In their new book Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It, Kevin Young, Tarun Banerjee and Michael Schwartz offer some counterintuitive advice to activists looking to make political change. While the book offers a rich and thought-provoking illustration of corporate political power, its strategic advice to activists needs to be scrutinized.

Led by former Harper-era cabinet minister and far-right evangelical Christian Jason Kenney, the UCP government is currently taking a sledgehammer to Alberta’s provincial state, gutting the province’s fiscal and regulatory capacities, attacking its public servants, and eliminating any and every barrier to the fossil fuel industry’s profits—the climate crisis notwithstanding.