Political
Organizing
Advocates/Services
Organized people power leading change towards a more just, sustainable, and democratic world.
We develop and support new civic leadership that organizes communities to build power and create change.
We are a global community of organizers, practitioners, educators and researchers catalyzing change through the power of narratives, rooted in the pedagogy and practice of community organizing.
We develop and support new civic leadership that organizes communities to build power and create change. We build the leadership, organizing capacity and resources of change makers across the globe to enable them to win campaigns that strengthen justice and human rights.
LCN members are developing leadership and building power in over 75 countries.
Articles/Op-eds/Essays
“I Wouldn’t Bet on the Kind of Democracy Big Business Is Selling Us,” Kim Phillips-Fein, The New York Times, Feb. 1, 2022.
"... The ideal of an easy symbiosis between public and private sectors would undermine the kinds of political mobilizations, however difficult to organize and enact, that are needed for reform that benefits most Americans... tireless efforts by unions and other social movements to get them to take these positions — and only when the disruptions have become so powerful that there appears to be no real choice and adoption offers companies a measure of control... While we might hear less about stakeholder capitalism, we would have a public realm that could make real the idea of the common good."
A manual for a new era of direct action (2017), George Lakey
Old Brain, New Brain, Cross-Partisan Dialog, Penn Garvin, Lois Passi, Wade Lee Hudson
—Organizing Tranformation: Best Practices in the Transformative Organizing Model, Steve Williams — “takes an effective approach towards developing leadership development plans by engaging members in discussions with the organizing staff to identify the areas that they would like to develop their leadership capacities.” Focuses on leadership training. Does not affirm mutual support for open-ended self-development, with each individual setting their own goals.
Books
—"The Women of NOW," Katherine Turk
So, yes, I think NOW's story can help us understand what we lose when the grassroots is no longer in the driver's seat... The national landscape, at least of these D.C. based organizations, what they're offering people is oftentimes a way to give money, a way to sign up as a member, perhaps sign a petition, open your e-mail inbox to lots of messages, but what's missing from the research that I've done on NOW in its most productive years in the early '70s is a way to do something, a way to organize in your community around those issues in a local sense, a way that matters to you and to the people where you live, but can also be nationally coordinated... In the early '70s, in its first decade or so, was really only loosely coordinated from the top, and it was local members who were in the driver's seat, not only signing petitions and, you know, paying those membership dues, but actually driving the movement's agenda. And what's lost when it's a more top-down model is people's sense of ownership, not only belonging, but really being able to shape the agenda of a movement that is also theirs.
-Beyond the Messy Truth: How We Came Apart, How We Come Together (2017), Van Jones
—Breaking Through Power: It’s Easier Than You Think (2016), Ralph Nader
—Collaborating with the Enemy: How to Work with People You Don’t Agree with or Like or Trust (2017), Adam Kahane
—Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism (2017), L.A. Kauffman
—Doing Democracy: The MAP Model for Organizing: The MAP Model for Organizing Social Movements (2001), Bill Moyer
—Engage: Exploring Nonviolent Living (2005), Laura Slattery, Ken Butigan, Veronica Pelicaric, and Ken Preston-Pile
—Faith Rooted Organizing: Mobilizing the Church in Service of the World (2014), Alexia Salvatierra, and Peter Heltze
—God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It (2005), Jim Wallis
—Grass Roots: How Ordinary People Are Changing America (1991), Tom Adams
—Groundbreakers: How Obama's 2.2 Million Volunteers Transformed Campaigning in America, Elizabeth McKenna, Hahrie Han (see “The Trump Campaign Knows Why Obama Won. Do Democrats?”, Joy Cushman)
—How We Win: A Guide for Nonviolent Direct Action Campaigning (2018), George Lakey
—Inciting Democracy, A Practical Proposal for Creating a Good Society (2001), Randy Schutt
—Is There No Other Way: The Search for a Nonviolent Future (2001), Michael N. Nagler
—Join the Club: How Peer Pressure Can Transform the World (2011), Tina Rosenberg
—MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country: How to Find Your Political Voice and Become a Catalyst for Change (2014), MoveOn
—Moving Toward a New Society (1976), Suzanne Gowan, George Lakey, William Moyer, and Richard Taylor
—Necessary Trouble: Americans in Revolt (2016), Sarah Jaffe
—New Power: How Power Works in Our Hyperconnected World -- and How to Make It Work for You, (2018), Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms
—Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons from the History of a Dangerous Idea (2006), Mark Kurlansky
—Organizing Urban America: Secular and Faith-Based Progressive Movements (2008), Heidi J Swarts
—Political Action: A Practical Guide to Movement Politics (2019), Michael Walzer
—Powerful Peacemaking: A Strategy for a Living Revolution (1987), George Lakey
—Reinventing Organizations: An Illustrated Invitation to Join the Conversation on Next-stage Organizations (2016), Frederic Lalous
—Rules for Revolutionaries: How Big Organizing Can Change Everything (2016), Becky Bond and Zack Exley
—Stand Up: How to Get Involved, Speak Out, and Win in a World on Fire (2018), Gordon Whitman
—Taking a Stand: A Guide to Peace Teams and Accompaniment Projects (2005), Elizabeth F. Boardman
—The Gandhian Iceberg: A Nonviolence Manifesto for the Age of the Great Turning (2016), Chris Moore-Backman
—The Lifelong Activist: How to Change the World Without Losing Your Way (2004), Hillary Rettig
Generation Climate Change, Ezra Klein Show