All Is Not Lost: 20 Ways to Revolutionize Disaster

by Alex Zamalin

Overview

An uplifting look at how organizers in the past have successfully leveraged crises into emancipatory politics, and a plea for continued progressive movement building in our tumultuous social climate

From the climate apocalypse and COVID-19 to double-digit unemployment to Donald Trump and the rise of far-right white nationalists—disasters are everywhere we look.

While these disasters often leave us feeling hopeless and withdrawn, scholar Alex Zamalin argues that pessimism cannot be the only response. Silence and inaction only perpetuate mass suffering and inequality. Instead, All Is Not Lost suggests that following every crisis emerges new political opportunity for changing our politics and everyday lives.

Blending intellectual history, biography, and political critique, Zamalin offers 20 specific lessons for our present moment, turning to moments in history to demonstrate how various figures in the past have successfully leveraged struggles into sources of political action and freedom. The lessons—on how to resist, organize, treat others, think politically, memorialize, dream, write, occupy, build, and act—all build toward one truth: though disaster is something we cannot prevent from arriving, we can control how we confront it and what we build in its place. Using examples from the 17th century to the present, All Is Not Lost reminds readers to not back down in the face of crisis and offers radical lessons of continued resistance and movement building to create a successful progressive coalition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807006085
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	04/12/2022
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	4.35(w) x 6.19(h) x 0.47(d)

About the Author

Alex Zamalin is the director of the African American Studies Program and an associate professor of political science at the University of Detroit Mercy. He is the author of numerous books, including, most recently, Against Civility: The Hidden Racism in Our Obsession with Civility. His areas of expertise include African American political thought, American politics, and political theory. Zamalin’s essays and reviews have appeared in various edited book collections and in peer-reviewed journals such as New Political Science, Contemporary Political Theory, Political Theory, and Women’s Studies Quarterly.

Table of Contents

1 Disasters Are Opportunities 1

2 Resist 9

3 Take Back the Streets 16

4 Patriotism Isn't the Answer 23

5 Redefine Ideals to Meet Your Democratic Aspirations 32

6 Politicize Truth 39

7 Imagine Utopia 45

8 Question Elites 53

9 Make Peace 62

10 Build a Democratic Society 69

11 Organize 76

12 Make Political Art 85

13 Paint a Bloody Picture 94

14 Politicize Grief 100

15 Create a Counterculture 106

16 Revolutionize Identity 113

17 Make an Angry Spectacle 122

18 Embrace Interconnectedness 128

19 Embrace Participatory Democracy 136

20 Think Historically 143

Acknowledgments 151

Notes 153

Editorial Reviews

A [fiery], earnest effort to inspire progressives to regain the political initiative now apparently firmly in conservative hands.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“In the wake of the wreckage of the Trump era and pandemic, relief is widespread, but so too is a sense of hopelessness. This book is a call to action, a must-read.”
—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of Not “a Nation of Immigrants”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

“Many of these remarkable stories from our history will be new to readers—which is sad in a way, since they are important chapters that have been ignored (or erased). But it’s a joy in another way, because their fresh power will inspire many to action!”
—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

“Pondering those who have resisted in our history, Alex Zamalin proposes, is the first step—after COVID and Donald Trump—to making sure that the center and right are not the only forces to reap the benefits of the ongoing American crisis. This is a thrilling read for our times.”
—Samuel Moyn, Yale University, author of Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War

“If, as Alex Zamalin says, ‘radical ideas are most palatable when they’re boldly announced and proudly defended in the mainstream,’ then this book will be their vehicle. All Is Not Lost is a visionary romp through the history we need for a transformational, just, and egalitarian politics. Vivid, inspiring, and accessible, this book gives us heroes who know that ‘to change what feels familiar, you have to make a scene.’ It should be read by everyone.”
—Bonnie Honig, Brown University, author of Shell-Shocked: Feminist Criticism After Trump

“In this place of darkness and disaster, Alex Zamalin gives us a guide to overcoming. Written with a great heart and a cool head, he maps what can, what should, be done to build a new world from the shards of the old. This is a call to change within our reach, a map to revolution in the everyday.”
—Anne Norton, University of Pennsylvania, author of Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire

“Filled with inspiring heroes and inspiriting examples, this appeal to make a better world offers an assertive call to seize the time. Combining ethics and idealism with grounded strategies for democratic mobilization, the book presents evocative and compelling guidance about how to organize and identifies ways to communicate without apology.”
—Ira Katznelson, author of When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America

From the Publisher

2022-01-18
An earnest effort to inspire progressives to regain the political initiative now apparently firmly in conservative hands.

“Counterintuitive as it may seem, disaster creates unprecedented opportunity to change our world. When all is broken, disoriented, and rearranged…we can transform society.” So writes Zamalin, a political science and African American studies professor and author of Against Civility: The Hidden Racism in Our Obsession With Civility. He looks back fondly to the 1950s and ’60s, when movements for civil rights and against the Vietnam War genuinely influenced U.S. leaders, and then to the 1980s, when AIDS activists instigated real change. Nowadays, noisy crowds are likely to be harassing an abortion clinic or denouncing mask mandates. In 20 short, fiery chapters, Zamalin stresses the importance of nonviolent street action, political art, participatory democracy, radical environmentalism, reproductive freedom, and a “counterculture opposed to what’s corrosive in the mainstream.” At the same time, he denounces authoritarianism, jingoism, racism, and the American obsession with “national security” and worship of the free market. Zamalin emphasizes—and few readers will deny—that the unemployed, low-wage workers, and less-educated Americans suffer more in the capitalism system. In the past, they voted for left-leaning politicians, while right-leaning candidates, dominated by the middle class and financed by the wealthy, opposed them through legislation, court action, or even violence. As the middle class has hollowed out and wages have stagnated, many Americans have gotten restless and angry. Having received the short end of the stick from democracy, they show it little respect. Consequently, political candidates with autocratic tendencies have gained favor even as they seek to dismantle civil rights. Zamalin correctly points out that the wealthy have given a great deal of money to Donald Trump and similar figures, but he doesn’t adequately explore how the middle-class and less-educated sectors elected him. Still, activists will find useful pointers in this earnest manifesto.

Impassioned advice for reformers.

Kirkus Reviews