“Trust: Reaching The 100 Million Missing Voters“, originally released in 2004 as a collection of essays, has been re-released online under a CC BY-NC license, meaning it can be shared, reused, and remixed as long as the author, Farai Chideya, is credited and it is for non-commercial purposes.

By releasing “Trust” under a CC license, Chideya and ‘Pop + Politics‘ (a political blog Chideya started in 1996) are able to spread their message much farther than before as the work can now be disseminated, reused, and remixed with no legal hassle. In other words, “Trust” can now more easily reach the 100 million missing voters the essay collection is focused on. You can download the first three chapters here, with more to follow as the election continues on. From Pop + Politics:

What does “Trust” cover? Well, do you want to know how the two-party system evolved? Why independent parties are at a disadvantage in that system? Why millions of people don’t vote? How hip hop politics evolved? How young Americans can revolutionize the system? It’s all in there.

AND IT’S YOURS.

This book is yours now. As long as you are a non-profit or a non-commercial blog, you can print any part (or all of) “Trust,” or: distribute it, post it on your site, excerpt it, or put parts of into other works like voter-registration packets. If you’re a commercial publisher or blog, you can do the same thing… but you have send us an email and ask permission first.

How can we give the book away for free online? The publishers, Soft Skull Press, gave us permission to release the book under a Creative Commons License. Creative Commons is an amazing project that allows books, art, and information to be free, with the permission of the people who created it.

That’s it. THIS IS YOURS.