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“Coffee Partiers might focus more on the threat of concentrated, unaccountable corporate power, while Tea Partiers typically target concentrated unaccountable government power. But see a pattern? Imagine if we realized that the problem is concentrated power itself and joined together to create a democracy accountable to us. Now that would be a powerful brew.” So wrote my guest, Frances Moore Lappe, in trying to seek a common ground where most see division. Lappe is a bestselling author and co-founder of the Small Planet Institute. Her first book, Diet for a Small Planet, sold three million copies. She has been recognized as a transformative figure by groups ranging from the Womens National Book Association to Gourmet Magazine, and is a recipient of 17 honorary doctorates from US Universities. In 1987 Lappe became the fourth American to receive the Right Livlihood Award, or Alternative Nobel Prize, and in 2009 she was named Outstanding Public Scholar by the International Political Economy section of the International Studies Association. She joins us to discuss the newly revised edition of her Getting A Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage for the World We Really Want. In it, Lappe argues that the current deep political divide in the United States is caused by different reactions to a common feeling of powerlessness. She encourages readers to reframe their understanding of Democracy as a way of life, moving away from a belief in fixed system rooted in competition, to a Democratic culture that evolves and promotes cooperation.

GUEST: Frances Moore Lappe, best-selling author of Diet For a Small Planet, and her latest: Getting A Grip: Clarity, Creativity, and Courage for the World We Really Want (newly revised).