Summer certainly seemed to take its time arriving this year! But now that it has arrived, here are some summer film and reading recommendations from various members of UUC's social justice groups. Enjoy!

Books:

• Apollo's Fire by Jay Inslee: A clear-eyed look at solutions and policy for climate change. - Laura Kennedy Gould (Green Sanctuary Group)
• Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky: This classic 1971 work offers advice from one of the most influential community organizers in US history on how to effect constructive social change, and to know “the difference between being a realistic radical and a rhetorical one.” - Ruth Little (Economic Justice and Immigrant Justice groups)
• The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Beyond the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, edited by Incite! Women of Color Against Violence: A $1.3 trillion industry, the US nonprofit sector is the world's seventh largest economy, with over 1.5 million organizations of staggering diversity that share the tax-exempt designation. Many social justice organizations find themselves blunting political goals to satisfy government and foundation mandates. This collection of essays by radical activists from around the globe offers a critical rethinking the long-term consequences of this investment. How did politics shape the birth of the nonprofit model? How does nonprofit status allow the state to co-opt political movements and manage dissent? How do we fund a movement outside this complex? - Jeni Stambaugh (Food & Meals Assistance Group)
• We the People: Consenting to a Deeper Democracy by John Buck and Sharon Villines: Describes “sociocracy,” a new method of governing ourselves that creates more inclusive and efficient organizations. With consent and collaboration as a foundation for decision-making and communications, it uses the new sciences of cybernetics, systems thinking, and complexity theory to create organizations that are as powerful, self-organizing, and self-correcting as the natural world. - Jeni Stambaugh (Food & Meals Assistance Group)
• Blindness by Jose Saramago: A profound, ultimately transcendent meditation on what it means to be human. It is in many ways a horrific novel, detailing the total breakdown in society that follows a most unnatural disaster. Saramago takes his characters to the very edge of humanity and then pushes them over the precipice. And yet in the midst of all this horror Saramago has written passages of unsurpassed beauty.” - Dave Elvin (Habitat for Humanity Group)

• My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, a brain scientist who suffered a stroke that wiped out the functioning of her left brain, including rational thought, ability to talk and understand language, memories, concepts. During 10 years spent getting that part of her brain back, she discovered through the right hemisphere a deep sense of peace, joy and a feeling of being connected to all of life.  A fascinating voyage.  - Jerome Chroman, (Economic Justice Group)

• Red Bird by Mary Oliver: As she puts it, "My work is loving the world," and through her poetry she shares that love with us and also  her outrage at human destructiveness that threatens the earth. - Jerome Chroman (Economic Justice Group)

Films:

• The Take by Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis: An excellent and inspiring social justice documentary about the worker's cooperative movement in Argentina, accompanied by a modern tango soundtrack by the Gotan Project. Available as a rental. – Jack Lattemann (Economic Justice Group)
• Manufactured Landscapes: This film is a marriage of “Rivers and Tides” (visually) and “An Inconvenient Truth” (ideologically). If there is anything that shows the vast consumptive needs of progress this film definitely hits the mark. Without being preachy, nor heavy handed in its presentation, this film sinks the viewer right into a few enormous, beautiful and heartbreaking scenes to witness our global world with a sense of immediacy. Available as rental. - Dave Elvin (Habitat for Humanity Group)
• The Visitor: A lonely New York widower’s life is dramatically changed by a pair of unexpected immigrant visitors. Currently showing in theaters. - Roberta Ray, Immigrant Justice Group