Jeremy Brecher – Common Preservation in Action

“Jeremy Brecher’s work is astonishing and refreshing; and, God knows, necessary.”

– Studs Terkel

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Common Preservation in Action

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Protecting Workers and Communities – From Below Part 2: There Ought to Be a Law

by Jeremy Brecher, originally published 2 May 2023 on Labor Network for Sustainability’s Stike! Commentaries, accessible here: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/articles/protecting-workers-and-communities-from-below-part-2-there-ought-to-be-a-law/ Listen to the audio version … Read More »

The Willow Project: Which Side Should Labor Be On?

by Jeremy Brecher, originally published 2 April 2023 on Labor Network for Sustainability’s Stike! Commentaries, accessible here: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/articles/the-willow-project-which-side-should-labor-be-on/ Listen to the audio version >> American unions increasingly … Read More »

Protecting Workers and Communities–From Below | Part 1: On the Ground

by Jeremy Brecher, originally published 23 March 2023 on Labor Network for Sustainability’s Stike! Commentaries, accessible here: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/articles/protecting-workers-and-communities-from-below-part-1-on-the-ground/ Listen to the audio version … Read More »

New Foundations for the House of Labor?

by Jeremy Brecher, originally published 21 February 2023 on Labor Network for Sustainability’s Stike! Commentaries, accessible here: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/articles/new-foundations-for-the-house-of-labor/ Workers’ problems are not limited to their relationships with … Read More »

The Green New Deal – The Current State of Play

by Jeremy Brecher, originally published 15 February 2023 on Labor Network for Sustainability’s Stike! Commentaries, accessible here: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/strike/commentary-the-green-new-deal-the-current-state-of-play/ While the national media have largely gone silent on the Green … Read More »

How To Revive the Labor Movement

by Jeremy Brecher, originally published 3 February 2023 on Dissentmagazine.org, accessible here: https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/how-to-revive-the-labor-movement In The Future We Need, Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta argue for extending collective bargaining beyond the … Read More »

About SAVE THE HUMANS?

“A breath-taking manuscript: I am overwhelmed and beginning to think how I can integrate this into my teaching. [An] enormous contribution to the advancement of know how for common preservation.”

– Frieder Otto Wolf, Free University of Berlin and former Member of the European Parliament for the German Greens

About SAVE THE HUMANS?

“Over the last decades Jeremy Brecher has known how to detect the critical issue of a period, to sort the many realities of suffering and injustice and to emerge with a clear, short, powerful description. He does it again in this important book--it is about people, how our system devalues people and what needs to be done.”

- Saskia Sassen, Columbia University and author of Territory, Authority, Rights

About SAVE THE HUMANS?

“I have been an advocate, a student, and a teacher of advocacy for more than forty years, but I have never learned more useful knowledge about advocacy than from this book. It is absolutely unique in its integration of engaging personal narratives of the author’s direct involvement in every significant social justice movement of the last forty years with his analytic history of previous movements.”

- Mike Pertschuk, former chair, Federal Trade Commission

The NVP's experience is relevant to a basic unsolved problem of modern civilization: most people's lack of power over the economic forces and decisions that affect them.

- Banded Together

From BANDED TOGETHER

This book tells the story of a group of factory workers, housewives, parishioners, and organizers who tried to create an alternative to the economic powerlessness manifested in the closing of dozens of factories in the Naugatuck Valley region.

- Banded Together

From BANDED TOGETHER

Ashes to ashes
Dust to dust
If Seth Thomas doesn't get you
Plume and Atwood must.

- Thomaston children's chant

From BANDED TOGETHER

This book is dedicated to the people of the Naugatuck Valley, who have educated me, sustained me, and taken me unto them as their pet outsider. I can truly say of the valley, as Herman Melville' Ishmael said of his whale ship, that it has been my Yale College and my Harvard.

- The author

From BANDED TOGETHER

"If all the people in a city are banded together to make it a better place to live, then it will be a better place to live. That's what the Naugatuck Valley Project is all about."

- Theresa Francis, NVP leader

From BANDED TOGETHER

"I think the Naugatuck Valley Project is an embryonic sign of what has to develop in the future on a much broader basis for this society to survive and be strong."

- Fred Perella, author of Poverty in American Democracy

About SAVE THE HUMANS

“This is a remarkable book: part personal story, part intellectual history told in the first person by a skilled writer and assiduous historian, part passionate but clearly and logically argued plea for pushing the potential of collective action to preserve the human race. Easy reading and full of useful and unforgettable stories about what ordinary humans from around the globe can do and have done to improve the condition of their lives. A medicine against apathy and political despair much-needed in the U.S. and the world today.”

- Peter Marcuse, Columbia University

About SAVE THE HUMANS?

"This is an indispensable book that everyone concerned about the human future needs to read and act upon. It offers a fascinating blend of political autobiography, manual for
social change, and illuminating account of the shifting agenda of progressive politics, giving cogent primacy to the stark goal of human preservation. With species survival at stake, what Jeremy Brecher writes is at once frightening and inspiring."

- Richard Falk, University of California, Santa Barbara

About SAVE THE HUMANS?

“It is an amazing piece of work indeed, accomplishing the unimaginable, to paraphrase the Port Huron Statement. The blend of personal experience, collective memories, social analysis, and indications of possible ways out of our current disastrous state is impressive.”

- Ferdinando Fasce, University of Genoa and author of An American Family: The Great War and Corporate Culture in America

About SAVE THE HUMANS?

“One of America's most admired activist-scholars shines his light on the path
forward, reminding us that social change is both possible and urgent.”

- Mike Davis, University of California--Riverside and author of City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles

Praise For SAVE THE HUMANS?

"The most important story of the past half century is that of ordinary people organizing to transform the way society looked at workers, unjust war, women, people of color, and the environment. Jeremy Brecher's life and book tell this story with a passion and comprehensiveness that make this a must read for fans of justice."

- John Cavanagh, Director, Institute for Policy Studies

You and I may not know each other, but I suspect there are some problems that we share -- problems like climate change, war, and injustice. For half a century I have been participating in and writing about social movements that address those problems. The purpose of this website is to share what I've learned. I hope it provides something of use to you in addressing our common problems.

For the record, I am the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements. I have written and/or produced more than twenty video documentaries. I have participated in movements for nuclear disarmament, civil rights, peace in Vietnam, international labor rights, global economic justice, accountability for war crimes, climate protection, and many others.

Common Preservation in Action

Protecting Workers and Communities – From Below Part 2: There Ought to Be a Law

The Willow Project: Which Side Should Labor Be On?

Protecting Workers and Communities–From Below | Part 1: On the Ground

New Foundations for the House of Labor?

The Green New Deal – The Current State of Play

How To Revive the Labor Movement

ABOUT JEREMY BRECHER

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