This book is a narrative of her personal and professional journey and of how she has gone about co-creating spaces where democracy can be enacted and individual, institutional, and community transformation can occur.

Maria Avila presents a personal account of how, from her experience as a teenager working in a factory, she got involved in community organising and how she has since applied its practices to civic engagement in higher education. Her premise is that community organising can help create a culture that values civically engaged scholarship and thus advance higher education's public, democratic mission.