A New Day is Dawning to Organize

Bill Moore, President Emeritus --

 

As the dark nights of COVID-19 seem to be shortening and hope for better days glimmers on the horizon, organizer and writer Greg Pierce is sounding a Reveille for a  New Generation: Organizers and Leaders Reflect on Power. It’s a collection of some fifty stories, essays, letters, poems, sermons, eulogies and other writing by organizers and leaders reflecting on the history of oppressed people in America organizing for power.

 

The writings are grouped in three sections: The Roots of Organizing, The Foundations of Organizing and the Future of Organizing. Contributing authors include: the slave Omar bin Said writing in 1831, Frederick Douglas, Sojourner Truth, Emma Lazarus, Mother Jones, both John L. Lewis the labor leader and civil rights organizer John R. Lewis, Ella Baker, Saul Alinsky, Cesar Chavez, Ernesto Cortez, Dick Harmon, Adrienne McCauley, and David Treur, to name a few.

 

Each short selection starts with information about the writer and ends with three questions for reflection or discussion.  If you have someone to share your table, Reveille is a great conversation starter. Read a passage aloud, then talk about it while you eat.

 

I like the book, though wish Pierce had included at least a few selections from current day organizers not associated with the Industrial Areas Foundation. Heather Booth and Marshall Ganz come to mind.

 

Pierce, Gregory F. Augustine, compiler & editor. Reveille for a new generation: Organizers and leaders reflect on power. Chicago: ACTA Publications. 2020