Plenty Good Room

Plenty Good Roomicon

Co-creating an Economy of Enough for All

by Andrew Wilkes

Publisher
Broadleaf Books
Publication
Jun 25, 2024
Format
Paperback/Softback
Illustrated
No
Price
19.99
Dimensions
5.5 x 8.5 in
ISBN
9781506491516
Pages
179
Age
Adult 18+
Category
General NonfictionChristian Living

Rights Sold

LanguageEnglish AudioCountryWorldwideAgent-BuyerTantor Media

Description

Plenty Good Room lays out in clear terms the hope of democratic socialism for a world ravaged by intensifying racial capitalism and social injustice. Unleash your ingenuity for systems that offer plenty good room--not for just a few but for all.

Economic inequality yawns as wide as ever. Capitalism is working as it was designed: replicating an uneven balance of power, constraining life chances, and limiting imaginations. Those of us concerned about injustice often confine ourselves to issue-by-issue activism. The end result? Owners, investors, and a politics of inequality win.

But what if there's another way to organize our common life--and what if it's as homegrown as sweet potato pie? What if we could become moral engineers who co-create the world we all deserve?

Plenty Good Room helps readers understand Black Christian socialism, a stream of the Black radical tradition, from the perspective of a Brooklyn pastor and political scientist's civic awakening. As the former director of the Drum Major Institute, founded by America's most famous democratic socialist, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Andrew Wilkes mounts a challenge to the endless greed, inequality, and profiteering of racial capitalism.

Tugging on the threads of history and scripture and pointing to the work of Black radicals like W. E. B. Du Bois, Rev. Addie Wyatt, and Fannie Lou Hamer, Wilkes weaves a narrative of "plenty good room moments": times in which communities and individuals had sufficient resources, human rights, and beauty. He invites us to join a movement that a day-laboring Christ initiated as he organized the dispossessed, the disinherited, and those pushed to the edges of society. Wilkes also introduces contemporary efforts pushing for reparations, community ownership, participatory democracy, and solidarity economies. These stories show us that we can create a world of care and reciprocity by envisioning an economy of enough for all--one rooted in justice, equity, and the God whose spirit falls on all flesh.

Awards & Endorsements

Andrew J. Young, former US ambassador to the United Nations and chair of the Andrew J. Young Foundation
"Plenty Good Room lays out in clear terms the hope of democratic socialism for a country ravaged by intensifying capitalism. This exciting read is written with such grace, wisdom, and passion, from beginning to end. My generation often wonders what will happen to the world we helped create. Plenty Good Room gives an entrée into the future." 

Author(s)

Andrew Wilkes

Andrew Wilkes

Rev. Andrew Wilkes, Ph.D., is a pastor, author, and political scientist. Dr. Wilkes is the co-lead pastor of the Double Love Experience Church in Brooklyn, NY and the former Executive Director of the Drum Major Institute, a social change organization founded by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He is also a 2022 inductee into the Martin Luther King Board of Preachers at Morehouse College. A proud alum of Hampton University, Princeton Theological Seminary, and City University of New York, his voice and work have been featured in the The New York Times, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Huffington Post, and Sojourners. Dr. Wilkes is the author of Freedom Notes: Reflections on Faith, Justice, and the Possibility of Democracy; co-author of Psalms for Black Lives; and author of Plenty Good Room: Co-Creating an Economy of Enough for All. Dr.Wilkes is the elated husband of Rev. Dr. Gabby Cudjoe-Wilkes and lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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