The Continued Need For Change

One of my favorite courses in college was a history class, taught by a part time adjunct professor. He brought history to life, and regularly said that history is one of the most important topics, because it repeats itself. As a young man, I struggled with this concept because it seemed odd that if you experience something once, and deal with the issue, why would it ever come back. 

But as I have aged, and experienced more of life, my old history teacher was right.  Things do repeat themselves, and keeping a good record of what happened and how you dealt with it is a good strategy for better life success. 

To this end, I want to tell you about my newest book, "The Macro Change Handbook." (Www.lapublishing.com). The book chronicles experiences of advocacy, mostly for disability and human rights over my 45 years in the movement. It looks at the notions of community, change, power, organizing people, strategies and tactics for promoting a more inclusive, just and fair society. Using sound sociological and psychological principles it looks at successful, and not so successful actions and aspects that either I observed, learned from others, or tried myself in my role as a disability advocate. 

In a way, this book is a compliment to the work that Jeff Fromknecht and I published last year, "Social Capital: The Key to Macro Change."  In our approach, we see 2 veins to broader social change, regardless of the issue at hand.  One is the formal petitioning via laws, policy, regulation and mandate (think ADA).  This is the nuts and bolts of "The Macro Change Handbook."  The other is found with the informal aspects of relationship building; the focus of "Social Capital." 

If you are a change agent, and someone interested in a better world, you might want to look at both books. Know too, that all the royalties from these books go to our nonprofit organization,  CLASS (www.classcommunity.org).  You might learn some new approaches, and will make a donation at the same time.