Vivian Phillips

America has a long history of using boycotts as a form of economic protest—leveraging collective purchasing power to demand inclusion and to challenge how wealth is accumulated and withheld. The Montgomery Bus Boycott famously crippled a city transit system and helped dismantle legalized segregation. In 1963, the Birmingham Campaign combined sit-ins with targeted business boycotts, creating enough financial pressure to push White business owners toward integration and political reform. Even...

Q & A with TOPDOG/UNDERDOG Director Valerie Curtis-Newton Suzan-Lori Parks, the playwright behind Topdog/Underdog , was the first woman of African descent to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. When she received the honor in 2002, Parks was widely recognized as “a pioneer of historically conscious and linguistically complex theater.” By the time of her Pulitzer win, Parks had already earned numerous awards and distinctions. Her body of work included screenplays for the films Anemone Me  (1990)...

Happy New Year!  Hopefully, your year is getting off to a reasonably decent start. There is a sense of cautious optimism in the air—new beginnings emerging as we collectively bid farewell to the year behind us. That past year asked much of us: to find ways to fend off chaos and invite calm, to endure uncertainty, and to keep moving forward. It was hard work, but we made it. Now, with the slate cleared and the lessons of the past as our guide, we can imagine new ways of operating in the next...