This edition of Rally Reads features the incredible Matthew Sherrington. For new visitors to this corner of the web, Rally Reads is a series of blog posts where we ask the people who’ve had the biggest impact on us to share the books that have had the biggest impact on them. And to explain why.
In this post Matthew gives us a fab reading list that covers history, power, identity, communications and campaigning. Matthew is a consultant and coach at Inspiring Action. He has been in charity fundraising, campaigning and comms for many years, including as Fundraising Director for Greenpeace USA and Communications Director for Oxfam GB. As a consultant and coach he has worked with over 100 charities, big and small, focused on inspiring action through leadership and supporter engagement, and better story-telling.
Matthew is one of the few Brits to make it in the USA - we could sit for hours and listen to him tell stories from Greenpeace. Those stories are one of the reasons Rally exists: it was those stories and his commitment to fusing comms, campaigning and fundraising that formed a major inspiration for the creation of Rally.
HISTORY, POWER AND IDENTITY
I like history, I’m curious about how we got here and how things work. I think it helps to understand dynamics, work out what needs fixing and how to change stuff. These are books that changed how I look at things.
How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (Walter Rodney). Studying history I did a course called Europe Overseas, about the 15th/16th century ‘discovery’ of other continents and expanding trade. Luckily, my uncle John, a teacher in Lambeth, was taking care of my rebellious education. As well as my first Clash and Linton Kwezi Johnson albums, he gave me this essential antidote. Africa already had its own history, and Europe oppressed, exploited and plundered, wherever it went. Which is why the political furore about culture wars and ‘rewriting our history’ is just bollocks.
Poverty and Famines (Amartya Sen). I taught English in Sudan the year after the ‘84-5 famine, and LiveAid. Sen wrote this a few years earlier, based on the Bengal famine of the 1940s, arguing famine was not the result of ‘natural disaster’, but the consequence of people’s poverty and inability to buy what they need, and political failure (In Bengal’s case, colonial Britain). In ‘84-5, as millions of people starved, Sudan was still exporting grain. Today in the UK, people go hungry and food banks exist for the same reasons. As Nelson Mandela later said, “overcoming poverty is not a gesture of charity. It is an act of justice.”
Women, Race and Class (Angela Y. Davis). I only read this last year, and wish I’d read it years sooner, since it’s about everything I’m not, as a white, middle class man, and explains so much about why intersectionality and inclusivity matter. It’s a history of struggle in the US, from emancipation to women’s suffrage to labour rights; the centrality of black women (and why that was); how white middle class women made other struggles subordinate to their own; and a reminder we can’t fully understand what we don’t live.
I joke about being left-handed in a world not designed for me, as an insight into what privilege looks like when you don’t have it. Susan Cain’s Quiet (and her Power of Introverts TED talk) is about introverts reclaiming their space and voice in the loud world extroverts have created. Right now, I’m reading Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez, about the gender data gap and presumption of ‘the default male’ behind everything – women simply missing from history and the data used to shape the world. Just how eye-opening it is, is a real eye-opener.
A few years ago I realised how un-diverse my reading actually was. (As Invisible Women points out, men tend not to read books by or about women; I was no different). Now, about half the books I read are by women; over a third by African, Asian, Black and ethnic minority writers. Gary Younge’s 2018 article about reading novels by African women spurred me on. As he says, it’s not virtue, but curiosity, a case of fixing my radar. It has introduced me to histories, experiences and perspectives of people around the world who are not like me.
CAMPAIGNING AND COMMUNICATIONS
The Revolution will not be Televised (Joe Trippi). Before Bernie Sanders, before Barack Obama, came Howard Dean in the 2004 primary race for the Democratic nomination. Joe Trippi was his campaign manager. An early front-runner, Dean didn’t win (in fact he blew it) but this is where mass political organising started using digital tools and low-dollar fundraising. This was the campaign we learnt from at Greenpeace USA, doing supporter engagement stuff years before anything like it in the UK.
Don’t Think of an Elephant (George Lakoff). The concept of ‘framing’ started with Lakoff. I got to hear him when he worked with green groups on climate change messaging. His critique of Democrats’ tendency to talk at people rationally, and their failure to connect with them on values, while Republicans did the opposite to great effect, anticipates the intensity of post-truth culture wars and polarisation today.
The Political Brain: The Role of Emotion in Deciding the Fate of the Nation (Drew Westen). This draws on the same context of US politics, and explains how the brain works, and how we feel rather than think our way to decisions and post-rationalise, before neuro-marketing became a thing. That our brains are smarter than we are, is a quirky thought I love.
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, The Danger of a Single Story TED talk. I came to this reflecting on how the stories we tell often need to be simple to illustrate a wider story and to engage audiences, but can stereotype, misrepresent and deny agency. It’s important to be honest we have an agenda, and power in choosing whose stories we tell, how we tell them, or whose voices we amplify. And it’s important to grapple with this challenge. It still challenges me.
Bury the Chains (Adam Hochschild). The story of the nineteenth century campaign to end the slave trade. Every tactic we use, they did here first. Petitions, boycotts, organising, media, the law, you name it.
Mandela, The Authorised Biography (Anthony Sampson). The struggle to end apartheid was one of the defining campaigns of the late 20th century. I first arrived in South Africa for Oxfam on the day in 1990 Nelson Mandela was released from 27 years in prison. You probably have to be over 45 or so now, to remember that day and know what it meant.
ON MATTHEW’S 2021 READING LIST:
The Purpose of Power: How to build movements for the 21st Century (Alicia Garza)
Black Wave: Saudi Arabia, Iran and the Rivalry that Unravelled the Middle East (Kim Ghattas)
Empireland: How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain (Sathnam Sanghera)
The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence, and Cultural Restitution (Dan Hicks)
Black and British: A Forgotten History (David Olusoga)
Huge thanks to Matthew for sharing this inspiring reading list. We hope you found it useful and that you add some of these books to your reading list. And don't be surprised if we approach you and ask you to give us your recommended reading and share some of the books that inspire you.
Main photo by Kimberly Farmer on Unsplash