Discover the great cost and greater reward of moving from white moderate ally to antiracist abolitionist, In Baptized in Tear Gas, minister and activist Elle Dowd invites readers to experience her transformation from what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as "the white moderate" into an Assata Shakur-reading, courthouse-occupying abolitionist. Like in baptism, this alteration requires parts of us to die-our tone policing, white niceness, respectability politics-so that we may be reborn. Through the Uprising in Ferguson, God made File into something new. Now it's our turn. Book jacket.

For years Elle Dowd considered herself an advocate for justice, but her well-meaning support always took a back burner to what Martin Luther King Jr. called the tension-free, ordered "negative peace" of white moderates. Then Michael Brown, a Black man, was murdered by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, and the subsequent Uprising changed everything. In Baptized in Tear Gas, minister and activist Elle Dowd tells the gripping story of her transformation into an Assata Shakur-reading, courthouse-occupying abolitionist with an arrest record, hungry for the revolution. Thanks to deep relationships with people in Ferguson and St. Louis, and to experiencing a fraction of the system for herself--including the fear of rubber bullets, the shock of sound cannons, and running from tear gas--Dowd fully committed to the work of anti-racism and abolition. Now she wants to help other white allies do the same. Like in baptism, this transformation requires parts of us to die: our lack of power analysis, our commitment to white niceness, our tone policing, our respectability politics--all of those impulses we have been socialized by since birth must die so that something new can be resurrected in our lives and in the world. The uprising in Ferguson changed Dowd, and through it, God made her into something new. Now it's our turn.

This book is a compilation of my personal adventures, experiences, and memories in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The reader will experience through my eyes what a career in law enforcement is like--the good, the bad, and the ugly side of civilization. I expose all the negative aspects of working in law enforcement, including current issues affecting law enforcement, such as the use of force issues, staffing shortages, hypocrisy within government and police/sheriff's departments, police/sheriff gangs, corruption, unrealistic expectations, undeserved promotions, scheduling and time off issues, overworking and understaffed departments, and dealing with the "Adam Henrys" of civilization. I feel this book has a wealth of information down to the details of everyday jobs and is extremely educational. I'm sure there are a lot of young aspiring deputies who would love to read your book. I wish I had a book like this when I was younger. I would have surely read it. "I think this book can become a movie. Maybe a Netflix documentary. This is a great time to unleash your book to the entire world. Thanks for trusting me and for sharing this book with me. If you have any questions, call me up or text me regarding my opinion on this amazing book, "Baptized by Fire".

Over the last forty years, the human landscape of the United States has been fundamentally transformed. The metamorphosis is partially visible in the ascendance of glittering, coastal hubs for finance, infotech, and the so-called creative class. But this is only the tip of an economic iceberg, the bulk of which lies in the darkness of the declining heartland or on the dimly lit fringe of sprawling cities. This is America’s hinterland, populated by towering grain threshers and hunched farmworkers, where laborers drawn from every corner of the world crowd into factories and “fulfillment centers” and where cold storage trailers are filled with fentanyl-bloated corpses when the morgues cannot contain the dead. Urgent and unsparing, this book opens our eyes to America’s new heart of darkness. Driven by an ever-expanding socioeconomic crisis, America’s class structure is recomposing itself in new geographies of race, poverty, and production. The center has fallen. Riots ricochet from city to city led by no one in particular. Anarchists smash financial centers as a resurgent far right builds power in the countryside. Drawing on his direct experience of recent popular unrest, from the Occupy movement to the wave of riots and blockades that began in Ferguson, Missouri, Phil A. Neel provides a close-up view of this landscape in all its grim but captivating detail. Inaugurating the new Field Notes series, published in association with the Brooklyn Rail, Neel’s book tells the intimate story of a life lived within America’s hinterland.

Justice commitments can and must be integrated into all of a church's financial practices, including fundraising, budgeting, managing property and personnel, investing, and participating in community partnerships. So argues Sheryl Johnson in Serving Money, Serving God: Aligning Radical Justice, Christian Practice, and Church Life. This is the first Christian stewardship and finance book written from an explicitly anti-racist, decolonial, feminist, ecological, and class-critical standpoint. Many churches espouse these commitments--as individual members, as congregations, and through their denominations--but pursue them as discrete initiatives, such as themes for study and worship, rather than as core organizing principles for congregational life. Alignment between Christian beliefs and commitments and church practice is both ethically and practically necessary, however. A 2009 Pew Research Center study that found that about half of those who had become unaffiliated from religion had done so because they found religious people "hypocritical, judgmental, or insincere." Alignment between beliefs and church practice therefore matters deeply both for those who are active in churches and for those who are not--but who might be if faith and action are consistent. This book offers a positive and constructive approach to the topic and is filled with inspiring examples for churches of all sizes. Case studies provide practical guidance and make the analysis concrete, relatable, and accessible. The book highlights the importance of creativity, imagination, and a sense of hope-filled adventure in engaging this work.

After the world witnessed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a passionate uprising erupted, with the intersection of 38th and Chicago at its epicenter. One block away stood Calvary Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation whose members had engaged in racial justice work for years. In Ashes to Action, Shari Seifert provides her riveting first-person account of the events following May 25, 2020. Shari joined others in the Calvary community to show up, listen, and ask what was needed in the moment. As the lines between her congregation and neighborhood blurred, the way toward a faithful response because clearer. This personal narrative stays rooted in the context of community, immersing readers in the days, weeks, and months following the uprising.

Landscape and animals have been fundamental elements of Turkish culture from the Ottomans to the present day. This book examines representations of and attitudes toward land and animals in selected Turkish literary texts and cultural contexts. Informed by global debates in ecocriticism, ecopoetics and animal studies, Kim Fortuny explores literary and arts activism, as well as environmental interventions in the Turkish cultural sphere in light of ongoing ecological degradation in Turkey. Writers from the Turkish canon such as Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar and Nâzim Hikmet are explored alongside American and English texts to reveal common transnational environmental and ecological concerns across these distinct literary cultures. Analysing works of Turkish literature within the emerging field of ecocriticism, this interdisciplinary work will be of interest to scholars of Turkish and comparative literature and animal studies and ecocriticism across the humanities.

After a speech at UMass Amherst on February 28, 1984, James Baldwin was asked by a student: "You said that the liberal facade and being a liberal is not enough. Well, what is? What is necessary?" Baldwin responded, "Commitment. That is what is necessary. You mean it or you don't." Taking up that challenge and drawing from Baldwin's fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and interviews, You Mean It or You Don't will spur today's progressives from conviction to action. It is not enough, authors Hollowell and McGhee urge us, to hold progressive views on racial justice, LGBTQ+ identity, and economic inequality. True and lasting change demands a response to Baldwin's radical challenge for moral commitment. Called to move from dreams of justice to living it out in communities, churches, and neighborhoods, we can show that we truly mean it. Welcome to life with James Baldwin. It is raw and challenging, inspired and embodied, passionate and fully awake.

This new deluxe eBook edition features more than eighty additional pages of exclusive, author-approved annotations throughout the text, which contain new illustrations and photographs, to enrich your reading experience. You can access the eBook annotations with a simple click or tap on your eReader via the convenient links. Access them as you read the novel or as supplemental material after finishing the entire story. There is also Random House Reader’s Circle bonus content, which is sure to inspire discussion at book clubs everywhere. When Julie Jacobs inherits a key to a safety-deposit box in Siena, Italy, she is told that it will lead her to an old family treasure. Soon she is launched on a winding and perilous journey into the history of her ancestor Giulietta, whose legendary love for a young man named Romeo rocked the foundations of medieval Siena. As Julie crosses paths with the descendants of the families immortalized in Shakespeare’s unforgettable blood feud, she begins to realize that the notorious curse—“A plague on both your houses!”—is still at work, and that she is the next target. It seems that the only one who can save Julie from her fate is Romeo—but where is he? “One of those rare novels that have it all . . . I was swept away.”—Sara Gruen

A sweeping novel of intrigue and identity, of love and legacy, as a young woman discovers that her own fate is irrevocably tied—for better or worse—to literature’s greatest star-crossed lovers. Twenty-five-year-old Julie Jacobs is heartbroken over the death of her beloved aunt Rose. But the shock goes even deeper when she learns that the woman who has been like a mother to her has left her entire estate to Julie’s twin sister. The only thing Julie receives is a key—one carried by her mother on the day she herself died—to a safety-deposit box in Siena, Italy. This key sends Julie on a journey that will change her life forever—a journey into the troubled past of her ancestor Giulietta Tolomei. In 1340, still reeling from the slaughter of her parents, Giulietta was smuggled into Siena, where she met a young man named Romeo. Their ill-fated love turned medieval Siena upside-down and went on to inspire generations of poets and artists, the story reaching its pinnacle in Shakespeare’s famous tragedy. But six centuries have a way of catching up to the present, and Julie gradually begins to discover that here, in this ancient city, the past and present are hard to tell apart. The deeper she delves into the history of Romeo and Giulietta, and the closer she gets to the treasure they allegedly left behind, the greater the danger surrounding her—superstitions, ancient hostilities, and personal vendettas. As Julie crosses paths with the descendants of the families involved in the unforgettable blood feud, she begins to fear that the notorious curse—“A plague on both your houses!”—is still at work, and that she is destined to be its next target. Only someone like Romeo, it seems, could save her from this dreaded fate, but his story ended long ago. Or did it? Praise for Juliet “One of those rare novels that have it all . . . I was swept away”—Sara Gruen, author of Water for Elephants “Juliet leads us on a thrilling treasure hunt through present-day Italy that makes the classic tragedy itself spellbinding all over again.”—Elle “Boldly imagined, brilliantly plotted, beautifully described, Juliet will carry you spellbound until the gripping end.”—Susan Vreeland, author of Clara and Mr. Tiffany “The Shakespearean scholarship on display is both impressive and well-handled.”—The Washington Post