"A philosophical and poetic text that speaks to the core of our grim moment." --CORNEL WEST
"Fluker won't calm down and he won't be contained." --BARBARA BROWN TAYLOR
"A phenomenal, readable, and relatable text for the activist, academic, layperson, and student." --OTIS MOSS III
"Demands our attention in these maddening days." --EDDIE S. GLAUDE
A meditation and manifesto on democracy, faith, and the race for belonging in a divided America.
Walter Earl Fluker--renowned scholar, preacher, and ethical leadership consultant--offers this powerful meditation on leadership, democracy, and spiritual resilience, using the metaphor of running. Running becomes more than motion--it becomes a spiritual practice, an act of resistance, and a way of imagining freedom. Drawing from his own life story and the legacies of Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King Jr., Toni Morrison, Harriett Tubman, Frederick Douglass, Assata Shakur, James Cone, Emilie Townes, and others, Fluker reveals how the past keeps chasing us, and how we can still choose to run toward hope.
When we are still haunted by the ghosts of racism, violence, and exclusion, when fear threatens our communities and divides us, Wake Up Running calls us to become runners of a different kind. We must become those who run toward justice, peace, and one another. With courage, creativity, and compassion, we must reclaim democratic spaces where all people belong.