We’ve just shown up in the streets to keep making our voices heard: NO KINGS! What’s next? Our families, our air, and our democracy are all under attack. But America belongs to its people. At Third Act, Americans over sixty are bringing the power and wisdom of older people to this movement—and we’re just getting started.
About this event
In this conversation, leaders across Third Act and our guest Erica Chenoweth, Director of Harvard’s Nonviolent Action Lab, will share strategic approaches for the road ahead—from protecting free and fair elections to ensuring local voices are heard as data centers loom over our communities. We’ll explore how accelerating the buildout of renewable energy can help shield Americans from the power consolidation and price shocks we’re seeing today. Participants will leave with a clear framework for understanding this moment—and how we can build power together as the midterms approach.
“Few humans have ever studied nonviolent resistance with as much depth, rigor, and devotion to change. Erica is truly a pioneer in what may be the most important thread of political science. They are famous for the proof that nonviolent resistance succeeds more often than campaigns of force and terror, and for formulating what’s come to be known as the 3.5 percent rule–the idea that when a significant percentage of a country rises up to demand change, it becomes a very hard force to stop.” – Bill McKibben
Erica Chenoweth
Erica Chenoweth, Ph.D. is the Frank Stanton Professor of the First Amendment and Academic Dean for Faculty Development at Harvard Kennedy School, a Faculty Dean at Pforzheimer House at Harvard College, and a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Chenoweth directs the Nonviolent Action Lab at Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, where they study political violence and its alternatives. They are particularly interested in how people effectively resist authoritarianism and push for systemic change, and in using social science tools and evidence to support movement-led political transformation. Chenoweth’s current book project explores the puzzling decline in the success of civil resistance movements in the past decade, even as the technique has become more popular worldwide.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of Third Act
Bill McKibben is a contributing writer to The New Yorker, and a founder of Third Act, which organizes people over the age of 60 to work on climate and racial justice. He founded the first global grassroots climate campaign, 350.org, and serves as the Schumann Distinguished Professor in Residence at Middlebury College in Vermont. In 2014 he was awarded the Right Livelihood Prize, sometimes called the ‘alternative Nobel,’ in the Swedish Parliament. He’s also won the Gandhi Peace Award, and honorary degrees from 19 colleges and universities. He has written more than twenty books about the environment, including his first, The End of Nature, published in 1989, The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon: A Graying American Looks Back at his Suburban Boyhood and Wonders What the Hell Happened, and his latest book is Here Comes The Sun
Akaya Windwood
Akaya Windwood facilitates transformation. She advises, trains, and consults on how change happens individually, organizationally, and societally. She is on faculty for the Just Economy Institute, and is founder of the New Universal, which centers human wisdom in the wisdom of brown womxn. She was President of Rockwood Leadership Institute for many years, and directs the Thriving Roots Fund, which supports young womxn’s finance and philanthropic learning and leadership based in generosity and interconnectedness. She received the 2020 Vision Award from Middlebury College and was one of Conscious Company’s 30 World Changing Women of 2018. She is an Ella Award recipient from the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and served on the Alameda County Human Rights Commission.
Akaya is deeply committed to working for a fair and equitable global society while infusing a sense of purpose, delight, and wonder into everything we do. She lives in Oakland, CA where she reads science fiction, makes sauerkraut, and relishes growing enormous squashes in her garden.
