Creative Community Organizing: A Guide for Rabble Rousers, Activists & Quiet Lovers of Justice (review)

Sometimes the moment arises when the educators must be re-educated. Too often both political and scholastic discourse reinforce an artificial classification and compartmentalization of subject material to the extent that the links between and the unifying core of political, economic, legal, and cultural ideas are lost. Likewise, individuals are narrowly labelled and rigidly stereotyped. Educators are "scholars." Artists are "cultural workers." Long-term activist commitment is judged inferior to academic study. The cultural is secondary to politics.

In the cultural milieu and folk music world many people recognize Si Kahn as "simply" a folksinger, songwriter, storyteller, and balladeer of union songs and songs for social justice. He is viewed as an "entertainer" (though one admittedly with social consciousness) and it is often overlooked that this role as a "performer" is a deep and vital part of his method of work as an educator, activist, and organizer. His lifelong love of folk music and belief in the power of such music is central to his career as an activist that began as a young volunteer with the Student Nonviolent Co-ordinating Committee during the civil rights/freedom movement and continued with his involvement with key labour battles for the United Mine Workers in Harlan County, Kentucky, and with J.P. Stevens textile workers fighting deadly cotton dust work hazards. He is the founder and executive director of Grassroots Leadership.

Community Organizing, Kahn's second book, is not a primer about how to get things done or how to hone organizational skills and techniques. The title is significant. Its central concern is re-examining creative and critical possibilities of organizing, recognizing that the organizational road to reach desired goals (like history itself) rarely follows a straight path and that activists/educators must learn "to feel as well as to think." Creative organizing is not a recipe; it's a process. In his own words, "I'm also concerned with what people learn on the way to that victory; about themselves, each other, history, justice, community, friendship. I want them to love the struggle for justice, not endure it." (5) Si Kahn makes the point that the organizers are indeed, in many ways, outside agitators, sometimes isolated, viewed with suspicion precisely because they are "from away," outside the community or group. As the outsider, Kahn charges the organizer with ethical responsibilities, especially when he or she might have that final luxury of leaving a community behind, thus not suffering the direct personal, sometimes painful or damaging repercussions of a campaign that fails. Community organizing can change people's lives in unexpected ways. Organizational commitments are not only time-consuming and difficult. The complex issues may split communities and families and play havoc with personal relationships that crumble from the stresses. Si Kahn is blunt:

"People become organizers because they want to help other people make their lives better. . . No matter how well we do our work, however continuously and carefully, even the best organizers occasionally make people's lives worse — sometimes for a while, sometimes forever." (61)

The best organizers do not come armed with answers. It is more important that they ask the right questions so that the individuals from the community who comprise the movement control the movement. Si Kahn asks those very questions of the reader as he tells vignettes of his own experiences. What is the responsibility of the organizer to others? What is their responsibility to themselves? When is it time to be militant and raise the stakes? When is it time to step back? When does one speak out and when does one remain silent? How does one act when confronted by racist or anti-Semitic remarks? How does one overcome stereotypes and expose "soft racism"? How does one attempt to bring together people of diverse backgrounds when they have been influenced by generations of division on the basis of colour, language, customs, and religious beliefs? Is there a time to compromise principle in order...