Collection : City Lights Open Media, City Lights Publishers

Inspired by the catalytic role pamphlet publishing has played throughout American history, Greg Ruggiero founded the Open Media Series in 1991 as an act of war protest, as well as an act of solidarity with social movements promoting greater freedom, justice, and democracy.

Over the years, Ruggiero has published some of the most outspoken scholars, social justice advocates, artists, and dissidents of our time, including Noam Chomsky, Angela Y. Davis, Howard Zinn, Arundhati Roy, Ralph Nader, Alice Walker, Manning Marable, Tanya Reinhart, John Cage, Keith Haring, Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Daniel Ellsberg, Michio Kaku, Helen Caldicott, Bill Ayers, Subcomandante Marcos, and the Dalai Lama.

In the spring of 2006, Ruggiero joined the ranks of the City Lights editorial team. The launch of the City Lights Open Media Series marked a new chapter in the publishing of intelligent, inspiring, and potentially radicalizing books. Among the recent and forthcoming titles in the series are A Power Governments Cannot Suppress by Howard Zinn; Spying on Democracy by Heidi Boghosian; A New Critical Edition of Frederick Douglass's Narrrative of a Slave by Angela Y. Davis; Dying to Live by Joseph Nevins; Mexico Unconquered by John Gibler; Mumia Abu-Jamal's Writing on the Wall, edited by Johanna Fernandez; Learning to Die in the Anthropocene by Roy Scranton; and Because We Say So by Noam Chomsky. "The heart of a functioning democracy is public engagement, communication, and intelligence," says Ruggiero. "The mission of the series is to increase all three."

PRAISE FOR THE OPEN MEDIA SERIES

See a bio for Greg Ruggiero, founder of the Open Media series

"An operation out to change the world" – Evelyn Nieves, The New York Times "Like Tom Paine or Martin Luther, the Open Pamphlet Series desperately wants to create democratic debate by providing timely snippets of information and analysis that the empire would just as soon suppress. They're a quick read, and in a time of intellectual as well as political crisis, they put serious information into the hands and minds of a needy public… 'Public intelligence is power,' says Ruggiero, and he's determined to disseminate both." – James Ledbetter, The Village Voice Top Editor to City Lights | Publishers Weekly by Bridget Kinsella "Peace on the Page" | The Boston Phoenix by Christopher Dreher "The Accidental Bestseller" | Publishers Weekly by Christopher Dreher "Indie Presses to Rush Out Cindy Sheehan Titles" | Publishers Weekly by Bridget Kinsella