Eileen Flanagan’s Common Ground: How the Crisis of the Earth Is Saving Us from Our Illusion of Separation brings together the author’s experiences in Quaker communities, teaching, and grassroots environmental organizing to demonstrate the necessity of solidarity.
Flanagan shows that “the illusion of separation”–the fallacy that humans can thrive in a dying world–is at the root of interlocking environmental crises and that it’s often politicians and corporations who benefit by keeping the rest of us divided across lines of race, class, religion, and generation. She weaves together a series of stories of hard won successes in the climate change movement, including against a multinational bank in one case, and a heavily polluting fossil fuel company in another, based on grassroots organizing.
The Ivy is delighted to present an evening with the author to discuss these topics and more, inspired by this exciting new book.
Eileen Flanagan, a writer and public speaker, is the author of the Silver Nautilus Book Award–winning books, Renewable: One Woman’s Search for Simplicity, Faithfulness, and Hope and The Wisdom to Know the Difference: When to Make a Change—and When to Let Go, which was endorsed by the Dalai Lama. She lives in Philadelphia, where she works as a leader of the Earth Quaker Action Team.