By Sarah van Gelder
Jump in Sarah van Gelder’s camper for an unforgettable journey. From remote North Dakota reservations to Chicago’s urban farms to the coal fields of Appalachia, YES! Magazine’s cofounder meets the quirky and the committed, the local heroes and the healers who are building a better world, one community at a time.
The common thread running through their grassroots efforts is best summed up by a phrase Sarah saw on a mural in Newark: “We the People LOVE This Place.” It’s that connection, Sarah suggests — the connection we each have to our physical and ecological place, and to our human community, where we’ll find our power and our best hopes for a new America.
The Revolution Where You Live is available at your local independent bookstores.
Praise for The Revolution Where You Live:
“I love that this book documents the incredibly powerful and dynamic movements that are taking root around the country. Read it!” — Mark Ruffalo, actor, director, and film producer
“Looking for hope? Here’s where to find it. An inspiring account of the grassroots leaders throughout the United States who are confronting racism, the climate crisis, and poverty.”
— Van Jones, CNN cohost, author, and activist
“The Revolution Where You Live couldn’t have come at a better time. If Woody Guthrie had penned a book to go along with ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ it might have read like this.”— David Bornstein, New York Times columnist, founder of the Solutions Journalism Network
“Jump into Sarah van Gelder’s camper, and you’ll see our country anew . . . just the book Americans need right now.” — Frances Moore Lappé, best-selling author
See more praise below …
Peek Inside
- Prologue: I Saw the Revolution in So Many of the Small Places We Call Home
- Forward by Danny Glover: Community or Chaos?
More About the Author: Sarah van Gelder
More Praise for The Revolution Where You Live:
“What a journey! Sarah van Gelder uncovers the real revolution unfolding across America: leaderless and leader-full, up against it and angry, but still willing to hope. A passionate, powerful account!”— Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy and The End of Nature, cofounder of 350.org
“This is a wonderful book—warm, human, direct, meaningful—and it is one that will help you understand why building a new America from the ground up must begin with community.”—Gar Alperovitz, author of What Then Must We Do?
“Sarah van Gelder has written a beautiful chronicle of people making revolution the old-fashioned way: close to home. Learn from these stories and claim your place in the America that is arriving.”—Eric Liu, founder of Citizen University and author of You’re More Powerful Than You Think
“In The Revolution Where You Live, Sarah van Gelder offers living hope, grounded not in theory but in the stories of the real communities of resilience and resistance she visits.”—Tim DeChristopher, climate activist
“Journalist Sarah van Gelder says we can build the political revolution Bernie Sanders talks about from the bottom up, away from the iron grip of Wall Street and wealthy corporate interests. That’s a future we can all believe in.”—RoseAnn DeMoro, Executive Director, National Nurses United, and National Vice President, AFL-CIO
“Sarah van Gelder’s The Revolution Where You Live is filled with stories of people she interviewed as she traveled the country listening to their cries and dreams. Readers of these engrossing stories can go along for this memorable ride of reflection and empathy!”—Ralph Nader
“I’ve learned to trust Sarah van Gelder, the questions she asks, and the folks she listens to. In The Revolution Where You Live, her encounters with people reinventing their lives today reveal promises we can believe in.”—Joanna Macy, activist and author of Coming Back to Life
“People are hungry for solutions, and those that unfold in these beautifully told stories offer hope and ways to build bridges of justice and understanding.” —LeeAnn Hall, Co–Executive Director, People’s Action
“What the world needs today is a modern Odysseus—one who speaks with the power and love of the feminine, listens from the heart, and acts from compassion. Sarah van Gelder is that hero, a woman who understands that the monsters blocking our paths are our own creations, that the way out of chaos is through soul-felt, community-centered involvement. The Revolution Where You Live is a song of modern redemption.” —John Perkins, New York Times best-selling author of New Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
“Like the inspiring efforts that she chronicles, Sarah van Gelder’s writing is ‘ordinary and extraordinary.’ In sharp contrast to mass media blather and clichés of condescension, this book offers hope grounded in real human experience.”—Norman Solomon, Executive Director, Institute for Public Accuracy, and author of War Made Easy
“In this good book, Sarah van Gelder documents her reprise of Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1831 travels in search of democracy. It is a book of answers: homegrown, walking-distance, smart, and heartfelt.” —Peter Block, author of Community
“Our survival depends today on rediscovering hope as a social force. This is what Sarah van Gelder does in this amazing book, where she shares sources of hope that she collected with love and wisdom.”—Gustavo Esteva, writer, speaker, and founder of Universidad de la Tierra
“Sarah van Gelder’s genius, in the spirit of Wendell Berry, is to celebrate the women, men, and children who cultivate love for their places in all their diversity. This book inspires us to regenerate our connections with each other and to the ecology of our place on earth.”—Madhu S. Prakash, author and Professor of Education, Penn State College of Education
“This book will keep you warm even as it keeps you riveted, and it will inspire you to see your part in the solutions that our world so desperately needs.” —Brendan Martin, founder and Director, The Working World
“Slow food is a local, healthy homemade meal, prepared with a lot of love. Sister Sarah has a similar talent as she shares with us her snail ride across Turtle Island—not as a fable but as independent media evidence that decolonization and the Great Turning are here. We the people love this place!” —Pancho Ramos-Stierle, full-time ServiceSpace volunteer, Oakland, undocumented and unafraid activist & meditator
“Buckminster Fuller reminded us that we are facing a civilizational choice between utopia and oblivion. In this intrepid account, Sarah van Gelder renders the realistic utopia possible and reminds us that it is being born, right now, in the heart of the old empire.”—Alnoor Ladha, Executive Director, The Rules, and Board Member, Greenpeace International USA
“Sarah listened to everyday people and tells us their beautiful stories as they take control over their own destinies.” —Linda Stout, founder of Spirit in Action and author of Bridging the Class Divide
“The inspiration and lessons we need to follow Joe Hill’s exhortation: ‘Don’t mourn—organize.’” —Jim Diers, author of Neighbor Power and former Director, Seattle Department of Neighborhoods