Without the Consent of the People

“Fred was a completely original thinker, and his new book is lively and totally unexpected, a timely trenchant analysis of our cultural and political predicament,” says publisher Brooks Roddan of IFSF. “You simply can’t find elsewhere the kind of commonsense yet prescient observations Fred makes, the surprising connections he’s able to wrest from the rubble of what otherwise often makes no sense at all, the social and cultural landscapes he explored in search of both community and its deplorable counterpart posing as real-politick”.

“I promise the reader it’s the kind of book you can pick up anywhere and find something of actual, meaningful substance,” Roddan says. “It’s serious fun, both a kind of snapshot and longer-lens examination of the world we’re living in now.”

Dewey, author of the earlier book “The School of Public Life” was the director of the Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center from 1996-2021. Writer, artist, publisher, and civic activist, he co-founded the Neighborhood Councils Movement in Los Angeles. Dewey died in 2021 according to the publisher, and The Fred Rogers Dewey Legacy Foundation (FRDLP) was formed in his honor. “Without the Consent of the People” was originally written by Dewey in 2020 and 2021 during the pandemic; the manuscript, discovered by his 10-year-old nephew several years after Dewey’s untimely death, was locked-up on Dewey’s laptop…several members of the FRDLP contributed to the re-assembly of his prescient work…