Download or read book A Community Organizer s Tale written by Mike Miller and published by Heyday. This book was released on 2009 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The rise and fall of the multi-issue Mission Coalition Organization is recounted in [this book], a richly detailed story of people power set in San Francisco's predominantly Latino Mission District. ... [T]he organization defeated urban renewal, negotiated jobs for the unemployed, and protected low-income tenants from exorbitant rents until it was ultimately weakened by federal "Model Cities" funding. Embodying the concept ... that "change comes from below" and combining colorful stories, lessons on organizaing for social and economic justice, public policy analysis, a keen eye for American politics, and reflection on democratic theory, this is a thoughtful and hopeful antidote to cynicism, apathy, and powerlessness."--Back cover.
Download or read book Creative Community Organizing written by Si Kahn and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Privatization has been on the right-wing agenda for years. Health care, schools, Social Security, public lands, the military, prisons-all are considered fair game. Through stories, analysis, impassioned argument-even song lyrics-Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich show that corporations are, by their very nature, unable to fulfill effectively what have traditionally been the responsibilities of government. They make a powerful case that the market is not the measure of all things, and that a vital public sector is an indispensable component of a healthy democracy.
Download or read book Hillbilly Nationalists Urban Race Rebels and Black Power written by Amy Sonnie and published by Melville House. This book was released on 2011 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The historians of the late 1960s have emphasised the work of a small group of white college activists and the Black Panthers, activists who courageously took to the streets to protest the war in Vietnam and continuing racial inequality. Poor and working-class whites have tended to be painted as spectators, reactionaries and even racists. Tracy and Amy Sonnie have been interviewing activists from the 1960s for nearly 10 years and here reject this narrative, showing how working-class whites, inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, fought inequality in the 1960s.
Download or read book Community Organizing written by Joan Kuyek and published by Fernwood Publishing. This book was released on 2014-09-01T00:00:00Z with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History is full of stories of the oppressed rebelling against the oppressor, only to reinstate an equally oppressive system. What we learn from oppression is how to oppress. If we want a truly transformative politics, then we must take up methods that embody the kind of world we want to create; we have to change deeply embedded beliefs and behaviours. In this engaging and passionate book, long-time community organizer Joan Kuyek offers important insights and concrete tools to encourage people to get involved in social justice action at the community level. In Canada, activists are frustrated with their inability to effect change in the global economic system, overwhelmed by the number and complexity of issues and too often unaware or dismissive of the efforts of other activists. As a result, social forces for justice and the environment are fragmented and ineffective, and the economic elite grows more powerful. Community Organizing argues that it does not have to be this way. Suggesting that most of our attempts at change and community-building fail because we cannot get along with each other, Community Organizing starts at the community level to describe how we can work together and create organizations based on dignity and respect. It provides strategies to build movements from the community to assert democratic political power and tools to create a culture of hope in this time of despair. This book offers the means to reclaim political power in Canada.
Download or read book People Power written by Aaron Schutz and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-27 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Saul Alinsky, according to Time Magazine in 1970, was a "prophet of power to the people," someone who "has possibly antagonized more people . . . than any other living American." People Power introduces the major organizers who adopted and modified Alinsky's vision across the United States: --Fred Ross, Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and the Community Service Organization and National Farm Workers Association --Nicholas von Hoffman and the Woodlawn Organization --Tom Gaudette and the Northwest Community Organization --Ed Chambers, Richard Harmon, and the Industrial Areas Foundation --Shel Trapp, Gale Cincotta, and National People's Action --Heather Booth, Midwest Academy, and Citizen Action --Wade Rathke and ACORN Weaving classic texts with interviews and their own context-setting commentaries, the editors of People Power provide the first comprehensive history of Alinsky-based organizing in the tumultuous period from 1955 to 1980, when the key organizing groups in the United States took form. Many of these selections--previously available only on untranscribed audiotapes or in difficult-to-read mimeograph or Xerox formats--appear in print here for the first time.
Download or read book America s Social Arsonist written by Gabriel Thompson and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-03-29 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A good organizer is a social arsonist who goes around setting people on fire."ÑFred Ross Raised by conservative parents who hoped he would Òstay with his own kind,Ó Fred Ross instead became one of the most influential community organizers in American history. His activism began alongside Dust Bowl migrants, where he managed the same labor camp that inspired John SteinbeckÕs The Grapes of Wrath. During World War II, Ross worked for the release of interned Japanese Americans, and after the war, he dedicated his life to building the political power of Latinos across California. Labor organizing in this country was forever changed when Ross knocked on the door of a young Cesar Chavez and encouraged him to become an organizer. Until now there has been no biography of Fred Ross, a man who believed a good organizer was supposed to fade into the crowd as others stepped forward. In AmericaÕs Social Arsonist, Gabriel Thompson provides a full picture of this complicated and driven man, recovering a forgotten chapter of American history and providing vital lessons for organizers today.
Download or read book Progressive Community Organizing written by Loretta Pyles and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-29 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in its third edition, Progressive Community Organizing: Transformative Practice in a Globalizing World introduces readers to the rich practice of progressive community organizing for social change while also providing concrete tools geared toward practitioner skill building. Drawing from social movement scholarship and social theory, this book articulates a transformative approach to organizing that embraces emergent strategies and healing justice. It emphasizes framing processes and the power of stories using story-based strategy and digital activism. Embracing intersectional organizing, the book addresses topics such as identity politics, microagressions, internalized oppression, and horizontal hostility with attention to recentering and allyship as a growth-oriented journey of solidarity and liberation. Readers will engage with case studies focused on issues such as poverty, racial justice, immigration, housing, health and mental health, and climate crisis. This new edition includes: Expanded content on transformative change approaches including healing justice New content on the role of digital technology and social media in organizing Case studies of the Poor People’s Campaign and Extinction Rebellion Emphasis on the power of stories and story-based strategy for organizing and issue framing Transformative organizations with attention to feminist and decolonized organizational structures and cultures Expanded chapters on strategies and tactics focusing on power analysis and a range of tactics from direct action to resilience-based organizing The book will be of interest to students and practitioners who want to become more skilled in structural analysis, praxis, and self-reflexivity through critical and transformative engagement with historical and current social problems, social movements, and social welfare.
Download or read book Stir It Up written by Rinku Sen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2003-08-16 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stir It Up--written by renowned activist and trainer RinkuSen--identifies the key priorities and strategies that can helpadvance the mission of any social change group. This groundbreakingbook addresses the unique challenges and opportunities the newglobal economy poses for activist groups and provides concreteguidance for community organizations of all orientations. Sponsored by the Ms. Foundation, Stir It Up draws onlessons learned from Sen's groundbreaking work with women's groupsorganizing for economic justice. Throughout the book, Sen walksreaders through the steps of building and mobilizing a constituencyand implementing key strategies that can effect social change. Thebook is filled with illustrative case studies that highlight bestorganizing practices in action and each chapter contains tools thatcan help groups tailor Sen's model for their own organizationalneeds. Stir It Up will show your organization how to: Design and conduct actions that further campaign goals Develop effective leaders Build strong alliances and networks Generate and use solid research Design an effective media strategy Put in place a plan for internal political education andconsciousness-raising With the information, tools, and suggestions outlined in thisbook your organization can use your "good idea" to change theworld.
Download or read book Seeds of Change written by John Atlas and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 2010-06-28 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "There is more value on a single page of Seeds of Change than in a year's worth of Rush Limbaugh screeds combined with a lifetime of Sarah Palin sneers at community organizers." --Todd Gitlin Seeds of Change goes beyond the headlines of the last Presidential campaign to describe what really happened in ACORN's massive voter registration drives, why it triggered an unrelenting attack by Fox News and the Republican Party, and how it confronted its internal divisions and scandals. Based on Atlas's own eyewitness original reporting, as the only journalist to have access to ACORN's staff and board meetings, this book documents the critical transition from founder Wade Rathke, a white New Orleans radical to Bertha Lewis, a Brooklyn African American activist. The story begins in the 1970s, when a small group of young men and women, led by a charismatic college dropout, began a quest to help the powerless help themselves. In a tale full of unusual characters and dramatic conflicts, the book follows the ups and downs of ACORN's organizers and members as they confront big corporations and unresponsive government officials in Albuquerque, Brooklyn, Chicago, Detroit, Little Rock, New Orleans, Philadelphia, and the Twin Cities. The author follows the course of local and national campaigns to organize unions, fight the subprime mortgage crisis, promote living wages for working people, struggle for affordable housing and against gentrification, and help Hurricane Katrina's survivors return to New Orleans. The book dispels the conservative myth that we can only help the poor through private soup kitchens and charity and the liberal myth that the solution rests simply with more government services. Seeds of Change, not only provides a gripping look at ACORN's four decades of effective organizing, but also offers a hopeful analysis of the potential for a revival of real American democracy. An offering of The Progressive Book Club.
Download or read book Collective Action for Social Change written by A. Schutz and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-04-11 with total page 492 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Community organizers build solidarity and collective power in fractured communities. They help ordinary people turn their private pain into public action, releasing hidden capacities for leadership and strategy. In Collective Action for Social Change , Aaron Schutz and Marie G. Sandy draw on their extensive experience participating in community organizing activities and teaching courses on the subject to empower novices to think like an organizers.
Download or read book Community Organizing written by Mike Miller and published by . This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 64 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a brief introduction to what is variously called "faith-based," "congregation-based," and "institution-based" community organizing. Grounded in a composite case study of an actual organizing effort, it shows how local communities can be organized for power. Key organizing concepts and strategies are illustrated with stories of real encounters with leaders, communities, and powerful opposition figures. In the approach described here, civic and religious institutions come together to give the community a collective voice. Organizers help a community build a powerful organization rooted in core values of democracy and the social justice teachings of the world's great religious traditions. Saul Alinsky developed the foundations of the tradition of organizing described here, an approach that remains dominant in the U.S. today. Alinsky rooted power deeply in the lives, relationships and institutions of marginalized and oppressed people. In his early organizing days, his organizations brought together a wide range of institutions: religious congregations and labor unions, as well as mutual aid, self-help, athletic, sororal and fraternal, neighborhood and other voluntary associations. By the late 1970s, as non-congregational neighborhood associations fell into decline, organizers in the Alinsky tradition started looking more carefully at how to sustain the vibrancy of the religious institutions that remained. Organizers sought to help congregation members become co-creators, rather than consumers, of the life of their churches, and worked to help members connect their faith more directly to action in the world. In this way, they helped make both faith and the action more meaningful. This little book tells the story of one congregation that was a member of a "broadly-based community organization," and how a community organizer assisted its development as a true community.
Download or read book Organizing for Social Change written by Kimberley A. Bobo and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feel comfortable speaking useful Mandarin Chinese in just three hours with this accessible audio course.
Download or read book We Make Change written by Kristin Layng Szakos and published by Vanderbilt University Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Community organizers work at their jobs because they are passionate, because they believe that change is possible, and because they enjoy working with people. Although it's not an occupation that leads to great wealth, community organizers can make a living at it. They get salaries, pensions and health insurance. They raise families. They do well by doing good. This book explores the world of community organizing through the voices of real people working in the field, in small towns and city neighborhoods--women and men of different races and economic backgrounds, ranging in age from those in their twenties to those in their sixties. Fourteen in-depth profiles tell the life stories of a cross-section of the diverse people who choose the life of an organizer. Other chapters, focused on issues of organizing, are tapestries of experience woven from the 81 interviews the authors conducted.
Download or read book Building Powerful Community Organizations written by Michael Jacoby Brown and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using stories and exercises from grassroots organizing experience ... [this book] walks you through the steps of starting a new group or strengthening an old one - to build a better world.-Back cover.
Download or read book Community Organizing written by David S. Walls and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2015-02-03 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This incisive book provides a critical history and analysis of community organizing, the tradition of bringing groups together to build power and forge grassroots leadership for social, economic, racial, and environmental justice. Begun by Saul Alinsky in the 1930s, there are today nearly 200 institution-based groups active in 40 U.S. states, and the movement is spreading internationally. David Walls charts how community organizing has transcended the neighborhood to seek power and influence at the metropolitan, state, and national levels, together with such allies as unions and human rights advocates. Some organizing networks have embraced these goals while others have been more cautious, and the growing profile of community organizing has even charged political debate. Importantly, Walls engages social movements literature to bring insights to our understanding of community organizing networks, their methods, allies and opponents, and to show how community organizing offers concepts and tools that are indispensable to a democratic strategy of social change. Community Organizing will be essential reading for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of sociology, social movements and social work. It will also inform organizers and grassroots leaders, as well as the elected officials and others who contend with them.
Download or read book Creative Community Organizing written by Angela Davis and published by ReadHowYouWant.com. This book was released on 2011-08 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This latest work by legendary social activist, musician, and author Kahn outlines many of the practical tactics organizers use, but also emphasizes community organizing as a way of thinking and a way of life....
Download or read book Creative Community Organizing written by Si Kahn and published by Berrett-Koehler Publishers. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A practical guide to community organizing that gathers the accumulated lessons, strategies, and secrets a veteran activist’s fourty-four years of experience. This latest work by legendary activist, musician, and author Si Kahn is a different kind of community organizing book. As with other books, including some by Kahn himself, it does describe many of the practical tactics organizers use. But it’s also about community organizing as a way of thinking and a way of life. For Kahn, it has been a way of life. He has been intimately involved in some of the most important progressive struggles of the past fifty years—the civil rights movement, the Harlan County miners’ strike, the fight against prison privatization, and many more. In this unique and moving book he uses his experiences and those of the people he’s worked with to illuminate critical aspects of organizing not touched upon by more conventional manuals. The stories Kahn tells are entertaining, funny, sad, and inspiring, but they’re more than that—they’re examples of creative community organizing in action. And like the secular rabbi he calls himself, Kahn lays out the specific lessons each tale is meant to teach—not only strategy and tactics, but advice on how to deal on a personal level with the demands of a difficult but vitally important job. Creative Community Organizing will help established organizers become more innovative and encourage them to question established principles and decide if they still work. Aspiring organizers will discover a whole new way of looking at the world—they’ll gain a sense of empowerment, understand that they can live and work in ways that help make the world more just and humane. With forewords by Angela Davis and Jim Hightower “Make room, Howard Zinn! Si Kahn’s Creative Community Organizing deserves a place on the must-read shelf next to A People’s History of the United States. Warm, cheerful, candid, and wise—just like the man himself—Si’s book is more than a how-to for justice seekers, more than a gripping memoir from the front lines of bodacious modern activism. It’s the up-close and creative story of how the “people’s history” gets made.” —Jay Harris, Publisher, Mother Jones “Creative Community Organizing documents Si Kahn’s career of working for justice in ways that are deeply affecting, personally and culturally. Si is truly Democracy’s Troubadour, bringing us not just the songs and stories of democracy and justice but also the practical strategies to deepen our democratic roots.” —Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin
