Reckoning with Democratic Debts: What Do We Owe the Grieving?

Juliet Hooker • Brown University

October 7th @ 6pm • Daniel Family Commons

US democracy has moved closer to achieving its vaunted yet always unmet promises thanks to the crucial role of social justice activists who have forced it to reckon with its deficits thanks to their testimonies about its embodied costs. Fugitive Black people who became abolitionists, civil rights protesters; survivors of sexual violence, gun violence, and police violence; women denied reproductive care and their families (among many other examples) have become exemplary activists and staged catalyzing moments of genuine democratic renewal. But there are costs to transforming ongoing loss into civic excellence, to performing the work of democratic care. These democratic debts point to a different kind of reckoning: what do we owe those who turn their grief into activism? How can we distribute the civic burdens of democratic labor more equitably?

Dead Reckonings
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