Social Justice Movements short courses at LFPL

Social Justice Movements short courses at LFPL

LFPL's Short Courses are taught like real college courses by professors and experts in their fields. Some will require reading and encourage field trips. All will be free and open to anyone with no academic background required. 

This six-week Short Course will offer historical and contemporary perspectives on a variety of social justice movements. Six scholars from the University of Louisville's Anne Braden Institute for Social Justice Research and Muhammad Ali Institute for Peace and Justice will explore aspects of social movement-building on topics such as racial justice, youth-led immigrant justice, LGBTQ rights, and solidarity, among others. This Short Course is free and open to the public, but registration is requested. Call (502) 574-1623 to reserve your spot. www.lfpl.org/mylibraryu/

Course Descriptions

Thursday, January 17, 2019

Cate Fosl, “’Unfinished Business’:  The Struggle for Housing Justice in 20th-century Louisville”

The struggle for fair and open housing is a major piece of unfinished business of the modern Black freedom movement of the 20th century USA.  Locally, housing justice has been a recurring centerpiece of the movement for racial equity since the founding of the Louisville NAACP to fight a housing segregation ordinance in what became a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1917.  This talk explores the dynamics of the Buchanan v. Warley case as well as later, post-WWII upsurges for housing justice in the city.  These include the Wade-Braden dynamiting of 1954 and the dramatic sedition charges that followed it, as well as the mass open housing movement that swept Louisville in the later 1960s, and more recent campaigns to put fair housing laws into practice.  Moments in these battles come into focus through profiles of a few of the Louisvillians who have led in the fight to eradicate housing discrimination. 

Thursday, January 24, 2019

Enid Trucios-Haynes, “DREAMers – How a Youth Movement Challenged Immigrant Rights Orthodoxy”

This presentation will discuss the rise of an immigrant rights movement led by undocumented youth over the past decade. In the mid-2000s, undocumented young people came out of the shadows and declared themselves to be undocumented and unafraid. They sought legislation, the DREAM Act, to provide legal status for those who came to the U.S. as children and had become undocumented when they turned eighteen.  They challenged the negative dehumanizing terminology of “illegal aliens” by identifying DREAMers as exceptional students, and later by uniting through the creation of national coalitional organizations. After marching in Washington D.C. in 2010, these youth activists used civil disobedience tactics to petition Congress directly for the DREAM Act. Youth activists became empowered to speak for themselves, their undocumented parents, and the entire undocumented community in the U.S.  Their progressive agenda, seeking dignity, respect, and recognition, led President Obama to create the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Program after Congress refused to act.  Although this program does not provide legal status, and is currently in limbo due to litigation, undocumented young people -- now out of the shadows -- continue to build the movement and coalitions to challenge the restrictionist immigration policies of the Trump Administration. 

Thursday, January 31, 2019

Lara Kelland, “Clio's Foot Soldiers: How Social Movement Activists Became Pubic Historians”

Traces the emergence of community-based historians within the Civil Rights, Black Power, Women's and Gay Liberation, and American Indian Movements, showing how activists used history as a movement-building tool.

Thursday, February 7, 2019

Cherie Dawson-Edwards, “Discipline or Safety? Student Voice & Policing School Behavior in the Age of Mass Incarceration”

Trends in school discipline disproportionality appear to mirror the toughening of sanctions in the criminal justice system. This session will apply the current #reimagineprison idea to the broader school to prison pipeline concept while exploring ways student agency and voice can address the criminalization of school discipline and mass incarceration. 

Thursday, February 14, 2019

Karen Tice, “Transnational Solidarities: Contesting Bans and Borders, Past and Present”

We will explore coalition building and social justice organizing across geo-political and personal borders of race, class, culture, and gender.

 Thursday, February 21, 2019

Ryan Combs, “Global Movements for Transgender Health”

In this talk, Dr. Combs will discuss global transgender health justice movements. He will cover political mobilization for greater access to gender transition treatments, more inclusive nondiscrimination policies, affirming healthcare, and the depathologization of transgender identities.