Read, watch, listen to and enjoy these, then send them to people in your life! To learn by doing, look at our volunteering list here.

This is a community-sourced list and will always be growing. Suggest your own favorite books, podcasts, and movies here!

Favorites/great things to start with!

Election-specific

• Where do we go from here? – an amazing introduction and reflection around easy steps we can begin taking to care for each other and create the change we need. Includes specific examples, cultural examination, and space to process emotions.
• What if Trump Wins Scenario + roles explorer – It’s like a choose your own adventure game but helps you learn to envision the good and bad possibilities and organize!
• Video: Post-election mass call

Essays

• What does an ecological society look like? – a proposal for society based on natural ecology

• Solarpunk manifesto – 22 principles of a better world.

• Chasing Dreams, Fighting Nightmares – a short imaginative outline of what a more joyful and climate justice future would actually look like.

• The Answer to Climate Change is Organizing (Bill McKibben) – a good intro to why the climate crisis can be solved, and antidote to climate anxiety or paralysis

• How Indigenous Peoples are Fighting the Apocalypse (Julian Brave NoiseCat) – an indigenous perspective on social justice and coping with challenging times

• Apocalypse Now Field Guide by Sophie Weston Chien - Issuu - a designer

Video + Audio

• Better lives for all (Podcast) – a wonderful overview of how climate resilience, workers rights, and social justice intersect, and a look at what solutions and a mass movement would look like to transform our society to have better lives for all while also mitigating the climate crisis.

• What is capitalist realism? (Podcast)

• How capitalism destroys radical movements (Video)

Online Media organizations

• Handbook for Climate Activists – a wikipedia style website that gives the basics of climate activism.

• Slow Factory - Slow Factory is an award-winning creative platform radically imagining and designing solutions to the intersecting crises of climate justice & human rights through cultural change, science and design. The scope of our work is both broad and deep.

• The Anarchist Library – a directory of 1000s of social change, political theory, and radical readings.

• Beautiful Trouble – an online toolbox of stories, strategy, theories, and tactics for creative changemaking.

• Boulder Resources local to Boulder:

  • Directory of local organizations

  • Local actions + resources

  • Calendar of weekly events

• Boulder Weekly’s city council summaries – what our local gov. is up to.

Short essays and articles

Organizing strategy

• If Capitalism is a cancer, what are we? – instructive and hopeful lessons from an illustrative metaphor.

• Shawn Fain’s New Year’s Resolution Is to Lay the Ground for a National Strike – on the thinking behind organizing for a 2028 national strike.

• The flower of transformation – describes a model to understand the interconnected key elements or spheres of change we are working towards, with examples from around the world.

• Drugs are fucking everywhere (and we’re all addicted to comfort) – a fiery critique of the modern organizing strategy under oppressive systems, and the need to create new systems.

Intersectionality

• adrienne maree brown - “We Are Earth” for Atmos - https://atmos.earth/adrienne-maree-brown-we-are-earth/
• Carbon Emissions and the War in Gaza
• Rudy @ IndigenousAction.org - Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex
• Bell hooks: Unsung Environmental Activist and Writer
• Disrupting Dominion: Breaking the Cycle of Toxic Masculinity and Colonial Legacies in the Outdoors
• Brené Brown on Strong Backs, Soft Fronts, and Wild Hearts
• No More Grind: How to Finally Rest with Tricia Hersey

Solarpunk

• Essay: Chasing Dreams, Fighting Nightmares – follow up for solarpunk!
• Solarpunk Station - Building Regenerative Futures Resource List

Science + data

• The World's Top Climate Scientists Are In Despair – interview of 380 climate scientists by The Guardian

Books

Favorites to start out with!

• Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer – a beautiful, fascinating mix of indigenous wisdom, western botanical science, and poetry dealing with climate grief, hope, and love for the natural world.

• Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care, Mariame Kaba

• Active Hope, Joanna Macy

• Less is More, Jason Hikel

• From What If to What Is, Rob Hopkins

• All We Can Save, Various (short essay format, which is really nice for getting an overview of them movement

Diving in deeper

• Solidarity, Astra Taylor – great if you want to learn about intersectionality, history of successful social movements, and how building community can strategically create change

• Doughnut Economics, Kate Raworth

• Regeneration Handbook, Don Hall

Videos

Youtube accounts

• Climate town

Youtube videos

• What is eco socialism? – intro to a theory of sustainable economy.

• A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow – Ted Talk by the author of Doughnut Economics, a book describing sustainable economic theory.

Movies

Leadership favorites :)

• 2040 – a hopeful portrayal of what the world could look like if we implemented currently existing climate/social justice solutions.

• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind – Studio Ghibli film :)

• The Black Power Mixtape 1967-1975 – an outsider’s perspective on the Black Panthers and the state of mid century American politics.

Environmental

• Kiss the Ground, and sequel, Common Ground — about regenerative agriculture and how food systems can prevent climate change and empower communities!

• Before the Flood — a bit depressing, but educational and has a few ways you can make changes. Also free to watch!

• David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet – 2020 film

• An Inconvenient Truth – 2005 film on climate change

• Damnation – about water rights and indigenous justice

Civil Rights + social movements

• Rabble Rousers – about successful activism around founding a community land trust in a lower east new york neighborhood threatened by racist urban planning

• The Black Panthers

  • All Power to the People – documentary from Black Panther Foundation

  • Vanguard of the Revolution – 2016 film

  • The Murder of Fred Hampton – 1971 film

  • Black Panthers – 1968 film

• Salut les Cubains – documentary film about Cuba during Fidel Castro’s government.

• ¡Palante, Siempre Palante! – about the Young Lords

Fictionalized films about social justice

• Erin Brockovich – about law and social change.

  • Don’t Look Up – about climate change and mass denialism.

  • Judas and the Black messiah – about the Black Panthers.

• More artistic films

  • Princess Mononoke

  • Beasts Of The Southern Wild

• Introductory videos and video essays!

Podcasts

Recommended series

• Upstream

• How to Citizen

• From What If to What Next – imaginative solutions to the polycrisis from diverse (and awesome) innovators and leaders! Focuses a lot on intersectionality and creative solutions.

Specific episodes

• The issue with 2 party politics

• Local action for widespread change

• Half Farmer, Half X — a Japanese theory of change

• The age of insecurity — how modern systems impact our free time and wellbeing

• Introduction to leninist's movement theory

Websites, newsletters, and social media

• Inside the Movement: A great weekly email list that shares current environmental campaigns to support, easy actions to take, and the biggest social change news.

• Take the Jump - a great ‘beginners guide’ to personal + community changes for sustainable/ethical living

• Slingshot Collective Directory: a great website with a list of local community-focused spaces. Also has media, essays, and lots more!

• Instagrams to follow

  • @slowfactory: information, media, and thought provoking posts on social justice, sustainability, and how to take action

  • @StrongTowns - affordable housing, walkable cities, affordable and sustainable transport

  • @intersectionalenvironmentalist – about the intersection of climate, human rights, racism, and other justice issues, and solutions that address the root cause (capitalism)

• Project drawdown - a great overview of different kinds of solutions to the climate crisis. Check out the book, read their website, or check out the quick overview of solutions here.

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