Cynthia Kaufman is the Director of the Vasconcellos Institute for Democracy in Action De Anza College where she runs, and teaches in, a community organizer training program. She is the author of five books on social change: Consumerism, Sustainability, and Happiness: How to Build a World Where Everyone has Enough (Routledge 2023), The Sea is Rising and So Are We: A Climate Justice Handbook (PM Press 2021), Challenging Power: Democracy and Accountability in a Fractured World (Bloomsbury 2020), Getting Past Capitalism: History, Vision, Hope (Lexington Books 2012), and Ideas for Action: Relevant Theory for Radical Change (2^nd Edition PM Press 2016). She has been active in a wide variety of social justice movements including Central American solidarity, union organizing, police accountability, and most recently tenants’ rights, transit justice, and climate change. She publishes on social justice in Common Dreams. She received her PhD and MA in Philosophy from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her BA in Development Studies from UC Berkeley. She started college at Mira Costa College, a community college in Oceanside, California.

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