Progressive social movements during the pandemic
With the declaration of a global pandemic in March 2020 and the subsequent imposition of lockdown regulations, the immediate expectation was that social movements were destined to enter into a period of latency, or at the very least, invisibility. Given the introduction of severe restrictions on the use of public space, it seemed that Covid-19 had managed to halt the incredibly intense period of global protest that had shaken the world in the Autumn of 2019, with peaks of contestation in places as diverse as Lebanon, Chile, Hong Kong and Catalonia. In reality, however, the pandemic period proved to be extremely rich in terms of contentious politics. Not only did the global wave of protests not come to an end with the emergency, but the health crisis triggered an intense period of contestation, during which activists and organizations from pre-existing progressive social movements remobilized and others emerged around issues such as social rights, labour rights, gender rights, and environmental rights, often combining their causes with calls for global health rights. By looking at these social movements, in this talk, I will reflect on the opportunities and challenges that the pandemic presents for progressive movements and, more broadly, for progressive politics.
Donatella della Porta is professor of political science, dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences and Director of the PhD program in Political Science and Sociology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Florence, where she also leads the Center on Social Movement Studies (Cosmos).
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