I don’t want to be paralyzed in the face of catastrophic climate change or any other looming calamity. I want to be motivated and spurred to action not by an apocalyptic vision of our local playground engulfed in flames or submerged under several feet of water, but by the potential for the brighter future than is surely within our grasp — within my grasp today and Madeline’s in some future that she truly deserves.

To read the rest of the piece, visit TomDisptach.

The Indypendent highlights Frida Berrigan’s It Runs in the Family and the recent collection Selfish, Shallow, and Self-Absorbed as two titles that help re-imagine a more ideal family:

Taken together, these redefine what family is supposed to mean — and challenge us, in the face of all our modern pressures, to create the kind of family we actually want.

To read the rest of the review, visit The Indypendent

Frida and Patrick, a second-generation peace activist himself and a social worker, have found a way to live radically. Highly educated people, they have turned away from the society of acquisition. They are not fixed upon an upward climbing graph that indicates more, much more, most. Instead they exult in the time that they have to tend children and calm our violent world. They have unbound themselves from the culture of ambition that entangles most of us. At this point, I should issue a warning: If your goals are deeply entrenched in the ambition culture and you might restate the principles of It Runs in the Family to read “Ambition drives people forward. Too many relationships and too much community hold people back. They will never succeed,” this is probably not the book for you. But if you are willing to fight the fear of not rising to the top of the working world, you might want to investigate how some people have found a different kind of success.

To read the full review, visit The Revealer.

Feminist blogger Veronica Arreola provides a glowing review for Frida Berrigan’s It Runs in the Family:

Best of all, Frida is forthright about how children turn our lives upside down, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Ok, sure we would want a better child care system, paid maternity leave and all that, but the whole juggle is tough, but can be pretty awesome too. “It Runs in the Family” is a refreshing take on parenting while pursuing social justice in the world.

To read the rest of the review, visit Viva la Feminista.

Listen to a free excerpt of the interview here. The full program is available at Uprising.

Berrigan is clearly a smart, well-intentioned new mom with some killer childhood stories.

To read the rest of the full review, visit City Paper

In another photo, taken in April 1985, I walk down the River Entrance steps. I am 11 and soaking wet and grimacing. I still remember the moment. I’m hoarse from chanting “You can’t wash the blood away!” as a maintenance crew works to scrub down one of the Pentagon’s imposing pillars. They could and did wash the blood away. Their hoses are visible in the background and the pillars are clean. Drawn from the veins of my parents and their friends, the dark red liquid was a potent symbol meant to mark that building with the end result of war. My parents hoped that it would remind those entering of the reality of their work, of what lay behind or beyond the clean offices they labored in and the spiffy suits or uniforms they wore. At the time, the Pentagon was locked in a fierce fight with the CIA and the White House over the wisdom of trading weapons for hostages with Iran and giving the money to U.S.-backed mercenaries in Nicaragua who were fighting a bloody war against peasants, catechists, and communists who wanted land reform, education, and democracy.

To read the rest of the article, visit Tom’s Dispatch

Truthout: The title of your book describes your evolution into “rebellious motherhood.” Can you explain more what you mean by that term?

Frida Berrigan: In essence, I am trying to mother without fear and with hope. I am trying to mother without a lot of money or possessions or acquisitiveness. I am trying to mother with a lot of time for my kids, for friendships and for work for peace and justice – and that seems pretty rebellious in this society.

To read the rest of the interview, visit Truthout

From our parents, Patrick and I learned how to live well without a lot of money, to speak up for justice in big and small ways, to treasure the richness of diversity, and to value truth and love above pretty much everything else.

What does that look like in practice? Potluck dinners, composting, knowing our neighbors, belonging to the community garden and the food co-op, looking after other people’s children, joyfully embracing chores and family work, pitching in with food and time when a neighbor is in need, advocating for peace and justice, being enthusiastic members of our local Unitarian Universalist church, greeting people by name, cultivating curiosity in our children, having time for each other and for others, sharing what we have, and so much more.

To read the rest of the excerpt, visit TruthOut

To listen to the podcast, visit Waging Nonviolence

To listen to the interview, visit WMUK

Wise and well-written, this is an inspiring read.

To read the rest of the review, visit Peace News

RD: For parents out there who are part of movement work, what do you hope this book will offer?

FB: Perspective. I think we try to do it all. I know I try– even now (and even after having written this book). It is hard to slow down, hard to take a back seat for a while, hard not to worry that if you leave the driver’s seat, you’ll never get back there. The message of the book is: it is okay to let parenting be your main job for a little while. And then I struggle with that alot even though my hand’s are completely full with two little kids and an 8 year old step-daughter, and you can see that throughout the book (and in the second part of my answer below).

The kid’s are alright. Parents who are activists worry that their commitments will mess their kids up. Parents who are activists are told (often very explicitly) that their commitments to other peoples’ kids will mess up their kids… My experience having super-committed parents says otherwise. Kids respect parents who do more than just live for their kids (and the weekend).

To read the rest of the interview, visit Radical Discipleship

In lieu of a society that treats time as the gift that it is, Frida Berrigan is keeping up her own family’s tradition of being a sign of contradiction. Other families’ ways of valuing time may not look like hers. But in any case it’s strange how today a simple life is enough to make one seem like a radical.

To read the rest of the article, visit America Magazine

What Berrigan demonstrates is that you needn’t be part of a Marxist intellectual hierarchy, steeped in dialectics, in order to commit to action that will help change the world for the better; that most things that need changing require simple and direct actions, not nuances of ideology. And that you can raise your children to be “morally cheerful” (glad to help) and to “play a part in resolving, rather than exacerbating, the problems of the world.” A lovely book, with a genuine smile.

To read the rest of the review, visit Prague Post

I was laughing by page four and crying by page 16. I’m a slow reader but this one was all read up quickly. I’m making it a supplementary text in my Participating in Democracy class. Frida gives her readers a grounding in a livingscape of resistance, a map of possibilities for parenting for peace and justice without making a single claim that she is something special.

But she is.

To read the rest of the review, visit CounterPunch

To hear the broadcast, visit The Steiner Show

Listen to the interview on WBAI.

Can you be fully committed to changing the world and change diapers at the same time? Can you be a nonviolent revolutionary and a present, loving role model for your children? Can you hold the macro – justice and peace and the big issues of the day – in one hand and the micro – boppies, wipes, third-grade science projects, and playground politics – in the other? My parents did not think so, and did not plan on having children.

Father Philip Berrigan, a Josephite priest, and Sister Elizabeth McAlister of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, both peace and civil rights activists, met at a funeral in 1966. Each of them was fully committed to revolution inside the church and throughout society. They fell in love, married, and were excommunicated. They faced long jail sentences and long court proceedings, and endured the harsh burn of the media spotlight. They formed Jonah House, a new community to support and nurture lives of resistance and prayer and to replace the religious orders that failed to evolve with them. They did not see kids as part of that picture, but then I came along. My brother Jerry followed a year later, and seven years after that our sister Kate was born. So much for natural family planning.

To read the rest of the excerpt, visit Alternet