By the end of 2022, 108.4 million people were forcibly displaced worldwide as a result of persecution, conflict, violence or human rights violations. This includes: 35.3 million refugees. 62.5 million internally displaced people. An estimated 500,000 people in the US are without housing with many more in unstable situations.

“A savage authoritarianism is producing a brutalizing politics that infuses massive amounts of misery, suffering, and violence into everyday life. As an unbridled war culture is being unleashed upon the most vulnerable residents and citizens with a vengeance, the crucial elements of a culture of cruelty that must be acknowledged, resisted, and eliminated.

As more and more people find themselves living in a society in which the quality of life is measured through market-based metrics such as cost-benefit analyses, it becomes difficult for the public to acknowledge or even understand the cost in human misery and everyday hardship that an increasing number of people have to endure.

A culture of cruelty highlights both how systemic injustices are lived and experienced, and how iniquitous relations of power turn the "American dream" into a dystopian nightmare in which millions of individuals and families are struggling to merely survive.” Henry Giroux

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Here we look at the worldwide and hyper local effects of the culture of cruelty from Gaza to the front steps of local police stations – wherein the phenomena of endless war, rapacious profiteering, climate catastrophes, stolen resources, and dispossession has created an unprecedented quantum of despair.

HotHouse has long developed multi-disciplinary programs that build progressive alliances and instigate action around a range of social justice issues.

***This in person event will be live-streamed through Haymarket Books. Register through Ticket Tailor to receive a link to the video conference on the day of the event. We ask that all in-person attendees wear masks in the event space during the program for the health and well-being of the speaker and other guests. We will have a reception afterwards with light refreshments.***

Speakers:

Juan González is a Senior Research Fellow at Great Cities Institute.

Throughout his career, González has become known as one of the most well-regarded Latino journalists in the United States. He was a staff columnist for New York’s The Daily News for nearly thirty years, has been a co-host since 1996 of the morning news show Democracy Now, and was the Richard D. Heffner Professor of Communications and Public Policy at Rutgers University from 2017 to 2023.

His investigative reports on the labor movement, environmental justice, race relations, and urban policy have garnered numerous accolades, including two George Polk Awards for commentary, and he became in 2015 the first Latino to be inducted into the New York Journalism Hall of Fame by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Deadline Club. He is the author of five books, including the classic Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America (2001), which became the basis of an award-winning 2012 feature documentary film narrated by González and which is now in its third edition. His News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media (2011), which he co-authored with Joseph Torres, was a New York Times best-seller and a finalist for the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. His Reclaiming Gotham, Bill de Blasio and the Movement to End America’s Tale of Two Cities (2017), examines the rise of progressive elected officials in cities across the United States and their efforts to revise urban policies.

"Even before he entered journalism, González was already a well-known Latino activist as a leader of the Young Lords in the late 1960s, and later as an organizer and the first president of the National Congress for Puerto Rican Rights in the 1980s."

Jorge Mujica emigrated to the United States from Mexico in 1987. He currently works as lead strategic campaigns organizer for Arise Chicago, a non-profit organization addressing the needs of low-wage workers, particularly stolen wages. He is also a Congressman in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies, representing Mexicans abroad. A well-known journalist in the Spanish media and has also worked extensively with labor unions and belongs to a number of community organizations that address immigrant rights. He co-authored the book Voces Migrantes, soon to be printed in English, and is currently working on “We The Immigrants,” on immigrant workers as founders of labor unions in the United States. Jorge was one of the three conveners of the immigration marches during the “Immigrant’s Spring” which brought a million people to the streets on May Day 2006.

Hatem Abudayyeh  is a Chicagoan and co-founder and current National Chair of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), which was established in 2006 and has chapters in eight states and DC, plus at-large members across the U.S. He is also co-founder and spokesperson for the Chicago Coalition for Justice in Palestine (CJP), which represents all the main Palestinian institutions in Chicagoland and has been leading the mass mobilizations and advocacy campaigns for Palestine in the city since the beginning of the 2nd Intifada in 2000.

Amisha Patel has 30 years of experience organizing for economic, racial, and gender justice. For 15 years, she served as Executive Director of Grassroots Collaborative in Illinois, which innovated community and labor strategic coalition campaigns that built the foundation for many movement victories, including progressive revenue solutions, subsidy reform, raising the minimum wage, and more. Most recently, she served as Senior Advisor to the transition team of Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.

Amisha first began organizing at the age of 19 against a toxic waste facility in East Palo Alto, CA. She spent years leading arts-based violence against women prevention programming with youth of color in the Bay Area. The documentary that her youth created, Young Azns Rising! Breaking Down Violence Against Women, screened in film festivals nationwide and won the Asian Emmy for best documentary. Amisha has received numerous recognitions, including Crain’s Chicago Business 40 under 40 award, and her op-eds have appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business, Bill Moyers, In These Times, and the Chicago Sun Times.

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