Jeanne Theoharis is distinguished professor of political science at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She is the author of the award-winning The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Life of Struggle Outside the South.
Many on the Left are wondering what to do against the Trump administration’s vicious assaults on workers, immigrants, and free speech. We can look to the example of US civil rights activists, who kept taking great risks even after demoralizing setbacks.
Rosa Parks was born on this day in 1913. Far from being a face of respectability politics, she was a defiant and seasoned working-class organizer who despised the cringing submission that Jim Crow induced and who doggedly fought oppression in all its forms.
Declaring white nationalism a form of terrorism won’t combat white nationalism — but it will grant more arbitrary powers to a carceral state that preys on the most vulnerable.