Grounded in struggles in Canada, the United States, Aotearoa/New Zealand, as well as transnational activist networks, Organize!: Building from the Local for Global Justice links local organizing with global struggles to make a better world. In over twenty chapters written by a diverse range of organizers, activists, academics, lawyers, artists, and researchers, this book weaves a rich and varied tapestry of dynamic strategies for struggle. From community-based labor organizing strategies among immigrant workers to mobilizing psychiatric survivors, from arts and activism for Palestine to organizing in support of Indigenous Peoples, the authors reflect critically on the tensions, problems, limits, and gains inherent in a diverse range of organizing contexts and practices. The book also places these processes in historical perspective, encouraging us to use history to shed light on contemporary injustices and how they can be overcome. Written in accessible language, Organize! will appeal to college and university students, activists, organizers and the wider public.
Praise:
“This superb collection needs to find its way into the hands of every activist and organizer for social justice. In a series of dazzling essays, an amazing group of radical organizers reflect on what it means to build movements in which people extend control over their lives. These analyses are jam-packed with insights about antiracist, anticolonial, working-class, and anticapitalist organizing. Perhaps most crucially, the authors lay down a key challenge for all activists for social justice: to take seriously the need to build mass movements for social change. Don’t just read this exceptionally timely and important work—use it too.”
—David McNally, author of Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance
“To understand the world, you have to try to change it. That’s what the authors of this fine set of essays and meditations have taken to heart. The result? Some of the best insights on power, organizing, and revolution to be found.”
—Raj Patel, author of The Value of Nothing
About Aziz Choudry:
Aziz Choudry is assistant professor of international education in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University. He is coauthor of Fight Back: Workplace Justice for Immigrants (Fernwood, 2009), and coeditor of Learning from the Ground Up: Global Perspectives on Social Movements and Knowledge Production (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). He has over two decades experience working in activist groups, NGOs, and social movements in the Asia-Pacific and North America as a researcher, educator, and organizer.
About Jill Hanley:
Jill Hanley is assistant professor in the McGill School of Social Work, where she teaches community organizing, social policy, and applied research. Her research focuses on access to social rights for precarious status migrants and the organizing strategies used by migrants to access these rights. She is cofounder and an active member of Montreal’s Immigrant Workers Centre. She is coauthor of Fight Back: Workplace Justice for Immigrants.
About Eric Shragge:
Eric Shragge teaches at the School of Community and Public Affairs, Concordia University, in Montreal. He remains active in grassroots organizations and he is coauthor of Fight Back Workplace Justice for Immigrants (Fernwood 2009) and coauthor of Contesting Community: The Limits and Potential of Local Organizing (Rutgers 2010).
Product Details:
Editors: Aziz Choudry, Jill Hanley & Eric Shragge
Publisher: PM Press/Between the Lines
ISBN: 978-1-60486-433-5
Published June 2012
Format: Paperback
Size: 9 by 6
Page count: 336 Pages
Subjects: Activism/Current Events
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