Going Public An Organizer's Guide to Citizen Action

by GECAN, MICHAEL

• ISBN13: 9781400076499
• ISBN10: 1400076498
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-05-18
• Publisher: Anchor

Summary

Urban decay can sap the determinationnot to mention the soulof anyone who experiences it. But there are forces that can and do reverse it. They are not spectators, or critics, or occasional demonstrators. They are groups of citizens, encouraged and trained to take power with dignity and creativity and unrelenting determination, and to make it work for them, day by day, month by month, and year to year. For more than twenty-five years, Michael Gecan has been a professional organizer with Industrial Areas Foundation, which has trained thousands of little-known community groups from Brownsville, Texas, to Brownsville, Brooklyn. Having grown up witnessing at close range the destructive effects of political patronage on powerless, disenfranchised Chicago communities, Gecan knows from experience that strong relationships in the public sphere and sustained and disciplined organizing can spark the public and private alchemy necessary to achieve sidewalks, parks, schools, housing--and the collective renewal that results. Full of good advice and entertaining accounts of success,Going Publicis the story of those who, says Gecan, "succeed in unexpected ways and in unexpected places."

Author Biography

Michael Gecan has worked as an organizer for the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Baltimore for more than twenty-five years. He lives in Princeton, New Jersey.

Table of Contents

PREFACE: WHY ORGANIZE?	ix
INTRODUCTION	1	(18)
PART I: The Habit of Relating
1. All Real Living Is Meeting	19	(14)
2. The World as It Is	33	(16)
PART II: The Habit of Action
3. Activists on a Manhattan Street	49	(5)
4. Introducing Your Larger Self	54	(11)
5. Merit Means (Almost) Nothing	65	(10)
6. Chutzpah Helps	75	(25)
7. Ambiguity, Reciprocity, Victory	100	(29)
PART III: The Habit of Organization
8. The Hard Edges of Effective Organization	129	(7)
9. Disorganizing and Reorganizing	136
PART IV: The Habit of Reflection
10. Three Public Cultures	151	(16)
11. Fault Lines and Collisions	167	(7)
12. The Right Relationship	174	(2)
CONCLUSION	176	(3)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	179	(8)
INDEX	187