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"A trenchant history of community organizing and a must-read for the next generation of organizers seeking to learn from the successes, failures, and contradictions of the past. The community organizing tradition is long overdue for reexamination. In Occupation: Organizer, scholar and activist Clâement Petitjean traces that history from its roots in the Progressive movement to its expansion and diverging paths during the social movements of the 1960s and '70s, when Saul Alinsky became the most popular "professional radical" in the US while groups like Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Black Panthers recast organizers as horizontal, antihierarchical spadeworkers--those who do the work as part of the community, rather than standing apart from it. But in the years since, the professionalization of organizing work has only increased, despite the critiques. Only by grappling with its limitations and pitfalls, Petitjean insists, can we learn to build durable, effective organizations for change."--Publisher's website.
List of contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Unpacking professionalization
Chapter 2: Origins. Saul Alinsky and the Chicago reform tradition
Chapter 3: Managing the democratic crisis in the age of the Cold War
Chapter 4: The Professional Radical
Chapter 5: Spadework. The radical community organizing tradition of the 1960s
Chapter 6: Professionalization from within. Building a skilled cadre of practitioners
Chapter 7: "You run for president?" Fitting into the division of political labor
Conclusion
About the author
Clément Petitjean is an associate professor of American studies at the Université Panthéon Sorbonne in Paris. He holds a PhD in sociology. His writing has appeared in academic journals and popular outlets like
Jacobin,
Contretemps, and
Le Monde diplomatique.
Summary
A trenchant history of community organizing and a must-read for the next generation of organizers seeking to learn from the successes, failures, and contradictions of the past.
The community organizing tradition is long overdue for reexamination. In Occupation: Organizer, scholar and activist Clément Petitjean traces that history from its roots in the Progressive movement to its expansion and diverging paths during the social movements of the 1960s and ’70s, when Saul Alinsky became the most popular “professional radical” in the US while groups like Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Black Panthers recast organizers as horizontal, antihierarchical spadeworkers—those who do the work as part of the community, rather than standing apart from it.
But in the years since, the professionalization of organizing work has only increased, despite the critiques. Only by grappling with its limitations and pitfalls, Petitjean insists, can we learn to build durable, effective organizations for change.
Foreword
- Promotion targeting left leaning publications like the Nation, Jacobin, Dissent.
- Direct marketing to activist groups and core Haymarket audience.
- Social media publicity campaign.
