A handbook for aspiring activists that readers will find to be both inspiring and practical.
Daley-Harris details the history of his successful citizens’ lobbyist group and sketches a blueprint for others to follow.
The author’s nonprofit lobbying group, RESULTS, whose name once stood for “Responsibility for Ending Starvation Using Legislation, Trimtabbing, and Support,” was founded in 1980 in Southern California as a small group of friends writing letters to elected officials to help fight poverty and world hunger. Decades later, it’s blossomed into a considerable organization with chapters all over the world, and it’s one that’s been widely recognized for helping to reduce malnutrition and preventable disease with what Daley-Harris calls “transformational advocacy.” As he sees it, his success was a function of this deliberate approach, which he sharply contrasts with that typically practiced by many larger organizations, a strategy that “disempowers the average citizen.” The author distills transformational advocacy into three practical parts, which he articulates with impressive clarity. First, such advocacy requires an organizational structure that provides support for its volunteers with a clarity of mission purpose and a set of high expectations. Second, it features a disciplined plan for outreach that not only produces letters to elected officials and editorials to newspapers, but also cultivates close personal relationships with politicians and journalists. Finally, and most importantly, the author focuses insistently on the empowering value of idealism—the sense that one can truly make a difference: “This idealism includes holding ourselves and our governments accountable to our greatest ideals. If government is broken, we are part of that brokenness and must engage in healing ourselves too.”
Daley-Harris’ approach to explicating transformational advocacy is eclectic. He furnishes a history of his own group, personal testimonials from those who’ve worked within it, and an account of the success of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, the first organization to replicate the specific methodology of RESULTS. The author’s focus is less on limning a conceptual framework to be copied, though, and more on concrete illustrations that show transformational advocacy in action. As a result, this is a thoroughly practical work that could serve as an instructional guidebook for those looking to start their own advocacy group, or who simply wish to become more involved as individuals. Aside from all the practical instruction, including how to become an effective spokesperson, Daley-Harris explains what he sees as the proper mindset of the activist: a psychological comportment that’s unabashedly and cheerfully optimistic and freed from the expectation of failure. In short, he writes, activists must come to see themselves as leaders who are capable of changing things: “With transformational advocacy, volunteers are trained, encouraged, and then succeed at doing things they never thought they could do as advocates—accomplishments like meeting with members of Congress and bringing them on board and enlisting editors to write about their issue—and, as a result…they see themselves as community leaders.” Overall, the author’s analysis of effective action is as persuasive as it is accessible, and his call to democratic participation is inspiring.
A handbook for aspiring activists that readers will find to be both inspiring and practical.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781953943347
Page Count: 348
Publisher: Rivertowns Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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