Osita Nwanevu - "The Right of the People" - Alex Han

Name: Osita Nwanevu - "The Right of the People" - Alex Han
Start: 2025-09-26T16:00:00-05:00
Location: 5751 S Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, IL 60637-1600, United States

Schedule

Fri, 26 Sep, 2025 at 04:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

5751 S Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, IL 60637-1600, United States | Chicago, IL

Osita Nwanevu will discuss his new book "The Right of the People." He will be joined in conversation by Alex Han. A Q&A and book signing will follow the discussion.
At the Co-op
About the Book: A bold case for reimagining the American project and making American democracy real—from a formidable new voice in political journalism.
Frustrated with our political dysfunction, wearied by the thinness of contemporary political discourse, and troubled by the rise of anti-democratic attitudes across the political spectrum, journalist Osita Nwanevu has spent the Trump era examining the very meaning of democracy in search of answers to questions many have asked in the wake of the 2024 election: Are our institutions fundamentally broken? How can a country so divided govern itself? Does democracy even work as well as we believe?
"The Right of the People" offers us challenging answers: while democracy remains vital, American democracy is an illusion we must make real by transforming not only our political institutions but the American economy. In a text that spans democratic theory, the American Founding, our aging political system, and the dizzying inequalities of our new Gilded Age, Nwanevu makes a visionary case for a political and economic agenda to fulfill the promise of American democracy and revive faith in the American project.
“Nearly two hundred fifty years ago, the men who founded America made a fundamental break not just from their old country but from the past—casting off an order that had subjugated them with worn and weak ideas for the promise of true self-governance and greater prosperity in a new republic,” Nwanevu writes. “With exactly their sense of purpose and even higher, more righteous ambitions for America than they themselves had, we should do the same now⁠—work as hard as we can in the decades ahead to ‘institute new Government’ for the benefit of all and not just the few.”
About the Author: Osita Nwanevu is a contributing editor for The New Republic and a columnist for The Guardian, writing about American politics and culture. He lives in Baltimore. This is his first book.
About the Interlocutor: Alex Han is Executive Director of In These Times. He has organized with unions, in the community, and in progressive politics for two decades. In addition to serving as Midwest Political Director for Bernie 2020, he’s worked to amplify the power of community and labor organizations at Bargaining for the Common Good, served as a Vice President of SEIU Healthcare Illinois and Indiana for over a decade, and helped to found United Working Families, an independent political organization in Illinois that has elected dozens of working-class leaders to city, state and federal office. Most recently he was executive editor of Convergence Magazine.