Best of
Social-Change

2004

The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear


Paul Rogat Loeb - 2004
    In THE IMPOSSIBLE WILL TAKE A LITTLE WHILE, a phrase borrowed from Billie Holliday, the editor of Soul of a Citizen brings together fifty stories and essays that range across nations, eras, wars, and political movements.Danusha Goska, an Indiana activist with a paralyzing physical disability, writes about overcoming political immobilization, drawing on her history with the Peace Corps and Mother Teresa. Vaclav Havel, the former president of the Czech Republic, finds value in seemingly doomed or futile actions taken by oppressed peoples.Rosemarie Freeney Harding recalls the music that sustained the civil rights movement, and Paxus Calta-Star recounts the powerful vignette of an 18-year-old who launched the overthrow of Bulgaria’s dictatorship.Many of the essays are new, others classic works that continue to inspire. Together, these writers explore a path of heartfelt community involvement that leads beyond despair to compassion and hope. The voices collected in THE IMPOSSIBLE WILL TAKE A LITTLE WHILE will help keep us all working for a better world despite the obstacles.

Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organizing for Reproductive Justice


Loretta J. Ross - 2004
    But, if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, let us work together.”—Lila Watson, Aboriginal ActivistVibrant. Strong. Fierce. Undivided Rights captures the evolving and largely unknown activist history of women of color organizing for reproductive justice—on their own behalf.Undivided Rights presents a fresh and textured understanding of the reproductive rights movement by placing the experiences, priorities, and activism of women of color in the foreground. Using historical research, original organizational case studies, and personal interviews, the authors illuminate how women of color have led the fight to control their own bodies and reproductive destinies. Undivided Rights shows how women of color—-starting within their own Latina, African American, Native American, and Asian American communities—have resisted coercion of their reproductive abilities. Projected against the backdrop of the mainstream pro-choice movement and radical right agendas, these dynamic case studies feature the groundbreaking work being done by health and reproductive rights organizations led by women-of-color.The book details how and why these women have defined and implemented expansive reproductive health agendas that reject legalistic remedies and seek instead to address the wider needs of their communities. It stresses the urgency for innovative strategies that push beyond the traditional base and goals of the mainstream pro-choice movement—strategies that are broadly inclusive while being specific, strategies that speak to all women by speaking to each woman. While the authors raise tough questions about inclusion, identity politics, and the future of women’s organizing, they also offer a way out of the limiting focus on “choice.”Undivided Rights articulates a holistic vision for reproductive freedom. It refuses to allow our human rights to be divvied up and parceled out into isolated boxes that people are then forced to pick and choose among.

The Search for a Nonviolent Future: A Promise of Peace for Ourselves, Our Families, and Our World


Michael N. Nagler - 2004
    Beginning with the achievements of Mahatma Gandhi, and following the legacy of nonviolence through the struggles against Nazism in Europe, racism in America, oppression in China and Latin America, and ethnic conflicts in Africa and Bosnia, Nagler unveils a hidden history. Nonviolence, he proposes, has proven its power against arms and social injustice wherever it has been correctly understood and applied.Nagler's approach is not only historical, but also spiritual. He argues, drawing upon the experience of Gandhi and other activists, that the shift to nonviolence begins within the individual, through the reshaping and re-visioning of how one understands the world. He then shows how from changes in the individual, changes in the larger community follow.Is There No Other Way? is a provocative and emotionally powerful document that challenges readers' assumptions about the workings of power in their homes and communities, as well as the larger political arena.

Presence: An Exploration of Profound Change in People, Organizations, and Society


Peter M. Senge - 2004
    In wide-ranging conversations held over a year and a half, organizational learning pioneers Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers explored the nature of transformational change--how it arises, and the fresh possibilities it offers a world dangerously out of balance. The book introduces the idea of "presence"--a concept borrowed from the natural world that the whole is entirely present in any of its parts--to the worlds of business, education, government, and leadership. Too often, the authors found, we remain stuck in old patterns of seeing and acting. By encouraging deeper levels of learning, we create an awareness of the larger whole, leading to actions that can help to shape its evolution and our future.Drawing on the wisdom and experience of 150 scientists, social leaders, and entrepreneurs, including Brian Arthur, Rupert Sheldrake, Buckminster Fuller, Lao Tzu, and Carl Jung, Presence is both revolutionary in its exploration and hopeful in its message. This astonishing and completely original work goes on to define the capabilities that underlie our ability to see, sense, and realize new possibilities--in ourselves, in our institutions and organizations, and in society itself.

Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership


William R. Torbert - 2004
    Through short stories of leadership and organizational changes in the areas of business, politics, health care, and education, this book illustrates how this process can increase personal integrity, improve relationships, and lead to company profitability and long-term success.

Light of Oneness


Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee - 2004
    It shows how mystics are helping with this work, bringing light and love where it is needed, transforming old patterns, and bringing this new awareness into the mainstream. This book stresses the role of the feminine and how her natural understanding of life’s wholeness and interrelatedness is pivotal to evolution, offering an understanding of a future in which the knowledge of science and the wisdom of the mystic will come together.

Inez: The Life and Times of Inez Milholland


Linda J. Lumsden - 2004
    Moving in radical circles, she agitated for social change in the prewar years, and she epitomized the independent New Woman of the time. Her death at age 30 while stumping for suffrage in California in 1916 made her the sole martyr of the American suffrage movement. Her death helped inspire two years of militant protests by the National Woman's Party, including the picketing of the White House, which led in 1920 to ratification of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. Lumsden's study of this colorful and influential figure restores to history an important link between the homebound women of the 19th century and the iconoclastic feminists of the 1970s.

Ecological Medicine: Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves


Kenny Ausubel - 2004
    Drawn largely from presentations given at the annual Bioneers Conference, it focuses on pragmatic solutions growing at the fertile interface between environmental restoration and holistic healing. The Bioneers (“biological pioneers”) are a network of scientists, writers, economists, artists, and others with practical and visionary solutions for our most pressing environmental and social challenges.Advocates of the emerging movement known as Ecological Medicine look to the strategic public health measures that first do no harm to the environment and, in turn, improve human health. They call for prevention and precaution as the first line of action. They seek to heal the tragic split that conventional medicine made from nature, and to conjure nature’s own mysterious capacity for self-repair. They celebrate the virtues of ancient natural medicine but also embrace an integrative approach that blends the best of all healing practices—emphasizing the centrality of the human spirit in the healing process. Their inspiring work, described so compellingly in this book, is of critical relevance to everyone concerned about health and the environment.

Practicing Servant-Leadership: Succeeding Through Trust, Bravery, and Forgiveness


Michele Lawrence - 2004
    Each contributor focuses on his or her area of expertise, exploring how servant-leadership works in the real world, using examples from a variety of organizations such as businesses, nonprofits, churches, schools, foundations, and leadership organizations. Highlights of the book's twelve essays include information on: how the idealistic vision of the servant as leader works even in the competitive world of business. encouraging leaders to begin by looking at what they themselves want to become and then to bring this knowledge into their daily leadership. how the principles of servant-leadership can enhance our understanding and practice of philanthropy. examining the board chairperson's especially vital role as a servant- leader. exploring what leaders learn from being followers. Order your copy today!

Community Psychology: In Pursuit of Liberation and Well-being


Geoffrey Nelson - 2004
    Following this, the authors look closely at the conceptual, interventional, and research tools of community psychology and how they can be applied in different contexts, the difficulties faced and practical ways to help achieve social justice.Featuring a wide range of critical perspectives, international examples, exercises and additional online resources, this textbook will encourage students to think more critically about the role of psychology in society and about how community psychology can aid in the liberation of oppressed groups to promote social justice and well-being.

Not Turning Away: The Practice of Engaged Buddhism


Susan Moon - 2004
    Not Turning Away is a treasury of writings on the philosophy and practice of engaged Buddhism by some of the most well-known and respected figures in the movement, gleaned from the pages of the magazine that is the primary forum for engaged Buddhism in America and elsewhere: Turning Wheel: The Journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. Not Turning Away provides a history of the engaged Buddhism movement, an analysis of its underlying principles, and inspiring practical examples of real people's experiences in putting spiritual practice to the test on the personal, national, and global levels. The range of topics—from political oppression to prison work, disability, racism, poverty, nonviolence, forgiveness, the student-teacher relationship, and homelessness—demonstrates the applicability of Buddhist teaching to every concern of modern life. Contributors include: Robert Aitken Jan Chozen Bays Melody Ermachild Chavis Zoketsu Norman Fischer Thich Nhat Hanh Jack Kornfield Kenneth Kraft Joanna Macy Jarvis Jay Masters Fleet Maull Susan Moon Wendy Egyoku Nakao Maylie Scott Gary Snyder Robert Thurman Joan Tollifson Diana Winston

The Upstart Spring: Esalen and the Human Potential Movement: The First Twenty Years


Walter Truett Anderson - 2004
    . . a complex story, but a sequential one nonetheless, with feuds and psychic shoot-outs, games of capture the flag and smell the roses." --Arthur Hough, San Francisco Chronicle"Upstart Spring tells Esalen's riveting, unfinished story - even-handedly, entertainingly, with sympathy, and yet holding little back." --David Toolan, Commonwealth"An absolute delight: brimming with juicy gossip, and as carefully crafted as a page-turner novel. And it has substance, the gift of a therapist who also happens to be a cultural historian with a good eye for the telling meta-detail." --Sandy McDonald, New Age Journal"Walt Anderson has the requisite experience, humor, and affection (if not detachment, since Esalen teaches, indeed proves, that detachment is a universal impossibility) to carry off a wonderful account." --Stewart Brand, Co-Evolution Quarterly"A wonderful read, consistently entertaining on several levels." --Michael Rossman, Associate for Humanistic Psychology Newsletter"A superb wrap-up of a notable influence on our popular culture." --Rita Fink, Pacific Sun