From some of our most prominent spiritual and religious leaders, poets and thinkers, singers and writers, a book of wisdom to light our way in dark times. AN OPEN FIELD PUBLICATION FROM MARIA SHRIVER At the start of 2020, in what felt already like an age of disorder, our world faced one of the gravest global challenges in a century. Covid-19 raced around the earth, and chaos erupted. Yet in the midst of this crisis, billions of human beings responded with love. Across the globe, people sought to connect, whether in person from a socially distant six feet or via a screen from 10,000 miles away. In that moment, Tim Shriver saw an opportunity for those hungry for community to answer a call to heal, a call to hope, a call to unite. He asked monks and nuns, artists and activists, nurses and doctors, ex-presidents and ex-cons to come together to share messages of inspiration, transformation, and love. This book captures the spirit of that 24-hour event. Featuring stories and insights from Bishop TD Jakes, Elizabeth Gilbert, Van Jones, Amy Grant, Dr. Rheeda Walker, Pastor Rick Warren, Rev. Jacqui Lewis, Jewel, Deepak Chopra and many others, The Call to Unite offers readers a book of wisdom to turn to in hard times - filled with prayers, poems, spiritual insights and lessons to live by that will stand the test of time. Those seeking affirmation, solace, and inspiration need only look inside for guidance in finding the light in any crisis. Only in embracing each other can we amplify the love that creates our global community. Only in coming together can we be our happiest, and our best.

The children of Forest Lake Elementary trod the boards in a dramatic reenactment of how the United States Constitution came to be. Full of facts about the call for a national government and the Constitutional Convention, this book presents American history with personality, good humor, and energy. Full color.

Fans of baseball, football, basketball, and hockey have long been exploited and oppressed by the monopolistic practices of team owners. The time has come for a revolution in the organization of major U.S. sports! Fans of the World, Unite! is a clarion call to sports fans. Appealing to anyone who is in despair due to the greed and incompetence of team owners, this book proposes a significant restructuring of sports leagues. It sets out a rational program for a revolution that will serve the best interests of the fans and of the sport itself. But Stephen F. Ross and Stefan Szymanski are no Marxists: they show how a revolution in the organization of sports might even benefit the owners. By harnessing the power of markets, sports leagues can be made both more responsive to the needs of the fans, and more efficient. Ross and Szymanski have spent many years evaluating the ways in which leagues work across the globe. Drawing on their extensive study of leagues, the authors boil down their plan to two major reforms. Borrowing from NASCAR, they propose that team owners should not own sports leagues as well. Rather, league ownership should be separate. Their second proposal is drawn from soccer: introduce competition through a promotion and relegation system. In this type of system, the worst teams in the league are kicked out at the end of the season and replaced by the best performing teams in the next division down. This gives poor performing teams incentive to step up their game, and allows fresh blood to enter the leagues if the poor performers fail to do so. The main goal of these reforms is to align the financial interest of those who own the league with the best interests of the fans and the sport. Having laid out the problem and the solution, the authors skillfully address practical implications of introducing their scheme, suggesting how leagues might at least make some changes, if not all of those suggested. The time for change has come! Armed with this book, and with fairness on their side, fans can set forth to begin a revolution.

In Mothers Unite!, a bold and hopeful new rallying cry for changing the relationship between home and the workplace, Jocelyn Elise Crowley envisions a genuine, universal world of workplace flexibility that helps mothers who stay at home, those who work part time, and those who work full time balance their commitments to their jobs and their families. Achieving this goal, she argues, will require a broad-based movement that harnesses the energy of existing organizations of mothers that already support workplace flexibility in their own ways. Crowley examines the efforts of five diverse national mothers' organizations: Mocha Moms, which aims to assist mothers of color; Mothers of Preschoolers (MOPS), which stresses the promotion of Christian values; Mothers & More, which emphasizes support for those moving in and out of the paid workforce; MomsRising, which focuses on online political advocacy; and the National Association of Mothers' Centers (NAMC), which highlights community-based networking. After providing an engaging and detailed account of the history, membership profiles, strategies, and successes of each of these organizations, Crowley suggests actions that will allow greater workplace flexibility to become a viable reality and points to many opportunities to promote intergroup mobilization and unite mothers once and for all.

"A memoir and history of the Special Olympics and a meditation on what one can learn about how to live from people with intellectual disabilities, by the chairman of the Special Olympics"--

"The alternate domination of one faction over another, natural to party dissension...is itself a frightful despotism." -- George Washington George Washington's nightmare has been realized. Despite his warning about the negative effects of party loyalties, the U.S. government has become paralyzed by partisanship, allowing national challenges to go unaddressed. As an independent candidate for U.S. Senate in 2018, Neal Simon witnessed the destructive nature of modern American politics. He experienced firsthand the perverse incentives that push candidates and lawmakers to ideological extremes. He watched as party leaders resisted pragmatic solutions to our nation's problems. He saw politicians prioritize loyalty to their party bases over progress for the American people. In this comprehensive analysis of United States politics, Simon shows how degradations in party primaries, campaign finances, and election rules have caused American self-government to collapse into gridlock and divisiveness. However, the American promise is so much greater. As the first U.S. president noted in his famed address, "The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government." Capitalizing on personal insight derived from Simon's political campaign along with extensive research, Contract to Unite America provides specific, practical solutions for an improved government and a better tomorrow.

An essential book for parents to help their children get the education they need to live happy, productive lives from The New York Times bestselling author of The Element and Creative Schools Parents everywhere are deeply concerned about the education of their children, especially now, when education has become a minefield of politics and controversy. One of the world’s most influential educators, Robinson has had countless conversations with parents about the dilemmas they face. As a parent, what should you look for in your children’s education? How can you tell if their school is right for them and what can you do if it isn’t? In this important new book, he offers clear principles and practical advice on how to support your child through the K-12 education system, or outside it if you choose to homeschool or un-school. Dispelling many myths and tackling critical schooling options and controversies, You, Your Child, and School is a key book for parents to learn about the kind of education their children really need and what they can do to make sure they get it.

Food Movements Unite! Strategies to transform our food systems The present corporate food regime dominating the planet’s food systems is environmentally destructive, financially volatile and socially unjust. Though the regime’s contributions to the planet’s four-fold food-fuel-finance and climate crises are well documented, the “solutions” advanced by our national and global institutions reinforce the same destructive technological path, the same global market fundamentalism, and the same unregulated consolidation of corporate power in the food system that brought us the crisis in the first place. A dynamic global food movement has risen up in the face of this sustained corporate assault on our food systems. Around the world, local food justice activists have taken back pieces of the food system through local gardening, organic farming, community-supported agriculture, farmers markets, and locally-owned processing and retail operations. Food sovereignty advocates have organized locally and internationally for land reform, the end of destructive free trade agreements, and support for family farmers, women and peasants. Protests against—and viable alternatives to—the expansion of GMOs, agrofuels, land grabs and the oligopolistic control of our food, are growing everywhere every day, giving the impression that food movements are literally “breaking through the asphalt” of a reified corporate food regime. The social and political convergence of the “practitioners” and “advocates” in these food movements is also well underway, as evidenced by the growing trend in local-regional food policy councils in the US, coalitions for food sovereignty spreading across Latin America, Africa, Asia and Europe, and the increasing attention to practical-political solutions to the food crisis appearing in academic literature and the popular media. The global food movement springs from strong commitments to food justice, food democracy and food sovereignty on the part of thousands of farmers unions, consumer groups, faith-based, civil society and community organizations across the urban-rural and north-south divides of our food systems. This magnificent “movement of movements” is widespread, highly diverse, refreshingly creative—and politically amorphous. Food Movements Unite! is a collection of essays by food movement leaders from around the world that all seek to answer the perennial political question: What is to be done? The answers—from the multiple perspectives of community food security activists, peasants and family farm leaders, labor activists, and leading food systems analysts—will lay out convergent strategies for the fair, sustainable, and democratic transformation of our food systems. Authors will address the corporate food regime head on, arguing persuasively not only for specific changes to the way our food is produced, processed, distributed and consumed, but specifying how these changes may come about, politically.

A smart and surprising political inventory for how America can reunite and revitalize in a time of crisis. Written by an admired leader of the Republican party, Rally Point: Five Tasks to Unite the Country and Revitalize the American Dream looks past the 2016 election, past the finger pointing and conventional political thinking, to focus on clear, primary principles that conservatives must debate and defend to protect the future of America. Raised in a working-class family in upstate New York, the first in his family to go to college, paid for in part by his service in the National Guard, Chris Gibson rose from Private to Colonel in the Army, including combat command in the storied 82nd Airborne Division. RALLY POINT is his story: what he's learned from the "School of Hard Knocks" and how he's applied those precious life lessons during his service in Iraq and in Congress. Drawn from a deep appreciation of history and American exceptionalism, Gibson provides incisive and frank analysis of the current political environment, including President Trump, and provides a roadmap based on time-tested Founding principles to help unite our country and revitalize the American Dream. RALLY POINT is a thoughtful, compelling, enjoyable read - a must for serious-minded Americans looking for answers in this challenging political environment.

Cardinal Burke, former Archbishop of St. Louis, and Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura, is now the chaplain of the Order of Malta and a great friend of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. In a thorough and hard-hitting discussion with Guillaume d'Alançon, episcopal delegate for the family and for life issues of a French diocese, he offers his thoughts frankly and without concern for political correctness on the pressing questions of today: the Church, the Liturgy, spiritual renewal, the family, marriage, openness to children and respect for life. Every theme is approached from the perspective of deep Faith, effectively and without polemics. Cardinal Burke, a great canonist, with long pastoral experience, treats with clarity and directness these often difficult subjects. This is a lucid, straight forward and important discussion for the understanding the essential moral and spiritual challenges of today, and the deep roots of the natural law, which is written on our hearts. "Jesus, the Son, is the door situated between the Father and Christian souls. There is no other. Jesus is the door through which the praises and sacrifices of souls ascend to the Father, and through which choice graces and the fruits of the infinite merits of the God-man descend upon the world. Let us turn our attention to the lock of this door, namely the Sacred Heart of Jesus. In order to open the door, we must strive to know the secrets of this divine heart, which has loved mankind so much." - Cardinal Raymond Burke