About me
I’ve spent most of my life working for change — convinced that the seeds of a better world are already here in communities that are finding ways to flourish without undermining the living systems we all depend on.
I’m the founding editor of YES! Magazine, part of a team that built it from a scrappy startup into a nationally recognized publication covering grassroots solutions addressing the climate crisis, racial justice, corporate power, mass incarceration, and cooperative economics. I’ve written for The Guardian, Truthout, Common Dreams, and others, and edited and authored several books including The Revolution Where You Live, based on a solo 12,000-mile road trip reporting on innovations in rust belt cities, Native reservations, and Appalachian coal country.
In 2017 I founded PeoplesHub, an online school connecting grassroots organizers with social change leaders. I also worked closely with the Suquamish Indian Tribe — including helping restore to the Tribe the land where Chief Seattle once lived — and I still paddle with them on the annual canoe journey. I currently serve as vice chair of Free Speech TV, an independent progressive network uplifting the voices on the front lines of social, economic, and environmental justice.
These days I’m writing, facilitating, and creating tools — like this Substack and the free zine *Community as Strategy* — to support the people doing the hard work of building a better world.
I’ve lived in India, China, and Latin America, and I’m based in the Pacific Northwest.
Why subscribe?
The values are there — concern for the Earth and for each other, and for social and economic justice. What’s missing for most people is a sense that we have the power to do something that matters.
I create zines and write about where that power comes from: building community, doing local organizing, reckoning with our history, and working to build the world we want to live in. Not someday. Now, in the places where we actually have agency.
You’ll get both the why — making the case for community and local power as our best response to fascism, climate crisis, and the epidemic loneliness — and the how: tools and practices that groups can use to work better together.
Subscribe FREE.
I’d love to hear from you!
Have you used one of the zines, Community as Strategy or Community Reckoning, with your group?Do you have suggestions about topics for future zines?.
You can reach me with comments on these questions and other ideas and suggestions by replying to any newsletter email, or leave a comment on a post. I read everything.
Thanks for checking out “How We Rise!”
