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The Instigators: How Black Women Have Been Essential to American Democracy
A top Democratic Party strategist and media contributor offers a bold and urgent reminder that young Black women hold the key to saving our democracy and building a truly multi-racial future that benefits all Americans.
Agitator. Troublemaker. Motivator. Initiator. Instigator.
“How can we build a truly inclusive multi-racial democracy?” For Atima Omara, the answer is The Instigators—a name she has given to a demographic of Black women between the ages of 18 and 45. These women are uniquely equipped to save American democracy. They didn’t ask for this ability, she argues. It was forced on them because racism and sexism have made them the most marginalized group in American politics. We can all benefit from their strategic know-how as we rebuild our society.
Black women have always been the most relentless instigators for change—building a democracy for all. Omara draws on her political knowledge and expertise, as well as history, to examine how they have responded to failed strategic decisions by movement leaders and the modern Democratic Party in previous elections as a context for the present. She also provides actionable recommendations to organizers, donors, candidates, strategists, political party leaders, that everyday people can use in their communities to build an inclusive democracy that endures beyond one election cycle.
The Instigators is at once an urgent political guide, historical exploration, and a poignant memoir that pulls from Omara’s two decades of work in Democratic politics and the progressive movement as an elected Democratic Party leader, movement organizer, former candidate, gubernatorial aide, campaign staff to candidates at the national, state, and local level; and now political strategist. Powerful, insightful, and practical, it is imperative reading for everyone eager to protect and rebuild our democracy and create a better tomorrow for all.
Agitator. Troublemaker. Motivator. Initiator. Instigator.
“How can we build a truly inclusive multi-racial democracy?” For Atima Omara, the answer is The Instigators—a name she has given to a demographic of Black women between the ages of 18 and 45. These women are uniquely equipped to save American democracy. They didn’t ask for this ability, she argues. It was forced on them because racism and sexism have made them the most marginalized group in American politics. We can all benefit from their strategic know-how as we rebuild our society.
Black women have always been the most relentless instigators for change—building a democracy for all. Omara draws on her political knowledge and expertise, as well as history, to examine how they have responded to failed strategic decisions by movement leaders and the modern Democratic Party in previous elections as a context for the present. She also provides actionable recommendations to organizers, donors, candidates, strategists, political party leaders, that everyday people can use in their communities to build an inclusive democracy that endures beyond one election cycle.
The Instigators is at once an urgent political guide, historical exploration, and a poignant memoir that pulls from Omara’s two decades of work in Democratic politics and the progressive movement as an elected Democratic Party leader, movement organizer, former candidate, gubernatorial aide, campaign staff to candidates at the national, state, and local level; and now political strategist. Powerful, insightful, and practical, it is imperative reading for everyone eager to protect and rebuild our democracy and create a better tomorrow for all.
272 pages, Hardcover
Published May 5, 2026
About the author
Atima Omara
3 books4 followersAtima Omara is a nationally recognized award-winning political strategist, leader, writer, speaker, and advocate. She is the Founder and Chief Strategist of Omara Strategy Group, the award-winning political and advocacy consultancy working with progressive candidates and organizations with a focus on women, people of color, and other historically underrepresented communities in the political process to win campaigns while building a progressive reflective democracy. She is also sought after commentator on national politics, candidates, policy, race, gender and culture. She is the creator and host of the Embracing Your Voice Podcast on the personal and professional lives of women of color. Atima also has been quoted in national outlets including The New York Times, Boston Globe, and The Atlantic. She’s appeared on CNN, PBS, Fox News, BBC, CBC, NPR, and MSNBC. Atima’s writing was published in Wake Up America: Black Women on the Future of Democracy edited by Kesha Blain. She’s also written for Washington Post, the American Prospect, The Root, Teen Vogue, and other national outlets. For her work, Atima has been named Ebony's Power 100 and Jet Magazine's 40 under 40, including receiving numerous awards for her leadership and strategy work.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 9, 2026
A must read for all Americans! This timely book gives context to the headlines of the day (from the 2024 presidential election to state actions to deny voting rights and access to representation).
“For the sake of democracy… it is important, not only to listen to what the Instigators are saying, but to follow their lead and support their efforts. Throughout history, they have shown a way forward that has and will benefit everyone.”
I really enjoyed reading the stories of the past generations of Instigators — Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Hazel Johnson, and Lucy Parsons, to name a few. I especially appreciated learning about the author’s life and leadership.
The book concludes with actions that every single one of us can take in order to secure the multiracial democracy this country deserves.
“For the sake of democracy… it is important, not only to listen to what the Instigators are saying, but to follow their lead and support their efforts. Throughout history, they have shown a way forward that has and will benefit everyone.”
I really enjoyed reading the stories of the past generations of Instigators — Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, Hazel Johnson, and Lucy Parsons, to name a few. I especially appreciated learning about the author’s life and leadership.
The book concludes with actions that every single one of us can take in order to secure the multiracial democracy this country deserves.
May 25, 2026
This is more political memoir than history. (DNF)
I'm giving this two stars because it's not badly written, but I do feel like it is misleading to present this as a history book when it reads much more like a political memoir. (For context, I'm a women's historian, so maybe this bothered me more than it would most readers.) I wanted to read about Black women's role in US activism, and this really wasn't that.
The first 10%+ is basically the author recounting her own experiences, and then we finally get to abolition and suffrage, and she barely mentions Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (I think basically all she says is that she was born to a free Black family) before talking way more about how awful Kyrsten Sinema is. Which, yeah, obviously she is, but I thought I was signing up for Black women's history, not a recap of how bad 2010s and 2020s US politics are, which presumably anyone reading this book has already lived through, if not with the close-up viewpoint the author has.
Given the description, I wasn't expecting A Black Women's History of the United States, but something like Mattie Kahn's Young and Restless or Rebecca Traister's All the Single Ladies in terms of structure. And this just wasn't that - the author wrote from her knowledge as a political strategist, but her writing as a historian just seemed really weak, presumably because she isn't one. Which would be fine if this were written and presented primarily as a memoir of her decade+ working in politics, but it's not. I mostly skipped the more than 5% of the book about the 2016 and 2024 elections, because we all lived through them too, and I just wasn't interested in reliving them through her close-up perspective (i.e. being at the official Clinton election night party in 2016) - again, that's not what I thought this book was about.
Disclaimer for this next bit: I'm a white woman. I'm all for calling out white women when they're being racist and otherwise horrible, and do it frequently in my own work. However, I found that the author largely ignored the sexism of Black men, which seems like missing half the equation of misogynoir. She spends a huge chunk of the introduction talking about a scandal with Virginia governor Ralph Northam where in 2019 it came out that there was a photo on his yearbook page from med school with a guy in blackface and another in a KKK outfit (circa 1984, for reference; I don't think she mentions the year). She still seems mad that he didn't resign, but only mentions in passing that his lieutenant governor, a Black man named Justin Fairfax, had been accused of sexual assault by multiple *Black women* (the author fails to mention their race, I believe) much more recently (early 2000s). What she couldn't have known at the time of writing was that he would go on to murder his wife (another Black woman) before killing himself in 2026. But sure, the white doctor and veteran who was in a racist photo 35 years earlier is clearly the worse of those two options and should have resigned to make way for Fairfax. I remember thinking that she'd probably also gloss over the rampant misogyny and sexual harassment in the Civil Rights Movement, but I didn't get that far in the book.
From a historical standpoint, she probably isn't aware as she's name-dropping Frederick Douglass that his wife, Anna Murray Douglass, was a badass abolitionist in her own right, helped him escape enslavement and was the one actually financing pretty much all his work even as his (Black male) colleagues derided her. But by the time I DNFd, she also hadn't mentioned Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth (you wanna talk about racist white women activists? Google what Frances Dana Barker Gage did to her "Ain't I a Woman" speech), Mary Church Terrell or any of the other prominent Black suffragists and abolitionists besides that very brief mention of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper - she spends way more time telling the reader about the racism of white women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton than anything about Harper's life and work. In fairness, this is where I gave up so maybe it gets better, but based on everything up to that point, I seriously doubt it.
Like I said, this isn't badly written, it's just not what (in my opinion) is described in the marketing. If you want to claim this is a book about How Black Women Have Been Essential to American Democracy, tell me about the Black women!
I'm giving this two stars because it's not badly written, but I do feel like it is misleading to present this as a history book when it reads much more like a political memoir. (For context, I'm a women's historian, so maybe this bothered me more than it would most readers.) I wanted to read about Black women's role in US activism, and this really wasn't that.
The first 10%+ is basically the author recounting her own experiences, and then we finally get to abolition and suffrage, and she barely mentions Frances Ellen Watkins Harper (I think basically all she says is that she was born to a free Black family) before talking way more about how awful Kyrsten Sinema is. Which, yeah, obviously she is, but I thought I was signing up for Black women's history, not a recap of how bad 2010s and 2020s US politics are, which presumably anyone reading this book has already lived through, if not with the close-up viewpoint the author has.
Given the description, I wasn't expecting A Black Women's History of the United States, but something like Mattie Kahn's Young and Restless or Rebecca Traister's All the Single Ladies in terms of structure. And this just wasn't that - the author wrote from her knowledge as a political strategist, but her writing as a historian just seemed really weak, presumably because she isn't one. Which would be fine if this were written and presented primarily as a memoir of her decade+ working in politics, but it's not. I mostly skipped the more than 5% of the book about the 2016 and 2024 elections, because we all lived through them too, and I just wasn't interested in reliving them through her close-up perspective (i.e. being at the official Clinton election night party in 2016) - again, that's not what I thought this book was about.
Disclaimer for this next bit: I'm a white woman. I'm all for calling out white women when they're being racist and otherwise horrible, and do it frequently in my own work. However, I found that the author largely ignored the sexism of Black men, which seems like missing half the equation of misogynoir. She spends a huge chunk of the introduction talking about a scandal with Virginia governor Ralph Northam where in 2019 it came out that there was a photo on his yearbook page from med school with a guy in blackface and another in a KKK outfit (circa 1984, for reference; I don't think she mentions the year). She still seems mad that he didn't resign, but only mentions in passing that his lieutenant governor, a Black man named Justin Fairfax, had been accused of sexual assault by multiple *Black women* (the author fails to mention their race, I believe) much more recently (early 2000s). What she couldn't have known at the time of writing was that he would go on to murder his wife (another Black woman) before killing himself in 2026. But sure, the white doctor and veteran who was in a racist photo 35 years earlier is clearly the worse of those two options and should have resigned to make way for Fairfax. I remember thinking that she'd probably also gloss over the rampant misogyny and sexual harassment in the Civil Rights Movement, but I didn't get that far in the book.
From a historical standpoint, she probably isn't aware as she's name-dropping Frederick Douglass that his wife, Anna Murray Douglass, was a badass abolitionist in her own right, helped him escape enslavement and was the one actually financing pretty much all his work even as his (Black male) colleagues derided her. But by the time I DNFd, she also hadn't mentioned Ida B. Wells, Sojourner Truth (you wanna talk about racist white women activists? Google what Frances Dana Barker Gage did to her "Ain't I a Woman" speech), Mary Church Terrell or any of the other prominent Black suffragists and abolitionists besides that very brief mention of Frances Ellen Watkins Harper - she spends way more time telling the reader about the racism of white women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton than anything about Harper's life and work. In fairness, this is where I gave up so maybe it gets better, but based on everything up to that point, I seriously doubt it.
Like I said, this isn't badly written, it's just not what (in my opinion) is described in the marketing. If you want to claim this is a book about How Black Women Have Been Essential to American Democracy, tell me about the Black women!
May 16, 2026
Every American should read this book. It is one of the most clarifying books I’ve read about democracy, organizing, and who actually moves this country forward. In it, the author reclaims the term "instigator" and pairs history with a brutally clear analysis of the present: a Democratic Party that still treats Black women as a “special interest” instead of a central political force, donors who underfund year-round organizing, and institutions that celebrate representation rhetorically while continuing to concentrate power elsewhere.
I was also moved by the author’s personal family story. When she described herself as “the daughter of a refugee where a failed democracy had forced my father to leave his country,” I related. People whose families have lived through democratic collapse often carry a different relationship to civic life, institutions, and political participation. My family knows this firsthand.
I finished the book feeling energized, clear-eyed, and hopeful. Not optimistic in a naive way — hopeful in a way rooted in history and guided by Omara’s specific, practical recommendations for the work ahead.
I was also moved by the author’s personal family story. When she described herself as “the daughter of a refugee where a failed democracy had forced my father to leave his country,” I related. People whose families have lived through democratic collapse often carry a different relationship to civic life, institutions, and political participation. My family knows this firsthand.
I finished the book feeling energized, clear-eyed, and hopeful. Not optimistic in a naive way — hopeful in a way rooted in history and guided by Omara’s specific, practical recommendations for the work ahead.
April 26, 2026
Pretty terrible read. Author is the queen of playing the victim card and even throughout the book put down the struggles of other people because hers had to be far superior. While the writing was eloquent and intellectual, she deliberately left out research and facts about Covid-19 and looting/crime. The only assertions that were accurate were in relation to the problem of mass incarceration. The author’s whole identity and life is clearly wrapped up in politics and I truly feel sorry for her. She also does not present any real problems to be fixed aside from her political identity.
May 18, 2026
At a time when Black women are being targeted in public life, we need The Instigators more than ever. It has so many inspiring and untold stories of young progressive Black women who have changed the game for everyone. An inspiring read!
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews