For the Long Haul - by Chris Dixon (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A guide to sustaining long-term activism from a social-movement veteran.

To win in significant ways, we will have to build and sustain movements--grassroots movements propelled by urgency, that move at a pace that we can maintain collectively, for years to come. This is the long haul. Changing the world will require large numbers of ordinary people moving into action, bringing more and more people along with them and constellating powerful new collectivities.

For the Long Haul addresses the question of how to sustain long-term involvement in transformative social movements. Chris Dixon takes up this question with a particular focus on our time of compounding crises and widely felt urgency. This urgency, the book argues, is warranted; creating a just and habitable future requires dramatic social transformation.

Written in a compact and accessible manner, For the Long Haul takes up the question of activist longevity through five chapter-length propositions. Each chapter names a key obstacle to movement durability and then elaborates practical tools for contending with the obstacle and nourishing long-haul organizing. Focusing on the US and Canada, the book is based on interviews with and writings by seasoned organizers, experiences of past and present-day political organizations, and a broad range of movement histories. Deceptively simple prompts, such as cultivating a long view, caring for each other, making plans, and sticking around, lead readers to rich examinations of movement history and culture that center Black, Indigenous, queer, and feminist voices.

Review Quotes

"For the Long Haul is an invaluable resource. Drawing on meticulous research and extensive political experience, Chris Dixon offers practical tools for building durable liberatory movements that can meet the challenges of our time." --Angela Davis, author of Freedom Is a Constant Struggle

"I cannot imagine a more timely text than Chris Dixon's For the Long Haul: How to Stay in the Fight for a Better World. Dixon's warm prose is a salve for weary spirits. So many of us are afraid that there's no point to the work we do or struggling to stay in the work. Dixon rejects moralizing in favor of thinking through how to make long-term struggle sustainable. A must-read for young folks and elders alike, I hope communities will read it together to find hope, sustenance, and the groundwork for a future where we survive and thrive." --Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, author of The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred

"For the Long Haul is a balm to counter burnout and exhaustion. Powerful, practical, and timely, For the Long Haul offers a practical roadmap. Dixon draws on the many approaches and strategies of both past and present-day movements and organizers to stay involved, invigorated, and (re)energized in battling injustices and building a better world." --Victoria Law, journalist and author of Corridors of Contagion: How the Pandemic Exposed the Cruelties of Incarceration

"Unlike an instruction manual, rigid and rendered irrelevant with age, For the Long Haul offers guideposts of political struggle to stand the test of time. Drawing wisdom from a diverse array of radical traditions, Chris Dixon has written a book that every organizer needs. Written with clarity, insight, and fidelity to social movements, For the Long Haul is not about what to do but how to do it. It tells us how to be strong enough for when we don't win, bold enough so that we do, and caring enough to nourish all who want to transform the world. This is a book that will not only stick around but one that aims to help our movements stick around--for the long haul." --Dan Berger, author of Stayed on Freedom: The Long History of Black Power Through One Family's Journey

"In this thoughtful and generous work, Chris Dixon offers inspiration, hope, and solace, while helping us think through what it takes to sustain ourselves and our movements across a lifetime of struggle." --A. J. Withers, longtime community organizer and author of Fight to Win: Inside Poor People's Organizing

"This book is a powerful resource for activists, offering crucial strategies for turning our rage against the horrors of this world into sustainable and effective movements to win changes. Chris Dixon weaves together activist knowledge from a wide range of movements, showing the ways people develop long-term perspectives on how the world works and how to change it by learning together through victories and defeats over generations. This is a compelling read, making deep and sophisticated non-sectarian analysis engaging and accessible." --Alan Sears, professor emeritus, Department of Sociology, Toronto Metropolitan University

"How can we respond to the crises of the moment, while building the enduring relationships and movements we need to interrupt the deep-rooted power relations that produce them? For the Long Haul looks for insights and incitements in the radical movements of the past and present, providing a flexible and non-dogmatic framework for assessing how we're organizing now and how we can lay the foundations for the fight of our lives." --Ted Rutland, coauthor of Out to Defend Ourselves: A History of Montreal's First Haitian Street Gang

About the Author

Chris Dixon is an activist, writer, and educator with more than three decades of experience in social movements in the US and Canada. Originally from Alaska, he now lives in Ottawa, on unceded Algonquin territory. Dixon is a member of Punch Up Collective and serves on the advisory board for the activist journal Upping the Anti. Formally trained as a scholar of social movements, he writes and speaks regularly about radical organizing, left history, and movement-based research. His first book was Another Politics: Talking Across Today's Transformative Movements. Find more of Dixon's work on his website, Writing With Movements.

Rachel Herzing's work has spanned grassroots movements against imprisonment and policing, community and movement education, and philanthropy. Herzing is the co-author of How to Abolish Prisons: Lessons from the Movement against Imprisonment with Justin Piché, and the director of the Yarrow Institute for Organizing and Analysis.