Phila Back is an issue and electoral campaign organizer and independent philosopher. Issues that she has worked on include land use and preservation, water, air, energy, mining, endangered species, public lands, climate, education, fair trade, healthcare, campaign finance reform and voting rights. She has participated in an anti-poverty commission, revitalization plan committee and community garden project in Reading, Pennsylvania. In 2015 and 2016 Back published a series of articles on neoliberalism in The Lehigh Valley Vanguard. This work is the product of decades of training, experience and thought about how to get large numbers of people engaged in the democratic process. She was a candidate for delegate to the 2020 Democratic National Convention pledged to Bernie Sanders. Back has a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Reed College.
A 2022 Under the Radar Movement
By Phila Back, Phila Back blog
I discovered a new under the radar movement of otherwise inactive people talking to each other. These were citizens freely acting on their own initiative to link up with others as citizens with the aim of making real the promise of democracy.
Silent Stalwart
By Phila Back, Phila Back blog
Like the profuse blooms of the brown-eyed susan, a multitude of people must come forth to fully pursue, serve and save life.
How citizens’ assemblies are revitalizing democracy
By Phila Back, Waging Nonviolence
By forming citizens’ assemblies people can proceed to develop a vision of how they want their world to be, at the center of which are people actively engaged as citizens.
Introduction to Being Alive: A Guide for Human Action
By Phila Back, Phila Back blog
I urge people to fulfill their true nature which consists of acting multidimensionally – as an individual human being, a member of their community, a citizen and an indivisible part of the living world – to achieve the just ecological civilization.
I Wanna Be a Livin’ Man
By Phila Back, Phila Back blog
It’s clear that livin’ isn’t a solo act, for it involves at least a community of people consciously acting to create and sustain for themselves a total living community.
Seeing the One in the Many
By Phila Back, Phila Back blog
As ecological consciousness grows more thinkers are putting forth holistic interpretations of the world which tackle the age-old problem of the one and the many that poses the two questions: how can a thing with many parts be one and how can there be many things of one kind?
From Systems Theory to Action
By Phila Back, Phila Back blog
At this time everyone, as parts of the human systems constituted by communities, polities and humanity as a whole, must consciously, collectively and urgently strive to realize the ecological civilization.
Change the Dominant Idea
By Phila Back, Phila Back blog
As the previous big idea of freedom rested on the foundation of Enlightenment physical science, so the new big idea of Life is backed by today’s life science.