Movements That Win

​”By sharing inspiring stories and highlighting the lessons of successful activist campaigns, Aric McBay has written an important book for our times. Movements that Win reminds us that people power makes a difference, especially when it is grounded in courage and solidarity.​” —Eileen Flanagan, author of Common Ground: How the Crisis of the Earth is Saving Us from Our Illusion of Separation“Activist McBay (Full Spectrum Resistance) offers an encouraging survey of successful environmental justice activism. The victories spotlighted include an unlikely alliance between construction unions and conservationists that helped protect urban green spaces in 1970s Australia, the diverse coalition-building that prevented gentrification of Boston’s Chinatown in the 1990s, the rural organizing and civil disobedience that stopped the construction of a nuclear reactor in Germany in 1975, and the ways in which Canadian environmentalists have built on a strong history of Indigenous land protection strategies to fight the installation of fossil fuel pipelines from the 2010s to today. Along the way, McBay points out common themes and approaches that led to each movement’s success, spotlighting 12 key “patterns,” including having “urgency” and a “positive vision” for the future, practicing strategic “escalation” and engaging in direct action rather than just protest, and building “coalitions across difference” and movements that can “persist and endure.” … [A]n illuminating overview and a useful playbook for environmentalists.”—Publishers Weekly

Aric McBay is a community organizer, organic farmer, and author of eight books, including the speculative fiction novels Kraken Calling and Inversion. His book Full Spectrum Resistance is a two-volume guide to building more effective movements. He writes and speaks on numerous social justice issues and has organized successful campaigns around fossil-fuel pipelines, Indigenous solidarity, unionization, prisoner justice, and other causes. He is also an award-winning digital game developer.