This book offers concrete action plans to tackle some of the issues that are in women's minds. It offers a reminder that activism, real activism, is not just comprised of sharing likeminded views on social media. If there is a cause that is near and dear to you and you are not sure how to go about effecting change, pick this book up for practical suggestions.

I mostly liked this book. Reading this though, I started to feel a little tired of the idea of having to maintain the resistance. It didn't give me the new ideas and enthusiasm I had hoped for.

Definitely a thorough look of what is going on in our society today and a view of what we can do about it and change it.

This book is very timely. Its strengths are that it presents some historical perspective and larger social analysis of US policy and laws to help situate the reader and gives the reader a lot of practice advise for work on social change now. The author is also self-reflective, which is good modeling of be self aware rather than assuming you're and your perspective are best (or the only). If you want to work for social change (or in some cases, stop social change in the other direction -- like defending Roe v Wade) and you want community and advice, this book is for you.

If you’re looking for concrete ideas about everyday activism, read Keep Marching: How Every Woman Can Take Action and Change Our World by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner. The author breaks down today’s most critical human rights issues, and provides an action plan.

Keep Marching is full of details, including the results of studies and true stories. Rowe-Finkbeiner delicately balances the statistics with reality, getting her readers all fired up. Then she lays out the details of how to take that information and use it for change.

For example, pick the topic area that matters most to you: Our Money, Our Bodies, or Our Communites. Next delve deeper into one topic, let’s say Our Bodies. In that section, Rowe-Finkbeiner covers health care, Medicaid, reproductive rights, domestic violence, and maternal mortality within this section.

Layered in between the topics are the action steps. One section talks about how to reach out to your legislators. Not just how to find their number, but how best to make that phone call. She explains what to expect, and the best way to get your message across. In another, Rowe-Finkbeiner explains how to make the most of a town hall or community forum. What if you’ve done all that and want to get more involved? Well, there’s a chapter on running for office or supporting a woman who already is running.

My conclusions:
Political action is much more than clicking “like” on Facebook memes. But it doesn’t have to be hard, or a full-time job. More women than ever are banding together, around dining room tables and board rooms. They are making change by doing any small things, consistently, and over long periods of time. Women aren’t letting up on the pressure.

Keep Marching reminded me of all the fire I felt in November 2016. It inspired me to do more, and to connect with like-minded friends and organizations. It helped me feel the power women truly have in the world today.

Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner’s writing style takes heavily researched topics and makes them approachable. The footnoted content is transformed from dry statistics with many stories of women’s own experiences. Keep Marching isn’t preachy. Instead, after reading it I’m excited to do more to impact my world.

Although I received this book as a digital advanced reader’s copy, I will definitely buy a copy of the finished product. According to the author, “100 percent of the proceeds of this book go to MomsRising to help provide the fuel to keep us all marching.” There’s a reason to purchase copies for friends too!

Acknowledgements:
Many thanks to NetGalley, the author, and Hachette Books for the opportunity to read this digital ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I was just looking at the recent cover of Ms. magazine: We March; We Run; We Vote and that certainly fits with the spirit of this new book, KEEP MARCHING by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner. An award winning author and radio host, Rowe-Finkbeiner is also executive director/CEO of MomsRising.org and is known for her support of feminist causes. In this latest work, she encourages action by every women to change our world for the better and I think our students will certainly be inspired.

Rowe-Finkbeiner divides her comments between three broad areas: Our Money, Our Bodies and Our Communities. She includes extensive footnotes and has obviously consulted a variety of sources. Each chapter begins with some background and research analysis and is then followed by a call to action. When writing about making positive change, for instance, she suggests asking:
What draws my attention in the news, on social media, in conversations in this book?
What is the one thing you want future generations to not have to fix? What breaks your heart?
If my possible future grandchildren ask me what in the heck I was doing when ____ was happening, will I be embarrassed to tell them I stood by silently?

Rowe-Finkbeiner does make specific policy recommendations, many of which (raising the minimum wage, funding Planned Parenthood, passing the Dream Act) are both controversial and of interest to our students so we are ordering a copy of KEEP MARCHING to review. I look forward to seeing it in print, although I appreciate the advance review copy from the publisher on which this honest review was based.

I really enjoyed this book a lot, and you can very much tell that the author did a lot of research for the book. She made a lot of good connections to current things going on in the world and stories that she knows about. It definitely opened up my eyes to stories I did not even know about. I really enjoyed the fact that the author did not focus on the white feminism that a lot of women's studies books focus on, but rather constantly mentions the topic of everyone, not just one select group of people.

Written by one of the founders of the Women's March, Keep Marching is a primer on how we can stay involved, and more importantly WHY we should stay involved. Written in fairly easy to read text (think less textbook, more informational text) this will appeal to women who are struggling with feeling defeated and knowing what to do next.
I was hoping this would appeal to teens as well, but I don't think it really will, it is definitely geared towards adults (I kind of felt specifically white adults). New Adults will find this book tremendously useful though. I received an ebook galley of this, and have to say it was not very visually appealing. I was hoping for color and eye-catching imagery. I got several black and white graphs. There is a lot of very useful information laid out in this book, but it's laid out as giant blocks of text. Adding in color and breaking up the giant blocks of text would have made the book more accessible, which is a huge part of this book, so the author/editor missed their own point a bit. Hopefully the print version addresses this a bit (galley ebooks often miss a bit, so I'm hopeful.)
Ultimately this is a decent book, well written, and helpful.
3.5

I'm loving all of the women-centered books being put out right now and this one is no exception. Wonderfully put together and more of a manual FOR the women's movement than a book "about" the women's movement.

Broken down into sensible and manageable sections, this book is for all women everywhere. Whether you've marched and demonstrated before or if you have thought about joining the ranks of women protesting injustices, this book is for you. I am a woman who has been actively protesting and marching for years. However, even I learned quite a bit reading this book. There are well placed statistics and tidbits of information to inform the reader about issues and convince a certain audience of readers to take action. I really love all the topics covered in this narrative and I would definitely buy it for the women in my life.