Guest speaker: Dana Fisher, University of Maryland

How has the climate movement connected with the Resistance? This talk will explore the ways the 2017 People’s Climate March built on the momentum of the Resistance to mobilize a crowd with intersectional interests.  Fisher will first compare data collected through random surveys of participants at the earlier People’s Climate March in September 2014 to those collected at the People’s Climate March in 2017.  The results will show how the movement has changed over that that three-year period. Next, she will compare the results from the 2017 March to data collected from the Women’s March in 2017. Like participants at the Women’s March, the 2017 People’s Climate March mobilized a crowd with intersectional interests that cross racial identity, class, gender, and sexuality.  There is clear evidence from this analysis that the climate movement, at least in terms of its large-scale protest events, has become part of the growing Resistance.  The talk will conclude by discussing the implications of these findings on the climate movement and the Resistance more generally.

Dana R. Fisher is a Professor of Sociology and the Director of the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland. Her research focuses on understanding the relationship between environmentalism and democracy—most recently studying activism and American climate politics. Her research employs a mixed-methods approach that integrates data collected through open-ended semi-structured interviews and participant observation with various forms of survey data.

Event Materials: 

Dana Fisher.pdf