Town Hall Seattle Civics Series

"If you make it trend, you make it true." The cycling of new and buzz-worthy information we face on a daily basis is faster than ever before. As new trends in information, politics, and culture are constantly updating, little time is left for critical analysis before the next headline hits the feed. And when those who hold the power to influence audiences and drive opinions in strategic directions...

Should Democrats be looking to the other side of the aisle for political strategy? Political scientist and strategist Rachel Bitecofer seeks to explain the intricate dynamics of contemporary politics in her new book,  Hit 'Em Where It Hurts.  Seeking actionable strategies for Democrats to connect with voters and reclaim the narrative in a pivotal election year, Bitecofer dissects the strategies em...

Delve into the complex tapestry of American politics with Juliet Hooker, the Royce Family Professor of Teaching Excellence in Political Science at Brown University.  Hooker, known for her expertise in racial justice, democracy theories, and Black political thought, will unpack the themes of her latest book,  Black Grief / White Grievance  and offer a critical examination of white supremacy's impac...

Can a parliamentary democracy end America's constitutional crisis? It's starting to feel to some people that American elections aren't offering us much choice, instead compounding the continued issues of our outdated voting system and showing our lack of capacity to face common issues together. In  Parliamentary America , Maxwell L. Stearns argues that the solution to these complex problems is a p...

As we head into another presidential election year, few issues feel as pressing as the spread of political misinformation. How can political campaigns fight back against the barrage of lies and disinformation? As time, tension, and technology all progress in our world, we're not always prepared for the acceleration and its impact on the political climate. The public can often be left to weed throu...

  Anyone who has fallen off the conveyor belt of mainstream health care and into the shadowy corners of illness knows what a dark place it is to land. Where is the infrastructure, the information, the guidance? What should you do next? In her new book,  Rebel Health , Susannah Fox draws on twenty years of tracking the expert networks of patients, survivors, and caregivers who have come of age betw...

Ever wondered how a leader orchestrates large-scale change on a global scale? In his new book,  Big Bets: How Large-Scale Change Really Happens,  Rajiv J. Shah, President of the Rockefeller Foundation and former administrator of USAID unveils his model for driving large-scale change. Drawing on his experiences, from vaccinating 900 million children with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to comba...

The subject of disinformation is a well-known part of political rhetoric, but it has implications even outside of the sphere of democracy.  From the electoral system to schools; from the workplace to hospitals, the consequences of it are far-reaching and dire. A legal analyst at MSNBC and former U.S. Attorney, Barbara McQuade's decades of experience in law help inform her authorship of Attack From...

Have you ever wondered how impeachment really works? As a witness and consultant in the impeachment trials of Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, legal scholar Michael J. Gerhardt has collected a lifetime of scholarly research and firsthand experience. But despite his proximity to such high-profile cases, Gerhardt doesn't advocate for or against the impeachment of specific presidents. Instead, he illum...

Is it possible to reshape immigration practices to align with the values of inclusivity, justice, and the historical promise of the United States as a welcoming haven for all? Law professor and immigration lawyer César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández presents a powerful case for divorcing immigration law from criminal law in his book,  Welcome the Wretched . He challenges the status quo by advocating...

Commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Boldt Decision, a pivotal moment in civil rights history and tribal sovereignty.  Centered around Charles Wilkinson's posthumously acclaimed work,  Treaty Justice , a panel will discuss the significance of the Boldt Decision and its enduring impact on the tribal sovereignty movement in the Pacific Northwest and beyond. Three panelists and a moderator will de...

Ijeoma Oluo's #1 New York Times bestseller So You Want To Talk About Race ( book tour event at Town Hall in 2019 ), offered a vital guide for how to talk about important issues of race and racism in society . In  Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America , she discussed how white male supremacy has had an impact on our systems, our culture, and our lives throughout American history. But...

In 1990, Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist Les Payne embarked on a nearly thirty-year-long quest to interview anyone he could find who had actually known Malcolm X. His goal was ambitious: to transform what would become over a hundred hours of interviews into an unprecedented portrait of Malcolm X, one that would separate fact from fiction. Following Payne's unexpected death in 2018,...

Journalist Tim Schwab is no stranger to investigative journalism that scrutinizes power structures and questions how private interests intersect with public policy.  With funding from a 2019 Alicia Patterson Fellowship, Schwab pursued an investigative series specific to Bill Gates and the Gates Foundation, and his work was published by  The Nation  in 2020 and 2021. Now Schwab expands on his repor...

It is among the most classically joked about modern grievances, air travel. Between flight cancellations, delays, lost baggage, increased prices, crammed planes, and the general downtrodden gloom that accompanies flying, there is plenty left to be desired when it comes to the quality of airline service. The truth is that bankruptcies and mergers have meant that competition has come to a critical e...

Starting in 1967, when fewer than 1% of women completed any education beyond four years of college, the Washington State University (WSU) Sociology Department dared to hire three female faculty members who became lifelong friends. Lois B. DeFleur, Sandra Ball-Rokeach, and Marilyn Ihinger-Tallman were role models for many women and paved the way for those who followed. Four decades later, volume ed...

For many people in the Emerald City, sports may be seen solely as entertainment. We watch the Kraken on the ice, climb the stands for the Seahawks and Sounders, and hold out hands out for a soaring Mariners ball. But what if something came along to challenge the idea of athletics as mere leisure? In his new book  Heartbreak City: Seattle Sports and the Unmet Promise of Urban Progress , author Shau...

Schuyler Bailar didn't set out to be an activist, his very public transition to the Harvard men's swim team put him in the spotlight. His choice to be open about his transition and share his experience has touched people around the world. As Anti-transgender legislation is being introduced in state governments around the United States in record-breaking numbers Schuyler's plain-spoken education ha...

Depending on who you overhear, conversations surrounding the controversial AI Chat Bot, Chat GPT, may be punctuated with terms like, "groundbreaking!" "paradigm-shifting!" "innovative!" or conversely might be filled with calls of "terrifying!" "mistake!" or "too far!" But peering through either lens, it is hard not to imagine that AI will diminish the necessity for human involvement, human experie...

Can leaders strive for more inclusivity in the workplace and improve outcomes in the process? Employers invest in and manage their key asset — talent — to be as high-performing as possible. Like a winning stock, it can be argued that successful diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) actions likewise pay back over time: that dividend is paid to the company through higher performance, talent acquisi...

Washington is leading the nation as a model for the transition to a climate-safe future. People, movements, and politicians across the state have been able to pass landmark policies that benefit local communities, as well as inspire other regions to follow suit. From Seattle's commercial energy codes, to Whatcom County's first-ever ban on new fossil fuel infrastructure, to the statewide Climate Co...

Many parents struggle with the physicality of caring for children, but even more with the growing lack of autonomy new moms may feel in their personal and professional lives. Join us for an evening with Amanda Montei, author of  Touched Out: Motherhood, Misogyny, Consent, and Control,  and Kristi Coulter, author of  Exit Interview:  The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career . Moderated by Gemma Ha...

Although social media may not be a typical source of enlightenment, historian Heather Cox Richardson decided to become an exception to the rule.  It all started during the 2019 impeachment when Richardson launched a daily Facebook essay providing historical background for the daily torrent of news. It soon morphed into a popular Substack newsletter, Letters From an American, and a readership that...

Have you ever wondered if there was another version of this country besides the one that was taught in schools? For many Americans, especially Black Americans, the answer is yes. The backstory that most of us were taught has been whitewashed and sugarcoated, its truths buried and untold, with many delivered halfway — if at all. Reality rewritten. In his new book,  Black AF History: The Un-Whitewas...

Growing up, Rebecca Clarren only knew the major plot points of her tenacious immigrant family's origins. Her great-great-grandparents, the Sinykins, and their six children fled antisemitism in Russia and arrived in the United States at the turn of the 20th century, ultimately settling on a 160-acre homestead in South Dakota. Over the next few decades, despite tough years on a merciless prairie and...