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Activism and Social Change: Lessons for Community and Local Organizing By Eric Shragge Peterborough: Broadview Press, 2004.
Community and social movement organizing is a complex business. In their progressive guise (this book usefully notes that we need to remember that organizing can be and is used by right-wing groups) it attempts to develop community as a positive element in its own right as well as a site for the struggle for social justice, thus as a basis for wider political action and fundamental progressive change. It is therefore intriguing to see a work written by someone who has been deeply involved in the action and who, as a teacher and writer, tries to reflect on it broadly. In this book Shragge helpfully locates himself and his experiences as well as his own writing: just over ten percent of the references are by himself or are co-written pieces. This gives the book passion and energy, though at the same time it tends to narrow the focus.
Shragge begins with his own experiences as a social work student organizer in Michigan and then as an activist and academic in Quebec, particularly in Montreal. He was involved in some of the more interesting community organizing endeavours in Canada in the 1970s, specifically at Point St Charles and the Parallel Institute. It was tough-minded organizing, and he apparently imbibed and maintained that approach to organizing. He is clear that he has questions and concerns that he believes need to be addressed but tend to be too often ignored. While he never uses the term, he espouses an anti-oppressive stance; that is, he is particularly concerned that organizers and activists fail too often to understand the impact of their own social location and tend to impose their own views and understanding on the marginalized populations which they purport to serve. Unfortunately, Shragge undercuts this position at times: at one point he refers...