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List of contents
Student Victories Preface A Message to the Teacher 1. Issue Development 2. Setting the Tone 3. Change Theory 4. Building Power 5. Research 6. Strategy and Tactics 7. Campaign Kickoff 8. Group Dynamics 9. Campaign Plan 10. Evaluation: Passing It On 11. The Hero’s and Shero’s Journey Index
About the author
Dr. Scott Myers-Lipton is Professor of Sociology at San José State University, and is the author of Ending Extreme Inequality: An Economic Bill of Rights Approach to Eliminate Poverty (Paradigm 2015), Rebuild America: Solving the Economic Crisis through Civic Works (Paradigm 2009), and Social Solutions to Poverty: America's Struggle to Build a Just Society (Paradigm 2006), as well as numerous scholarly articles on racism, education, and civic engagement.
He co-founded the successful efforts to raise the minimum wage from $8 to $10 in San Jose and to modernize San Jose’s business tax. He also co-founded the Gulf Coast Civic Works Campaign, an initiative to develop 100,000 prevailing-wage jobs for local and displaced workers after Hurricane Katrina. He has worked to help students develop solutions to poverty by taking them to live at homeless shelters, the Navajo and Lakota nations, the U.S. Gulf Coast, and Kingston, Jamaica. He is also on the Board of Directors for the National Jobs for All Coalition.
Scott Myers-Lipton is the recipient of San Jose/Silicon Valley NAACP Social Justice Award, the Elbert Reed Award from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Santa Clara County, the Changer Maker Award from the Silicon Valley Council of Non-Profits, and the Manuel Vega Latino Empowerment Award. He lives with his wife, Diane, and his two children, Gabriela and Josiah, in San Jose. In addition, Scott and Diane are the proprietors of the Sequoia Retreat Center, a meeting space dedicated to individual and social transformation.
Summary
This is the first practical social change text devoted to students working in an academic environment. While there are many books about community organizing and social change, there are no college texts focusing on how to provide real-world experience with academic content taking into consideration the flow of the academic term. CHANGE! A Student Guide to Social Action is written specifically for faculty and staff to use with college students with the goal of helping students bring about the change they believe is necessary to make our community a better place to live.
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The book is very effective in part because the book is structured to align with the academic semester. Just three weeks into the semester, I can see that my students have already carried out as many actions as they accomplished all semester long last year without the book. The narrative is compelling, the examples from prior college student campaign successes are inspiring, and the focus on policy change is pushing my students to make clearer and more focused demands.
Miriam Shakow, Associate Professor of Anthropology, The College of New Jersey
For the past decade, the Bonner Foundation has been exploring how to develop a social action track within our network of 65 plus colleges. With the book, CHANGE! A Student Guide to Social Action, we now have the vehicle to help the Bonner network take this next step. Faculty on all college campuses should consider adopting CHANGE! so as to provide an effective and powerful social action experience for their students, and skilled civic leaders for their communities.
Robert Hackett, President, Bonner Foundation
CHANGE! comes at a moment in U.S. history which demands the creation of ever more powerful social and economic justice change agents, a job that higher education has done poorly. It’s part roadmap, part compass, part toolkit. But above all, it’s a practical guide for faculty who want to foster a new generation of able and smart activists.
Kent Glenzer, Ph.D., Dean, Graduate School of International Studies and Management, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey
