Our Movements Are Only as Strong as Our People

Join us for an unforgettable night of conversation, insight, and reflection as we welcome acclaimed author-journalists M. Gessen and Paola Ramos, as well as creator of the 1619 Project, Nikole Hannah-Jones, in conversation with Marguerite Casey Foundation (MCF) president and CEO Dr. Carmen Rojas, onstage at the Symphony Space in NYC.

This special MCF Summer School event, Our Movements Are Only as Strong as Our People, is presented by MCF in partnership with Haymarket Books.

About the event

Organized people power is the antidote to authoritarianism. From attacks on immigrants to attacks on the judiciary, independent media, and universities, we’re living through a moment where authoritarian forces are reshaping not only government but also civil society. Challenging autocratic rule will depend on our ability to seed a different vision of humanity—one that’s based on care, solidarity, and a refusal to accept this current political moment as normal.

Hear from our panelists about how authoritarianism can be defeated by organizing around shared struggles, tethering hope to action, and winning the world we know is possible.

About MCF Summer School

The MCF Summer School creates spaces to learn, engage, and fight back. From the billionaires who hoard the most on the backs of working people to trillions of dollars in cuts to programs that keep our families fed, safe, and cared for—we’re witnessing firsthand how runaway corporate power and political leaders that punish opposition fuel authoritarianism. Learn more at CaseyGrants.org/SummerSchool.

About our panelists

M. Gessen

Journalist and author

One of our most trenchant observers of democracy, M. Gessen is the author of eleven books, including the National Book Award–winning The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin. An opinion writer at the New York Times, they have covered political subjects including Russia, LGBT rights, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and the rise of autocracy, among others. Gessen’s essential book Surviving Autocracy is a bracing overview of the calamitous trajectory of American democracy under the Trump administration.

Paola Ramos

Author and journalist

Paola Ramos is an author and Emmy-winning journalist. Ramos is a contributor for Telemundo News and MSNBC. Her reporting has taken her along the southern border and into the Darién Jungle, and it has led her to embed with Mexican cartels, with the Proud Boys, and with underground abortion pill networks. She is the author of Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America and Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity. Ramos is a former Hauser Leader in the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School, where she received her master’s in public policy. She is Cuban, Mexican, and American and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Nikole Hannah-Jones

Knight Chair in Race and Journalism, Howard University; creator of the 1619 Project

Nikole Hannah-Jones is the Pulitzer Prize–winning creator of the 1619 Project and a staff writer at the New York Times Magazine. Hannah-Jones has spent her career investigating racial inequality and injustice, and her reporting has earned her the MacArthur Fellowship, a Peabody Award, two George Polk Awards, and the National Magazine Award three times. She serves as the Knight Chair in Race and Journalism at Howard University, where she founded the Center for Journalism and Democracy. She is the cofounder of the Ida B. Wells Society for Investigative Reporting, and in 2022, she opened the 1619 Freedom School, a free after-school literacy program.

Dr. Carmen Rojas (moderator)

President and CEO, Marguerite Casey Foundation

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 $252 million 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.