Civic Participation

Apocalyptic Optimist Episode 2: Why Solidarity Is So Hard — and How We Build It Anyway
In Episode 2 of the Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast, Dana talks with Dr. Rashawn Ray about the realities of building solidarity in a deeply divided moment. From his work with communities-of-color and police departments to learning from the Black Lives Matter movement, Dr. Ray breaks down what works, what doesn’t, and how people can show up as […]
CECE Whitepaper No. 4: Understanding Community Response to Disaster: Results from Three AmeriCorps [...]
AmeriCorps members and volunteers engage in community response to disaster across the United States. How do they explain the skills they use, the motivations that urge them to respond, and their experiences with disaster? Across the three programs that we visited, participants reported drawing from their prior life experiences, whether personal or professional,to increase their […]
Apocalyptic Optimist Episode 1: Learning from the Free America Walkout
In the inaugural episode of the Apocalyptic Optimist Podcast, Dr. Dana R. Fisher talks with Rachel O’Leary Carmona and Tamika Middleton from the Women’s March about what we can learn from the Free America Walkout. You can watch all of the episodes here or access them via our YouTube Channel, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.
[Article] Resistance to Trump 2.0 Is Getting More Confrontational
CECE Director Dana R. Fisher recently wrote about how resistance has shifted during the second Trump administration. The article, published in The Guardian, outlines how Resistance 2.0 has become, and will continue to be, more confrontational. The full article can be found here.
[Article] Inside the Movement Challenging—and Disrupting—ICE
Data gathered by CECE Director Dana R. Fisher and Postdoctoral Fellow Arman Azedi was recently featured in an article in The Economist. The article provides a look inside the network of activists disrupting ICE across the country. The full article can be found here.
[Article] Drawing Systems of Stewardship to Guide Action and Reveal Critical Relationships of Care
CECE Postdoctoral Fellow Natalia C. Piland is lead author of a new paper in Earth Stewardship titled, “Drawing systems of stewardship to guide action and reveal critical relationships of care.” This paper is a presentation of a tool she, with her co-authors, developed while working at the U.S. Forest Service. The tool is meant to lower activation […]
COPOut Episode 1: Platforming Activism
In the inaugural episode of the COPOut Podcast, Dr. Dana R. Fisher talks with climate leaders about how to platform activism and empower civil society in the struggle to address the climate crisis. Tune in to hear from Ingmar Rentzhog from We Don’t Have Time, Jamie Minden from This Is Zero Hour, and Magnolia Mead […]
[Article] What’s radical? Comparing how climate activists and the general public perceive social [...]
A team from CECE has published a paper in Environmental Research Letters that compares perspectives about social movement tactics between climate activists and the general public. Read the abstract below and and Click here to read the article. As the climate crisis worsens, activists have employed a wide range of tactics to draw attention to […]
CECE Team Surveys NoKings Day 2.0 Participants in Washington D.C.
On October 18th, a coalition of left-leaning political groups coordinated a second national day-of-action to declare that the US has no kings. Almost 3,000 events took place across the US during NoKings Day 2.0 with early estimates predicting that over 5 million people had joined the day of action in the US (with many more […]
CECE Announces New National Science Foundation Grant
We are delighted to report that Professors Scott Freeman and Mike Alonzo were just awarded a 2.5 year grant from the National Science Foundation to support their research. The grant builds on their previous research, which was supported by the CECE Faculty Research Incubator Program.
Final Student Reports Complete Inaugural DataCorps Fellowship
The Workforce Development & the 4Rs project wrapped up its first summer of the DataCorps Fellowship Program. At the beginning of the summer, the DataCorps fellows identified individual topics they would like to research. Each fellow then designed one to two questions on their topics to be included in the project’s service corps member survey. […]
Tracking Activism and Resistance at the No Kings Day of Action
Over the past 6 months, protesters have flooded the streets across the country to voice their concerns about the Trump Administration and its policies. Multiple large-scale, coordinated days of action organized by groups such as Indivisible and more informal networks like 50501 movement have taken place. The most recent day of action was called No […]