Remaking Democracy: How We Make the Worlds We Want

FORTHCOMING, SHIPS MARCH 2026

Danielle Chynoweth & Elizabeth Adams

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

Author: Danielle Chynoweth & Elizabeth Adams
Publisher: Common Notions
ISBN: 9781945335518
Published: March 31, 2026
Format: Paperback
Size: 6.0 in X 9.0 in
Page count: 256
Subjects: Organizing / Movements / Political Science


About THE AUTHOR

Danielle Chynoweth is a media justice and housing rights leader. She works to end homelessness as an elected official. She was the Organizing Director for Media Justice and co-founded the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center. She teaches at the University of Illinois, School for Designing a Society, and internationally.

Elizabeth Adams, PhD, is a composer, teacher, and caregiver who has worked at the intersection of art, education, and organizing for over twenty years. She produces anti-capitalist music concerts, created pop-up political education spaces with Free University NYC, and won historic rent laws with the Crown Heights Tenant Union. She has taught at Columbia University and the School for Designing a Society.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface: Safiya Noble, PhD

Introduction: What Time is it on the Clock of the World?


SPIRAL OF CHANGE

1. 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