We Need to Build

Field Notes for Diverse Democracy

By: Eboo Patel

Narrated by: Vikas Adam

Length: 7 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

From the former faith adviser to President Obama comes an inspirational guide for those who seek to promote positive social change and build a more diverse and just democracy

The goal of social change work is not a more ferocious revolution; it is a more beautiful social order. It is harder to organize a fair trial than it is to fire up a crowd, more challenging to build a good school than it is to tell others they are doing education all wrong. But every decent society requires fair trials and good schools, and that’s just the beginning of the list of institutions and structures that need to be efficiently created and effectively run in large-scale diverse democracy.

We Need to Build is a call to create those institutions and a guide for how to run them well.

In his youth, Eboo Patel was inspired by love-based activists like John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr., Badshah Khan, Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Thich Nhat Hanh. Their example, and a timely challenge to build the change he wanted to see, led to a life engaged in the particulars of building, nourishing, and sustaining an institution that seeks to promote positive social change—Interfaith America. Now, drawing on his twenty years of experience, Patel tells the stories of what he’s learned and how, in the process, he came to construct as much as critique and collaborate more than oppose.

His challenge to us is clear: those of us committed to refounding America as a just and inclusive democracy need to defeat the things we don’t like by building the things we do.

©2022 Eboo Patel (P)2022 Beacon Press

Critic reviews

"A centrist call to actively build—rather than passively critique—civic institutions."—Kirkus Reviews

"Patel wants to build, and help others build, institutions to do all of this good work. He wants to inspire and train new civic leaders who nurture pluralism and community that is welcoming."—Jon W. McSweeney, Spirituality & Practice

“Revelatory and profoundly timely! This is the essential handbook for every activist ready to move from resisting injustice to rebuilding a world of justice. A legendary builder and visionary teacher, Eboo Patel gives us the blueprint for how to build institutions that will birth the beloved community.”—Valarie Kaur, author of See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love

Inspiring and timely

I really appreciated Eboo’s perspective. There are some great principles in this book for building the society many of us want to live in.

A meaningful contribution

This book provides a meaningful contribution to the literature on how America can move forward in these troubled political and social times. Beyond just diagnosis Patel provides a fundamentally constructive prescription and some helpful tips from his experiences and knowledge. At times the writing is a bit breezy and the analysis a bit thin and I found that the audio book narrator’s reading style exacerbated these problems. But the points he makes are insightful and practical and the key thesis about moving from critique to institution building is spot on and critically important. I will definitely be recommending this book to those I know interested in positive social change and integrating the ideas into my own pursuit of a restored American democracy.

May cause some to rethink their basic assumptions

This book may cause some people to rethink their basic assumptions about how to achieve the just society they properly desire. Eboo Patel offers essential perspectives that some white progressives (and those they've influenced) may have overlooked—or forgotten. When the dust has settled after protests and court cases, the real work of building institutions remains to be done—thus Patel's astute observation that focus on constructing the world desired is more productive than spending one's finite energies on rage and withdrawal no matter how greatly justified.

In successive personal anecdotes, the author relates his own painful experiences with racist taunts and microaggressions—these accounts, together with Patel's broader research, provide an authoritative view of race issues that (culturally) white people may not naturally perceive. Equally powerful are Patel's accounts of mutual acceptance among persons of different religious faiths—that aspect alone makes this book uniquely valuable.

Patel illustrates how progressive cancel culture is itself an expression of white privilege. Instead of preaching about and to people of color, white progressives need to truly listen to them now more than ever—and fortunately many are. People are beginning to see how emphasizing group oppression without the context of individual victories snuffs out the personal agency essential to overcoming the real oppression experienced.

Burning it down (euphemistically), leaves only a smoldering heap that's not much use to anyone—and even afterward the oppressors still oppress, sometimes worse than before. Patel recommends instead to build institutions designed to achieve just and beneficial goals—and the way to accomplish that is to ensure everyone's dignity and individual agency is sustained in a multi-cultural and multi-faith democracy that empowers our common humanity. This is the society we need to build. After reading this book, I'm convinced we can.