The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves

The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves

  • Downloads:9081
  • Type:Epub+TxT+PDF+Mobi
  • Create Date:2022-02-24 10:21:34
  • Update Date:2025-09-06
  • Status:finish
  • Author:Shawn A. Ginwright
  • ISBN:1623175429
  • Environment:PC/Android/iPhone/iPad/Kindle

Summary

For readers of Emergent Strategy and Dare to Lead, an activist's roadmap to long-term social justice impact through four simple shifts。

We need a fundamental shift in our values--a pivot in how we think, act, work, and connect。 Despite what we’ve been told, the most critical mainspring of social change isn’t coalition building or problem analysis。 It’s healing: deep, whole, and systemic, inside and out。

Here, Shawn Ginwright, PhD, breaks down the common myths of social movements--a set of deeply ingrained beliefs that actually hold us back from healing and achieving sustainable systemic change。 He shows us why these frames don’t work, proposing instead four revolutionary pivots for better activism and collective leadership:

Awareness: from lens to mirror
Connection: from transactional to transformative relationships
Vision: from problem-fixing to possibility-creating
Presence: from hustle to flow

Supplemented with reflections, prompts, cutting-edge research, and the author’s own insights and lived experience as an African American social scientist, professor, and movement builder, The Four Pivots helps us uncover our blind spots。 It shows us how to discover new lenses and boldly assert our need for connection, transformation, trust, wholeness, and healing。 It gives us permission to create a better future--to acknowledge that a broken system has been predefining our dreams and limiting what we allow ourselves to imagine, but that it doesn’t have to be that way at all。 Are you ready to pivot?

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Reviews

Brittany Collins

Insightful, engaging, and so important。

BigBlueSea

This is the kind of book you start with low expectations (having read many books on social justice) and by the end of page 2 go to get a yellow highlighter。 As a middle class white man (more aptly, a flawed human being just like you), I don’t pretend to understand the deep hurts, hopes, fears or joys of people around me。 I’ll tell you that this book is special。 It did not shame me into guilt or make me want to run when confronted with perspectives wider than my own: it just methodically with hum This is the kind of book you start with low expectations (having read many books on social justice) and by the end of page 2 go to get a yellow highlighter。 As a middle class white man (more aptly, a flawed human being just like you), I don’t pretend to understand the deep hurts, hopes, fears or joys of people around me。 I’ll tell you that this book is special。 It did not shame me into guilt or make me want to run when confronted with perspectives wider than my own: it just methodically with humility lays out a heart。 It welcomes you to something bigger just as Reverend King’s speeches did。 It offers encouragement to a life and community bigger than ourselves。 To with humility look at our own predilections and view others through the same journey we view ourselves。 Highly recommended。 。。。more

Avory Faucette

This book joins several recent titles placing #socialjustice movements at a tipping point, suggesting that a wave of change is coming that must center healing and relationship。 Current thinking can make this important shift seem like bypassing or denying urgency, and I’ve personally felt this fear and uncertainty in transforming my own relationship to activism。 We may see the potential for a momentous collective shift, but also fear punitive dynamics within communities。 And it’s tough to reject This book joins several recent titles placing #socialjustice movements at a tipping point, suggesting that a wave of change is coming that must center healing and relationship。 Current thinking can make this important shift seem like bypassing or denying urgency, and I’ve personally felt this fear and uncertainty in transforming my own relationship to activism。 We may see the potential for a momentous collective shift, but also fear punitive dynamics within communities。 And it’s tough to reject these dynamics and *also* avoid saviorism or dogma。 The call is to come together, acknowledge our tremendous pain and grief and desire for something new, and integrate approaches: centering accountability, but also healing。I thought Ginwright did an excellent job in this book of presenting what this change might look like at an individual and collective level, balancing acknowledgement of the astounding current level of need and oppression with a critical understanding of how our tactics need to change。 The “four pivots” form an overarching framework to guide the reader through vulnerable storytelling, direct suggestions, and honest reflection on our present moment, shared history, and potential futures。 The stories Ginwright chose to illustrate his points are broad enough to touch a range of readers, pulling from his own life as a parent, husband, community organizer, funder, and Black man。 I also appreciated contextualized reflections from Ginwright’s past mistakes as a social justice leader, since funders and Board members are so often in CYA mode。Through each pivot, you can consider a different mode of being: how to be more reflective, engage in transformative relationships, open up to possibility, and move through the world with greater spaciousness and adaptability。 If the subtitle “Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves” appeals to you, you’ll find this book to be a valuable support。 I would also recommend for organizational use。[ARC provided by NetGalley。] 。。。more