You're Not Powerless: The Crisis of Agency and How We Reclaim It Together

Does anything you do matter? Millions of people have come to believe that the problems they face are too big to confront: What is one person in the face of climate change, the housing crisis, or a toxic political culture? You’re Not Powerless doesn’t shy away from how hard the world is, but unlike many of her peers, Rachel Cohen Booth refuses to descend into nihilism. In a propulsive, humane, and deeply persuasive book, Booth rejects the bootstrapping fantasies of the right and the paralyzing fatalism of the left. Instead, this book is a bracing reminder that the world can be changed and that we have the power to change it.

Jerusalem Demsas, founder and editor-in-chief of The Argument

Humans yearn for agency, for the ability to architect their own futures. Rachel Cohen Booth’s vitally important book provides crucial insights on an under-examined question: how we can design our civic and public lives to better enable people to build agency with others.

Hahrie Han, MacArthur Fellow, author of Undivided, and inaugural director of the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University

I am not usually a fan of books (too long), but this one was good and about a topic, constructive civic engagement, that gets relatively little attention.

Matt Bruenig, founder of People’s Policy Project

Our politics too often feels stuck; our culture torn apart by polarization, isolation, and whatever gets served up by algorithms. Rachel Booth’s You’re Not Powerless comes not a moment too late. It’s a necessary and compelling reminder that despite the headwinds, we still have the opportunity—and obligation—to think creatively, act boldly, and create a better society from the bottom up. Anyone who has ever felt like the system is stacked against them needs to read this book.

Patrick T. Brown, fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center

Rachel Cohen Booth’s You’re Not Powerless achieves that rarity of rarities, a triple play: It is at once a volume of self-help, community help and national help. With wide-ranging reporting and trenchant analysis, Booth documents the personal, political, structural and social psychological crisis of agency that afflicts millions of young Americans and many of their elders as well. Knowing that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, she recommends that her readers take a step or two, and if that sends them walking down the block, that they consider knocking on some neighbors’ doors, listening to their concerns, and trying a little community organizing. Posing solutions that are both personal and systemic, You’re Not Powerless is a notable addition to the lamentably small shelf of books that address the multi-dimensional crisis of power and purpose that vexes American life and short-changes American lives.

Harold Meyerson, editor-at-large of The American Prospect