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Common Ground

How the Crisis of the Earth is Saving Us from Our Illusion of Separation

Author Eileen Flanagan
Paperback
$21.95 US
Seven Stories Press
On sale Aug 26, 2025 | 336 Pages | 9781644214787
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In Common Ground, veteran organizer Eileen Flanagan weaves together a series of stories of hard won successes in the climate change movement, including against a multinational bank in one case, and a heavily polluting fossil fuel company in another, based on grassroots organizing.

As heat waves, wildfires, storms, and floods become ever more deadly, the book describes a groundswell of action in which citizens of all ages, races and political stripes struggle to understand each other and the enormous challenges we face fighting companies and governments wilfully blind to the climate change dangers we face as a society.

A Quaker activist, facilitator, and teacher,  Flanagan takes us on a personal journey through her environmental direct-action experiences as well as her relationships with community leaders to understand how we can form coalitions to actually make a difference. Flanagan shows that “the illusion of separation”—the fallacy that humans can thrive in a dying world—is at the root of interlocking environmental crises and that it’s often politicians and corporations who benefit by keeping the rest of us divided across lines of race, class, religion, and generation.

In Common Ground, Flanagan argues that more than technology or even elections, acting in solidarity with all life is humanity’s best hope for survival.

Includes a foreword by internationally acclaimed South African activist Kumi Naidoo, President of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative and former head of Greenpeace International and Amnesty International.
“With a capacious heart, an unerring moral compass, and consummate evidence-based research, Eileen Flanagan shows that, together, we have the power to rescue the planet from a path of greed and self-destruction, and, in the process, come to know ourselves and each other. Flanagan has given us both a history of and a blueprint for our mutual liberation.” —Sarah Willie-LeBreton, President of Smith College

“Eileen Flanagan puts into words what history reveals as a powerful truth. When people of faith and spirit get up and get organized, and go into the streets and halls of power calling for change, transformation becomes possible. There's no message more vital right now.” —Rev. Fletcher Harper, Executive Director of GreenFaith

 ​"If you like heartening books by positive, engaged people who act out of deep conviction, Eileen Flanagan’s book is for you. You’ll be encouraged by comrades whose work she describes—diverse movers and shakers elsewhere in the U.S. and as far away as India.​" —George Lakey, author of How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning

"In Common Ground, Eileen Flanagan guides us toward the longview, helping to illuminate our deep interconnectedness and the very real capacity that we have to harness people-power. She does so by reminding us that separation is an illusion and that we have the collective ability to actively co-create the future we most want to inhabit." —Sherri Mitchell (Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset), Executive Director of the Land Peace Foundation

"Eileen Flanagan has both the breadth of campaigning experience and the depth of heart required to be a reliable colleague, guide, and teacher—this is the right book for a moment when our government is trying to divide us, and when we must respond with real and meaningful unity."​ —Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes the Sun​: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization

“We are living through a time of gut-wrenching losses, when illusions are cracking open. As Eileen Flanagan journeys across continents, she offers us stories we need: tales of connection, where the fiercest resistance is stitched with spiritual insight and grounded in the steady craft of nonviolent strategy. Common Ground is a timely and compelling read—one that meets the moment with heart and vision.” —Daniel Hunter, Director of Choose Democracy
EILEEN FLANAGAN brings a forty-year commitment to justice to her speaking, writing, and climate leadership. From a working-class Irish American family, she has confronted corporate CEOs, prayed in their lobbies, and been arrested alongside Indigenous water protectors, Black preachers, and fellow Quakers. Nationally known for helping people to make their activism more effective and spiritually-grounded, she shepherded a scrappy group of Quakers to pressure a $4 billion-a-year bank to stop financing mountaintop removal coal mining. She earned a BA from Duke and an MA from Yale as a first-generation college student, focusing on resistance to colonialism, which she taught on the college level. The Dalai Lama endorsed her award-winning book The Wisdom to Know the Difference, and some of the best-known climate activists in the world endorsed her memoir Renewable. She lives with her husband on Lenape land in Philadelphia.
Eileen Flanagan View titles by Eileen Flanagan
Foreword by Kumi Naidoo
Author’s Note

Introduction

Part I: The Crisis of the Earth
Chapter One: The Crossroads
Chapter Two: A Clash of Worldviews
Chapter Three: Love and Power

Part II: The Cost of Separation
Chapter Four: What’s Race Got to Do with It?
Chapter Five: Dividing the Spectrum of Allies
Chapter Six: Navigating the Currents of Race

Part III: For the Love of the Land
Chapter Seven: Breaking Colonialist Patterns
Chapter Eight: Move Around them Like Water
 
Part IV: One World
Chapter Nine: One Family, Different Impacts
Chapter Ten: Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic
Chapter Eleven: Applying the Lessons in the Vanguard Campaign
 
Acknowledgements

Footnotes

Bibliography

Index

About

In Common Ground, veteran organizer Eileen Flanagan weaves together a series of stories of hard won successes in the climate change movement, including against a multinational bank in one case, and a heavily polluting fossil fuel company in another, based on grassroots organizing.

As heat waves, wildfires, storms, and floods become ever more deadly, the book describes a groundswell of action in which citizens of all ages, races and political stripes struggle to understand each other and the enormous challenges we face fighting companies and governments wilfully blind to the climate change dangers we face as a society.

A Quaker activist, facilitator, and teacher,  Flanagan takes us on a personal journey through her environmental direct-action experiences as well as her relationships with community leaders to understand how we can form coalitions to actually make a difference. Flanagan shows that “the illusion of separation”—the fallacy that humans can thrive in a dying world—is at the root of interlocking environmental crises and that it’s often politicians and corporations who benefit by keeping the rest of us divided across lines of race, class, religion, and generation.

In Common Ground, Flanagan argues that more than technology or even elections, acting in solidarity with all life is humanity’s best hope for survival.

Includes a foreword by internationally acclaimed South African activist Kumi Naidoo, President of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative and former head of Greenpeace International and Amnesty International.

Praise

“With a capacious heart, an unerring moral compass, and consummate evidence-based research, Eileen Flanagan shows that, together, we have the power to rescue the planet from a path of greed and self-destruction, and, in the process, come to know ourselves and each other. Flanagan has given us both a history of and a blueprint for our mutual liberation.” —Sarah Willie-LeBreton, President of Smith College

“Eileen Flanagan puts into words what history reveals as a powerful truth. When people of faith and spirit get up and get organized, and go into the streets and halls of power calling for change, transformation becomes possible. There's no message more vital right now.” —Rev. Fletcher Harper, Executive Director of GreenFaith

 ​"If you like heartening books by positive, engaged people who act out of deep conviction, Eileen Flanagan’s book is for you. You’ll be encouraged by comrades whose work she describes—diverse movers and shakers elsewhere in the U.S. and as far away as India.​" —George Lakey, author of How We Win: A Guide to Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning

"In Common Ground, Eileen Flanagan guides us toward the longview, helping to illuminate our deep interconnectedness and the very real capacity that we have to harness people-power. She does so by reminding us that separation is an illusion and that we have the collective ability to actively co-create the future we most want to inhabit." —Sherri Mitchell (Weh'na Ha'mu Kwasset), Executive Director of the Land Peace Foundation

"Eileen Flanagan has both the breadth of campaigning experience and the depth of heart required to be a reliable colleague, guide, and teacher—this is the right book for a moment when our government is trying to divide us, and when we must respond with real and meaningful unity."​ —Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes the Sun​: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization

“We are living through a time of gut-wrenching losses, when illusions are cracking open. As Eileen Flanagan journeys across continents, she offers us stories we need: tales of connection, where the fiercest resistance is stitched with spiritual insight and grounded in the steady craft of nonviolent strategy. Common Ground is a timely and compelling read—one that meets the moment with heart and vision.” —Daniel Hunter, Director of Choose Democracy

Author

EILEEN FLANAGAN brings a forty-year commitment to justice to her speaking, writing, and climate leadership. From a working-class Irish American family, she has confronted corporate CEOs, prayed in their lobbies, and been arrested alongside Indigenous water protectors, Black preachers, and fellow Quakers. Nationally known for helping people to make their activism more effective and spiritually-grounded, she shepherded a scrappy group of Quakers to pressure a $4 billion-a-year bank to stop financing mountaintop removal coal mining. She earned a BA from Duke and an MA from Yale as a first-generation college student, focusing on resistance to colonialism, which she taught on the college level. The Dalai Lama endorsed her award-winning book The Wisdom to Know the Difference, and some of the best-known climate activists in the world endorsed her memoir Renewable. She lives with her husband on Lenape land in Philadelphia.
Eileen Flanagan View titles by Eileen Flanagan

Table of Contents

Foreword by Kumi Naidoo
Author’s Note

Introduction

Part I: The Crisis of the Earth
Chapter One: The Crossroads
Chapter Two: A Clash of Worldviews
Chapter Three: Love and Power

Part II: The Cost of Separation
Chapter Four: What’s Race Got to Do with It?
Chapter Five: Dividing the Spectrum of Allies
Chapter Six: Navigating the Currents of Race

Part III: For the Love of the Land
Chapter Seven: Breaking Colonialist Patterns
Chapter Eight: Move Around them Like Water
 
Part IV: One World
Chapter Nine: One Family, Different Impacts
Chapter Ten: Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic
Chapter Eleven: Applying the Lessons in the Vanguard Campaign
 
Acknowledgements

Footnotes

Bibliography

Index

Additional formats

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