They are as diverse as America. Young and old. Of color and white. Urban and rural. Immigrants and native born. They are students and teachers. Athletes and artists. Lawyers, doctors, politicians, farmers, architects, novelists, and more. Names familiar and unfamiliar. Superheroes, figuratively…and in one case real! They have founded major corporations and grassroots organizations or struck out on their own. They are institutionalists and agitators. And in some cases both!

But as diverse a lot as they may be, the people who tell their stories on these pages share one thing in common. Each is committed to fighting inequality and injustice. Each, too, can pinpoint a moment when they were moved to action, when it became impossible to sit on the sidelines and just watch: when the teacher uttered racial slurs, when no one in the college club looked like they did, when the city was on the brink of disaster, when the authorities came for their undocumented mother, when they discovered their ancestors had owned slaves, when the cop stopped them in their own driveway, when there was no fresh food in their community, when their right to vote was threatened.

In The Moment, New York Times bestselling author Steve Fiffer presents an oral history from today’s social justice activists–many of them still under 30–that is pitch perfect for these dissonant times. Featuring the words of Amirah Ahmed, Nada Al-Hanooti, Erika Andiola, Cheick Cameras, Dazmonique Carr, Clarissa Martinez De Castro, Erynn Chambers, Brandy Colbert, Carolyn Considine, Edwidge Danticat, Jacqueline De Leon, Doug Glanville, Kahlil Greene, DeOnte Hannah, Leticia Hernandez-Linares, Sebastian Hidalgo, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Pranjal Jain, Brian Jon, Ashley M. Jones, Melissa Missy Janczewski Jones, Don Katz, Bryan Lee Jr., Chokwe and Ebony Lumumba, David Mata, Julian D. Miller, Renee Montgomery, Tram Nguyen, Christian Picciolini, Zev Shapiro, Ben Shore, Vishavjit Singh, Bryan Stevenson, Michael Strautmanis, Ermias Tadasse, Anthony Tamez-Pochel, and Keith White, these first person accounts will inspire us to act, offer a blueprint for making change, and perhaps, most importantly, give us hope for the future.