Cynthia Kaufman is the director of the Vasconcellos Institute for Democracy in Action at De Anza College in Cupertino, California, where she runs and teaches in a community organizer training program. She is the author of The Sea Is Rising and So Are We: A Climate Justice Handbook (Between the Lines and PM Press, 2021); Challenging Power: Democracy and Accountability in a Fractured World (Bloomsbury, 2020); Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change (2nd ed. PM Press, 2016); and Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope (Lexington Books, 2012). She has been active in a wide variety of social justice movements including Central American solidarity, union organizing, police accountability, and most recently tenants’ right and climate change. She publishes on social justice in Common Dreams.