Charles Derber – författare

Turnout! offers strategies for "emergency elections," like the 2020 races, and addresses the nuts-and-bolts for civic groups and individuals to effectively turn out the vote. Indeed, few elections in recent history represent the kind of apocalyptic turning point for our planet and democracy as the present one. Turnout! is both a creative work of political vision combined with a detailed manual for turning out millions of new voters.Participation at local, state, and federal levels will have an outsized impact on the future of democracy and life itself. The elections also provide an opportunity to power-up social movements that can re-frame and re-define civic participation in an age of extreme inequality, climate change, and pandemics.

Contributors include powerful movement leaders Maria Teresa Kumar (Voto Latino), Aimee Allison (She the People), Winona LaDuke (Honor the Earth), and Matt Nelson (Presente.org); leading public officials advocating greater voter engagement like Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and Wisconsin Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, and councilors Helen Gym and Nikki Fortunato Bas. Turnout! reveals strategies and real-world tactics to mobilize millions of discouraged, apathetic, or suppressed voters, including women, low-income, Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian, LGBTQIA+, student and youth, and working-class voters.

Turnout! offers strategies for "emergency elections," like the 2020 races, and addresses the nuts-and-bolts for civic groups and individuals to effectively turn out the vote. Indeed, few elections in recent history represent the kind of apocalyptic turning point for our planet and democracy as the present one. Turnout! is both a creative work of political vision combined with a detailed manual for turning out millions of new voters.Participation at local, state, and federal levels will have an outsized impact on the future of democracy and life itself. The elections also provide an opportunity to power-up social movements that can re-frame and re-define civic participation in an age of extreme inequality, climate change, and pandemics.

Contributors include powerful movement leaders Maria Teresa Kumar (Voto Latino), Aimee Allison (She the People), Winona LaDuke (Honor the Earth), and Matt Nelson (Presente.org); leading public officials advocating greater voter engagement like Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley and Wisconsin Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes, and councilors Helen Gym and Nikki Fortunato Bas. Turnout! reveals strategies and real-world tactics to mobilize millions of discouraged, apathetic, or suppressed voters, including women, low-income, Indigenous, Black, Latinx, Asian, LGBTQIA+, student and youth, and working-class voters.

Drawing on historical cases of the American South before and after the Civil War, Europe – especially Germany – between the world wars, and the United States in Vietnam and its aftermath, this book takes a historical approach to explain the problems of capitalism and democratic leadership in western democracies today. Capitalist democracies proclaim equality, material prosperity and comfort but produce extreme differences in wealth and power. They promise security and peace, but deliver frequent wars. The promises broken, elites often turn to other visions- partially borrowed from feudalism- to win public support. Nations turn to honor, nobility and war as a way of winning over workers and legitimating the capitalist system itself.

Capitalism’s contradictions often have produced a cultural divide. One side, "cosmopolitans" – urban, see themselves as citizens of the world, not one region or country – identify as secular, preach multi-culturalism, entertain state welfare systems, and are cautious about going to war. Their opponents, "traditionalists," breed among people who feel left behind, anxiousness and insecurity, often embracing community, tradition, God and family.

The devastation of the world wars and the Third Reich led Europe to forgo visions of empire, militarism and glory and focus upon improving the quality of life for their own citizens. Although the United States does not need to experience comparable trauma, they should follow Europe’s example- forget glory and instead build a better life for the American people. The last chapter will consider how such a change could emerge in the US and who might help fight for it.

Drawing on historical cases of the American South before and after the Civil War, Europe – especially Germany – between the world wars, and the United States in Vietnam and its aftermath, this book takes a historical approach to explain the problems of capitalism and democratic leadership in western democracies today. Capitalist democracies proclaim equality, material prosperity and comfort but produce extreme differences in wealth and power. They promise security and peace, but deliver frequent wars. The promises broken, elites often turn to other visions- partially borrowed from feudalism- to win public support. Nations turn to honor, nobility and war as a way of winning over workers and legitimating the capitalist system itself.

Capitalism’s contradictions often have produced a cultural divide. One side, "cosmopolitans" – urban, see themselves as citizens of the world, not one region or country – identify as secular, preach multi-culturalism, entertain state welfare systems, and are cautious about going to war. Their opponents, "traditionalists," breed among people who feel left behind, anxiousness and insecurity, often embracing community, tradition, God and family.

The devastation of the world wars and the Third Reich led Europe to forgo visions of empire, militarism and glory and focus upon improving the quality of life for their own citizens. Although the United States does not need to experience comparable trauma, they should follow Europe’s example- forget glory and instead build a better life for the American people. The last chapter will consider how such a change could emerge in the US and who might help fight for it.

Those who regard him as a “doom and gloom” critic will find an unexpected Chomsky in these pages. Here the world-renowned author speaks for the first time in depth about his career in activism, and his views and tactics. Chomsky offers new and intimate details about his life-long experience as an activist, revealing him as a critic with deep convictions and many surprising insights about movement strategies. The book points to new directions for activists today, including how the crises of the Coronavirus and the economic meltdown are exploding in the critical 2020 US presidential election year. Readers will find hope and new pathways toward a sustainable, democratic world.

Those who regard him as a “doom and gloom” critic will find an unexpected Chomsky in these pages. Here the world-renowned author speaks for the first time in depth about his career in activism, and his views and tactics. Chomsky offers new and intimate details about his life-long experience as an activist, revealing him as a critic with deep convictions and many surprising insights about movement strategies. The book points to new directions for activists today, including how the crises of the Coronavirus and the economic meltdown are exploding in the critical 2020 US presidential election year. Readers will find hope and new pathways toward a sustainable, democratic world.

This is an original, accessible book for scholars, students, activists, and the general public on the greatest crisis the world has faced. The authors challenge the widespread notion that a green and peaceful set of technological reforms in the current economic and political system – perhaps a “green capitalism” – can prevent disaster. Dying for Capitalism analyzes the “triangle of extinction” that links capitalism, environmental destruction, and militarism as a system that cannot sustain life on the planet. The authors analyze how the extinction triangle evolved historically, how it functions globally as integral to the world capitalist order, and how the United States has become the dominant “extinction nation.” They also show how recent anti-democratic and anti-scientific cultural and political forces intensify denial of the threat and subordinate health and survival to profit and extreme concentrated power.

The book offers a “slender path” of social and political transformation that can prevent catastrophe. The path requires moving beyond current ruling systems. But possibilities of survival arise from action at local, state, regional, and global levels through multiple strategies and movements that already exist. The authors draw on the history of abolitionism and emancipation from slavery in the United States to show how a system that appears unchangeable can be transformed, while describing organizations, movements, and practices that are models of hope and a shift from the triangle of extinction to the “circle of creation.”

This is an original, accessible book for scholars, students, activists, and the general public on the greatest crisis the world has faced. The authors challenge the widespread notion that a green and peaceful set of technological reforms in the current economic and political system – perhaps a “green capitalism” – can prevent disaster. Dying for Capitalism analyzes the “triangle of extinction” that links capitalism, environmental destruction, and militarism as a system that cannot sustain life on the planet. The authors analyze how the extinction triangle evolved historically, how it functions globally as integral to the world capitalist order, and how the United States has become the dominant “extinction nation.” They also show how recent anti-democratic and anti-scientific cultural and political forces intensify denial of the threat and subordinate health and survival to profit and extreme concentrated power.

The book offers a “slender path” of social and political transformation that can prevent catastrophe. The path requires moving beyond current ruling systems. But possibilities of survival arise from action at local, state, regional, and global levels through multiple strategies and movements that already exist. The authors draw on the history of abolitionism and emancipation from slavery in the United States to show how a system that appears unchangeable can be transformed, while describing organizations, movements, and practices that are models of hope and a shift from the triangle of extinction to the “circle of creation.”