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Title details for We Need to Build by Eboo Patel - Wait list

We Need to Build

Field Notes for Diverse Democracy

by Eboo Patel
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“You don’t create societies by burning things down, You create societies by building things.”
From the former faith adviser to President Obama comes a fresh manifesto for those who seek to promote positive change and build a more diverse and just democracy
The goal of social change work is not a more ferocious revolution; it is a more beautiful social order. It is harder to organize a fair trial than it is to fire up a crowd, more challenging to build a good school than it is to tell others they are doing education all wrong. But every decent society requires fair trials and good schools, and that’s just the beginning of the list of institutions and structures that need to be efficiently created and effectively run in large-scale diverse democracy.
We Need to Build is a call to create those institutions and a guide for how to run them well.
 
In his youth, Eboo Patel was inspired by love-based activists like John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr., Badshah Khan, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Thich Nhat Hanh. Their example, and a timely challenge to build the change he wanted to see, led to a life engaged in the particulars of building, nourishing, and sustaining an institution that seeks to promote positive social change—Interfaith America. Now, drawing on his twenty years of experience, Patel tells the stories of what he’s learned and how, in the process, he came to construct as much as critique and collaborate more than oppose.
 
His challenge to us is clear: those of us committed to refounding America as a just and inclusive democracy need to defeat the things we don’t like by building the things we do.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 10, 2022

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9780807024072

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9780807024072
      • File size: 829 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Kirkus

      March 1, 2022
      The story of how Interfaith America founder Patel expanded his activism to become a nonprofit founder focused on building civic institutions. The author, a former faith adviser to President Barack Obama, remembers himself as a young person who was always ready with an unsparing political and cultural assessment of any given situation. In college, he writes, he ruined a question-and-answer period after a student play by launching into a mean-spirited critique of the production. He expected his independent-study adviser to praise his incisive analysis. Instead, she sent him an email expressing her disappointment at his unnecessarily harsh reaction to the work, encouraging him to try creating something instead of just tearing other people down. Years later, Patel followed this advice--guidance he also received from a Mayan activist who heard Patel's brutal criticism at an existing interfaith institution--and founded Interfaith America, an organization the author hopes will "be among the vital civic institutions engaging the great challenge and opportunity that is American religious diversity and moving the needle toward more widespread interfaith cooperation." Patel then describes "the nitty gritty challenges" involved in institution building, and in conclusion, he pens a letter to his sons urging them to eschew anger and to avoid limiting their lives to critiquing others. "Tell a story of America where we all belong; build civic spaces where we can all contribute and feel connected," he writes. "You want people who are being their worst selves to be their better selves. And truthfully, you want to be better too. All of us need to be better." Activists may glean some useful tactics from the book, but the narrative is often disjointed, and Patel's arguments about diversity and inclusion are not as forceful or cohesive as they were in his 2012 book, Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice, and the Promise of America. A centrist call to actively build--rather than passively critique--civic institutions.

      COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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