Soup Against Fascism: Building Community Capacity to Undo Political Division

Americans are repeatedly told how divided they are. The nation has been partitioned into red states and blue states. But survey data tells us there is broad consensus on key values, like privacy, the right to vote, and education. Scholars of authoritarianism, like Hannah Arendt, have written a great deal about how totalitarian regimes rise when individuals feel isolated from each other, creating a void filled by charismatic leaders and cult-like movements. Isolation creates social disengagement and opens the door for scapegoating and political violence. The remedy is, then, community-level engagement and reconnection. Fifty years ago, nearly 75 percent of Americans belonged to at least one voluntary organization, from neighborhood clubs to bowling leagues. Now less than one third of Americans are members of such groups. This keynote will discuss the new approach to rebuilding community connections in the interest of stemming political and social incivility, with a special focus on revitalizing third spaces in neighborhoods that foster face to face interaction. This movement is finding new ways rebuild connective tissue on the local level, from soup swaps to ICE watches. Dr. Blazak has worked on this effort through a federally funded project called CurePNW that has built relationships between local police and protestors as well as within communities divided along political lines.

Randall Blazak has been the chair of Oregon’s Coalition Against Hate Crimes since 2002 and is a globally recognized expert on bias crimes and extremism. Blazak earned his PhD at Emory University in 1995 after completing an extensive field study of racist skinheads that included undercover observations and interviews across the world. He became a tenured sociology professor at Portland State University and left full time teaching in 2015 to work on community-based equity issues. In 2022, with the support of a large federal grant, he co-founded Cure:PNW, an organization that develops strategies to reduce political violence. He is currently writing a book on antifascism and is sharing excerpts on his popular Substack page, The Blazak Report.

Learn more at www.randyblazak.com