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Please join Raina Lipsitz, author of The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics, community organizer and State Representative Rick Krajewski, Senator and cofounder of Reclaim Philadelphia Nikil Saval, and senior strategist for the Working Families Party and City Council at-Large candidate Nicolas O'Rourke for a lively discussion of the state of progressive organizing in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and nationwide. Joe Dinkin, national campaigns director for the Working Families Party, will guide the discussion. Raina Lipsitz's new book, The Rise of a New Left, will be highlighted as a part of the discussion.

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About the Book:

The mushrooming rolls of the Democratic Socialists of America, Marxist explainers in Teen Vogue, and the outsized impact of the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, all herald a new, youth-inflected radical politics.

The Rise of a New Left gets behind the headlines about AOC and her cohort of elected officials to tell the stories of the young organizers who created the Squad and the new social movements that have roiled US politics, from the DSA to the Sunrise Movement to Justice Democrats. Ranging across the country to describe grassroots organizing in places like rural Pennsylvania, upstate New York, Kentucky, Florida, and California, this book examines the panoply of strategies and struggles of activists working in—and trying to transform—electoral politics and the climate justice, racial justice, and labor movements. Alongside Ocasio-Cortez, we hear from the even younger Alexandra Rojas, one of the strategists who guided her political insurgency.

Propelled by scores of immersive and absorbing conversations on political strategy with young activists determined to reshape the country, this book—by a writer who is herself a member of this generational movement—is a riveting account of a resurgent left.
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About the Panelists:
Raina Lipsitz is the author of The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics, She writes about politics and culture. Her work has appeared in Al Jazeera America, The Appeal, The Atlantic, The Conversationalist, The Nation, and The New Republic, among other publications.
Rick Krajewski is a community organizer currently serving as State Representative for the 188th District of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. As a multiracial Black man raised during the War on Drugs, he is passionate about building movement power inside and outside institutions in order to win our common agenda.
The Reverend Nicolas O’Rourke is the Covenant Pastor of the Living Water United Church of Christ in Oxford Circle and the Senior Strategist for the Working Families Party within the Mid-Atlantic Region. He is competing in the 2023 Municipal General Election as an Independent candidate for City Council at-Large with the Working Families Party, campaigning for gun safety, affordable housing, climate solutions, safe public schools, justice and radical love.
Nikil Saval is a State Senator representing the First Senate District in Philadelphia. He is a co-founder of Reclaim Philadelphia. From 2012 through 2019, he was an editor of n+1, and he is the author of Cubed: A Secret History of the Workplace (Doubleday, 2014).
Joe Dinkin is the national campaigns director for the Working Families Party. He is a veteran political strategist who currently manages the WFP's independent expenditure campaigns, helping to elect six progressive members to Congress in competitive Democratic primaries in 2022. Joe got his start at the Working Families Party on a 2004 campaign to raise the minimum wage in New York. Joe lives in South Philadelphia with his wife and two cats.