Political Self

On January 21, 2017, millions of protestors took part in the Women's March, and many of them created a "sea of pink" when they wore knitted pink "pussyhats" in record numbers. The pussyhat swiftly found its place on the cover of Time and The New Yorker, and it ultimately came to symbolize resistance culture. Creator of the Pussyhat Project, Krista Suh, took an idea and built a worldwide movement and symbol in just two months. But like so many women, Krista spent years letting her fears stop her from learning to live by her own rules.

¿Qué significa ser una mujer mentalmente fuerte? La aparición de los movimientos #MeToo y #TimesUp ha despertado a la sociedad y ha alentado a las mujeres a encontrar su voz y reclamar su poder. Pero para hacer esto, las mujeres deben aprender a mejorar su propia fuerza mental. Contender con una serie de problemas difíciles, desde la igualdad salarial hasta la agresión sexual, exige dureza psicológica.

Born into slavery in 1818, Frederick Douglass rose to become one of the nation's foremost intellectuals - a statesman, author, lecturer, and scholar who helped lead the fight against slavery and racial oppression. Unlike other leading abolitionists, however, Douglass embraced the US Constitution, insisting that it was an essentially anti-slavery document and that its guarantees for individual rights belonged to all Americans, of whatever race. Douglass spoke in his most popular lecture, "Self-Made Men", of people who rise through their own effort and devotion rather than privilege.

Combining the deft social analysis of Where Good Ideas Come From with the optimistic arguments of Everything Bad Is Good for You, New York Times best-selling author Steven Johnson's Future Perfect makes the case that a new model of political change is on the rise, transforming everything from local governments to classrooms, from protest movements to health care. Johnson paints a compelling portrait of this new political worldview.

The American way - independence, entrepreneurialism, liberty - has been under assault for decades. The cultural foundations of the United States and its institutions are devolving along the line of some futuristic apocalyptic novel and producing social, moral, and economic dry rot that can lead only to chaos and ruin. Attacks on individuality, freedom, and personal responsibility for most of the last century have resulted, as Alexis de Tocqueville once predicted, in a gradual degradation of the people and the descent into slavery of once-free people.

In March 2004, high school freshman Shauna Fleming invited 1,100 schoolmates to join her in "A Million Thanks", a campaign to collect and distribute one million letters of appreciation to current and past military men and women at home and overseas. Within six months, she received the one millionth letter. Since then, she has raised her goal to 1.4 million letters, one for each member of the U.S. armed services.

Words are powerful, life-changing tools. By focusing our attention on how we speak and think, we can change our lives for the better. The Power of the Spoken Word emphasizes the importance of affirmations to help listeners make the positive changes they've always wanted to make.

Tired of all the political rhetoric? Want a voting guide that truly does not care who you vote for, except that you think through your voting choices by examining your values and beliefs? This Vote Smart Quick Reference Guide is your answer. It provides a framework to think through an election grounded by your values and beliefs supported by goodness and an examination of foundationally historic documents in US history including the US Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Gettysburg Address.