Organizing for Power and Empowerment: The Fight for Democracy
Second edition
Jacqueline B. Mondros and Joan Minieri
The second edition of Organizing for Power and Empowerment: The Fight for Democracy draws on extensive research to portray how social action organizations have evolved over the past twenty-five years, building power in the struggle for social and economic justice. It explores how organizers’ strategies and theories of change increasingly emphasize racism, patriarchy, and economic inequality, and fight pervasive intersectional injustice and corporate influence.
The book tells the stories of a variety of geographically and racially diverse organizations, and features the voices and experiences of more than forty organizers working across a range of issues. They share their thoughts on building community organizations and empowering ordinary citizens to become leaders. The organizers describe campaigns that convene people around issues that matter in their daily lives—work schedules, bail reform, schools, voting, and affordable housing—and connect them to broader topics such as racial justice, immigration, climate change, criminal justice, and workers’ rights. The book underscores the importance of Black Americans, other people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ people as they lead campaigns to impact the disparate effects of inequality faced by their communities. It provides detailed analysis of new organizational structures and change strategies including electoral activism, statewide organizing and community- labor coalitions. This book sheds important new light on both foundational organizing practices and the challenges and opportunities for progressive social action today.
Available now on Amazon: https://www.amazon.
"All social workers who care about social justice, whether your focus is on immigration, mass incarceration, climate change, housing, or LGBTQ+ rights, should read this book. It includes the voices of more than 40 organizers from 20 different organizations all over the country telling us how to find and create activists, build effective organizations and design effective campaigns that actually achieve real change. These organizations are the last best hope for a vigorous inclusive democracy." ~Jacqueline B. Mondros
Jacqueline B. Mondros, DSW, is professor and dean emeritus of Stony Brook University School of Social Welfare and a past president of the National Association of Deans and Directors of Social Work. She has published widely on community organizing.
Joan Minieri is the executive director of the Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock, a national funder of organizing and civic engagement, and an adjunct associate professor of public service at New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. She is coauthor of Tools for Radical Democracy: How to Organize for Power in Your Community (2007).
