We Need to Build
Field Notes for Diverse Democracy
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Narrated by:
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Vikas Adam
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By:
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Eboo Patel
About this listen
“You don’t create societies by burning things down, You create societies by building things.”
From the former faith adviser to President Obama comes a fresh manifesto for those who seek to promote positive change and build a more diverse and just democracy
The goal of social change work is not a more ferocious revolution; it is a more beautiful social order. It is harder to organize a fair trial than it is to fire up a crowd, more challenging to build a good school than it is to tell others they are doing education all wrong. But every decent society requires fair trials and good schools, and that’s just the beginning of the list of institutions and structures that need to be efficiently created and effectively run in large-scale diverse democracy.
We Need to Build is a call to create those institutions and a guide for how to run them well.
In his youth, Eboo Patel was inspired by love-based activists like John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr., Badshah Khan, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Thich Nhat Hanh. Their example, and a timely challenge to build the change he wanted to see, led to a life engaged in the particulars of building, nourishing, and sustaining an institution that seeks to promote positive social change—Interfaith America. Now, drawing on his twenty years of experience, Patel tells the stories of what he’s learned and how, in the process, he came to construct as much as critique and collaborate more than oppose.
His challenge to us is clear: those of us committed to refounding America as a just and inclusive democracy need to defeat the things we don’t like by building the things we do.
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Critic reviews
"A centrist call to actively build—rather than passively critique—civic institutions."
—Kirkus Reviews
“Eboo Patel holds a singular place in American life and thought. His expertise on the pluralistic religious reality of twenty-first-century life has influenced virtually every major field—from education to the workplace to political policy and culture. We Need to Build comes at precisely the right moment to become a key handbook for navigating the transformative healing—the building—that our world of fracture and disarray so urgently demands.”
—Krista Tippett, author of Being Wise and host of On Being
“Eboo Patel has long served as one of America’s most trusted and impactful leaders for religious pluralism. In his latest book, We Need to Build, Patel provides an invaluable and must-read road map filled with practical wisdom and timely prescriptions to help all of us better build the thriving organizations and communities and healthy democracy we so desperately need.”
—Rev. Adam Taylor, president of Sojourners and author of A More Perfect Union
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Story
The belief that all lives matter is at the heart of our founding documents - but we must admit that this conviction has never truly reflected reality in America. Movements such as Black Lives Matter have arisen in response to recent displays of violence and mistreatment, and some of us defensively answer back, "All lives matter". But do they? Really? This audiobook is an exploration of that question.
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Enlightening
- By karleen on 06-26-20
By: Wayne Gordon, and others
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Common Ground: Exclusive Edition
- By: Justin Trudeau
- Narrated by: Justin Trudeau, Colm Feore
- Length: 8 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Justin Trudeau has spent his life in the public eye. From the moment he was born, the first son of an iconic prime minister and his young wife, Canadians have witnessed the highs and the lows, sharing in his successes and mourning with him during tragic times. But few beyond Justin's closest circle have heard his side of his unique journey. Now, in Common Ground, Justin Trudeau reveals how the events of his life have influenced him and formed the ideals that drive him today.
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Mesmerizing
- By emilia on 05-04-18
By: Justin Trudeau
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How We Get Free
- Black Feminism and the Combahee River Collective
- By: Keeanga -Yamahtta Taylor
- Narrated by: Lisa Reneé Pitts
- Length: 6 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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The Combahee River Collective, a path-breaking group of radical black feminists, was one of the most important organizations to develop out of the antiracist and women's liberation movements of the 1960s and 70s. In this collection of essays and interviews edited by activist-scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, founding members of the organization and contemporary activists reflect on the legacy of its contributions to black feminism and its impact on today's struggles.
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Crucial history
- By Laura T on 10-04-18
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Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching
- A Young Black Man's Education
- By: Mychal Denzel Smith
- Narrated by: Kevin R. Free
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
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How do you learn to be a Black man in America? For young Black men today, it means coming of age during the presidency of Barack Obama. It means witnessing the deaths of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Akai Gurley, and too many more. It means celebrating powerful moments of Black self-determination for LeBron James, Dave Chappelle, and Frank Ocean. In Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Mychal Denzel Smith chronicles his own personal and political education during these tumultuous years.
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History through a Young Black Man's Eyes!! Perfect
- By Patricia Hambsch on 08-31-16
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Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness
- What It Means to Be Black Now
- By: Touré, Michael Eric Dyson
- Narrated by: Touré
- Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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A provocative look at what it means to be Black today. This audiobook includes excerpts from over 100 interviews with Rev. Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, Skip Gates, Melissa Harris-Perry, Kara Walker, Kehinde Wiley, Glenn Ligon, Malcolm Gladwell, Paul Mooney, NY Gov. David Paterson, Harold Ford, Jr., Soledad O'Brien, Kamala Harris, Chuck D, Questlove, and others.
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Food for Thought
- By Sara on 12-22-11
By: Touré, and others
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My Life, My Love, My Legacy
- By: Coretta Scott King, Barbara Reynolds
- Narrated by: January LaVoy, Phylicia Rashad
- Length: 14 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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The life story of Coretta Scott King - wife of Martin Luther King Jr., founder of the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and singular 20th-century American civil rights activist - as told fully for the first time, toward the end of her life, to one of her closest friends. Born in 1927 to daringly enterprising Black parents in the Deep South, Coretta Scott had always felt called to a special purpose.
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Inspirational memoir
- By Jean on 01-30-17
By: Coretta Scott King, and others
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The Opposite of Hate
- A Field Guide to Repairing Our Humanity
- By: Sally Kohn
- Narrated by: Sally Kohn
- Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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As a progressive commentator on Fox News and now CNN, Sally Kohn has made a career out of bridging intractable political differences, learning how to talk civilly to people whose views she disagrees with passionately. Famously "nice", she even gave a TED Talk about what she termed emotional correctness. But these days, even Kohn has found herself wanting to breathe fire at her enemies. It was time, she decided, to look into the ugliness erupting all around us.
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Profoundly insightful, important, and digestible.
- By Scott on 04-24-18
By: Sally Kohn
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We Gon' Be Alright
- Notes on Race and Resegregation
- By: Jeff Chang
- Narrated by: Jeff Chang
- Length: 5 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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In these provocative, powerful essays acclaimed writer/journalist Jeff Chang (Can't Stop Won't Stop, Who We Be) takes an incisive and wide-ranging look at the recent tragedies and widespread protests that have shaken the country. Through deep reporting with key activists and thinkers, passionately personal writing, and distinguished cultural criticism, We Gon' Be Alright links #BlackLivesMatter to #OscarsSoWhite, Ferguson to Washington, DC, and more.
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a conversation that needs to happen
- By Angie B on 03-11-17
By: Jeff Chang
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What Unites Us
- Reflections on Patriotism
- By: Dan Rather, Elliot Kirschner
- Narrated by: Dan Rather
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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In a collection of original essays, the venerated television journalist, Dan Rather, celebrates our shared values and what matters most in our great country, and shows us what patriotism looks like. Writing about the institutions that sustain us, such as public libraries, public schools, and national parks; the values that have transformed us, such as the struggle for civil rights; and the drive toward science and innovation that has made the US great, Rather brings his experience on the frontlines of the world's biggest stories, and offers listeners a way forward.
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Hope. For both sides of the aisle.
- By Leigh A. Barrett on 01-30-18
By: Dan Rather, and others
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The Next Christians
- The Good News About the End of Christian America
- By: Gabe Lyons
- Narrated by: Gabe Lyons
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Turn on a cable news show or pick up any news magazine, and you get the impression that Christian America is on its last leg. The once dominant faith is now facing rapidly declining church attendance, waning political influence, and an abysmal public perception. More than 76% of Americans self-identify as Christians, but many today are ashamed to carry the label. While many Christians are bemoaning their faith’s decline, Gabe Lyons is optimistic that Christianity’s best days are yet to come.
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Optimistic about the church
- By Ellen Gilmartin on 09-12-24
By: Gabe Lyons
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A Nation of Nations
- A Story of America After the 1965 Immigration Law
- By: Tom Gjelten
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 12 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1950, Fairfax County, Virginia, was 90 percent white, 10 percent African American, with a little more than 100 families who were "other". Currently the African American percentage of the population is about the same, but the Anglo white population is less than 50 percent, and there are families of Asian, African, Middle Eastern, and Latin American origin living all over the county. A Nation of Nations follows the lives of a few immigrants to Fairfax County over recent decades as they gradually "Americanize".
By: Tom Gjelten
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Democracy in Black
- How Race Still Enslaves the American Soul
- By: Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
- Narrated by: Kevin Free
- Length: 7 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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America's great promise of equality has always rung hollow in the ears of African Americans. But today the situation has grown even more dire. From the murders of black youth by the police to the dismantling of the Voting Rights Act to the disaster visited upon poor and middle-class black families by the Great Recession, it is clear that black America faces an emergency - at the very moment the election of the first black president has prompted many to believe we've solved America's race problem.
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The Dysfunctional Mindset of American
- By Paul T. on 07-09-16
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The War on the West
- By: Douglas Murray
- Narrated by: Douglas Murray
- Length: 12 hrs and 42 mins
- Unabridged
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In The War on the West, Douglas Murray shows how many well-meaning people have been fooled by hypocritical and inconsistent anti-West rhetoric. After all, if we must discard the ideas of Kant, Hume, and Mill for their opinions on race, shouldn’t we discard Marx, whose work is peppered with racial slurs and anti-Semitism? Embers of racism remain to be stamped out in America, but what about the raging racist inferno in the Middle East and Asia?
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Every Human (seriously, everyone) Read This!
- By aaron on 04-27-22
By: Douglas Murray
What listeners say about We Need to Build
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Silas
- 11-30-22
A meaningful contribution
This book provides a meaningful contribution to the literature on how America can move forward in these troubled political and social times. Beyond just diagnosis Patel provides a fundamentally constructive prescription and some helpful tips from his experiences and knowledge. At times the writing is a bit breezy and the analysis a bit thin and I found that the audio book narrator’s reading style exacerbated these problems. But the points he makes are insightful and practical and the key thesis about moving from critique to institution building is spot on and critically important. I will definitely be recommending this book to those I know interested in positive social change and integrating the ideas into my own pursuit of a restored American democracy.
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- NAT
- 03-22-23
Inspiring and timely
I really appreciated Eboo’s perspective. There are some great principles in this book for building the society many of us want to live in.
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- marwalk
- 07-02-23
May cause some to rethink their basic assumptions
This book may cause some people to rethink their basic assumptions about how to achieve the just society they properly desire. Eboo Patel offers essential perspectives that some white progressives (and those they've influenced) may have overlooked—or forgotten. When the dust has settled after protests and court cases, the real work of building institutions remains to be done—thus Patel's astute observation that focus on constructing the world desired is more productive than spending one's finite energies on rage and withdrawal no matter how greatly justified.
In successive personal anecdotes, the author relates his own painful experiences with racist taunts and microaggressions—these accounts, together with Patel's broader research, provide an authoritative view of race issues that (culturally) white people may not naturally perceive. Equally powerful are Patel's accounts of mutual acceptance among persons of different religious faiths—that aspect alone makes this book uniquely valuable.
Patel illustrates how progressive cancel culture is itself an expression of white privilege. Instead of preaching about and to people of color, white progressives need to truly listen to them now more than ever—and fortunately many are. People are beginning to see how emphasizing group oppression without the context of individual victories snuffs out the personal agency essential to overcoming the real oppression experienced.
Burning it down (euphemistically), leaves only a smoldering heap that's not much use to anyone—and even afterward the oppressors still oppress, sometimes worse than before. Patel recommends instead to build institutions designed to achieve just and beneficial goals—and the way to accomplish that is to ensure everyone's dignity and individual agency is sustained in a multi-cultural and multi-faith democracy that empowers our common humanity. This is the society we need to build. After reading this book, I'm convinced we can.
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1 person found this helpful