Organizing America Publication Day!

Today marks the publication of my 4th book, Organizing America: Stories of Americans Who Fought for Justice. It’s 20 short biographies of Americans who made a difference. But it’s also written with lessons for the present about the mistakes that we make–damning all Trump voters as being evil, the cancel culture within liberal-left communities that calls people out instead of calling them in, the idea of the organizer superhero, the belief that people can’t change or at least the constant reminders that people used to have bad positions and can’t be trusted because of that. Basically, if you think I am critical of liberals and mainstream Democrats over here at LGM, you may have no idea that I am far more critical of today’s left culture. I also think we teach our history wrong. We do teach about King and Malcolm and Parks now, but we teach them as almost superheroes and no one can be the person they could. Everything about superhero culture is inherently reactionary, including this. Rather, these people screwed up all the time in ways that are super familiar to us. They didn’t know what they were doing, much like we don’t know what we are doing. They failed. They oppressed other people in their own fight for change.

So to me, we kind of need to start over with every single thing about left of center politics, from centrists dismissal of organizing entirely to leftist purity tests and a million things in between. Organizing America is my attempt to make a slight intervention here by telling very human stories of 20 American organizers in their successes and failures. Real people can mean real inspiration and a real pathway forward as we try to find our way through the great darkness that has befallen us.

You can buy the book wherever, but here’s the easiest way.

Also, don’t take my word for the book. Here is the review at Publishers Weekly:

Historian Loomis (A History of America in Ten Strikes) profiles in this inspiring account 20 activists from the 17th century to today who each convey a specific lesson for political organizing. Among them is Benjamin Lay, an early-18th-century Quaker who fought against slavery “at a time when almost no white people thought it was wrong.” His solo crusade led to the American colonies’ first anti-slavery regulations, implemented through the political will of the Quakers, whose leaders Lay denounced and communities he galvanized until they agitated for change. Lay’s example inspired one of Loomis’s other subjects, Lydia Maria Child, a 19th-century suffragist who rejected the racism that pervaded that movement and similarly galvanized for change within its ranks. The takeaway, for Loomis, is that it makes sense to begin by shifting the perspective of an in-group, rather than taking on the whole public. Other lessons include making use of capitalism when expedient (he points to Maggie Walker, who helped freed Black communities in the post–Civil War South establish banks to build local power) and to not dismiss the need for armed self-defense (he cites Robert Williams, a Black WWII veteran who offered armed protection to civil rights organizers). Loomis’s biggest takeaway—that his subjects “were not above us or better than us… they just did the work”—is a winning one. Readers will be galvanized themselves.

Galvanize yourself by buying the book!