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by Lee Boutell (Author)
The early 1970s saw tremendous upheaval and unrest in the United States. Fed up with civil rights abuse, the military draft, Vietnam War, business-as-usual politics, and lack of healthy life choices, young visionary Americans began building an alternative world. They wanted to change the world and they had the time of their lives.
Overwhelming numbers of Baby Boomers rebelled against the rigid rules, materialism, harsh treatment, limited opportunities, and unimaginative expectations their parent's generation placed on them. Above all, young people wanted freedom to live in their own way, and would do practically anything to achieve it. They built alternative communities outside of conventional society by joining together and creating new ways to connect, make a living, celebrate, and organize to make a better world. They started countless alternative businesses, cooperatives, festivals and non-governmental organizations to serve humanity.
This book tells the story of the Eggsnatchur Natural Foods Restaurant in Eugene, Oregon and describes the high adventure, intrigue, and loving learned along the way. The workers became a family of activists who formed a profit-sharing collective that served the community with the highest quality fresh food available. They facilitated positive social and political change by challenging the norms and powers of the day.
The book describes deep, transformative personal changes young people went through during this turbulent era and focuses on how one man grew from a conservative fraternity boy in Kansas into an alternative entrepreneur within the emerging cultural Renaissance of the Pacific Northwest.
The story depicts young people who were full of energy, optimism, and love of adventure with great capacity for taking risk. Whether hitchhiking across the country, chasing romantic adventures across the seas, engaging in political activism in the nation's capital, or embarking on a pirate's life in the Caribbean, We Can Change the World takes you to unimagined places during an exciting, dynamic era.
