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Boston Review: What Is the State For?
Is a better world possible in an era of climate chaos? How should organizers engage with the state in our work for justice? How can social movements take on the immense power of fossil fuel interests, which have compromised the state’s ability to act for the public good?
Philosopher Dr. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò poses these critical questions in What Is the State For?, opening a powerful conversation with leading political thinkers and organizers about the path forward for social movements. Dr. Táíwò proposes a new strategy for organizers in the era of climate crisis: first, take out the political power of fossil capital, then change the world.
MODERATOR
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Dr. Carmen Rojas is the president and CEO of Marguerite Casey Foundation. Under her leadership, the foundation launched the prestigious Freedom Scholar award, and since starting in 2020 granted more than $170M in funding to dozens of organizations doing the hard work of shifting power to those people who have long been excluded from having it. Prior to MCF, Dr. Rojas was the cofounder and CEO of the Workers Lab, an innovation lab that partners with workers to develop new ideas that help them succeed and flourish.
PANELIST
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Dr. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is an American philosopher and a professor of philosophy at Georgetown University. He received his PhD in philosophy at the University of California Los Angeles. He has published in academic journals ranging from Public Affairs Quarterly, One Earth, Philosophical Papers, and the American Philosophical Association newsletter Philosophy and the Black Experience. His public philosophy, including articles exploring intersections of climate justice and colonialism, has been featured in the New Yorker, the Nation, Boston Review, Dissent, the Appeal, Slate, Al Jazeera, the New Republic, Aeon, and Foreign Policy. He is the author of Elite Capture and Reconsidering Reparations.
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Dr. Thea Riofrancos is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Providence College, a Strategic Co-Director of the Climate and Community Institute, and a fellow at the Transnational Institute. Her work focuses on resource extraction, climate change, the energy transition, the global lithium sector, green technologies, social movements, and the Latin American left. She is the author of Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke, 2020) and coauthor of A Planet to Win: Why We Need a Green New Deal (Verso Books, 2019). Her next book, Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism, will be published in September 2025 with W.W. Norton.
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Astra Taylor is a writer, filmmaker, and organizer. She is the director of numerous documentaries and her books include The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart, Democracy May Not Exist But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone, and the American Book Award winner The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age. Her most recent book is Solidarity: The Past, Present, and Future of a World-Changing Idea, co-written with Leah Hunt-Hendrix. She was the 2023 CBC Massey Lecture and cofounded the Debt Collective, a union of debtors.
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