About the Book
When the Women’s March gathered millions just one day after Trump’s inauguration, a new era of progressive action was born. Organizing on the far Right led to Trump’s election, bringing authoritarianism and the specter of neo-fascism, and intensifying corporate capitalism’s growing crises of inequality and injustices. Yet now we see a new universalizing resistance among progressive and left movements for truth, dignity, and a world based on democracy, equality, and sustainability.
Derber offers the first comprehensive guide to this new era and an original vision and strategy for movement success. He convincingly shows how only a new universalizing wave, a progressive and revolutionary "movement of movements," can counter the world-universalizing economic and cultural forces of intensifying corporate and far-right power.
Derber explores the crises and eroding legitimacy of the globalized capitalist system and the right wing movements that helped create the Trump era. He shows how left universalizing movements can--and must—converge to propel a mass base that can prevent societal, economic, or ecological collapse, stop a resurgent Right, and build a democratic social alternative. He describes tactics and strategies for thisnew progressive movement. Brief guest "interludes" by Medea Benjamin, Noam Chomsky, Ralph Nader, Bill Fletcher, Juliet Schor, Gar Alperovitz, Chuck Collins, Matt Nelson, Janet Wallace, and other prominent figures tell how to coalesce and universalize activism into a more powerful movement wave—at local, community, national, and international levels.
Vivid and highly accessible, this book is for activists, students, and all citizens concerned about the erosion of justice and democracy. It thoroughly illuminates the rationale, theory, practice, humanism, love, and joy of the social transformation that we urgently need.
Table of Contents:
Table of Contents
A PERSONAL PRELUDE:
INTRODUCTION: A CALL TO ACTION
PART I UP AGAINST THE WALL: THE UNIVERSALIZING CORPORATE SYSTEM AND THE APOCALPYSE
Chapter 1 THE SYSTEM AND ITS DISCONTENTS: THE MILITARIZED MATRIX VS US
Chapter 2 THE PAC-MAN SYSTEM: HOW IT IS UNIVERALIZING AND THREATENING EXTINCTION
Part II UNIVERSALIZING RESISTANCE
Chapter 3 IRRESISTIBLE RESISTANCE: THE GRASS ROOTS AND THE WAVES OF CHANGE
Chapter 4 MOVEMENT GPS: TEN RULES OF THE ROAD TO DEMOCRACY AND JUSTICE
Chapter 5 FIGHT THE POWER, A.K.A THE SYSTEM: CHOOSE DEMOCRACY OVER AUTHORITARIANISM
Chapter 6 WIN THE MAJORITY: IT’S EASIER THAN YOU THINK
Chapter 7 Converge! GET OUT OF YOUR SILO
Chapter 8 DEMOCRATIZE THE WORLD: GLOBALIZE AND LOCALIZE
Chapter 9 PACHAMAMA: PROTECT MOTHER EARTH
Chapter 10 DON’T JUST SAY NO: SAY YES TO ALTERNATIVES
Chapter 11 CREATE MEDIA OF, BY AND FOR THE PEOPLE: MOVEMENTS BEYOND PROPOGANDA
Chapter 12 LET’S GET POLITICAL: MOVEMENTS AND ELECTIONS
Chapter 13 THINK, Learn and teach: EDUCATION AS ACTIVISM
Chapter 14 CHOOSE LIFE AND LOVE: THE CULTURE OF ACTIVISM
PART III FROM VISION TO PRACTICE
Chapter 15 GRAND STRATEGY: ANSWERING THE BIG QUESTIONS
Chapter 16 WALKING THE TALK: NUTS AND BOLTS
About the Author :
A life-long activist and public speaker, Charles Derber is the author of 20 books and is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. He writes for and has been reviewed in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, Time, Newsweek, Newsday, Truthout, and The Christian Science Monitor. He has made hundreds of radio and television appearances. His books are translated into Chinese, Korean, Tamil, German and Polish- and he is a bestselling author in South Korea; he has done extended book tours in German bookstores and blues coffee houses, and has lectured often in Italy. Derber is a public intellectual - shortlisted in 2006 for best book in current affairs - who believes that serious ideas should be written in an accessible and entertaining style. His most recent books include Bully Nation; Sociopathic Society: A People's Sociology of the United States; and The Disinherited Majority: Capital Questions - Piketty and Beyond.
Review :
"This book is joyfully jammed with the wisdom, experience, tools and motivation to overcome the ravages of the corporate state. On page after page, the theme is about building democratic initiatives and institutions for the common good and the good life of justice, peace and freedom. So gripping and personal is "Welcome to the Revolution", you can scarcely put this book down without putting yourself down. Read, digest, reflect and join with others for a functioning democracy." -Ralph Nader, Consumer Advocate and author of Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than We Think
"Welcome to the Revolution could not have come at a better moment. With the election of Donald Trump, millions of Americans suddenly found themselves attending women’s rallies, supporting sanctuary cities, protesting Islamophobia, confronting their elected officials—even doing civil disobedience or running for local office. But activists, and the movements they are part of, need strategy, they need direction, they need to know not just what they are resisting but what transformations they aim for. Charles Derber’s brilliant and inspiring new book provides the glue that will help us craft a revolutionary movement that can resist, transform and prevail. Read it!" - Medea Benjamin, Co-Founder of Code Pink and Global Exchange
"Charlie Derber’s new book calls us all both to work harder on our particular issues and to get out of our silos to make common cause with others to change the system as a whole. This is the right message for the
Trump era, and it is presented in powerful, moral, and practical terms. A must read for anyone serious about building a meaningful and positive future!" - Gar Alperovitz, author of What Then Must We Do? Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution, and Co-Chair of The Next System Project
"Derber has written the theoretical and practical manifesto for this historical moment, reminding us of the tremendous possibilities at hand. Welcome to the Revolution explains how extractive capitalism has led to expanding systemic social, economic and ecological system disruptions. Yet these same forces have seeded 'universalizing resistance' movements that, if they succeed, will push us back from the brink and toward a next system that is more democratic, equal, peaceful and lives in harmony with the earth’s ecological limits. To find out how you can 'universalize' and make a difference, read this book." - Chuck Collins, Institute for Policy Studies, co-editor of Inequality.org and author of Born on Third Base
