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A discussion with journalist Vincent Bevins, author of The Jakarta Method, about his new book and our recent history. A huge amount of people have tried to change the world in recent years. Why did this so often fail, or backfire, and how can this energy be harnessed better in the future?

About the Book:
From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result. IF WE BURN is a stirring work of history built around a single, vital question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?

From the so-called Arab Spring to Gezi Park in Turkey, from Ukraine’s Euromaidan to student rebellions in Chile and Hong Kong, acclaimed journalist Vincent Bevins provides a blow-by-blow account of street movements and their consequences, recounted in gripping detail. He draws on four years of research and hundreds of interviews conducted around the world, as well as his own strange experiences in Brazil, where a progressive-led protest explosion led to an extreme-right government that torched the Amazon.

Careful investigation reveals that conventional wisdom on revolutionary change is gravely misguided. In this groundbreaking study of an extraordinary chain of events, protesters and major actors look back on successes and defeats, offering urgent lessons for the future.

About the Speakers:
Vincent Bevins is an award-winning journalist. He reported for the Financial Times in London, then served as the Brazil correspondent for the Los Angeles Times before covering Southeast Asia for the Washington Post.
His first book, The Jakarta Method, was named one of the best books of 2020 by NPR, GQ, the Financial Times, and CounterPunch, and has been translated into fifteen languages. Vincent lives in São Paulo.

Dr. Nazia Kazi is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Stockton University, where she teaches courses on race, empire, and anti-Muslim racism. Her first book, Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics, is required reading in many university classes and she is currently working on a second book about the relationship between the CIA and right-wing movements in the Muslim world. She is an officer in her campus union, The Stockton Federation of Teachers, and is a volunteer at the Philadelphia Liberation Center. Kazi is also a faculty affiliate of the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights.