Handbook for the Revolution: Building a More Perfect Union for the Twenty-First Century

“Meet Derrick Palmer. Why? Because you need to. In this, his first book, he goes after some of the most important and hardest-to-get-right issues of the day―race and class, capitalism and dignity, the value of human work. You know. The small stuff . . . Derrick not only tells his story, but tells others how to tell their stories. I am excited to be publishing this book and hope that you’re just as excited to read it.” ―Questlove

From the cofounder of the Amazon Labor Union, a definitive how-to guide to workplace organizing told through a David vs. Goliath chronicle for the ages.

On April 1, 2022, the Amazon warehouse known as JFK8, in Staten Island, notched an improbable victory when its workers voted to become the company’s first unionized facility. Miraculously, a completely self-taught and worker-led union had defeated one of the most powerful corporations on the planet. In the aftermath, two of the founders of the Amazon Labor Union, Derrick Palmer and Chris Smalls, began traveling across the country to help workers at Amazon and other corporations form their own unions. Nearly everyone they met had the same question: How did they do it?

In Handbook for the Revolution, Derrick Palmer, who continues to work at JFK8, answers that question in this how-to guide to organizing in today’s workplace that also delivers gripping, never-before-told anecdotes from the ALU’s fight and discusses its plans for the future. Practical, philosophical, and full of personality, Palmer’s manual-meets-manifesto is an accessible step-by-step playbook for the often contentious and complex process of unionization, and a powerful call for equality―and greater understanding―through worker solidarity.

Full of hard-won lessons and personal experiences, and anchored in the conditions of mass consolidation, fluctuating labor laws, and an ever-widening wealth gap, Handbook for the Revolution is an invaluable resource for the modern labor movement, a thrilling chronicle of persistence, and an inspiring push for change in the workplace―and beyond.