What We Do Now

If you are looking for an activist upper, let me recommend What We Do Now. This phenomenal book was written and published within a month of the election, and contains essays by twenty-four activists grappling with how the progressive community should respond to the resurgence of the red states.
Check it:
Percival Everett describes the problem like this: “I can deal with disappointment of my candidate having lost. I cannot deal with the lies. But we lost because of lies…The race for the White House in 2008 has already started. And the advantage goes to the liars. It goes to them because they have managed to divide the country into red and blue states. They have sucked us into blaming the loss of the election on the backward red states in the middle of the country. We sit around laughing about the yokels without waterfront and all the while we alienate the people who are just like us.”
And check out Jamin Raskin’s essay for a boost. “The great advantage to being marginalized is that, in the margins, you can find space to innovate. In the political wilderness, we can remake the way we practice politics and redesign our political institutions…The awesome power of the liberal mobilization in 2004–so strong it almost defeated an incumbent president in wartime–came not from the Democratic National Committee or the Kerry-Edwards ticket but rather from progressive civil society…The progressive movement cannot win if it is a bunch of bureaucracies in Washington.”
Four years *is* a long time. But this election showed that we have A LOT of work to do and many bridges to build. We need to seize this time and make a plan…