeremy Corbyn’s fracturing of conservative “New Labor” in Britain, and the all-too complicated ascent of Syriza in Greece. But what would it look like for movements to build independent political power in the United States?

Our webinar for Day 3 of #NewEconomy Week, Democracy vs. the 1%, will bring together Millennial Movement leaders to discuss how to add politics to protest, and create a multi-racial democracy capable of tackling climate change and this country’s myriad and deeply-rooted inequalities.