Spotlight! Guest Instructor Series: Lawrence Grandpre
Beyond Woke-Technocracy & the Gentrification of Liberation
Wednesday, October 20, 2021 · 12 - 1 PM
Online
Reposted from our partners from the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery. Original Post to RSVP can be found here.
Beyond Woke-Technocracy and the Gentrification of Liberation: (Re)Learning to Distinguish Cooperative vs. Liberatory Policy for Community Empowerment
Historical analysis of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements reveals that attempts to co-opt social justice movements have often been couched as attempts to do "community reinvestment". Despite this, many "leftist" have celebrated recent federal and state investments into "underserved communities", often without critically interrogating the institutional imperatives and political infrastructures behind these policies. Lawrence Grandpre, Director of Research for Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, will analyze recent federal and state social justice interventions, arguing that, while claiming to be radical, many have served to further center decision-making power within elites institutions that adopt top-down, technocratic methodologies on how to engage Black and Brown communities, thus further disempowering the communities they claim to support. Conversely, an analysis of Baltimore's federal poverty programs and minority contracting investments in the 60s, 70s, and 80s reveal paths to an alternative vision on how to conceptualize policy approaches to community empowerment, ones that can harness the history and culture of oppressed communities to empower communities to serve as their own saviors.
AOK Library & Gallery Spotlight! Guest Instructor Series will be
hosting a public symposium throughout the Fall 2021 semester examining
the topic of radicalism. The aim of the symposium is not to declare a
definitive definition of radicalism but to offer a regional and
historical context to the term. The inspiration for the theme is the
Library’s Special Collections’ Radical Literature and Alternative Press
Center collections.