In her 3-million copy bestseller Diet for a Small Planet, she forever changed our thoughts about the politics of food and hunger.  Now in Democracy's Edge, Frances Moore Lappé reshapes our ideas about democracy.   In a lecture that inspires by example, Frances shows us how  citizens here and around the world are discovering power within themselves to act on democracy's core values and find solutions to our toughest problems.

Democracy's Edge

For many Americans, democracy means nothing more than casting a vote every four years, teaching school children about our founding fathers, and participating in a market economy. But this understanding of democracy won’t allow us to create the world we want. What’s more, we’re losing what democracy we have.

From Jefferson to Eisenhower, presidents from both parties have warned us of the danger of letting a closed, narrow group of business and government officials concentrate power to make life and death decisions for us. Yet today, Americans face just this predicament. As a result, the gap is widening between public desires and public policies, and seven out of ten of us, including Republicans and Democrats, worry our country is headed in the wrong direction.

This crisis is really only a symptom, Lappé argues.  It’s a symptom of thin democracy, something done to us or for us, not by or with us.   Such democracy, whether here or abroad, is always at risk of being stolen by private interests or extremist groups, left and right.

But there is a solution.  The answer, says Lappé, is Living Democracy, a powerful yet often invisible citizens’ revolution surging in communities across America and the world.  Moving beyond rhetoric, they are tackling problems that have stumped the elite experts—from electoral politics to local economies, from  media and food to security  and schools.  It’s the emergence of a new historical stage of democracy in which  regular citizens realize that democracy isn’t something we have, but something that we do.

Biography
Frances Moore Lappé has published fourteen books since her three-million copy best-seller Diet for a Small Planet, including Hope’s Edge, winner of the 2002 Nautilus award. Lappé has received 17 honorary doctorates and the Right Livelihood Award. She is cofounder of Food First, the American News Service, and the Small Planet Institute. Lappé has appeared on the Today Show, NPR’s Weekend Edition, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, and PBS Now. Her work is featured in publications as diverse as The New York Times and O Magazine.