10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspiration & motivation with history thrown in!, February 7, 2010
This review is from: Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice (Paperback)
Books do different things including tell a story, educate, emotionally inspire or motivate to action.
Si Kahn's book Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice manages to do it all.
On a casual level, it is a story or biography covering his involvement in the civil rights movement, his influence from his family and rabbi father, friendships and connections he made. Plus a little side trip to seduction and firearms.
It is also a mini history lesson from a personal viewpoint about a critical time in the growth of this country's awakening to civil rights and justice.
However, in reality, it is neither a biography nor a history lesson. It is glimpses of his experiences and history given as a means of imparting insights. Kahn shares his thoughts about the needs of our country and how community organizers make changes, not by going in and doing to or for a community, but by listening to them and helping them to achieve their own goals. This is not a denial of some agenda but rather a process of reaching a larger goal by supporting those on the front lines to make steps that will move toward that final goal. It is not a step by step manual, but rather an overview of the approach one needs to begin influencing our world.
Kahn writes not as some rock star civil rights player, but rather as someone who has deeply-felt convictions that each person has the right and the responsibility to stand up and move our country forward. Reaching the goal is only a part of the journey, the inside growth is also important:
QUOTE: "But I'm also concerned with what people learn on the way to that victory: about themselves, each other, history, justice, community, friendship. I want them to love the struggle for justice, not endure it."
We are in an era when everyone is writing a how-to book. This is more a "why to do" book. It is motivation to look at what one person can do. Right now so many are so overwhelmed with the state of the world, with their own finances, their own lives, it seems unrealistic to think we can get involved and create change. Yet here is Si Kahn proposing that is precisely what we must do.
QUOTE:
"None of us here today will live long enough to see the just world of which we dream finally come to pass. But it will. All we have to do to make that happen is to do our work as well as we can, in a way that makes the job run just a little more smoothly for those who we absolutely believe and know will come after us, who will carry on the work we have done. If we truly want peace and justice some day, all we have to do is pull our shift."
This book helps the reader realize that we don't have to be superheroes, but we can be heroes. As Si puts it, we can simply pull our shift. This book, using song lyrics and story telling, gives a foundation for how to begin: just take one step at a time. In simple stories, Kahn illustrates that the world changes that matter are the ones the people have the will and desire to shape. Yes, we have Gandhis and MLKs, but they succeeded not by their will alone but with all the individuals who stepped up and heard the call. This book is, in fact, a calling.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delightful, often moving insider's view of organizing for social change, April 5, 2010
There's a little something for just about everybody in Si Kahn's delightful little memoir, Creative Community Organizing. In the space of a couple of hours of reading, you can gain a front-row seat on history from the vantage-point of SNCC (the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, one of the most militant elements in the civil rights struggle) to the UMWA (the Mineworkers Union) to the recent nationwide campaign to end immigrant family detention. You'll learn about music and art and their central role in what Kahn calls "creative community organizing," with folksong lyrics prefacing every chapter. You'll learn about Si's remarkable rabbi father and radical mother. You'll even learn the meaning of the puzzling word "hod," as in "hod carrier."
Si is a 45-year veteran of organizing in the civil rights movement, the labor movement, and through the scrappy little nonprofit organization he founded 30 years ago to work for social and economic justice in the South and Southwest, Grassroots Leadership. He is also a writer and singer of folksongs, most of them on radical themes tied to his organizing work. Oh, and by the way: he's a really nice guy.
This book, subtitled A Guide for Activists, Rabble-Rousers, and Quiet Lovers of Justice, can also be read as a primer on creative community organizing. The material is organized into chapters that correspond to the guiding principles of Si's craft. And I can testify to the wisdom of those principles, having worked as a community organizer myself for several years in the 1970s -- operating more from the seat of my pants rather than the solid experience Si has gained through a lifetime of organizing.
Note well: Si hasn't just organized and run campaigns. He has helped win a number of notable victories over the years. He knows whereof he writes. And our country is much the stronger for Si's tireless efforts on behalf of justice, equality, and freedom.
(From Mal Warwick's Blog on Books)
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Belongs on any social issues or activist library's shelf, May 14, 2010
This review is from: Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble-Rousers, Activists, and Quiet Lovers of Justice (Paperback)
Si Kahn's CREATIVE COMMUNITY ORGANIZING: A GUIDE FOR RABBLE-ROUSERS, ACTIVISTS AND QUIET LOVERS OF JUSTICE comes from a founder of grassroots leadership and offers a fine survey of the author's work in some of the most important grassroots organizations of the last fifty years, from the Southern Civil Rights Movement to the Harlan County coal miners' strike. His insights are key to understanding the process of effective community involvement and this belongs on any social issues or activist library's shelf.
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