Informed Community Book Club

About this event

Conference Room. Join us for the Informed Community Book Club, a space dedicated to exploring and discussing pertinent social, economic, and political issues. If you are interested in participating in our democratic institutions or just making friends, join us! September's book will be All-American Nativism: How the Bipartisan War on Immigrants Explains Politics as We Know It, by Daniel Denvir From the publisher's website: It is often said that with the election of Donald Trump nativism was raised from the dead. After all, here was a president who organized his campaign around a rhetoric of unvarnished racism and xenophobia. Among his first acts on taking office was to block foreign nationals from seven predominantly Muslim countries from entering the United States. But although his actions may often seem unprecedented, they are not as unusual as many people believe. This story doesn’t begin with Trump. For decades, Republicans and Democrats alike have employed xenophobic ideas and policies, declaring time and again that “illegal immigration” is a threat to the nation’s security, wellbeing, and future. The profound forces of all-American nativism have, in fact, been pushing politics so far to the right over the last forty years that, for many people, Trump began to look reasonable. As Daniel Denvir argues, issues as diverse as austerity economics, free trade, mass incarceration, the drug war, the contours of the post 9/11 security state, and, yes, Donald Trump and the Alt-Right movement are united by the ideology of nativism, which binds together assorted anxieties and concerns into a ruthless political project. All-American Nativism provides a powerful and impressively researched account of the long but often forgotten history that gave us Donald Trump. The discussion will be hosted by former Los Gatos Planning Commissioner and current president of the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition Jeff Suzuki.

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