SOCIAL MOVEMENT HISTORY STUDY GROUP

Organizing through Crisis, Loss, and Retreat

APPLICATIONS CLOSED

Overview

Are you an organizer looking to deepen your understanding of social movement history—and use it to inform strategy today? Join the Social Movement History Study Group, a four-session online series exploring how movements have navigated moments of crisis, loss, and retreat. Together, we’ll read and discuss a key text that raises urgent, strategic questions for organizers facing today’s challenges.

Applications Due: Sunday, July 6 2025

How It Works

  • Online & Free to Attend

  • Led by experienced facilitators Lindsay Zafir and Brad Brockman

  • Choose one, two, or all three sessions

  • Meet once a week for four weeks (90 minutes each)

  • Engage in reading, discussion, and collective learning

Each session focuses on a different book — together they offer a layered look at how organizers have faced political turning points, adapted, and imagined new futures.

Pick Your Group

(Or Join them All!)

This fall, we'll host three study groups, each focusing on a book about the path forward in moments of loss and retreat: Lisa McGirr’s Suburban Warriors, which examines the rise of the New Right during the mid-20th century “liberal consensus”; Vincent Bevins’s If We Burn, which explores the failure of mass protest movements internationally during the 2010s; and Robin D.G. Kelley’s Freedom Dreams, which looks at the radical visions of Black activists and intellectuals in the 20th century.

You can sign up for all three sessions or choose just one or two sessions. The dates and meeting times are:

  • Session 1 (Suburban Warriors): Fridays from 1-2:30pm ET, Aug. 29, Sept. 5, Sept. 12, Sept. 19

  • Session 2 (If We Burn): Mondays from 6-7:30pm ET, Sept. 29, Oct. 6, Oct. 13, Oct. 20

  • Session 3 (Freedom Dreams): Mondays from 6-7:30pm ET, Nov. 3, Nov. 10, Nov. 17, Nov. 24

Book Descriptions

  1. In Suburban Warriors, historian Lisa McGirr examines the grassroots organizing that propelled the far right’s rise to power, from its relatively marginal position in the early 1960s to its dominance by the early 1980s. We’ll use this book as a jumping off point for thinking about the strategies we can adopt to build political power today. 

  2. In If We Burn, journalist Vincent Bevins looks at the failure of global mass protest movements in the 2010s–from Egypt to Brazil to South Korea–to bring about the revolutions that they sought. We’ll be discussing the lessons we can learn about strategy and tactics as we fight oligarchy and authoritarianism in our own country.

  3. In Freedom Dreams, historian Robin D.G. Kelley explores the radical and expansive visions for an alternative future put forth by a range of Black freedom movements in the 20th century. We'll use the book to reflect on the importance of hope and political imagination today.

Eligibility

  • Must be able to attend and complete the readings and other preparation work for all 4 weeks of the selected session

  • Ideally, connected to a power-building organization as an employee, member leader, or volunteer

  • Committed to learning from and with other members of the study group

Time Commitment

Participants should expect to spend 90 minutes each week in the study group and additional time outside of the group to read about 60 pages each week.