People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal

Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Ganz (Why David Sometimes Wins) draws on his career as a grassroots organizer, particularly in the Mexican farm workers’ movement in the 1970s, to offer an accessible manual on how to bring about meaningful social change. He maintains that for democracies to survive, activists and concerned citizens must come together in an organized way to effectively counter authoritarian moves from their governments. Ganz divides organizing into five key practices—“building relationships, telling stories, strategizing, acting and structuring”—and neatly breaks down each practice into the values they communicate, the concepts they lean on, and the skills needed to master them. He emphasizes that the skills are ones often used in everyday life and that they can be taught to anyone, which brings an approachable realness to legends like Cesar Chavez and Saul Alinsky who populate his personal recollections and whom he draws on for examples. Throughout, Ganz puts a premium on fostering a community’s cohesiveness and training it in the tools of organizing over preaching ideological purity, arguing that laying the groundwork will “enable that community to turn resources it has into the power it needs to get what it wants.” Ganz’s can-do-ism is a welcome counterpoint to recent books bemoaning a decline in civic engagement. (Aug.)