Discover the great cost and greater reward of moving from white moderate ally to antiracist abolitionist, In Baptized in Tear Gas, minister and activist Elle Dowd invites readers to experience her transformation from what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as "the white moderate" into an Assata Shakur-reading, courthouse-occupying abolitionist. Like in baptism, this alteration requires parts of us to die-our tone policing, white niceness, respectability politics-so that we may be reborn. Through the Uprising in Ferguson, God made File into something new. Now it's our turn. Book jacket.

This book is a compilation of my personal adventures, experiences, and memories in the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. The reader will experience through my eyes what a career in law enforcement is like--the good, the bad, and the ugly side of civilization. I expose all the negative aspects of working in law enforcement, including current issues affecting law enforcement, such as the use of force issues, staffing shortages, hypocrisy within government and police/sheriff's departments, police/sheriff gangs, corruption, unrealistic expectations, undeserved promotions, scheduling and time off issues, overworking and understaffed departments, and dealing with the "Adam Henrys" of civilization. I feel this book has a wealth of information down to the details of everyday jobs and is extremely educational. I'm sure there are a lot of young aspiring deputies who would love to read your book. I wish I had a book like this when I was younger. I would have surely read it. "I think this book can become a movie. Maybe a Netflix documentary. This is a great time to unleash your book to the entire world. Thanks for trusting me and for sharing this book with me. If you have any questions, call me up or text me regarding my opinion on this amazing book, "Baptized by Fire".

Over the last forty years, the human landscape of the United States has been fundamentally transformed. The metamorphosis is partially visible in the ascendance of glittering, coastal hubs for finance, infotech, and the so-called creative class. But this is only the tip of an economic iceberg, the bulk of which lies in the darkness of the declining heartland or on the dimly lit fringe of sprawling cities. This is America’s hinterland, populated by towering grain threshers and hunched farmworkers, where laborers drawn from every corner of the world crowd into factories and “fulfillment centers” and where cold storage trailers are filled with fentanyl-bloated corpses when the morgues cannot contain the dead. Urgent and unsparing, this book opens our eyes to America’s new heart of darkness. Driven by an ever-expanding socioeconomic crisis, America’s class structure is recomposing itself in new geographies of race, poverty, and production. The center has fallen. Riots ricochet from city to city led by no one in particular. Anarchists smash financial centers as a resurgent far right builds power in the countryside. Drawing on his direct experience of recent popular unrest, from the Occupy movement to the wave of riots and blockades that began in Ferguson, Missouri, Phil A. Neel provides a close-up view of this landscape in all its grim but captivating detail. Inaugurating the new Field Notes series, published in association with the Brooklyn Rail, Neel’s book tells the intimate story of a life lived within America’s hinterland.

It is not enough to hold progressive views on racial justice, LGBTQ+ identity, and economic inequality. Through a rich examination of James Baldwin's writing and interviews, You Mean It or You Don't spurs today's progressives from conviction to action, from dreaming of justice to living it out in our communities, churches, and neighborhoods.

Justice commitments can and must be integrated into all of a church's financial practices, including fundraising, budgeting, managing property and personnel, investing, and participating in community partnerships. So argues Sheryl Johnson in Serving Money, Serving God: Aligning Radical Justice, Christian Practice, and Church Life. This is the first Christian stewardship and finance book written from an explicitly anti-racist, decolonial, feminist, ecological, and class-critical standpoint. Many churches espouse these commitments--as individual members, as congregations, and through their denominations--but pursue them as discrete initiatives, such as themes for study and worship, rather than as core organizing principles for congregational life. Alignment between Christian beliefs and commitments and church practice is both ethically and practically necessary, however. A 2009 Pew Research Center study that found that about half of those who had become unaffiliated from religion had done so because they found religious people "hypocritical, judgmental, or insincere." Alignment between beliefs and church practice therefore matters deeply both for those who are active in churches and for those who are not--but who might be if faith and action are consistent. This book offers a positive and constructive approach to the topic and is filled with inspiring examples for churches of all sizes. Case studies provide practical guidance and make the analysis concrete, relatable, and accessible. The book highlights the importance of creativity, imagination, and a sense of hope-filled adventure in engaging this work.

After the world witnessed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, a passionate uprising erupted, with the intersection of 38th and Chicago at its epicenter. One block away stood Calvary Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation whose members had engaged in racial justice work for years. In Ashes to Action, Shari Seifert provides her riveting first-person account of the events following May 25, 2020. Shari joined others in the Calvary community to show up, listen, and ask what was needed in the moment. As the lines between her congregation and neighborhood blurred, the way toward a faithful response because clearer. This personal narrative stays rooted in the context of community, immersing readers in the days, weeks, and months following the uprising.

After a speech at UMass Amherst on February 28, 1984, James Baldwin was asked by a student: "You said that the liberal facade and being a liberal is not enough. Well, what is? What is necessary?" Baldwin responded, "Commitment. That is what is necessary. You mean it or you don't." Taking up that challenge and drawing from Baldwin's fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and interviews, You Mean It or You Don't will spur today's progressives from conviction to action. It is not enough, authors Hollowell and McGhee urge us, to hold progressive views on racial justice, LGBTQ+ identity, and economic inequality. True and lasting change demands a response to Baldwin's radical challenge for moral commitment. Called to move from dreams of justice to living it out in communities, churches, and neighborhoods, we can show that we truly mean it. Welcome to life with James Baldwin. It is raw and challenging, inspired and embodied, passionate and fully awake.