370. Nora Kenworthy with Marcus Harrison Green: The True Costs of Crowdfunding
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Release Date: 09/06/2024
404. Evelyn Iritani with Frank Abe: Safe Passage: The Exchange of American and Japanese Civilians by Sea
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Across the water from Seattle, you can visit the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial. It’s a place to honor and learn from the past. Evelyn Iritani, a longtime Seattle resident and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, wants to remember – and learn from – another, lesser-known story from World War II. In her book, Safe Passage, she reveals the dramatic, behind-the-scenes efforts to bring U.S. and Japanese citizens home from enemy land. In 1943, during some of the Pacific theater’s bloodiest battles, the United States and Japan coordinated the exchange of civilians...
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403. We Hold These Truths: A Live Broadcast of the 1941 Bill of Rights Radio Special
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Celebrate the 234th anniversary of the Bill of Rights and the historic December 15, 1941, radio broadcast of We Hold These Truths with a live performance and radio event at Town Hall Seattle. Known as the poet laureate of American radio, Norman Corwin wrote We Hold These Truths months before its original airing. But after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, the program—created to honor the Bill of Rights on its 150th anniversary—took on new emotional depth and national significance. This production commemorates both the Bill of Rights and Corwin’s landmark broadcast, featuring a...
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402. Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Jen Barnes: Man Up: The New Misogyny
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
As political violence, mass shootings, and the actions of radical extremists continue to be a devastating presence in our news cycle, academics and experts are compelled to look for connections. What things do most mass shooters, terrorists, or violent extremists have in common? In her newest book, educator and scholar of extremism Cynthia Miller-Idriss expands upon the roles of gender in this conversation – that not only are these violent acts almost always carried out by men and boys, but that evidence of aggressive misogyny, homophobia, or transphobia occurs at nearly the same rates...
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401. Black Thoughts: An Evening With Martellus Bennett, Michael Bennett, and Jesse Hagopian
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Three voices at the intersections of art, education, and social critique come together for an evening of readings and conversation. Jesse Hagopian will share from his forthcoming book Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education, while Martellus Bennett (MR. TOMONOSHi) and Michael Bennett will read from their own works, including Black Thoughts and Things That Make White People Uncomfortable. Together, they’ll engage in a wide-ranging conversation on race, creativity, justice, and liberation, offering perspectives that draw from literature, design, sport, and...
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400. Clyde W. Ford: Who's Left Out of Black History
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
How much do you know about Black history? From African women’s rebellions on slave ships to a former enslaved man whose account of the first Juneteenth differs from what we hear today, to Benjamin Banneker’s life, to how Islam found its way into American popular music in multiple genres, there is a lot of information that doesn’t necessarily make it into your average curriculum. In A High Price for Freedom: Raising Hidden Voices From the African-American Past, author and historian Clyde W. Ford addresses these and other topics, seeking to illuminate and amplify little-known...
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399. Indigenous Peoples’ Day: Turning Adversaries into Tribal Allies to Save Salmon
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Our region is facing tremendous setbacks for salmon populations and Northwest tribal treaty rights. Fish runs continue to fall short while Indigenous communities bear the brunt of climate change, political polarization, and existential threats to their way of life. Tribes can’t overcome these issues alone, but it’s not just a matter of finding allies — it’s how to get them in the game. The Billy Frank Jr. Salmon Coalition, formed by Salmon Defense, has taken an innovative approach to protect salmon, restore ecosystems, and build climate resilience by uniting unexpected allies, who...
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398. Speaking of Seattle: After the Ballot
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Just weeks after Seattle’s November elections, Town Hall Seattle kicks off a timely, can’t-miss series hosted by Marcus Harrison Green. The panel features political strategist Crystal Fincher, The Stranger’s news editor Vivian McCall, and the South Seattle Emerald’s political columnist Tobias Coughlin-Bogue. Together they’ll cut through the noise to unpack what the results really mean—from who’s setting the agenda at City Hall to what’s looming in Olympia, and connect it all to the turbulent political currents in Washington, D.C. Expect an unflinching, illuminating...
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397. Advancing Climate Resilience with Connected Communities
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
Town Hall Seattle, Juneau Street Resilience Pod, and the City of Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment hosts an evening with climate justice leaders who are reimagining our climate future in Seattle and beyond; discussing how community leaders, local government and academia can use joy and storytelling to build relationships and actualize climate resilience strategies, and sharing more about the upcoming One Seattle Climate Action Plan Update, including how you can get involved! Moderator Nancy Huizar (they/them/theirs) is an environmental justice activist, facilitator, and...
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396. In the Spirit of Right and Respectful Relations: Conversations about Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Being in Nature
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
In relationship with , Braided River is celebrating the launch of their newest project, In the Spirit of Right and Respectful Relations: Conversations about Indigenous Ways of Knowing and Being in Nature. As told to Kurt Russo, with a foreword by Jay Julius Xw’tot lhem, and illustrations by Fiorella De La O (Quechua), this book invites readers into a conversation rooted in Indigenous ways of knowing and being in nature. The vision of the project is to draw on ancestral knowledge to further empower and inspire Indigenous-led environmental campaigns with...
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395. Nilanjana Dasgupta with Paula Boggs: How Small Changes Can Make a Big Impact
Town Hall Seattle Civics Series
How can one person fight for social justice? Can everyday people actually make changes in systemic, structural inequality? Social psychologist and author of the book Change the Wallpaper, Nilanjana Dasgupta offers science-driven answers to these questions, arguing that social shifts start with small changes to our “wallpaper,” or the things that we experience in our daily lives. In other words, we need to revise the hyperlocal cultures we live in to make broader change. Dasgupta believes that these small shifts in our cultural “wallpaper” are far more effective in producing...
info_outlineOver 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 taking us, and who gets left behind by this new platformed economy.
Although crowdfunding has become ubiquitous in our lives, it is often misunderstood: rather than a friendly free market “powered by the kindness” of strangers, crowdfunding is powerfully reinforcing inequalities and changing the way Americans think about and access healthcare. Drawing on extensive research and rich storytelling, Crowded Out demonstrates how crowdfunding for health is fueled by—and further reinforces—financial and moral “toxicities” in market-based healthcare systems. It offers a unique and distressing look beneath the surface of some of the most popular charitable platforms and helps to foster thoughtful discussions of how we can better respond to healthcare crises both small and large.
Nora Kenworthy is Associate Professor at the University of Washington Bothell. She is the author and editor of several books, and her writing has appeared in the American Journal of Public Health, Social Science and Medicine, PLOS One, Scientific American, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times.
Marcus Harrison Green is a columnist for The Seattle Times. A long-time Seattle native, he is the founder of the South Seattle Emerald, which focuses on telling the stories of South Seattle and its residents.
