Looking to History to Build Power

The cost of living problem in the United States is an energy problem. Millions of Americans can’t pay their utility bills each month as for-profit utilities extract high profits while also polluting communities and making the climate crisis worse.

In this moment of a looming Trump presidency, what are the ideas, the strategies, the constituencies that we need to mobilize in order to lower people’s costs, regain control over the backbone of the economy, and ensure a livable climate? One answer: mobilize a base to fight for public power from the ground up.

In his debut book, Democracy in Power, Sandeep Vaheesan brings in the past to equip campaigns of the future. Vaheesan traces the rise of publicly governed utilities in the twentieth-century electrification of America, exploring its backers and headwinds. There is no doubt that controlling and democratizing the grid is a story of David vs Goliath– but it is a fight we have won in the past.

Join us on Tuesday, December 17th from 6:00-730 at Creative Grounds in Washington, DC!