350. Tamara Payne with Glenn Hare: The Life and Legacy of Malcolm X
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Release Date: 02/20/2024
371. Aziz Rana with Michael Hardt and Jaleh Mansoor: The Constitutional Bind
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Some Americans fear the Federal Constitution falls short in addressing democratic threats, yet it’s long been revered for its ideals of liberty and equality. Join us at Town Hall Seattle for a discussion with Aziz Rana, Michael Hardt, and Jaleh Mansoor about Rana’s book, The Constitutional Bind, exploring how this flawed document gained mythic status and its impact on society. Rana contends this reverence emerged in the 20th century alongside US global dominance, shaping both domestic and foreign policy. Discover how this cultural phenomenon has hindered meaningful...
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370. Nora Kenworthy with Marcus Harrison Green: The True Costs of Crowdfunding
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Over the past decade, charitable crowdfunding has exploded in popularity across the globe. Sites such as GoFundMe, which now boasts a “global community of over 100 million” users, have transformed the ways we seek and offer help. When faced with crises—especially medical ones—Americans are turning to online platforms that promise to connect them to the charity of the crowd. What does this new phenomenon reveal about the changing ways we seek and provide healthcare? In Crowded Out, Nora Kenworthy examines how charitable crowdfunding so quickly overtook public life, where it is...
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369. Natalie Foster with Angela Garbes: Freedom Within the Free Market
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Government-backed guarantees, from bailouts to bankruptcy protection, help keep the private sector in business in our nation’s economic system. What if the same were true not only for businesses but for individuals as well? In her new book The Guarantee: Inside the Fight for America’s Next Economy, Natalie Foster, co-founder and president of the Economic Security Project, invites readers to envision a future where things like housing, health care, higher education, family care, inheritance, and an income floor are not only attainable for everyone but guaranteed by our...
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368. Anna Zivarts with Barb Chamberlain and Tanisha Sepúlveda: Driving Change — Navigating Mobility for All
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Traffic, parking, gas prices, miles per gallon- many casual concerns might enter your mind when you get into your car and go out into the world. But what happens when your concerns are not casual but constant, and they start with figuring out whether you can even access where you’re trying to go in the first place? One-third of people living in the United States don’t have a driver’s license, yet live in a system that doesn’t prioritize people who don’t or can’t drive. In her book When Driving is Not an Option: Steering Away From Car Dependency, Anna Letitia Zivarts sets...
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367. Loretta Napoleoni with Ross Reynolds: The Rise of the New Robber Barons
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Technology pioneers like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft (to name a few) are woven into the fabric of Seattle’s economy. Yet, on a day-to-day basis, how much do you think about what these techno giants mean for the future of our world? With such enormous amounts of influence and money, how are these powers shaping our world today? Economist and journalist Loretta Napoleoni digs into these questions. At the dawn of the digital revolution, people thought the internet was going to be the great equalizer, a global democratic force. Napoleoni argues that instead, Wall Street funded a new breed...
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366. Michael Sheldrick with Paulin Basinga: From Ideas to Impact — Harnessing Pop Culture for Social Justice
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
In April 2020, when the world was in the early months of COVID-19, you may remember the televised concert that Lady Gaga hosted called “One World: Together At Home.” This star-studded show was put together by , an international social justice organization that used the program to promote and support healthcare workers and the World Health Organization. The program was remarkable in harnessing pop culture to promote social justice issues. Michael Sheldrick, a co-founder of Global Citizen, believes leaders must adopt concepts like this to tackle the challenges in today’s...
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365. Annalee Newitz with Lindy West: Stories are Weapons
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Have you ever thought what #FakeNews might have looked like 200 years ago? While we may be experiencing a new era of disinformation, the tactics aren’t necessarily original. Drawing from their latest book, Stories Are Weapons, journalist and science fiction author Annalee Newitz traces back in history how disinformation, propaganda, and violent threats — all elements of psychological warfare — have evolved into tools of today’s domestic culture wars. Newitz argues that America has a deep-rooted history with psychological operations. Beginning with Benjamin Franklin’s...
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364. Stephen Robert Miller with Marcus Harrison Green: Climate Chronicles — The Delusion of Controlling Nature
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Erratic weather, blistering drought, rising seas, and ecosystem collapse now affect every inch of the globe. Increasingly, we no longer look to stop climate change, choosing instead to adapt to it. Academics call it maladaptation; simply, it’s about solutions that backfire. In his new book, Over the Seawall, Stephen Robert Miller tells us the stories behind these unintended consequences and the fixes that can do more harm than good. From seawalls in coastal Japan to the reengineered waters in the Ganges River Delta, to the artificial ribbon of water supporting both farms and...
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363. Jonathan Metzl with Florangela Davila: Reframing the Conversation on Gun Control
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
In 2018, there was a mass shooting with an AR-15 at a Waffle House. The racially charged act of violence led Dr. Jonathan M. Metzl, a Nashville-based gun policy scholar and author, to advocate for gun reform. But how can we stop gun violence in a nation that sees hundreds of mass shootings every year? As Metzl examined the crime, he began having doubts about continuing to approach gun reform through the lens of public health that he had championed long before. The killings led him to examine the limitations of biomedical frameworks for fully diagnosing or treating the complexities of...
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362. Renee DiResta: How Public Opinion Forms in a Digital Age
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
“If you make it trend, you make it true.” The cycling of new and buzz-worthy information we face on a daily basis is faster than ever before. As new trends in information, politics, and culture are constantly updating, little time is left for critical analysis before the next headline hits the feed. And when those who hold the power to influence audiences and drive opinions in strategic directions stand to benefit, how does the public know what is based on evidence versus algorithm? In her new book Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality, author Renée DiResta sets out...
info_outlineIn 1990, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Les Payne embarked on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X.
His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become over a hundred hours of interviews into an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction. Following Payne’s unexpected death in 2018, his daughter Tamara Payne heroically completed the biography.
Presented by the Seattle Opera and Town Hall Seattle, Tamara Payne returns to the Town Hall stage (following her virtual appearance in 2020) to share from the final biography, The Dead Are Arising: The Life of Malcolm X. Drawing on hundreds of hours of interviews — with all living siblings of the Malcolm Little family, classmates, street friends, cellmates, Nation of Islam figures, FBI moles and cops, and political leaders around the world — she traces his life from his Nebraska birth in 1925 to his Harlem assassination in 1965. Payne explores how her father corrects the historical record and delivers extraordinary revelations with a biographer’s unwavering determination. She discusses the intensive research process and introduces a riveting biography that affirms the centrality of Malcolm X to the African American freedom struggle. In a moment of renewed vigor for the struggle in Black freedom, this presentation is essential viewing.
Tamara Payne is Les Payne’s daughter and served as his principal researcher.
Presented by Town Hall Seattle and the Seattle Opera.
The Elliott Bay Book Company