Global Transformation: Strategy for Action
Dedication Epigraph Preface Acknowledgments One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Epilogue Comments

At the age of 62, after being immersed in political activism, personal growth, spirituality, and community organizing most of my life, I sum up what I’ve learned and present some new proposals for action.

My primary focus is the United States, the country I know best. Modernization, however, is global. So I assume that if you’re from another country, you can relate to what I say (though you may need to substitute names for specific institutions such as “Congress”).

My hope is to encourage progressive individuals and organizations to:

• Agree on a comprehensive worldview rooted in a commitment to protect the environment and serve all humanity
• Steadily reform our institutions, our culture, and ourselves to serve that purpose
• Cultivate home-based communities that nurture the whole person
• Form alliances with people in other countries working in the same direction

This strategy, I believe, could help transform the global social system that is leading us into one disaster after another. By learning from one another, progressive-minded people throughout the world can cooperate and move in the same general direction to create a new global community.

The modern world is reducing people to specialized, trained functionaries – instruments in one machine or another. To counter this trend and provide more balance in our lives, we need families and communities that foster well-rounded individuals who embrace all that it means to be human. If we do, we can create a new world that is qualitatively different and much improved.

For several years, with colleagues in the Strategy Workshop, I’ve been evaluating ideas for how the progressive movement might be more effective. Now I’m presenting my conclusions in this book.

I write with a sense of urgency. Pick your apocalypse. The possibilities are well known. Any one of them could come true, alone or in combination.

Already, however, more than 40,000 people die needlessly every day. So we need not wait for any greater catastrophe. Current conditions should be enough to motivate us. The time to act is now. When the people of the world unite, we will create decent living conditions for all humanity and safeguard the environment.

To achieve those goals, we need broad agreement on a clear, long-term worldview rooted in progressive values that are affirmed by most people. Secondly, we need a step-by-step plan to achieve that vision. By accepting our limits, we can focus on what we can change now, and move on to other objectives later.

I certainly don’t have all the answers concerning how to proceed, but I do have some new ideas that could be one component in an overall strategy for global transformation. To my knowledge, no other book makes the statement that this book makes. And I’m familiar with no organization that is doing what I propose here – though it would be easy for many existing organizations to do so by slightly modifying their current activities.

So I feel I have something important to say that no one else has said.

I’m self-publishing this first edition using iuniverse.com. I plan to use feedback from readers to write a second edition, for which I’ll seek a traditional publisher. So after you’ve read the book, I’d appreciate your response to the questionnaire that is posted at:

http://progressiveresourcecatalog.org/index.php/Book1/Questionnaire/.

Since the questionnaire asks for an overall evaluation of each chapter, you might want to answers those questions when you finish each chapter.

On September 15 in San Francisco in the Hispanic/Latino Community Room at the Main Library from 12 – 5 PM, I’ll convene a workshop open to the public at which I’ll seek more feedback from people who’ve read the book, engage in dialogue with those people, and invite the participants to discuss the issues raised in the book with one another. You and others are welcome to participate, whether or not you finish the book. The event will begin with a potluck lunch.

Feel free at any time to tell me what you think about this book, especially concerning points with which you disagree and points that are not included that should be included. You can reach me at wadehudson@progressiveresourcecatalog.org.

An online version of this edition is on the Progressive Resource Catalog website, which will serve as an online appendix to both editions of this book. Comments on the book will be posted there (so please let me know if I can post your comment, anonymously if you prefer).

With this book, I'm trying to articulate my convictions as clearly and persuasively as possible, with the hope that my comments will prompt people to move in the direction that I propose. I also hope that circulating this book will lead me to discover already existing progressive, holistic communities of the sort that I propose, in which case I might well join one of them.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to research, reflect, converse, write, experiment, work on myself, and engage in political activism, while actively waiting for the opportunity to act consistently with a community of like-minded people.

Sooner or later, we will do what we need to do.

Wade Hudson
Tepoztlan, Morelos
Mexico
March 31, 2007

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