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.
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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
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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