The East Side Freedom Library invites you to the final monthly  conversation of 2020.   

Throughout 2020, activist scholar Tom O’Connell has anchored  conversations which have sought to envision and shape the future through  engagement with the past. These conversations are archived on ESFL’s  YouTube channel and we encourage you to revisit them. Now, at the end of  this turbulent year, Tom convenes a conversation with three  Minnesota-based historians, all of whom use their training and research  as ways to guide us through the challenges of the present, with an eye  towards a better future.  

Shannon Smith is an Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies at  the College of St. Benedict’s and the College of St. John’s. Her  research has focused on the use of military and police organizations to  quell rebellions and uprisings. This past summer, Shannon contributed to  public discussions of grassroots protests’ challenges to monuments and  entrenched power.  

Doug Rossinow is a Professor of History at Metropolitan State University  and the Interim Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Doug’s research  has focused on social movements and political thought, especially the  complex roles played by religious ideologies. He recently edited a  collection entitled The Religious Left in Modern America.  

Jeff Kolnick is a Professor of History at Southwest Minnesota State  University in Marshall. His research has focused on social and political  movements, from Populist farmers in late 19th century Minnesota to the  civil rights movement of the 1960s. Jeff helped to found the Fannie Lou  Hamer National Institute on Citizenship and Democracy in Jackson,  Mississippi, and he has been a contributor to such Minnesota  publications as MinnPost, Minnesota Reformer, and MNOpedia. He has been a  leader in the Inter Faculty Organization, the union of Minnesota state  university professors.

View the video: https://youtu.be/ppRpFV_mZvA