Happy Launch Day, Taking on the System!

You’re going to be seeing a lot of Markos, hearing a lot from Markos and reading a lot about Markos in the next few weeks as Taking on the System: Rules for Radical Change in a Digital Era hits the stores.

Here’s hoping he gets enough publicity that we all become thoroughly sick of him.

But here’s the real secret about Taking on the System: It’s not about Markos, or even blogging, at all. It’s about you. About us. About people who find each other, who collaborate and share, and who trade war stories and strategies and inspiration in the furtherance of  a goal that's bigger than any one of us.

It’s the story of people who join together as co-creators, people who make things happen, and the methods they use to change their slice of the world. It’s a book about people who refuse to stay in their place, or to shut up, or accept no for an answer.

In short, it's about finding your passion and your niche and acting upon it.

What Markos has done in Taking on the System is celebrate the democratization of media and culture – something that we live every day at Daily Kos – by telling the stories of unlikely real-life heroes who are blazing trails in collaborative self-determination.  From the grassroots activists who recruited Jim Webb (and flipped the Senate in the process), to the African-American activists and bloggers who wouldn’t rest until a nation’s attention was drawn to blatant injustice in Jena, Louisiana, Taking on the System is a collection  of case studies on how everyday Americans can better their world by reinventing protest and redefining conventional narrative. Along the way, Markos draws lessons from personalities as disparate as Graeme Frost and Cindy Sheehan, Carol Shea-Porter and Fiona Apple, all of whom have in different ways used their resources and creativity to challenge conventional wisdom to change, bypass or convert the gatekeepers – or,  in some cases, to make them irrelevant altogether.

Under ordinary circumstances, I’d give a straightforward review of the book, but I’ve had the privilege of reading every revision along the way, and I’ve come to adore this book the more I’ve read it. And it was a treat to watch Markos himself become inspired by the heroes he wrote about – people who, like him, often shot from obscurity to prominence, from feeling ineffective and powerless to daring to claim their own power and use it. As our community continues its journey together to reclaim the promise of democracy, I can think of no better practical guide or inspirational work than this salute to the father of modern organizers, Saul Alinsky.

This book is for you and about you, Kossacks, and for and about all of our allies in the new and unapologetic progressive movement—or, as Markos puts it in the acknowledgements, "everyone who gets off his or her ass to change the world."

(Come join Markos and other Bay Area Kossacks tonight at the official launch party, a benefit for Netroots Nation. Details on the where, when and how can be found in this morning's open thread).