Calling All Radicals How Grassroots Organizers Can Save Our Democracy

Forty-seven million Americans without healthcare. Soaring economic inequality. Environmental racism. Slumlords and sweatshop owners. Every year, students leave high school and college eager to tackle the crises facing the United States. But how, exactly, does one go about building social justice movements and strengthening our democracy? Calling All Radicals argues that we can reclaim our democracy in the old fashioned way-through grassroots organizing. Beyond campaign sound bytes and the occasional election, democracy is about focusing on the development of leaders, taking collective action, and building power among groups usually ignored and abused. In essence, organizers are democracy "scouts" who recruit formerly inactive, sometimes cynical people to play their part in our unfolding democratic experiment.

Gabriel Thompson is the Director of Organizing at the Pratt Area Community Council (PACC), a community-based organization which works in the neighborhoods of Central Brooklyn. He speaks regularly to college students about organizing, and has designed a leadership development program for inner-city high school students. Thompson is the author of There’s No Jose Here and writes for The Nation, the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times, The Brooklyn Rail and Our Time Press (the monthly newspaper of Central Brooklyn).