Remaking Democracy: How We Make The Worlds We Want
Remaking Democracy: How We Make The Worlds We Want
Danielle Chynoweth & Elizabeth Adams
Forthcoming, ships March 2026
How can we empower ourselves and our communities to make lasting social change?
Remaking Democracy is a guidebook for social change. We are at a watershed moment of rising fascism and rising seas: our institutions are failing us, health crises ravage our communities, and the natural world has been thrust into catastrophic climate freefall. Despair threatens to overtake hope in our visions of the future.
In these pages, organizers and teachers Danielle Chynoweth and Elizabeth Adams offer analysis and strategy for sustainable transformation. This accessible and practical resource presents case studies alongside a design toolkit that equips readers to participate in creating the abundant worlds we want. Remaking Democracy empowers us—individually and in groups—to make lasting social change on every level, so that we who are affected by systems can become their creators.
Product Details
ISBN: 9781945335518
Published: March 31, 2026
Format: Paperback
Size: 6 x 9 in
Page count: 256
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“Now is the time to put forward bold, people-centered solutions. To do so, we need to learn from past movements, not rehash them. We need organizers who have been on the frontlines training a new crop of leaders that can see beyond their own time. Remaking Democracy: How We Make the Worlds We Want is a training manual for our future.” —Carol Ammons, Illinois State Representative, Co-chair of Illinois Black Caucus
“For the first time in human history, a connected, just, and equitable global society is possible. What we lack is mass participation in imaging and creating that world. Remaking Democracy: How We Make the Worlds We Want helps us think beyond the reality of our current existence to forge a radically inclusive, global community.” —Alfredo Lopez, Founder of the May First Movement Technology, a founder of the Radical Elders Organization, and one of the organizers of the U.S. Social Forum.
“We need to know how to do the work of social change, and how to build structures to sustain our values of care, justice, and respect for the earth and all its inhabitants. The guidebook for this change is Remaking Democracy.”—Safiya U. Noble, Author of Algorithms of Oppression, David O. Sears Presidential Endowed Chair of Social Sciences and Professor, UCLA Director of the Center on Resilience & Digital Justice and UCLA DataX-Data Justice Initiative
“Danielle Chynoweth has been generously sharing her passion, strategies, and methods of activism with us in the Global South. This book comes at the perfect time, when people everywhere are anxious about the new world order and citizen activism matters more than ever." —Keiko Sei, media activist, Myanmar and Thailand
"School for Designing a Society (SDaS) has offered a rare intellectual and creative nest—one that has helped me navigate the space between collectivist Eastern traditions and individual-centered Western paradigms (according to my subjective experiences). Its holistic approach has taught me to hold both in balance, affirming that a society flourishes only when the individual and the collective are equally seen, nurtured, and respected.” —Earthling Koushalya, film maker, India
“This book is a tour de force offering a clear and deep analysis of capitalism and its inherent contradictions through which we can organize and bring this beast to its feet. Reflecting on several decades of community organizing in Urbana Champaign, their gains, successes, and failures the authors give us a road map to move forward and continue the change making work.” —Faranak Miraftab, Professor, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
“This book as a curriculum invites us to become active collaborators in reimagining, revolutionizing, and reconstructing new equitable democratic practices that accompany futurist thinking, participatory joy, advancing praxis, promotional healing, and equitable democracies.” —Stacey A. Robinson, Multimedia Artist, Associate Professor, Graphic Design and Studio, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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Preface: Safiya Noble, PhD
Introduction: What Time is it on the Clock of the World?
SPIRAL OF CHANGE1. Living in Contradiction
2. Spiral of Change
3. From Indymedia to Media Justice (case study)
GATHER STORIES & PEOPLE
4. “Movements Begin with the Telling of Untold Stories”
5. Sharing Stories Builds Beloved Community
6. As violence was done to me, so violence is done to them
FORMULATE PROBLEMS, LOOK SYSTEMS
7. What is Your Problem? How To Look Systems
8. Formulating Problems, Looking Systems
9. Campaign for Prison Phone Justice (case study)
GENERATE DESIRES
10. Desire as Premise for the Worlds We Want
11. Right or Wrong My Desires
12. The School for Designing a Society (case study)
UNEARTH CONTRADICTIONS
13. Formulating Contradictions
14. Finding Points of Leverage for Change
15. Ending Homelessness (case study)
DESIGN INTERVENTIONS
16. Designing care for a loved one
17. Beginning to Design: Essential Tools
18. Design Principles
19. Re-Designing the Care in Health Care (case study)
20. Tools from Cybernetics, Permaculture, Performance, & Group Process
ACT & FORAGE, REFLECT & RENEW
21. Local Organizing Against Police Violence (case study)
22. The World Is Always Being Made and Never Finished
Conclusion: Idea Garden
Afterword: Further Provocation from Susan Parenti and Mark Enslin
