Trump, Gaza, and Jewish Organizing: A Conversation with Marshall Ganz

For Americans of conscience, this is a sobering moment. Last month, the country elected an authoritarian ethnonationalist for a second time, just four years after he attempted to incite a coup. In Gaza, American-made bombs continue to fall on hospitals and apartment buildings in a campaign of destruction that many experts in international law have deemed a genocide. Among left-wing Jews informed by a history of persecution and extermination, these parallel crises have led to many dark nights of the soul.

For organizers and activists, these events also represent a particular challenge. While many Jewish organizing efforts have swelled in number since Trump’s first election, our inability to stop these disasters reflects the limits of our organizing and our power. What can we learn from our work over that period? What mistakes should be interrogated? What successes can be built upon? And what assumptions must be examined?

Join Jewish Currents, Diaspora Alliance, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, and legendary organizer and theorist Marshall Ganz for an intimate evening of frank discussion on where left-wing Jewish organizing efforts might go from here.

This is an in-person event at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research (BISR) located in Brooklyn at 68 Jay Street, Suite #425. The building is wheelchair-accessible. For any accessibility questions or accommodations, please email events@jewishcurrents.org.

This event will be free for Jewish Currents members (check out our membership program here!) and $18 for non-members. Doors open at 7pm, conversation begins at 7:30pm. Drinks will be provided.

Marshall Ganz is the Rita E. Hauser senior lecturer in Leadership, Organizing and Civil Society at the Kennedy School of Government. He teaches, researches, and writes on leadership, narrative, strategy, and organization in social movements, civic associations, and politics. His newest book, People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal, was published this year. His previous book—Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement, published in 2009—earned the Michael J. Harrington Book Award of the American Political Science Association. In association with the global Leading Change Network of organizers, researchers, and educators, Ganz coaches, trains, and advises social, civic, educational, health care, and political groups on organizing, training, and leadership development around the world.

Carinne Luck has been an organizer, trainer, and strategist for over 20 years. She is currently the international executive director at Diaspora Alliance, an organization confronting two intertwined threats to the health and viability of democracy worldwide: antisemitism and its instrumentalization. Before co-founding Diaspora Alliance, Luck worked with groups such as the Working Families Party, Election Defenders, and Women’s March to develop and staff pro-democratic, anti-authoritarian grassroots campaigns at scale. Luck has had the privilege of supporting the leadership of immigrants, people with disabilities, domestic workers, and young people with groups such as Mijente, Hand in Hand, Faith Matters Network, Southerners on New Ground (SONG), IfNotNow, and Jews For Racial & Economic Justice. Luck was a producer on the award-winning documentaries Mayor (2021) and Riotsville, USA (2022) and has been a faculty member in Upaya Zen Center’s Socially Engaged Buddhist Training program.

Audrey Sasson is the executive director of Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, and the first Mizrahi person to serve in the position. She has nearly 30 years of experience building the organized left as a community organizer, social worker, and campaign director, on issues ranging from immigrant worker struggles and tenant rights to sustainable economies and racial justice. Before assuming her current role, she served on JFREJ’s board of directors for six years while working in both the nonprofit sector and the labor movement. She holds a Master’s in International Affairs from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s of Social Work from McGill University.

Daniel May (moderator) is publisher of Jewish Currents.

Diaspora Alliance works to strengthen the values of multiracial, pluralistic democracy by confronting antisemitism and its instrumentalization.

Jews For Racial & Economic Justice is a 6,000-member grassroots organization and the home of New York’s Jewish Left. For over 30 years, JFREJ members have organized alongside our neighbors to transform New York from a playground for the wealthy few into a real democracy, free from all forms of racist violence.