Budget Justice: Book Launch, Reading & Conversation with Celina Su

Grounded in specific struggles and with specific communities, Celina Su‘s scholarly, pedagogical, and creative work focuses on everyday struggles for collective governance, centering economic democracy and racial justice. She is the Marilyn J. Gittell Chair in Urban Studies and a Professor of Political Science at the City University of New York, a former Senior Democracy Scholar at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and a recipient of a Berlin Prize in public policy. Her writing includes Landia, a book of poetry, as well as three books on the politics of social policy and civil society, three poetry chapbooks, and pieces in the New York Times Magazine, Boston Review, n+1, Harper’s, and elsewhere. 

Kesi Fosteris the Co-Executive Director at Partners for Dignity and Rights (P4DR). P4DR works in partnership with grassroots community and worker-led organizations across the country and internationally to build a broad movement for social and economic rights. P4DR provides strategic support to campaigns that advocate for policies that guarantees everyone can work and live with dignity.

He was previously the Co-Director of the Youth Power Project at Make the Road New York, where he advanced campaigns for educational justice, immigration justice, and community safety. Before Make The Road, Kesi coordinated the Urban Youth Collaborative, the largest youth-led educational justice coalition in New York City, and worked at the Annenberg Institute for School Reform. Before joining the movements for educational justice, he held positions at the Right to Vote Campaign, and worked to open up career opportunities for formerly incarcerated individuals and public housing residents in New York City.

Liza Featherstone is an author, journalist, essayist, critic and teacher. She has written and reported extensively on left social movements in the United States. She is a columnist at Jacobinand The New Republic, as well as a contributing writer at The Nation. Featherstone is the author of Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation (O/R Books, 2018), and Selling Women Short: The Landmark Battle for Workers’ Rights at Wal-Mart (Basic Books, 2004), among other books. Featherstone’s work has also been published in Lux, TV Guide, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Ms., The American Prospect, Columbia Journalism Review, Glamour, Teen Vogue, Dissent, The Guardian, In These Times and many other publications. She teaches writing at NYU and Columbia. Featherstone is also an active member of NYC-Democratic Socialists of America and ACT-UAW(local 7902).