Description of The Trajectory of Change.
The Trajectory of Change charts a course for the growing, international movement against corporate globalization. Albert makes the case for collectively creating a vision of a participatory, democratic, and egalitarian society.
Table of Contents
Forward 1 The Trajectory of Change
2 New Targets
3 Being Radical
4 Being Congenial: Or, The Stickiness Problem
5 Respecting Differences, While Building Solidarity
6 Autonomy Within Solidarity
7 Stop Whining, Start Winning
8 Class, Race, Sex?
9 My Generation
10 Sustain Radicalism
11 What Are We Waiting For?
12 Urgent Patient Tasks
Afterword
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Excerpt
From Chapter 11 What Are We Waiting For?
Our
commitment to ultimately revolutionize all aspects of life should affect how
our immediate campaigns are defined, what immediate goals we seek, and how we
seek these goals. It should inform what we talk about when we organize, write,
speak, and teach—what ideas we try to convey, what commitments we try
to elicit. This is what seems missing from progressive and Left activism, and
from our very lives, today.
The
absence of unifying goals, of shared long-term commitment, and of attention
to communicating these forthrightly at every opportunity weakens not only our
prospects of organizing usefully toward a distant end, but also our near-term
efforts to reduce pain today. Today’s activism, for want of revolutionary
designs and spirit, is often ill-informed, frequently lacks integrity, and virtually
never incorporates the kind of logic, solidarity, and spirit that can sustain
long-term involvement by suffering constituencies.
Current
movements are most often too narrow, too lacking in scope and in spiritual and
moral appeal to attract wide support. Remarkably, they often celebrate their
very weaknesses, their lack of vision, their lack of breadth, and their lack
of anything resembling audacity and passion as if these debits were virtues.
At the level of feeling, of emotion, and of consciousness, our projects often
do little to overcome (and...
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Praise
“Cross global activism with common sense, and you get Michael Albert’s
new book, The Trajectory of Change. It's clear, useful, and short. You
will not agree with all of his suggestions, but this book will start you thinking:
what would work? How do we solve the real problems of our movement?”
—Mike Prokosch, Director of the global economy program at United for
a Fair Economy
“In the clearest of language, Michael Albert lays bare the weaknesses
of the Left and points to the opportunities ahead. Eschewing cynicism and defeatism,
he outlines positive alternatives that will attract and retain social activists,
and, most importantly, achieve tangible victories. If you’re tired of complaining
about the ills of capitalism and ready to articulate what we want and how to
get there, read this book.”
—Medea Benjamin, Founding Director of Global Exchange and active Green
Party member
“The Trajectory of Change could just as easily been entitled ‘passing
the word’ because it summarizes some of the key lessons—pluses
and minuses—of the work of the US Left over the last 30+ years. These are
lessons and observations of great value to all activists, but especially
those new to progressive and Left politics. Written in an accessible manner
and profoundly thought-provoking, this book helps us to remember that a movement
of resistance to oppression is essential; a movement with vision a...
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