Radical Book Club
Next meetings:
Tuesday, July 21 at 7 pm on Zoom.
Thursday, June 23rd at 5:30 pm at Hubbard Free Library in Hallowell.
Radical Book Club is a chill space for young people (under 30) who care about social and climate justice to connect, build community, and talk books! No prior activism or book club experience needed.
New members are always welcome!
Email phoebe@mycj.org with any questions.
Current Read:
What If We Get It Right? Visions of Climate Futures
Sometimes the bravest thing we can do while facing an existential crisis is imagine life on the other side. This provocative and joyous book maps an inspiring landscape of possible climate futures.
Through clear-eyed essays and vibrant conversations, infused with data, poetry, and art, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson guides us through solutions and possibilities at the nexus of science, policy, culture, and justice. Visionary farmers and financiers, architects and advocates, help us conjure a flourishing future, one worth the effort it will take—from every one of us, with whatever we have to offer—to create.
If you haven’t yet been able to picture a transformed and replenished world—or to see yourself, your loved ones, and your community in it—this book is for you. If you haven’t yet found your role in shaping this new world or you’re not sure how we can actually get there, this book is for you.
With grace, humor, and humanity, Johnson invites readers to ask and answer this ultimate question together: What if we get it right?
About the Author
Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy expert, writer, and teacher working to help create the best possible climate future. She is co-founder of Urban Ocean Lab, a think tank for the future of coastal cities, and is the Roux Distinguished Scholar at Bowdoin College. Ayana authored The New York Times bestseller What If We Get it Right?: Visions of Climate Futures, work that is carried on with her newsletter and podcast of the same name.
Previously, she co-edited the bestselling anthology All We Can Save, co-created and co-hosted the Spotify/Gimlet podcast How to Save a Planet, and co-authored the Blue New Deal, a roadmap for including the ocean in climate policy. As executive director of the Waitt Institute, she co-founded the Blue Halo Initiative and led the Caribbean’s first successful island-wide ocean zoning effort. Early in her career, she developed U.S. federal ocean policy at the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Ayana earned a BA from Harvard University in environmental science and public policy, and a Ph.D. from Scripps Institution of Oceanography in marine biology. She serves on the board of directors for Patagonia and GreenWave and on the advisory board of Environmental Voter Project. Recent recognitions include, the Schneider Award for Outstanding Climate Communication and the TIME Earth Award. Her writing has been published widely, including in the New York Times, WIRED, and Rolling Stone.
She is the proud daughter of a teacher/farmer and an architect/potter. Above all: Ayana is in love with climate solutions.
Hosted by:
Maine Youth for Climate Justice and Maine Youth Power
Meets:
In Person: Every 3rd Thursday of the month at Hubbard Free Library at 5:30 pm
Virtually: Every 4th Tuesday of the month at 7 pm
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Past Reads:
If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution
“A remarkable new history” (David Wallace-Wells, New York Times Magazine) of a decade aflame—and what we can learn from its embers
From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result. Acclaimed journalist Vincent Bevins carried out hundreds of interviews around the world, guided by a single, puzzling question: How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?
The result is a stirring work of history that connects events in a dozen countries and reveals that conventional wisdom on revolutionary change is gravely misguided. From the so-called Arab Spring to Gezi Park in Turkey, from Ukraine’s Euromaidan to student rebellions in Chile and Hong Kong, Bevins provides a blow-by-blow account of street movements and their consequences, recounted in gripping detail. In this groundbreaking study of an extraordinary chain of events, protesters and major actors look back on successes and defeats, offering urgent lessons for the future.