BOOKSHELF

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BOOKSHELF: THREE FOR A NEW COMMUNITY

BUILDING POWERFUL COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS: A Personal Guide to Creating
Groups That Can Solve Problems and Change the World, by Michael Jacoby
Brown, Long Haul Press, $19.95.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0977151808/progressiverevieA/
CALLING ALL RADICALS: How Grassroots Organizers Can Save Our Democracy,
by
Gabriel Thompson, Nation Books, $14.95.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1568583672/progressiverevieA/
TOOLS FOR RADICAL DEMOCRACY: How to Organize for Power in Your
Community, by Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos, Chardon Press, $29.95.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=0787979090/progressiverevieA/

BENNETT BAUMER
CITY LIMITS

Three recent books serve as guides to organizers building community
groups, unions and other social change organizations. Two of these works
could be characterized as textbooks - "Tools For Radical Democracy," by
Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos, and "Building Powerful Community
Organizations," by Michael Jacoby Brown. "Calling All Radicals," by
Gabriel Thompson, gives helpful tips on organizing while maintaining a
more anecdotal narrative flow. . .

"Tools For Radical Democracy" and "Building Powerful Community
Organizations" are the most explicit about how to build organizations
for social change. . . . Both books offer various case studies, rooted
in Getsos' coalition-building in uptown Manhattan and Jacoby Brown's
decades' worth of agitating around workplace issues across the country.
The textbooks also offer exercises and work sheets at the ends of
chapters on such mundane organizing work as phone banking, door
knocking, media relations and preparing testimony to elected officials.
. .

While the above books are basically practical manuals, Thompson's
"Calling All Radicals" is more directed at the heart. As a former
housing organizer in central Brooklyn, Thompson believes organizers are
the key to building democracy and illuminates how they do the grunt
work. Thompson presents tenants standing up to slumlords, and
politicians reluctant to enact a tough lead paint bill, not as case
studies but as part of a social justice story. . .

"Calling All Radicals" also examines Alinsky's organizing model and asks
the provocative question - why do organizers do what they do, and to
what end?

http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=3434


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