.  “Michael Jacoby Brown’s Building Powerful Community Organizations is a splendid “how to” book on community organizing.   I used it this semester in my community organizing class at the University of Connecticut, and the students found it tremendously helpful and highly accessible.”

-- Professor Robert Fisher, University of Connecticut

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From Vol 16 (1), 2008, by Mitchell Kahn, MSW, Ramapo College of New Jersey, VP and Director of Organizing, New Jersey Tenants Organization. (excerpts):

“This no nonsense, user-friendly guidebook is replete with sound organizing advice…The book is creatively designed to actively engage the reader with the material being presented…There is a lot to chew on her, and a reader new to organizing might feel overwhelmed by this soup to nuts approach, but the book’s nicely illustrated, jargon-free, pragmatic and skilled pedagogical format makes it a wonderful textbook for teaching community organizing.”

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“Building Powerful Community Organizations is what you get when a wise veteran organizer…gets around to letting the rest of us in on his secret…  Brown manages to be both reflective and disciplined, arranging his book so every chapter is filled with exercises, case studies and an innovative use of “Quick Tips” that offer the reader a fast way to integrate the tools in the book.  he is also a gifted storyteller…

Practical and step-by-step, the book’s thirteen chapters offer grassroots organixers and leaders thinking about starting a group (or groups in need of renewal) a workbook and spirit guide….

Not just for beginners, he offers seasoned organizers refreshing wake-up calls throughout the book…a useful and personal guide.”

-James Mumm, Executive Director of the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition.

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 This just in from the American Booksellers Association News.

BUILDING POWERFUL COMMUNITY

ORGANIZATIONS: A Personal Guide to

Creating Groups That Can Solve Problems

and Change the World, by Michael Jacoby

Brown  “A down-to-earth,

practical guide to building all kinds of grass-roots

organizations. Justifiably praised, with case

studies and exercises, it is the most useful book

on the subject I’ve seen.”—Frank Kramer,

Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, MA

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…”a very down-to-earth, unusually practical, and very useful guide to creating all kinds of community organizations. I think it should be in every display on building and sustaining vibrant local economies. With case studies and exercises, it is the best book on the subject I’ve seen.”

Carole Horne, General Manager, Harvard Book Store, Cambridge, MA

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The Mindful Bard
Michael Jacoby Brown – Building Powerful Community Organizations

Books, Music, and Film to Wake Up Your Muse and Help You Change the World
Wanda Waterman St. Louis, Nova Scotia, Canada

An excerpt from a new review:
Building Powerful Community Organizations is a thorough and detailed course in grassroots organising. If you're serious about your cause, buy, don't borrow, this book. The workbook pages are necessary for an effective absorption of the principles. Brown has drawn on thirty years of activism in just about every social arena and in defence of nearly every communal cause you can name. He has also done extensive research in grassroots activism and spent a great deal of time listening mindfully to the stories of other organisers.

For a direct link to the full review from The Voice, of the Athabasca Student Union, go to:

http://www.voicemagazine.org/search/searchdisplay.php?ART=5456

 

 

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