Roots for Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action, and Justice

Description

The successor to the legendary activist Saul Alinsky, Edward T. Chambers pioneered a set of principles and practices that have guided community organizations throughout the US and the world. Roots for Radicals remains his definitive reflection on these fundamental principles of community activism: how, as public citizens, we can navigate the gap between the world as it is and as it should be, between self-interest and self-sacrifice and in doing so create lasting change for our communities. In the face of the increasingly turbulent politics of the 21st-century, Chambers's book has never been more relevant.

Edward T. Chambers (1930-2015) succeeded the legendary community organizer Saul Alinsky as Executive Director of the Industrial Areas Foundation, one of America's most prolific community organizing networks. He was responsible for developing the IAF's systematic training program for activists and campaigners across the country, an educational framework that remains influential to this day.

Edward T. Chambers might know more about building democratic institutions than any man alive. * San Francisco Chronicle * Here is a how-to-book in the best sense: a primer in how to beat the dragons. It has been designed for community organizers: to know, to feel, and mostly to think creatively how, not so much to lead, as to incite the powerless to find the power and speak for themselves....Ed Chambers is something of a secular priest, with the community as his parish, teaching that the least of us have the right to lead decent lives. -- Studs Terkel, Writer and Broadcaster