Not-So-Modest Proposals

Any time he is asked how he learned to fight for his beliefs, Dave Meslin answers the same way: “That’s the wrong question.” The long-time organizer and Toronto-based activist explains his go-to answer in his new book, Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up. “Children exhibit no signs of apathy,” he writes. “They know what they want, and they ask for it — often loudly.” Meslin believes that “we’re all activists at heart,” and that we all know what we want. If we are not asking for it, it is only because society has robbed us of what he calls the four faiths: faith in our own ideas, faith in each other, faith in our leaders, and faith in the system.

The Mez, as he’s called by many, has a prescription for this loss of faith. Like Jerry Rubin, the social activist who published Do It! in 1970, he believes that the only way to regain our voices and our faith is to engage, make our voices heard, and find ways to make our...