Welcome to the 30th installment of Books (and more) by Friends.

Powerful mosaics five-stories high are now on permanent display in downtown Watsonville, California. These are images created by longtime artist and activist Juan Fuentes, who grew up in Watsonville. Be moved and inspired by making the trip, Watsonville is less than two hours drive from San Francisco.

Set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic at San Quentin State Prison, Adamu Chan’s film What These Walls Won’t Hold chronicles the organizing and relationships of people who came together beyond the separations created by incarceration to respond to this crisis.

The film version of a live performance of Gene Bruskin’s The Moment Was Now, a musical play about Reconstruction, has been reissued for 2023. A three-minute preview is available on YouTube here; contact Gene to arrange a showing of the film at genebruskin@gmail.com

In 1970, teaching assistants at the University of Wisconsin in Madison went on strike for 24 days. It was the first TA strike in the history of the United States. They won a contract and have represented teaching assistants of UW-Madison ever since. A documentary of the strike made at the time ahs been re-edited by one of the original filmmakers, Jim Russell, and is now available to view on YouTube here.

In her memoir What You Don’t Know Will Make a Whole New World, celebrated librarian and public historian Dorothy Lazard tells the story of her journey to becoming “queen of my own nerdy domain.” As she traces her trajectory to adulthood, she also explores her personal experiences connected to the Summer of Love, the murder of Emmett Till, the flourishing of the Black Arts Movement, and the redevelopment of Oakland.

Bill Fletcher, Jr.’s second novel, The Man Who Changed Colors, tackles many of the same themes that made his first novel – The Man Who Fell from the Sky – so compelling. Once again reporter David Gomes delves into the complicated relationships between African Americans and Cape Verdean Americans in a book that is both mystery story and social criticism.

In Labor Power and Strategy, edited by Peter Olney and Glenn Perusek, John Womack, Jr. presents his ideas on labor strategy – and a set of experienced union organizers including Gene Bruskin, Bill Fletcher, Jr, Rand Wilson and Carey Dall respond.

After Marx: Literature, Theory and Value in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Colleen Lye and Christopher Nealon, includes fresh approaches to reading poetry, fiction and drama and shows how Marxist literary criticism improves our understanding of racial capitalism, feminist politics, colonialism, and other issues.

Working Nine to Five, by Ellen Cassedy, is aptly subtitled A Women’s Movement, a Labor Union, and the Iconic Movie. It recounts the history of 9 to 5 from the time the author co-founded the organization with Karen Nussbaum (interviewed here) in through the directorship of Ellen Bravo and beyond.

In The Latinx Guide to Graduate School, Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales and Magdalena L. Barrera provide a roadmap for surviving and thriving in advanced-degree programs. They document the unwritten rules of graduate education that impact Latinx students, who are often the first in their families to walk that path.

Keep your eyes open for two books coming this fall:

Class, Race, and Gender: Challenging the Injuries and Divisions of Capitalism, by Michael Zweig. Not only an analysis of structural problems, the volume also presents strategies for political action in electoral and movement-building work.

Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World, by Stephanie Luce and Deepak Bhargava. Based on interviews with leading organizers, this groundbreaking book features stories of organizations and movements that have won, including Make the Road NY, the St. Paul Federation of Educators, the welfare rights movement, the Working Families Party, New Georgia Project, Occupy Wall Street, 350.org, the Fight for 15, and Gay Men’s Health Crisis. 

Finally, to prepare now for the pivotal 2024 election, check out Power Concedes Nothing: How Grassroots Organizing Wins Elections, which I co-edited with Linda Burnham and Maria Poblet. It’s a deep dive into how progressive activists mobilized the record-breaking turnout that made the difference in 2020, featuring the first-hand accounts of the organizers who powered the victory over Trump, broke Republican control of the Senate, and drove progressive candidates at all levels to new levels of influence.

If you already have your copy, consider giving one as a gift for a friend, family member or co-worker.