Get Up, Stand Up

Uniting Populists, Energizing the Defeated, and Battling the Corporate Elite

Polls show that the majority of Americans oppose recent US wars and Wall Street bailouts, yet most remain passive and appear resigned to powerlessness. Many Americans have lost confidence that genuine democracy is possible, and Get Up Stand Up explains how major US institutions have created fatalism. When such fatalism and defeatism sets in, truths about economic injustices and lost liberties are not enough to set people free—something else is required. For democratic movements to get off the ground, individuals must recover self-respect, and a people must regain collective confidence that they can succeed at eliminating top-down controls. Get Up, Stand Up describes how anti-elitists can unite and recover dignity, confidence, and the energy to wrest power away from the ruling corporate-government partnership (the “corporatocracy”). Get Up, Stand Up details those strategies and tactics that oppressed peoples have successfully employed to gain power.

Get Up, Stand Up is a powerful call to action that inspires us to take our country back. . . . This comprehensive analysis of how modern corporatocracy robber barons stole the US (and most of the world) is a must read for all who resonate with Levine’s belief that We the People have the power and the responsibility to overthrow the ruling elite.”–John Perkins, New York Times best-selling author of Hoodwinked, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, and The Secret History of the American Empire

As you read Bruce Levine’s rousing Get Up, Stand Up, inevitably you will be reminded of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, which served as a rallying cry for the colonialists to take action against their British rulers. Today, Levine argues, Americans are ruled by a tyrannical “corporatocracy”-i.e. government by big business and for big business-and his analysis of why the American people remain so passive in the face of such tyranny is smart, lucid, and passionate. Readers will also find, in his proposals for how the “people” today can stand up and “do battle” with the corporatocracy, a stirring call for action that surely needs to be heard.–Robert Whitaker, author of Anatomy of an Epidemic and Mad in America

“In an era when most political commentary has degenerated into self-satisfied carping and smug Monday morning quarterbacking, Bruce E. Levine breaks out of this intellectual paralysis with a clarion call for a new kind of politics. Levine offers a progressive user’s manual for reclaiming our government from the stranglehold of corporate greed and rightwing paranoia. As an antidote to apathy, Get Up, Stand Up is worthy of Bob Marley, which is very high praise indeed. Read it, absorb it, act on it.”–Jeffrey St. Clair, co-editor, CounterPunch, and author of Born Under a Bad Sky

“With this book, Bruce Levine reinvents the old saw ‘the personal is political.’ Healthy people make up a healthy movement, and Get Up Stand Up is full of both hope and practical solutions.”--Anya Kamenetz, author of DIY U and Generation Debt

“Over the years, I have been astounded at the way mainstream, hardworking, formerly self-sufficient Americans have meekly accepted being screwed by big business, Wall Street and their elected officials. I have wondered, why hasn’t there been an uprising over the looting of mainstream America by big business and Wall Street, facilitated by Congress? Through his brilliant analysis, psychologist Bruce Levine explains the process by which mainstream America has become demoralized and docile, how those in power maintain that power, and what it will take to turn things around. Anyone who cares about the decline of mainstream America should read this book. Anyone who wants to do something about the decline of mainstream America must read this book.”--Jim Gottstein, President/CEO Law Project for Psychiatric Rights

“We are living in a land in which corporate power buys as many politicians as it needs, unjust laws shovel money to the rich, and media substitute entertainment for information. Yet Bruce Levine dares to show how we can reclaim our deadened souls, regain integrity and passion, and begin to change a political system we have let numb us into resigned helplessness.”--Rev. Davidson Loehr, author of America, Fascism, and God

“Bruce Levine attempts to wake us from our collective political stupor, our anesthetized resignation to corporate rule. Get Up, Stand Up inspires hope that together we can regain our self-respect and create the families, communities and, perhaps, the country we once dreamed possible.”–Oryx Cohen, Director of the National Empowerment Center’s Technical Assistance Center

“Bruce Levine’s intriguing new book examines how emotional suffering is interwoven with political disempowerment. He has taken our discussion of mental health out of the doctor’s office and put it back where it belongs: in the community.”–Will Hall, host of Madness Radio and co-founder of Freedom Center

“Feeling politically demoralized? You’re not alone. In his latest book, Get Up, Stand Up, Bruce Levine provides not only the diagnosis for our country’s seeming paralysis, but also a very strong antidote.”–Steve Clark, Walking and Bicycling Program Manager, Transit for Livable Communities, Minneapolis

2 Responses

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    […] “If there’s no rebel energy, there’s no movement,” the late working-class activist Bill Moyer wrote in Doing Democracy.  He didn’t mean violent rebellion or randomly scattered rage, but strategically targeted rebellion against unjust power-holders. Tame tactics would never make social change. Looking around at the devastation in the U.S. economy and environment, it’s clear that too many of us are taking terrible injustices sitting down. We have a society-wide shortage of rebel energy, as Bruce Levine. […]

  2. New classism book holds the keys to movement-building

    […] us are taking terrible injustices sitting down. We have a society-wide shortage of rebel energy, as Bruce Levine has […]

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