A unique approach -- uses stories, lyrics, and poems to inspire and energize both new and experienced organizers Offers sage insights into aspects of community organizing not addressed by more conventional manuals Written by a veteran activist and musician with over forty-five years of experience working for progressive causes This latest work by legendary activist, musician, and author Si Kahn is a different kind of community organizing book. As with other books, including some by Kahn himself, it does describe many of the practical tactics organizers use. But it’s also about community organizing as a way of thinking and a way of life. For Kahn, it has been a way of life. He has been intimately involved in some of the most important progressive struggles of the past fifty years—the civil rights movement, the Harlan County miners’ strike, the fight against prison privatization, and many more. In this unique and moving book he uses his experiences and those of the women and men he’s worked with to illuminate critical aspects of organizing not touched upon by more conventional manuals. The stories Kahn tells are entertaining, funny, sad, and inspiring, but they’re more than that—they’re examples of creative community organizing in action. And like the secular rabbi he calls himself, Kahn lays out the specific lessons each tale is meant to teach—not only strategy and tactics, but advice on how to deal on a personal level with the demands of a difficult but vitally important job. Creative Community Organizing will help established organizers become more innovative and encourage them to question established principles and decide whether or not they still work. Aspiring organizers will discover a whole new way of looking at the world—they’ll gain a sense of empowerment, understand that they can live and work in ways that help make the world more just and humane.

Si Kahn's impromptu song at BK Author Day Lunch Meeting

It may be hard to believe in an era of Walmart, Citizens United, and the Koch brothers, but corporations are on the decline. The number of American companies listed on the stock market dropped by half between 1996 and 2012. In recent years we've seen some of the most storied corporations go bankrupt (General Motors, Chrysler, Eastman Kodak) or disappear entirely (Bethlehem Steel, Lehman Brothers, Borders).

Gerald Davis argues this is a root cause of the income inequality and social instability we face today. Corporations were once an integral part of building the middle class. He points out that in their heyday they offered millions of people lifetime employment, a stable career path, health insurance, and retirement pensions. They were like small private welfare states.

The businesses that are replacing them will not fill the same role. For one thing, they employ far fewer people—the combined global workforces of Facebook, Yelp, Zynga, LinkedIn, Zillow, Tableau, Zulily, and Box are smaller than the number of people who lost their jobs when Circuit City was liquidated in 2009. And in the “sharing economy,” companies have no obligation to most of the people who work for them—at the end of 2014 Uber had over 160,000 “driver-partners” in the United States but recognized only about 2,000 people as actual employees.

Davis tracks the rise of the large American corporation and the economic, social, and technological developments that have led to its decline. The future could see either increasing economic polarization, as careers turn into jobs and jobs turn into tasks, or a more democratic economy built from the grass roots. It's up to us.

In his groundbreaking book Somebodies and Nobodies, Robert Fuller identified a form of domination that everyone has experienced but few dare to protest: rankism, abuse of the power inherent in rank to exploit and humiliate someone of lower rank. It plays a role in just about every form of social oppressionÑracism, sexism, homophobia, and religious intolerance all have a significant element of rankism in them. Most everyone has felt the sting of rankism--at the hands of a dictatorial boss, a condescending teacher, an arrogant doctor, or an imperious bureaucrat. But, equally, most everyone has inflicted it on someone of lower rank. That we are, all of us, both victims and perpetrators of rankism mandates a novel, multifaceted strategy for confronting it. Fuller isn't proposing that we do away with rank--without it organizations become dysfunctional. He's not advocating an egalitarian society where all are equal in rank but rather a "dignitarian" one where all are equal in dignity: a society in which rankholders are held accountable, rankism is shunned, and dignity is broadly protected.In his groundbreaking book Somebodies and Nobodies, Robert Fuller identified a form of domination that everyone has experienced but few dare to protest: rankism, abuse of the power inherent in rank to exploit and humiliate someone of lower rank. It plays a role in just about every form of social oppressionÑracism, sexism, homophobia, and religious intolerance all have a significant element of rankism in them. Most everyone has felt the sting of rankism--at the hands of a dictatorial boss, a condescending teacher, an arrogant doctor, or an imperious bureaucrat. But, equally, most everyone has inflicted it on someone of lower rank. That we are, all of us, both victims and perpetrators of rankism mandates a novel, multifaceted strategy for confronting it. Fuller isn't proposing that we do away with rank--without it organizations become dysfunctional. He's not advocating an egalitarian society where all are equal in rank but rather a "dignitarian" one where all are equal in dignity: a society in which rankholders are held accountable, rankism is shunned, and dignity is broadly protected.

• By the author of the bestselling Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank

• Argues that rankism--abuse of the power that comes with superior rank--does serious damage to our private relationships and public institutions

• Details how to design social institutions that overcome rankism and protect human dignity

• Learn more at www.BreakingRanks.net

Provides an intimate experience of how seven healthy and resilient communities took on intractable problems by working together in new and different ways.

The Enhanced Edition includes 25 minutes of animation, video, and audio. The animation shows the “Two Loops Theory of Change” with a voiceover from co-author Deborah Frieze. Three videos show inspirational “Walk On” communities in Brazil, South Africa, and India. This edition also includes the “Walk Out Walk On” theme song.

• 2012 Nautilus Silver Award Winner in Social Change Category

• By the bestselling author of Leadership and the New Science and Turning to One Another

• Provides an intimate experience of how seven healthy and resilient communities took on intractable problems by working together in new and different ways

• immerses the reader in the experience of each community through stories, essays, first-person accounts, and over 100 color photos

This is an era of increasingly complex problems, fewer and fewer resources to address them, and failing solutions. Is it possible to find viable solutions to the challenges we face today as individuals, communities, and nations? This inspiring book takes readers on a learning journey to seven communities around the world to meet people who have "walked out" of limiting beliefs and assumptions and "walked on" to create healthy and resilient communities. These Walk Outs who Walk On use their ingenuity and caring to figure out how to work with what they have to create what they need.

In India, we meet people from Shikshantar, a community that is rejecting the modern culture of money, with its emphasis on self-interest and scarcity, in favor of a gift culture based on generosity and reciprocity. In Zimbabwe, we discover the capacity people have to adapt and invent new ways of surviving and thriving in the face of total systems collapse.

Through essays, stories, and beautiful color photographs, Wheatley and Frieze immerse us in these communities that are accomplishing extraordinary things by relying on everyone to be an entrepreneur, a leader, an artist. From Mexico to Greece, from Columbus, Ohio to Johannesburg, South Africa, we discover that every community has within itself the ingenuity, intelligence, and inventiveness to solve the seemingly insolvable. "It's almost like we discovered a gift inside ourselves," one Brazilian said, "something that was already there.

WINNER OF THE 2015 IBPA BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AWARD IN POLITICS/CURRENT EVENTS

The Ecology of Law

Fritjof Capra and Ugo Mattei argue that at the root of many of the environmental, economic, and social crises we face today is a legal system based on an obsolete worldview. Capra, a bestselling author, physicist, and systems theorist, and Mattei, a distinguished legal scholar, explain how, by incorporating concepts from modern science, the law can become an integral part of bringing about a better world, rather than facilitating its destruction.

This is the first book to trace the fascinating parallel history of law and science from antiquity to modern times, showing how the two disciplines have always influenced each other—until recently. In the past few decades, science has shifted from seeing the natural world as a kind of cosmic machine best understood by analyzing each cog and sprocket to a systems perspective that views the world as a vast network of fluid communities and studies their dynamic interactions. The concept of ecology exemplifies this approach. But law is stuck in the old mechanistic paradigm: the world is simply a collection of discrete parts, and ownership of these parts is an individual right, protected by the state. Capra and Mattei show that this has led to overconsumption, pollution, and a general disregard on the part of the powerful for the common good.

Capra and Mattei outline the basic concepts and structures of a legal order consistent with the ecological principles that sustain life on this planet. This is a profound and visionary reconceptualization of the very foundations of the Western legal system, a kind of Copernican revolution in the law, with profound implications for the future of our planet.