On Friday, Feb. 6, Wellesley locals joined Wellesley College students and faculty at Wellesley Books to celebrate and discuss two recent book releases by Wellesley professors: English professor Dan Chiasson’s Bernie for Burlington and Africana Studies professor Kellie Carter Jackson’s We Refuse.

Rows of seats filled quickly, with some attendees standing between bookshelves for a better view of the panel discussion featuring Chiasson, Carter Jackson and moderator Dean of Academic Affairs Michael Jeffries. Chiasson’s Bernie for Burlington traces Senator Bernie Sanders’ political career and examines what his life reveals about American politics.

“I happened to grow up in Burlington, Vermont, during the time exactly in the years that Bernie Sanders was our mayor,” said Chiasson. “I felt a lot of gratitude for Bernie’s initiatives in our city that had real outreach to me in my community. I wanted to pay it back by telling the story.” 

Chiasson described the book as “rollicking, fun to read, rich and nuanced.” He cited his upbringing in a low-income, multigenerational household in Burlington as central to his interest in Sanders’ political career.

“When Bernie ran for mayor for the first time, he was written off as a ‘quack,’ sort of a gadfly,” Chiasson said. “Which, of course, made him incredibly intriguing and interesting to me.”

Chiasson also reflected that he was further motivated to write the book by his frustration with Democratic establishment resistance to Sanders’ movement in 2019. 

“It was a moment when Bernie’s appeal was spiking, yet the conversation among these Democratic Party operatives was, ‘How are we gonna stop this?”

Carter Jackson’s inspiration for We Refuse stemmed from her frustration with U.S. American politics and systemic injustices more broadly. The turbulence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the racial reckoning that arose after the murder of George Floyd prompted Carter Jackson to write an op-ed for the Atlantic, which later became the basis for We Refuse.

“Anger is like an engine,” she said. “It fuels you.” 

We Refuse, Carter Jackson’s second publication, challenges monolithic understandings of Black resistance while weaving historical analysis with personal anecdotes of resistance within Carter Jackson’s own family.

“I wanted to also write a book that moved beyond the binary of violence and nonviolence,” Carter Jackson said in an interview with the News. 

 The Jan. 6th insurrection at the U.S. Capitol cemented Carter Jackson’s understanding of double standards in the U.S. American protest movements. We Refuse explores the hypocrisy in how violence and resistance are framed differently depending on who is protesting, and includes strategies to combat white supremacy. 

“The way that we think about violence and nonviolence is very simplified: you’re either gonna protest or you’re gonna throw Molotov cocktails. But those can’t be the only options we have available when we are trying to combat things like white supremacy and things like fascism,” Carter Jackson said.

She hopes her book will be a way to continue this poignant conversation about racial injustice and help understand how to respond effectively.

“A lot of Black people are limping through life because of the handicaps of racism and white supremacy. How can we refuse?”

Both authors described a form of “refusal” taking place across the U.S. in light of recent political unrest in Minnesota and elsewhere in response to recent mass deportations by ICE. Carter Jackson said that the examples presented in these books of successful, perhaps unconventional political disruption are critical to learn from and to inform activism today. 

“The past is prologue,” she said. “Prisons did not always exist … ICE has not always been around. [That] means we can imagine a world with something different.” 

Chiasson agreed that unwavering resistance and a firm commitment to sustainable policy change are especially essential today. He compared Bernie Sanders to Zohran Mamdani, the Mayor of New York City, suggesting the growing appeal of democratic socialism, Sanders’ brand of politics. 

Carter Jackson echoed his statement, emphasizing the importance of solidarity.

“Solidarity is the greatest weapon to fight fascism, authoritarian rule and white supremacy,” she said. 

For Carter Jackson, the situation in Minnesota today serves as an ideal model for a proactive community response to targeted violence and hate.

“Seeing the ways that people are willing to be comrades, not just allies, but comrades in the trenches … is encouraging.”

Carter Jackson maintains that radical camaraderie and commitment to protecting U.S. democracy are what threaten Trump most. 

“When he sees that people are unified, that they can’t be divided and that there is solidarity, he is beside himself,” she said.

Carter Jackson and Chiasson received a standing ovation at the conclusion of the panel and were quickly surrounded by attendees.

Both books have also received national attention. Writing for The New York Times, Linda Villarossa pondered the balance between advising activists and creating a historical record in We Refuse, writing, “History — complicated, cleareyed and unrepentant — is her warning and her weapon of choice.”

Simultaneously, Bernie for Burlington was positively received by Tunku Varadarajan, writing for The Wall Street Journal, who praised the “often beautifully” written story of Bernie Sanders as a socialist hero.  

In the end, both professors expressed that their books aim to encourage hope. 

“I am sympathetic to the rage and the anger that people have at just grievous injustice,” said Carter Jackson. “And so, I am trying to think about how we do it differently. And when there is violence, when there is force, and it works, we have to grapple with that, too.” 

Contact the editor in charge of this article: Noufeesa Yahyaoui