RISE AND RESIST: How to Reclaim Workplace Equity and Justice, resistance needs many fronts to be effective

RISE AND RESIST: How to Reclaim Workplace Equity and Justice
JANICE GASSAM ASARE, PhD
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$24.95 all editions, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: This powerful guide draws on strategies from Black resistance movements and merges historical wisdom with modern technology to combat the DEI backlash and build sustainable workplace equity in today’s hostile climate.

As the unprecedented backlash against diversity, equity, and inclusion intensifies—with corporations dismantling initiatives, lawmakers passing anti-DEI legislation, and post–George Floyd promises abandoned—this tactical handbook arms advocates with revolutionary resistance strategies drawn from Black historical movements.

Dr. Janice Gassam Asare transforms centuries of Black resistance wisdom—from Underground Railroad networks to civil rights organizing tactics—into modern resistance plans, wielding ethical AI as a force multiplier to create sustainable change that outlasts corporate whims and political cycles.

Each chapter grounds modern workplace tactics in revolutionary approaches of more than twenty prominent Black historical figures, including the following:

Ida B. Wells—Documentation techniques for workplace injustice inspired by her work
Ella Baker and Fred Hampton—Coalition-building methods from the American civil rights movement
Toni Morrison and Angela Davis—Narrative control strategies drawn from their celebrated writing

Whether you’re a DEI practitioner navigating corporate pushback, an employee experiencing equity rollbacks, or a leader committed to sustainable inclusion, this handbook provides battle-tested strategies for preserving workplace equity—even in hostile environments.

This isn’t just about surviving the backlash. It’s about reimagining workplaces where everyone thrives.

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My Review: A hybrid how-to, why-to, and pep talk by an organzational psychology graduate with a track record:

Dr. Janice Gassam Asare is a journalist, speaker, trainer, consultant, and podcaster whose Forbes articles have garnered over 9 million views. Her writing appears in Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, and Fast Company, and she reaches over 170,000 followers across social platforms. A LinkedIn Top Voice in Racial Equity, Dr. Asare creates courses for LinkedIn Learning and Udemy Business. She holds a doctorate in applied organizational psychology and previously served as an assistant professor of management at Sacred Heart University before focusing on her consultancy. She delivers approximately fifty speaking and training engagements annually, helping organizations create more equitable workplaces.

This is her bio from the publisher.

By bringing together the tried-and-true techniques of past Black resistance and inclusion heroes in one book, Author Janice Gassam Asare taps into the most important asset in her field's arsenal: direct experience of success. As a field of psychological practice, organizational psychology has been evolving since its creation in the 1880s from industrial-worker adjustments...research that centered interest by management in reduction of expensive turnover hiring, problematic labor relations, etc., to the current efforts centering the needs of workers to experience their workplaces as safe, fair places where baseline survival is no longer the main focus of employment.

No wonder capitalists hate it.

Focusing on resistance to abusive practices involves learning what you need to know about behaviors, about what organizations will require in the way of proof of claimed harm, and why your voice should be raised in self-defense.

It's a solid, compact, effective read for anyone concerned about the way a workplace can...and should...function to better all within it.

FIXING FAIRNESS: 4 Tenets to Transform Diversity Backlash into Progress for All, well worth the short read

FIXING FAIRNESS: 4 Tenets to Transform Diversity Backlash into Progress for All
LILY ZHENG
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$29.95 all editions, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: DEI needs a reset. Discover how to achieve real social change in the workplace that puts everyone ahead through the groundbreaking FAIR framework.

The demand for inclusive workplaces is stronger than ever, with most employees seeking a sense of belonging and fairness at work. Yet traditional diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) strategies have faced backlash and stagnation, leaving organizations at a crossroads.

Where common DEI initiatives have failed, this book instead offers a results-based, systems-focused, all-inclusive, and universally beneficial framework to help bring about real social change in the workplace. This can be achieved through the FAIR framework:

Fairness—Promote equitable treatment by addressing systemic barriers and ensuring transparent, just practices for all.

Access—Expand opportunities by removing obstacles and creating pathways for underserved and underrepresented groups.

Inclusion—Foster a sense of belonging where diverse voices are valued, heard, and integrated into decision-making.

Representation—Reflect the diversity of society at all levels, ensuring visibility and participation across demographics.

This book isn’t about the next acronym or rebranding; it’s a call to action for a more effective and resilient approach to social progress. The DEI industrial complex failed to make real change through unchecked growth and performative practices, and far-right antagonists only offer regressive “solutions.” With clarity, urgency, and practicality, Fixing Fairness offers a third option and charts a path forward for those committed to creating better outcomes for all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Tight, compact, and rooted in the author's entire career's-worth of research and—more importantly—practice.

What I appreciated most was Author Zheng's ability to restate points without making me feel I was being given cold leftover oatmel, lumps and all; it is down to the approachable style of their writing. (Author Zheng uses they/them pronouns.) It's clear, from high-powered venues supporting their work with publications and endorsements...this was on Forbes's Best New 2026 Books On Workplace Inclusion And The Future Of DEI list and Author Zheng's work has appeared there, in the New York Times, and Harvard Business Review. Links are all on their website here.

A key realization in this read came from the not-subtle calling-out of the fabrication of noise and chaos surrounding the efforts, flawed and half-hearted as they were, to set up DEI initiatives, by hostile sources supporting an antiquated and no longer prevalent societal paradigm. It's a lot to pack into barely over 160pp. Author Zheng manages! There are notes, and all of them I tested, around half, link to vaild and apparently reputable venues. None were, for example, to weird little fringe outlets...except maybe directorsandboards.com, because what tinier fringe group is there than that...and perhaps tellingly, the author cited on that site was Ted Kennedy, Jr.

I don't think most general readers will care too much about the subject discussed here. It's too bad. After reading this book I understand the opponents of DEI much better, and disapprove of them and their actions even more...plus I've picked up some techniques for opposing their rhetoric effectively. I encourage y'all to go to Author Zheng's website, linked above, to see what their work is all about. Even if your budget is tight, you can always request your library get a copy. These ideas deserve room in your head, your awareness, and your actions.

THE 2nd THOM HARTMANN PAGE: The Hidden History of Big Brother in America; The Hidden History of Monopolies

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF BIG BROTHER IN AMERICA: How the Death of Privacy and the Rise of Surveillance Threaten Us and Our Democracy
THOM HARTMANN
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$17.00 ebook, available now

TAKE NOTE: For just two days—June 26–27 (2025)—we’re giving you 30% off any book in any format at bkconnection.com.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: America's most popular progressive radio host Thom Hartmann reveals how the government and corporate America misuse our personal data and shows how we can reclaim our privacy.

Most Americans are worried about how companies like Facebook invade their privacy and harvest their data, but many people don't fully understand the details of how their information is being adapted and misused. In this thought-provoking and accessible book, New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann reveals exactly how the government and corporations are tracking our every online move and using our data to buy elections, employ social control, and score and monetize our lives.

Hartmann uses extensive, vivid examples to highlight the consequences of Big Data on all aspects of our lives. Along with tracing the history of surveillance, he shows how we got to where we are today, how China—with its new Social Credit System—serves as a warning, and how we can and must avoid a similarly dystopian future.

By delving into the Constitutional right to privacy, Hartmann reminds us of our civil right and shows how we can restore it.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Not updated yet, I'll be very interested to see what Hartmann has to say about the extreme, upsetting effects of AI on the Body Politic.

While we are indeed starting to engage with the most important factor in this outdated screed against the Felonious Yam and his tech bro scum support/enablers, ie who's doing what with our deepest darkest secrets, it could really be much too late to do anything effective about it. Look at the *massive* data theft done by DOGE on behalf of Edolph Twitler. Why is no one in Congress screeching their fool lungs out about this?

Because, like Hartmann, they do not understand what the problem really is: Us. The userbase wants Big Data to store credit card numbers, passwords...16 billion of which were compromised on 18 June 2025 alone...so we don't have to think. Big Data will use its enormous database, its stunningly effective analytic software, and all the cash we've allowed it to pile up, to defeat any attempts to meaningfully deny it more and more and more data.

This is not to say we should not try. We should, starting right now.

Getting mad is the first stop on this train, so read this book and steam your way to Congress's inbox.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF MONOPOLIES: How Big Business Destroyed the American Dream
THOM HARTMANN (foreword by Ralph Nader)
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 ebook, available now

TAKE NOTE: For just two days—June 26–27 (2025)—we’re giving you 30% off any book in any format at bkconnection.com.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: “This is the most important, dynamic book on the cancers of monopoly by giant corporations written in our generation.”—from the foreword by Ralph Nader

American monopolies dominate, control, and consume most of the energy of our entire economic system; they function the same as cancer does in a body, and, like cancer, they weaken our systems while threatening to crash the entire body economic. American monopolies have also seized massive political power and use it to maintain their obscene profits and CEO salaries while crushing small competitors.

But Thom Hartmann, America's #1 progressive radio host, shows we've broken the control of behemoths like these before, and we can do it again.

Hartmann takes us from the birth of America as a revolt against monopoly (remember the Boston Tea Party?), to the largely successful efforts of both Presidents Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and other like-minded leaders to restrain corporations' monopolistic urges, to the massive changes in the rules of business starting during the “Reagan Revolution” that have brought us to the cancer stage of capitalism.

He shows the damage monopolies have done to so many industries: agriculture, healthcare, the media, and more. Individuals have taken a hit as well: the average American family pays a $5,000 a year “monopoly tax” in the form of higher prices for everything from pharmaceuticals to airfare to household goods and food. But Hartmann also describes commonsense, historically rooted measures we can take—such as revitalizing antitrust regulation, taxing great wealth, and getting money out of politics—to pry control of our country from the tentacles of the monopolists.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: More finger-pointing and right-wing-bashing than even I, for whom those activities are recreations I savor, found excessive. Nonetheless, as a way to get at the root of a problem not at all new, not uniquely American, and not quickly resolvable, this little ammo pile is good.

I think most of y'all know much of this history but quite likely haven't put it into this context before. That makes it a good, if tendentious (by design!), read for anyone who has a single qualm about greed.

I hope you'll try to get your head around why your wallet is always flat, why politicians say we can never "afford" things other countries have had for decades, and what to do about it.

THE THOM HARTMANN PAGE: Unequal Protection; The Hidden History of American Oligarchy; The Hidden History of American Healthcare

UNEQUAL PROTECTION: How Corporations Became "People" and How You Can Fight Back
THOM HARTMANN
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
$20.95 trade paper, presently backordered...wonder why...

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Was the Boston Tea Party the first WTO-style protest against transnational corporations? Did Supreme Court sell out America's citizens in the nineteenth century, with consequences lasting to this day? Is there a way for American citizens to recover democracy of, by, and for the people?

Thom Hartmann takes on these most difficult questions and tells a startling story that will forever change your understanding of American history. He begins by uncovering an original eyewitness account of the Boston Tea Party and demonstrates that it was provoked not by "taxation without representation" as is commonly suggested but by the specific actions of the East India Company, which represented the commercial interests of the British elite.

Hartmann then describes the history of the Fourteenth Amendment—created at the end of the Civil War to grant basic rights to freed slaves—and how it has been used by lawyers representing corporate interests to extend additional rights to businesses far more frequently than to freed slaves. Prior to 1886, corporations were referred to in U.S. law as "artificial persons." but in 1886, after a series of cases brought by lawyers representing the expanding railroad interests, the Supreme Court ruled that corporations were "persons" and entitled to the same rights granted to people under the Bill of Rights. Since this ruling, America has lost the legal structures that allowed for people to control corporate behavior.

As a result, the largest transnational corporations fill a role today that has historically been filled by kings. They control most of the world's wealth and exert power over the lives of most of the world's citizens. Their CEOs are unapproachable and live lives of nearly unimaginable wealth and luxury. They've become the rudder that steers the ship of much human experience, and they're steering it by their prime value—growth and profit and any expense—a value that has become destructive for life on Earth. This new feudalism was not what our Founders—Federalists and Democratic Republicans alike—envisioned for America.

It's time for "we, the people" to take back our lives. Hartmann proposes specific legal remedies that could truly save the world from political, economic, and ecological disaster.

I CHECKED THIS BOOK OUT FROM THE PRIME LENDING SERVICE. USE THEM OFTEN, THEY PAY AUTHORS FOR OUR USE.

My Review: If I need to spell out why this book's subject, fifteen years on, is still relevant...nay, even moreso, please accept my congratulations for your recent recovery from the coma.

Citizens United v. FEC is one of the most direct causes of the horrible politiscape of 2025. It is an outgrowth of the central argument of this book, that "corporate personhood" is the legal equal of natural personhood (ie being a human being, though even that isn't enough anymore) and therefore endows corporations with broad civil rights including First Amendment rights to free speech.

The lawyers are, of course, thrilled because this means their clients need hugely profitable PAC-running, fee-generating help. The rest of us? Totally screwed, you can have the justice you can pay for... Hartmann, to the political left in the US, argues this is absurd. It is. He goes on to ramble about stuff from history that isn't really well-supported by facts, and his anti-corporate bias goes a lot further than the nonsensical "personhood". It's a shame on some levels because the problems and abuses he rails against are real. Distracting from them by arguing the Boston Tea Party (of 1773!) was the first salvo of resistance to multinational corporations screwing over We-the-People is fanciful at best.

Had he stopped with noting that the notion of "corporate personhood" is explicitly NOT INCLUDED in the decision of Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Co. but is present only in a headnote written by a clerk. Headnotes do not form part of the judgment in Supreme Court decisions; this was ruled on in separate decisions on other cases, and acknowledged in this decision.

There is no Constitutional basis for "corporate personhood" as now constituted. I wish Hartmann had played less to his audience and stuck more closely to what I perceive to be his strong, central thesis. I'd rate this tendentious mash-up of political grievance (which I share!) with historical research into legal history higher had he done so.

Still it's a hugely important topic and a book whose emotional register will propel most who really don't care much for argument and prefer conclusions to finish the read.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICAN HEALTHCARE: Why Sickness Bankrupts You and Makes Others Insanely Rich
THOM HARTMANN
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 ebook, available now

TAKE NOTE: For just two days—June 26–27 (2025)—we’re giving you 30% off any book in any format at bkconnection.com.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Popular progressive radio host and New York Times bestselling author Thom Hartmann reveals how and why attempts to implement affordable universal healthcare in the United States have been thwarted and what we can do to finally make it a reality.

"For-profit health insurance is the largest con job ever perpetrated on the American people—one that has cost trillions of dollars and millions of lives since the 1940s,” says Thom Hartmann.

Other countries have shown us that affordable universal healthcare is not only possible but also effective and efficient. Taiwan's single-payer system saved the country a fortune as well as saving lives during the coronavirus pandemic, enabling the country to implement a nationwide coronavirus test-and-contact-trace program without shutting down the economy. This resulted in just ten deaths, while more than 500,000 people have died in the United States.

Hartmann offers a deep dive into the shameful history of American healthcare, showing how greed, racism, and oligarchic corruption led to the current “sickness for profit” system. Modern attempts to create versions of government healthcare have been hobbled at every turn, including Obamacare.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This book is for you if you've ever wondered why Luigi Mangione is being treated like a terrorist for allegedly killing a very rich "insurance" company executive, and why when we-the-people failed to rise in our millions against his heinous murderous act, he suddenly vanished from our media landscape.

Creating a martyr, a face that can act as a rallying image for people against the horrible system that delivers the worst results for the great majority of its consumers yet fattens wallets at an obscene clip, is not what "They" want.

What this book does is delve into the ways, the compromises, the roots of capitalist seizure of healthcare delivery. It's definitely not going to convert anyone on the political right. It is unabashedly tendentious. It makes no serious effort to come up with any idea to persuade the capitalists to loosen, still less release, their grip on the public purse.

In preaching to the choir, Hartmann is mostly issuing a rallying cry. The reason to read the book is to become motivated, to pick up a few bits and bobs to hurl at the enemy within. If you're tired of arguing, this is not your best investment of time and treasure.

If like me you're in search of fuel for the possibly-wavering fires of battle, here's you a book.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

THE HIDDEN HISTORY OF AMERICAN OLIGARCHY: Reclaiming Our Democracy from the Ruling Class
THOM HARTMANN
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 ebook, available now

TAKE NOTE: For just two days—June 26–27 (2025)—we’re giving you 30% off any book in any format at bkconnection.com.

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Thom Hartmann, the most popular progressive radio host in America and a New York Times bestselling author, looks at the history of the battle against oligarchy in America—and how we can win the latest round.

Billionaire oligarchs want to own our republic, and they're nearly there thanks to legislation and Supreme Court decisions that they have essentially bought. They put Trump and his political allies into office and support a vast network of think tanks, publications, and social media that every day push our nation closer and closer to police-state tyranny.

The United States was born in a struggle against the oligarchs of the British aristocracy, and ever since then the history of America has been one of dynamic tension between democracy and oligarchy. And much like the shock of the 1929 crash woke America up to glaring inequality and the ongoing theft of democracy by that generation's oligarchs, the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 has laid bare how extensively oligarchs have looted our nation's economic system, gutted governmental institutions, and stolen the wealth of the former middle class.

Thom Hartmann traces the history of this struggle against oligarchy from America's founding to the United States' war with the feudal Confederacy to President Franklin Roosevelt's struggle against “economic royalists,” who wanted to block the New Deal. In each of those cases, the oligarchs lost the battle. But with increasing right-wing control of the media, unlimited campaign contributions, and a conservative takeover of the judicial system, we're at a crisis point.

Now is the time for action, before we flip into tyranny. We've beaten the oligarchs before, and we can do it again. Hartmann lays out practical measures we can take to break up media monopolies, limit the influence of money in politics, reclaim the wealth stolen over decades by the oligarchy, and build a movement that will return control of America to We the People.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: This is another provocatively unapologetic takedown of the right-wing slow coup that's been ongoing since "They" installed that fatuous old actor in the White House after manipulating the media into reporting insanity as facts.

Not gonna work to deradicalize your MAGAt relative, but definitely can offer you some armor against joining them for even a second. Staying alert to what their end game is will keep your from getting too far off the line "They" don't want you to draw. It's blatantly partisan and at times on the overkill side, but better that than playing nice with nasty people.

To fight intolerance, you must learn to be intolerant of it. Paradoxically that works for all topics in public life.

KLAXON READS: "ARE YOU CALLING ME A RACIST?": Why We Need to Stop Talking about Race and Start Making Real Antiracist Change, & YOU BELONG HERE: The Power of Being Seen, Heard, and Valued on Your Own Terms

"ARE YOU CALLING ME A RACIST?": Why We Need to Stop Talking about Race and Start Making Real Antiracist Change
SARITA SRIVASTA
NYU Press (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$26.59 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Shows why diversity workshops fail and offers concrete solutions for a path forward

Despite decades of anti-racism workshops and diversity policies in corporations, schools, and nonprofit organizations, racial conflict has only increased in recent years. “Are You Calling Me a Racist?” reveals why these efforts have failed to effectively challenge racism and offers a new way forward.

Drawing from her own experience as an educator and activist, as well as extensive interviews and analyses of contemporary events, Sarita Srivastava shows that racial encounters among well-meaning people are ironically hindered by the emotional investment they have in being seen as good people. Diversity workshops devote energy to defending, recuperating, educating, and inwardly reflecting, with limited results, and these exercises often make things worse. These “Feel-Good politics of race,” Srivastava explains, train our focus on the therapeutic and educational, rather than on concrete practices that could move us towards true racial equity.

In this type of approach to diversity training, people are more concerned about being called a racist than they are about changing racist behavior.

“Are You Calling Me a Racist?” is a much-needed challenge to the status quo of diversity training, and will serve as a valuable resource for anyone dedicated to dismantling racism in their communities, educational institutions, public or private organizations, and social movements.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Read this:

Is the assignment for November 5th, 2024, clear now? Choosing to stay rooted in the conflict over "race" as we so wrongly call differences in skin color and/or ethnicity is choosing to feel good about being Right over making substantive progress. Harris, imperfect and politically impure as she is (and must be in order to get a shot at the US President's chair) will not drag the country back into a dead, disgusting past of unchallenged racism, sexism, homophobia, and unchecked capitalism.

Will everything be perfect? No. When has it ever been? It *will* be better than a Vance presidency that will usher in the Nerd Reich of unchecked, surveillance-happy corporate fake people to then unfetter their squads of tech scum to set about further enshittifying our lives at an increasing rate. That hegemony already makes tech work more poorly for non-whites, and limits the benefits of tech to a very elite group.

These are the stakes. Understand the assignment. Vote for the lesser of the evils because you have no options but the ones we're given. Stop whining about the way the world is and do something to make it better.

A Harris presidency won't magically do anything at all. It might, depending on her actions, renew the DEI conversation, and refocus it on reparative justice instead of on how we, white people, "feel" when racism is brought up; on the enforced sharing of Black and other non-white people's lived experience in some mystical communion of getting to know "the other side;" on burying and distracting attention from action in the real world, not the therapy arena of workshops.

I'm big on therapy, y'all, don't come at me! It's just that therapy is mental masturbation if it doesn't turn into actual behavioral change. If you as an individual need therapy, go find it. It's never been easier with the multiple online sources readily available at a big variety of out-of-pocket costs. We as a society, however, need action to build back better. (Biden's woefully underused and succinct catchphrase; especially useful when "race" is the subject) The world is on literal fire. No woman, of any skin color or native tongue, can be wasted on a stunted uneducated life of sexual and social servitude. We need literally every single person alive today to take this challenge to change as an instruction not an invitation that can be declined.

This book is a great way to change the prescription in your social glasses.

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YOU BELONG HERE: The Power of Being Seen, Heard, and Valued on Your Own Terms
KIM DABBS
Berrett-Koehler Publishers (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$16.88 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In a world overcrowded with labels, don’t allow your identity to be defined by other people. Learn how to take back your power, choose to feed the aspects of your identity that serve you, and let go of those that don’t.

Everyone feels like an outsider at some point in their life—when we walk into a room and think to ourselves, “I don’t belong here.” To avoid these feelings of exclusion, many of us hide our authentic selves and allow others to define our identity.

You Belong Here offers a new framework that allows each of us to define how we want to be seen, heard, and valued on our own terms so we feel a sense of belonging in any situation. Further, it serves as a launchpad for organizational leaders and culture builders to create safe spaces for individuals to show up as their authentic selves.

Readers will explore our four identities:

Our Lived Identity is made up of the aspects of our identity we inherit when we are born into the world.

Our Learned Identity includes the parts of our identity that we’ve chosen or claimed as we make our way through the world.

Our Lingering Identity is the identity we default to when we feel like an outsider and fall back into as a survival mechanism.

Our Loved Identity is where we find our authentic selves and see ourselves through a lens of empowerment.

In the journey to understand our past experiences and how society has established barriers to entry, we can design our own future, rooted in our Loved Identity. We learn to rewrite the stories that aren’t serving us and embrace the ones that do. Rather than look for a seat at someone else’s table, we find the tools to build our own.

When we fully leverage this and live with authenticity and purpose, we can be seen, heard, and valued in a way that gives us a sense of belonging at home, at work, and in society. Belonging is realized when we understand everyone is an outsider and it’s the power to create space for those differences that unite us all.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: See? I really am pro-therapy!

This succinct self-help book is a quality read for anyone who needs to sharpen their sense of themself as a worthy and worthwhile contributor in order to become an effective leader. The trick here is to use these carefully thought-out "Identities" to lead others into a stronger commitment to their own identities being expressed in the world.

The present pass has multiple axes of crisis. Why and how they came to be is, at this moment, less urgent a topic of discussion than what the hell we need to do about it all. No one has every answer. No one individual is going to Fix the World. The usefulness of every person's contribution to society isn't a helpful focus of attention, ever really but certainly not now.

We need to use techniques like these simply delineated ones to instill the sense of strength, of personal power, of ability to effect change and affect others in the world in positive ways, in the greatest number of people. All hands are needed at the pump to keep the boat afloat. Learning how best to support a sense of urgency in one's self, and effectively communicate it into action that's both personal and group-based will be a lot easier when one has a sense of one's value to every situation. Learning the technique Author Dabbs supplies here will provide some very useful tools to achieve this goal.

Don't ignore the value of a strong sense of your own power and ability and right to use it. If you're feeling helpless and useless in the face of the world's problems, read this book to start topping up your emotional fuel tanks.

CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN (3rd edition)...still infuriating after twenty years, maybe even more

CONFESSIONS OF AN ECONOMIC HIT MAN (3rd edition)
JOHN PERKINS
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
$21.95 trade paper, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The riveting third edition of this New York Times bestselling title expands its focus to China, exposes corruption on an international scale, and offers much-needed solutions.

Extensively updated, this edition features twelve new chapters, including a new introduction, preface, and study guide. The book brings the story of economic hit men (EHMs) up-to-date and focuses on China’s EHM strategy.

EHMs are highly paid professionals who use development loans to cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars and force them to serve US interests. Former economic hit man John Perkins gives an insider view into this system. With a truly global perspective, this book offers powerful revelations on extremely timely elements, including the third economic hit man wave that is sweeping the world and the way China optimizes US EHM models to make them a more dominating force. China’s strategy is even more dangerous since it’s successful at enticing lower income nations.
Perkins also reveals how we can transform what he calls a failing Death Economy into a Life Economy. He encourages China’s leaders to apply the Confucian ideal of serving the family to the global community to end the EHM strategy. The book ultimately provides a source of hope and inspires readers to participate in a new era of global cooperation.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: When I read the first edition back in 2004, it was an eye-opener. Remember that those were the Cheney years, where the forces of business skulduggery were very much ascendant. Their plan was, and is, to do the maximum amount of economic damage in order to impoverish and control the working people around the world with insecurity, debt slavery, and social Othering to build xenophobia and mistrust.

It suits China to go big on these proven strategies because there are so very many Chinese people...but like the Western economies, they figured without the population collapse their old people living longer and having fewer babies while they still can making the existing plans increasingly unworkable. Global climate change is not helping them, or their plans.

No need to cry for the failure to get immediate control has had on the awful people who think only of their own short-term profits,though...the plans have changed enough to make a whole new level of economic misery possible.

Reading this book was intensely angering all over again, as John Perkins uses his insider knowledge to explain the new goals and tactics to reach them. I thought humans were awful before I read the first edition. After reading the third, with its laser focus on the newest practitioners of manipulative business shenanigans, I was ready to stow away on the next SpaceX rocket. I do not care where it is going. As long as it is away from the kind of horrible, amoral, truly sociopathic scum that run things in the ways that John Perkins reveals.

However.

The John Perkins-revealed point is, now that we know, and can see, the manipulations and behaviors being deployed against our Body Politic, we can take action. Call it out, call your congressional district office, call the White House...anyone who HAS to listen...and make it clear that you want to see substantive change in the way business is regulated. Make it clear you want to see your government stand up and fight against the looting of the treasury and the planet both. Then go to the polls and VOTE THEM OUT. You still have that power, and it scares Them leaky, and they are trying to take the vote away from you. Stay active, or accept the much, much worse world the Economic Royalists are trying to cram down your throat.

ACTIVATING THE COMMON GOOD: Reclaiming Control of Our Collective Well-Being, a goal more important than ever

ACTIVATING THE COMMON GOOD: Reclaiming Control of Our Collective Well-Being
PETER BLOCK
Berrett-Koehler Publishers
$27.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A powerful, inspiring, and achievable vision of a society based on cooperation and community instead of competition and commodification.

This book counters the dominant and destructive story that we are polarized, violent, selfish, and destined to consume everything in sight. That is not who we are.

The challenge, Peter Block says, is that we are suffering under an economic theology that is based on scarcity, self-interest, competition, and infinite growth. We’re told we can purchase and outsource all that matters. Block calls this the “business perspective narrative.” It dominates not only the economy but also architecture, faith communities, journalism, arts, neighborhoods, and much more.

Block offers an alternative in the “common good narrative.” It embodies the belief that we are basically communal and cooperative. And that we have the capacity to communally produce what we care most raising a child, safety, livelihood, health, and a clean and sustainable environment.

This book describes how shifts to the common good perspective could transform many areas, fostering journalism that reports on what works, architecture that designs habitable spaces creating connection, faith collectives that build community, a market that is restrained and local, and leadership and activism that build social capital by creating trust among citizens. With these shifts, we would fundamentally change the world we live in for the better.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A business guru wrote this book, this loud call to rein in our enshrined attitude of greed and selfishness. That delights me more than anything else about the read. I resonate like a struck bell to the author’s call to rethink our cultural norms. Given how entrenched the mindset of me first, me on top is, the best thing to do is to begin the process of change at the personal and local level.

Visit the website, The Abundant Community, that the author and his collaborator John McKnight run. It is chock-a-block with ideas and resources to accomplish this. The book at hand is an excellent read to guide you to the areas that you most need to focus on, be they personal or community based. Our individual well-being is tied closely to our social well-being and this is a frequently discussed facet of life that the author is at pains to weave throughout the short book. From the Introduction, entitled “We Are Not Divided”, forward, Author Block makes the case for beginning one’s journey with the personal commitment to calibrating one’s mind to a "we are not alone" mindset. The difference between "alone" and "divided" recurs throughout the book, very much ringing through the ideas for actions we as citizens of this system of divide-and-conquer tactics can effectively take.

There is nothing at all unattainable in any of the goals Author Block offers to us as models for effecting change. That he offers them in actionable formats and in digestible, relatable examples makes the read both pleasant, easy, and short and offers real-world results to those willing to undertake his tried-and-tested steps toward a common-good focused world.