Save the Humans?: Common Preservation in Action

We the people of the world are creating the conditions for our own self-extermination, whether through the bang of a nuclear holocaust or the whimper of an expiring ecosphere. Today our individual self-preservation depends on common preservation—cooperation to provide for our mutual survival and well-being.

For half a century Jeremy Brecher has been studying and participating in social movements that have created new forms of common preservation. Through entertaining storytelling and personal narrative, Save the Humans? provides a unique and revealing interpretation of how social movements arise and how they change the world. Brecher traces a path that leads from the sitdown strikes on the pyramids of ancient Egypt through America’s mass strikes and labor revolts to the struggle against economic globalization to today’s battles against climate change.

Weaving together personal experience, scholarly research, and historical interpretation, Jeremy Brecher shows how we can construct a “human survival movement” that could “save the humans.” He sums up the theme of this book: “I have seen common preservation—and it works.” For those seeking an understanding of social movements and an alternative to denial and despair, there is simply no better place to look than Save the Humans?