And the Big Bet to save the world goes to....

Community and worker organizing! Because when people are tired of whinging and waiting for Guffman, there is always doing and funding what actually works

To be clear, folks under direct attack and threat by Trump and MAGA are understand the value and necessity of strategic organizing. It’s elites who have the luxury to ponder their navels that are getting the push here.

Before we dig in, I wanted to give you a heads up about two books that are absolute 🔥🔥🔥🔥 and I’m looking forward to sharing a multi-book review that includes both of them in March.

Folks, don’t wait to pre-order these two: Unrig the Game: What Women of Color Can Teach Everyone About Winning by Vanessa Priya Daniel and Calling In: How to Start Making Change with Those You’d Rather Cancel by Loretta Ross. These books will shift how you think and open up new ways of being for you and your organization.

Ok, back to our conversation. While The Onslaught (™️) continues, I am hoping that the following collection of book reviews might point organizers and funders in the direction of organizing and strategy that meets the moment.

I wrote The Pitchforks Are Coming for Philanthropy five years ago and the lessons from Edgar Villanueva’s Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance, Anand Giridharadas’ Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, and Rob Reich’s Just Giving: Democracy and How it Can Do Better, all published in 2018, are more relevant than ever for the philanthropies and billionaires whinging on the one hand and waiting for Guffman on the other.

And yes, the pitchforks are coming for all billionaires, “ours” and theirs. Do you really think that working people are going to spare the anyone in the donor class as they plead “But we gave away the minimum 5% annual payout!” from their foundations and donor advised funds (with billions of dollars sitting out Trump and Musk’s dismantling of the United States), while tens of millions of people lose the ability to pay for basic needs like food, housing, and medicine at the same time that big corporations and the wealthy get massive new tax cuts?

In the next two reviews shared today, we explore how organized money, ideas, and people are how we build power, and then how we wield it to change the landscape and make increasingly more structural change in line with the Long-Term Agenda Theory of Change. This is hard work. It requires all of us. But it’s not rocket science. It’s the Big Bet you’ve been waiting for all along.

In The Antidote to Authoritarianism: How an Organizing Revival Can Build a Multiracial Pluralistic Democracy and Inclusive Economy, which I co-authored in 2023, we explore how a revival of community and worker organizing is the best way to make lasting change because we can get started right now in every community. No new shiny objects to distract organizers or donors necessary!

Now onto strategy in Answering the Call, where Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce’s Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World (2023) is an essential guide to acting from a place of strategy, not reaction. It introduces readers to seven strategies and six forms of power framework analysis, with thirty-six essential tools, prompts, and resources. If you’ve already read this, read it again.

Together we will create a world grounded in joy and justice. Let’s get to it.