They stomp on our neck, and then they tell us, ‘Just chill, O.K., just relax.’ Well, look, we are mad, and we’ve been had. —Sarah Palin, endorsing Donald Trump for president, January 19, 2016

More than five years ago, renowned sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild embarked on a journey from her liberal hometown of Berkeley, California, deep into Louisiana bayou country—a stronghold of the conservative right. As she got to know people who strongly oppose many of the ideas she champions, Hochschild nevertheless finds common ground with the people she meets—people whose concerns are ones that all Americans share: the desire for community, the embrace of family, and hopes for their children.

In a new book, Strangers In Their Own Land, Hochschild explores the right-wing world and discovers powerful forces—fear of cultural eclipse, economic decline, perceived government betrayal—that help explain the emotional appeal of a candidate like Donald Trump. Hochschild draws on her expert knowledge of the sociology of emotion to help us understand what it feels like to live in “red” America. Along the way she finds answers to one of the crucial questions of contemporary American politics: why do the people who would seem to benefit most from “liberal” government intervention abhor the very idea?

Join New America NYC for a conversation with Arlie Russell Hochschild on a conversation that plumbs our deep political divide and asks the question: how does the world look from the heart of the right?

Arlie Russell Hochschild
Professor Emerita, University of California, Berkeley
Author, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right

Jamil Smith  @JamilSmith
Senior National Correspondent, MTV News

Nina Burleigh  @ninaburleigh
National Politics Correspondent, Newsweek

Copies of Arlie Russell Hochschild's Strangers In Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right will be available for purchase and signed by the author. Join the conversation online using #HeartOfTheRight and by following @NewAmericaNYC.

In the spring and summer of 2016, the world's richest democracies witnessed a collective upheaval that shocked the globe. As if overnight, many Democrats backed a socialist named Bernie Sanders; the United Kingdom voted to the leave the European Union, in a stunning rebuke; the nativist billionaire Donald Trump became the presidential nominee of the Republican Party; and a slew of extreme parties continued to win election after election in countries like Norway, Austria, and Greece.

A new book by John B. Judis, The Populist Explosion, traces the phenomenon of populism back to its roots in the 1890s United States and sees it in a new light: as a warning sign for the ideological crises to come. What started in the United States spread to Europe and back again. As the EU grapples with the aftershock of Brexit, the U.S. must also come to terms with the implications of the rise of Sanders and Trump: growing numbers of people are insisting that our standard worldview is breaking down and in desperate need of repair.

Join New America NYC for a conversation with John B. Judis and New America co-founder Michael Lind on the social and economic upheaval roiling politics on both sides of the aisle and both sides of the Atlantic.

John B. Judis  @JohnBJudis
Editor at Large, Talking Points Memo
Author, The Populist Explosion: How the Great Recession Transformed American and European Politics

Michael Lind
Co-founder and Policy Director, Economic Growth Program, New America

The only warheads we thought would go off in the United States were Soviet warheads. We never considered that our own warheads could detonate our own continent. – Allan Childers, Missile Combat Crew

It is September 19, 1980, and a nuclear disaster is playing out in a missile silo outside Little Rock, Arkansas. A worker accidentally drops a socket, puncturing the fuel tank of an intercontinental ballistic missile carrying the most powerful nuclear warhead in our arsenal. It sets in motion a chain of emergency responses to head off damage and destruction of unknown reach.

Directed by Emmy Award winner Robert Kenner (Food, Inc., Merchants of Doubt) and based on the critically acclaimed book by Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Command and Control is a minute-by-minute account of the long-hidden story of the "Damascus Accident." With original footage and eyewitness accounts, the film recalls this near-miss catastrophe, shocking for being only one of thousands of close brushes with nuclear incidents, according to a recently declassified Department of Energy document.

Join New America NYC for a screening of Command and Control and discussion about the risks of our aging nuclear arsenal and current efforts in arms control and nonproliferation.

Robert Kenner
Director, Producer, and Co-writer, Command and Control

Eric Schlosser
Producer and Co-writer, Command and Control

Sharon Squassoni
Director and Senior Fellow, Proliferation Prevention Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Tamara Patton
Doctoral Candidate, Nuclear Futures Lab, Princeton University

In a world in which the instant push of a button can lead to the death of a particular individual more than eight thousand miles away, is it possible to define "war" with any clarity? What separates the targeting of an enemy combatant under lawful wartime from the extrajudicial murder of someone suspected of wrongdoing? What is the purpose of a modern military in a world where future threats come from computer hackers, terrorists, and other nonstate actors?

These are some of the questions Future of War fellow Rosa Brooks poses in her new book,  How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything. Backed up by a career with human rights NGOs and top positions in the Pentagon, she argues that by viewing more and more threats as "war," its ambit of law seems to apply to more and more spheres of human activity. The result: a greater tolerance for secrecy and coercion, the inevitable expansion of the military, and a society distrustful of the entity tasked with protecting it.

Join New America NYC for a discussion on how to bring into focus the increasingly blurry boundaries of "war" and "peace" and the global security outcomes that depends on their understanding.

It has been 43 years since Roe v. Wade passed 7-2, yet the war against reproductive health clinics has not subsided.

In the past six years, 288 TRAP () laws have been passed by state legislatures, subjecting reproductive health clinics and abortion providers to legal restrictions not imposed on any other medical professionals. Unable to comply with these extensive laws, dozens of clinics in states like Alabama and Texas have been forced to close, leaving scores of women under-served, without access to legal healthcare services.

But now, a contingent of clinic workers and lawyers have taken the fight to the courts. Trapped follows leaders on the front lines of an escalating battle who are working to change the fact that, for many women, a zip code determines the fate of their constitutional rights.

As another landmark Supreme Court case addressing abortion is decided this month, join New America for a screening of Sundance Film Festival award-winner Trapped and a conversation with leading experts on what remains among the country's most divisive issues. Stephanie Toti, lead counsel on that case, Whole Women's Health v. Cole, will be joining us.

This event is a Social Cinema Screening.

In the wake of the Great Recession, as the housing bubble burst and unemployment rose, millions of American families experienced a precipitous decline in their net worth. Those who were able to stay in their homes were able to weather the storm, but others couldn't.

Tragically, something more nefarious – and preventable – was also in play: foreclosure fraud. In his new book, Chain of Title, David Dayen chronicles how a small group of ordinary people uncovered the large-scale corporate malfeasance that undermined the financial security of families when they were at their most economically vulnerable. Scores of families were faced with eviction from their homes based on false evidence by mortgage companies with no legal right to foreclose.

Stories like this are, at once, a cautionary tale on how financial services firms can behave badly and an inspiring story of the citizens fighting back. Chain of Title provides a valuable context for the current and future fight to protect New York homeowners from the next wave of foreclosure scams, battles that continue to be waged on the frontlines by legal service attorneys and community activists.

“By the middle of this century we will trigger runaway climate change — a process beyond our control. What do you do if you have that information? What do you do?” – Dr. Steven Chu, Former U.S. Energy Secretary and Nobel Prize winner

Climate change may be the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced. There are solutions, but we are in a race against the clock to respond to this critical global threat. In Time To Choose, Academy Award® winner Charles Ferguson (Inside Job, No End In Sight) explores the far-reaching effects of the climate change crisis and examines the potential of solutions already available and the promise of those to come.

Shot on five continents, from the oil fields of Nigeria to the forests of Indonesia and the coal mines of Appalachia, Time To Choose investigates the costs that fossil fuels and industrialized agriculture take on human lives and future of the land. Through interviews with clean energy and environmental entrepreneurs; innovators in urban planning and design; global and local leaders; and the grassroots activists working on the frontlines of climate change, the film takes an in-depth look at many of the remarkable people working to save our planet.

Join New America for a screening of Time To Choose and a conversation with the film's director and leading climate advocates on what may very well be the next greatest political issue of our time.

This event is a Social Cinema Screening.

Four years ago – in the infancy of Syria's civil war – Janine di Giovanni traveled to Syria on assignment for the New York Times. That trip became the first of many as conflict in the region escalated tragically, reaching far beyond borders and affecting millions of lives.

When di Giovanni, a seasoned war correspondent, first arrived in Damascus in 2012, she immediately recognized the familiar sight of a country trembling on the brink of war. Through the intimate stories of the ordinary civilians she encountered in places like Damascus, Homs, Darayya, and Aleppo, The Morning They Came For Us illuminates the harsh realities of warfare from all sides. What began with a handful of teenagers writing anti-government slogans rapidly turned into a full civil war, transforming a people in denial into a people in the midst of violence from which they have never recovered.

Join New America for a conversation with International Security Program Fellow Janine di Giovanni on the devastating impacts of the Syria crisis and the ongoing realities of daily life in a war zone.

Copies of Janine di Giovanni's The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria will be available for purchase. Join the conversation online using #DispatchesFromSyria and by following @NewAmericaNYC.

Janine di Giovanni
Middle East Editor, Newsweek
Fellow, International Security Program, New America
Author, The Morning They Came For Us: Dispatches from Syria
@janinedigi

Ben Taub
Contributor, The New Yorker
@bentaub91

Catherine "Kitty" Genovese was stabbed to death on a street in

The murder of Kitty Genovese transfixed New York and the world;

A half-century after the crime, spurred by the recent death of Kitty's murderer Winston

Join New America for a screening of The Witness followed by a

This is a Social Cinema Screening.

Popular awareness of postpartum depression has improved tremendously in recent years. Obstetricians now regularly screen patients for post-delivery symptoms of sadness and anxiety, and depressive illness in new parents is discussed in thousands of books, articles, support groups, and online forums.

Yet there has been no such growth in public understanding of prenataldepression. Though studies show that depression during pregnancy is just as common, and equally dangerous, many newly pregnant women are unaware that it is even a possibility. Conditioned to believe that pregnancy should be a joyful period, depressed expectant mothers may avoid seeking help, or find that their feelings are trivialized or stigmatized by partners and friends. Many obstetricians and psychiatrists remain reluctant to prescribe antidepressants to pregnant patients, even as suicide has become one of the leading causes of death among pregnant women and new mothers. And in the United States, a pregnant woman who survives a suicide attempt may find herself receiving, not support and psychiatric treatment, but a murder charge.

What can be done to ease the damaging guilt, shame, and stigma surrounding depression during pregnancy? Could ideals of maternal sacrifice be impeding the protection of some of our communities' most vulnerable mothers?

This is a Broadly Speaking event.