Opening paragraphs.............

 Spend enough time in activist spaces and you start to see the patterns unfold before you, like a skipping record.  I am now some twenty-five years into a career as a part-time organizer.  Some years I've organized more, some I've organized less, and I took a break during grad school, but I've tried to get involved one way or another since I first became politically conscious as a teenager.  Over that time, I have watched the same dynamics play out again and again, dedicated organizers falling into the same sad patterns that obstruct progress.  The victories have been real, but the failures have been more frequent and bitter, sometimes resulting in the fracturing of groups and friendships.  There are many stories I could tell, and in this book I will tell some of them.

-Fredrik deBoer, from his Introduction to How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement