Stir It Up

Rinku Sen, a veteran community organizer, draws on 15 years of experience and research into 14 economic justice organizations to argue that progressive groups must develop far greater strategic sophistication to counter the forces shaping modern American life. The book emerges from a partnership with the Ms. Foundation for Women, which funded the organizations profiled under its New Voices, Proactive Strategies Initiative from 1997 to 2001. Sen visited each grantee, interviewed staff and constituents, and reviewed literature on organizing for social and economic justice to produce a guide grounded in real-world practice.

Sen opens with a historical overview of community organizing in the United States after World War II. She identifies Saul Alinsky as the figure widely credited with codifying the first replicable organizing model, beginning with the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, a coalition of churches, unions, and service groups in Chicago, in the early 1940s. Alinsky's core premises held that organizers and community leaders should occupy distinct roles, that organization building should express growing power, that campaigns should target specific decision makers, that organizing should pursue concrete wins rather than explicit ideology, and that organizers should devote themselves fully to the work. These ideas influenced subsequent networks, including Fred Ross Sr.'s Community Service Organization, which pioneered individual-membership organizing among Latinos in Los Angeles; the People's Institute for Community Organizing, which developed faith-based organizing; and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, which designed the first replicable model for organizing the very poor.

Sen presents two critiques that spurred alternative practices. The antiracist critique challenged domination by white staff and leaders, the refusal to address racism, and rigid rules that clashed with the political cultures of communities of color. The feminist critique targeted the overemphasis on the public sphere at the expense of the private sphere where women contributed, work schedules excluding people with family responsibilities, reliance on narrow self-interest over compassionate motivation, and emphasis on confrontation over cooperation. These critiques led to new formations, including the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO), founded in 1980 as the premier network for organizers of color. Separately, Sen identifies three emergent forces that further expanded the field: the New Labor movement of community-based worker organizing, identity-based movements asserting that socially constructed identities produce vastly different experiences, and innovations within organizing that prioritized the most marginalized people and added political education to practice.

Sen advances two essential arguments. First, three political and economic trends define the current context: the resurgence of conservative movements, the new global economy, and the continued centrality of racism and sexism. The conservative movement built a powerful infrastructure of think tanks, media outlets, and grassroots organizations beginning in the 1970s; the Heritage Foundation grew from a $250,000 grant to an annual budget exceeding $23 million. Conservatives devised policy campaigns around welfare, affirmative action, immigration, and crime, using extensive polling to craft language highlighting popular anxieties. The new global economy restructured work through neoliberal policies, meaning deregulation, free capital movement, corporate subsidies, and free-trade agreements, along with the rising use of contingent workers who lack protections under the Fair Labor Standards Act. Sen argues that racism and sexism continue to stratify economic life, pointing to welfare reform policies designed to control women's roles while racially sorting need-based programs.

Second, effective organizing requires capacities well beyond recruiting members and planning actions. Sen devotes the bulk of the book to these capacities, organized into chapters on constituency building, issue development, direct action, leadership development, research, alliances, media strategy, and political education, drawing on the 14 profiled organizations throughout.

On organizing new constituencies, Sen defines five essential elements: a clear mission, a membership and leadership structure, outreach focused on those most affected, issue campaigns featuring direct action, and pursuit of institutional change. She argues structures must be deliberate and transparent. Direct Action for Rights and Equality (DARE), a multiracial Providence organization, used committees to build democratic participation, while 9to5, a national working-women's organization, created caucuses for women in poverty, women of color, and bi/trans/lesbian women. Sen warns that service provision can overshadow organizing and highlights the Workplace Project, a Long Island organization serving Latino immigrants, which shifted from individual legal consultations to group workshops, tripling active participants.

On issue development, Sen argues clear criteria must guide choices. She presents criteria from the Midwest Academy, an organizing training institution, then shows how CTWO developed alternative criteria after finding the traditional emphasis on winnability led the organization to sacrifice its racial justice frame during a police accountability campaign. She stresses that demands must be ambitious and specific, targets must be individual decision makers, and framing determines public resonance.

On direct action, defined as face-to-face confrontation between a constituency and a target over a specific demand, Sen argues it works only within sustained campaigns. Justice, Economic Dignity and Independence for Women (JEDI), the premier organization of poor women in Utah, occupied the governor's office to prevent cuts to child care subsidies, generating top news coverage and protecting the program. The Home Day Care Justice Campaign in Rhode Island combined militant actions with research and legislation over five years to win health insurance for family day-care providers.

On leadership development, Sen distinguishes identifying existing leaders from developing new ones, arguing the latter requires systematic programs grounded in popular education, a participatory methodology rooted in the work of Brazilian theorist Paulo Freire. She illustrates through the Women's Institute for Leadership Development (WILD), which encourages women union members to see themselves as leaders, and through DARE's practice of hiring staff from its constituency.

On research, Sen asserts all research is influenced by ideology and organizations must produce their own. She highlights Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW), which organized around the Self-Sufficiency Standard, a geographically based measure of income needed to meet basic needs developed by researcher Diana Pearce. The standard differs from the federal poverty line by using actual costs adjusted for family type. 9to5's testing project sent pairs of Black and white women to apply at temp agencies and uncovered illegal discrimination at two-thirds of those tested.

On alliances, Sen distinguishes loose networks from formal coalitions and warns that alliances cannot substitute for organizing. The Workplace Project worked with tactical allies, meaning short-term campaign partners, rather than a broad coalition during its fight for the Unpaid Wages Prohibition Act, retaining control of its framing while recruiting business associations around their own interests.

On media strategy, Sen argues progressives cannot avoid mainstream media despite its consolidation and hostility, stressing sharp messages grounded in shared values. The Workplace Project's five-year effort to build media capacity by training immigrant leaders to stay on message illustrates how systematic relationship-building with reporters can shift public discourse.

On political education, Sen contends no organization is truly nonideological and that groups pretending otherwise cannot compete with the organized conservative movement. DARE's multi-month process after September 11, 2001, illustrates this principle: The organization moved from emotional discussions through months of study to a consensus statement connecting the war on terrorism to its existing campaigns.

Sen concludes that progressive activists succeed by combining awareness with action. She insists that reversing injustices caused by capitalism, racism, and sexism is possible but requires courage and discipline, with the calculation residing in paying attention and the risk in action.