Citizenville

Citizenville PDF

Author: Gavin Newsom

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2014-01-28

Total Pages: 273

ISBN-13: 0143124471

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“A fascinating case for a more engaged government, transformed to meet the challenges and possibilities of the twenty-first century.” —President William J. Clinton A rallying cry for revolutionizing democracy in the digital age, Citizenville reveals how ordinary Americans can reshape their government for the better. Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California, argues that today’s government is stuck in the last century while—in both the private sector and our personal lives—absolutely everything else has changed. Drawing on wide-ranging interviews with thinkers and politicians, Newsom shows how Americans can transform their government, taking matters into their own hands to dissolve political gridlock even as they produce tangible changes in the real world. Citizenville is a timely road map for restoring American prosperity and for reinventing citizenship in today’s networked age.

Ben and Emma's Big Hit

Ben and Emma's Big Hit PDF

Author: Gavin Newsom

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-12-07

Total Pages: 41

ISBN-13: 0593204115

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From California Governor Gavin Newsom comes an empowering picture book about a young boy with dyslexia who discovers a new way to look at reading. Ben loves baseball. He loves the lines of diamond-shaped field and the dome of the pitcher's mound. What Ben doesn't like is reading. Ben has dyslexia, which means letters and sounds get jumbled up in his brain, and then the words don't make sense. But when Ben starts looking at reading like he looks at baseball, he realizes that if he keeps trying, he can overcome any obstacle that comes his way. In this empowering story by California Governor Gavin Newsom, inspired by his own childhood diagnosis of dyslexia, readers will learn that kids with the determination to try (and try again) can do big things. *This book is set in a font specifically designed to be easier for people with dyslexia to read.

Living with a Wild God

Living with a Wild God PDF

Author: Barbara Ehrenreich

Publisher: Twelve

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1455501751

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From the New York Times bestselling author of Nickel and Dimed comes a brave, frank, and exquisitely written memoir that will change the way you see the world. Barbara Ehrenreich is one of the most important thinkers of our time. Educated as a scientist, she is an author, journalist, activist, and advocate for social justice. In LIVING WITH A WILD GOD, she recounts her quest-beginning in childhood-to find "the Truth" about the universe and everything else: What's really going on? Why are we here? In middle age, she rediscovered the journal she had kept during her tumultuous adolescence, which records an event so strange, so cataclysmic, that she had never, in all the intervening years, written or spoken about it to anyone. It was the kind of event that people call a "mystical experience"-and, to a steadfast atheist and rationalist, nothing less than shattering. In LIVING WITH A WILD GOD, Ehrenreich reconstructs her childhood mission, bringing an older woman's wry and erudite perspective to a young girl's impassioned obsession with the questions that, at one point or another, torment us all. The result is both deeply personal and cosmically sweeping-a searing memoir and a profound reflection on science, religion, and the human condition. With her signature combination of intellectual rigor and uninhibited imagination, Ehrenreich offers a true literary achievement-a work that has the power not only to entertain but amaze.

How Change Happens

How Change Happens PDF

Author: Cass R. Sunstein

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-04-09

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0262351919

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An “illuminating” book that “puts norms at the center of how we thinking about change”, revealing the different ways social change occurs—for readers of Freakonomics and Thinking, Fast and Slow (The New York Times) How does social change happen? When do social movements take off? Sexual harassment was once something that women had to endure; now a movement has risen up against it. White nationalist sentiments, on the other hand, were largely kept out of mainstream discourse; now there is no shortage of media outlets for them. In this book, with the help of behavioral economics, psychology, and other fields, Cass Sunstein casts a bright new light on how change happens. Sunstein focuses on the crucial role of social norms—and on their frequent collapse. When norms lead people to silence themselves, even an unpopular status quo can persist. Then one day, someone challenges the norm—a child who exclaims that the emperor has no clothes; a woman who says “me too.” Sometimes suppressed outrage is unleashed, and long-standing practices fall. Sometimes change is more gradual, as “nudges” help produce new and different decisions—apps that count calories; texted reminders of deadlines; automatic enrollment in green energy or pension plans. Sunstein explores what kinds of nudges are effective and shows why nudges sometimes give way to bans and mandates. Finally, he considers social divisions, social cascades, and “partyism,” when identification with a political party creates a strong bias against all members of an opposing party—which can both fuel and block social change.

Reactionary Democracy

Reactionary Democracy PDF

Author: Aurelien Mondon

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2020-04-28

Total Pages: 271

ISBN-13: 1788734246

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Democracy is not necessarily progressive, and will only be if we make it so. What Mondon and Winter call 'reactionary democracy' is the use of the concept of democracy and its associated understanding of the power to the people (demos cratos) for reactionary ends. The resurgence of racism, populism and the far right is not the result of popular demands as we are often told. It is rather the logical conclusion of the more or less conscious manipulation by the elite of the concept of 'the people' and the working class to push reactionary ideas. These narratives place racism as a popular demand, rather than as something encouraged and perpetuated by elites, thus exonerating those with the means to influence and control public discourse through the media in particular. This in turn has legitimised the far right, strengthened its hand and compounded inequalities. These actions diverts us away from real concerns and radical alternatives to the current system. Through a careful and thorough deconstruction of the hegemonic discourse currently preventing us from thinking beyond the liberal vs populist dichotomy, this book develops a better understanding of the systemic forces underpinning our current model and its exploitative and discriminatory basis. The book shows us that the far right would not have been able to achieve such success, either electorally or ideologically, were it not for the help of elite actors (the media, politicians and academics). While the far right is a real threat and should not be left off the hook, the authors argue that we need to shift the responsibility of the situation towards those who too often claim to be objective, and even powerless, bystanders despite their powerful standpoint and clear capacity to influence the agenda, public discourse, and narratives, particularly when they platform and legitimise racist and far right ideas and actors.

Mapping Ideology

Mapping Ideology PDF

Author: Slavoj Zizek

Publisher: Verso Books

Published: 2012-11-13

Total Pages: 353

ISBN-13: 1844675548

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For a long time, the term ‘ideology’ was in disrepute, having become associated with such unfashionable notions as fundamental truth and the eternal verities. The tide has turned, and recent years have seen a revival of interest in the questions that ideology poses to social and cultural theory, and to political practice. Mapping Ideology is a comprehensive reader covering the most important contemporary writing on the subject. Including Slavoj Žižek’s study of the development of the concept from Marx to the present, assessments of the contributions of Lukács and the Frankfurt School by Terry Eagleton, Peter Dews and Seyla Benhabib, and essays by Adorno, Lacan and Althusser, Mapping Ideology is an invaluable guide to the most dynamic field in cultural theory.

Faces of Labour

Faces of Labour PDF

Author: Andy McSmith

Publisher: Verso

Published: 1996

Total Pages: 412

ISBN-13: 9781859849682

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McSmith focuses on key individuals in the party whose careers cast a complex story into sharp relief. His choice of subjects is deliberately eclectic. It includes portraits of politicians like Peter Mandelson, Clare Short, David Blunkett, John Prescott and Tony Blair, who will play a leading role in any Labour government.

Technology in Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action

Technology in Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action PDF

Author: John McNutt

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 77

ISBN-13: 900437812X

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Information and communication technologies (ICT) are major forces shaping our current age. ICT affects many areas of human existence and influences the both human wellbeing and human evil. The nonprofit sector is already heavily involved in technology both as a way to pursue its mission and as an influential factor in the evolution of the sector. This article examines how technology affects the sector and how the sector uses technology in its work.

Supreme Inequality

Supreme Inequality PDF

Author: Adam Cohen

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2021-02-23

Total Pages: 458

ISBN-13: 0735221529

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“With Supreme Inequality, Adam Cohen has built, brick by brick, an airtight case against the Supreme Court of the last half-century...Cohen’s book is a closing statement in the case against an institution tasked with protecting the vulnerable, which has emboldened the rich and powerful instead.” —Dahlia Lithwick, senior editor, Slate A revelatory examination of the conservative direction of the Supreme Court over the last fifty years. In Supreme Inequality, bestselling author Adam Cohen surveys the most significant Supreme Court rulings since the Nixon era and exposes how, contrary to what Americans like to believe, the Supreme Court does little to protect the rights of the poor and disadvantaged; in fact, it has not been on their side for fifty years. Cohen proves beyond doubt that the modern Court has been one of the leading forces behind the nation’s soaring level of economic inequality, and that an institution revered as a source of fairness has been systematically making America less fair. A triumph of American legal, political, and social history, Supreme Inequality holds to account the highest court in the land and shows how much damage it has done to America’s ideals of equality, democracy, and justice for all.