Hey there, it's Jonathan K. Pardon, this is Cape Up.

You're more powerful than you think.

That's the emphatic message and title of Eric Liu's new book.

By asking readers to picture a ripe red tomato,

the expert in the power of civic engagement

uses an effort by tomato pickers in Florida

to illustrate that point. You got to hear him explain why Occupy Wall Street

is like a nurse log, why not voting is voting, and why Donald Trump is...

He is responsible for the greatest surge in civic participation in half a century.

You can hear it all right now.

Eric Liu, thanks very much for being on the podcast this morning.

It's great to be with you.

So you start out your new book

literally with this line, picture a ripe red tomato. Why is that tomato the

foundation of your book? That tomato, which we take for granted and anytime we're in our

kitchen or at a fast food store or supermarket, is emblematic of the potential of

citizen power. I tell the story about the tomato pickers of Immaclee, Florida,

which is a part of the country where a giant proportion of our national tomato

crop is grown.

And for decades, those tomatoes were picked by the hands of migrant

workers who were often undocumented and basically subjected to a form of

what you would think of as indentured servitude. Or slavery, I think.

...