WE MAKE CHANGE, Sun. 9/30 at 4pm

Need some inspiration to renew your hope and optimism about civic life? Does the political system shut you out of the process? This book and this group could help you change your relationship to power in Richmond and statewide. As a Board member of the Virginia Organizing Project (VOP), I am proud to announce this weekend's reading from our organization's book on community organizing (one of the first of it's kind). I hope you'll attend and/or spread the word. Below is the announcement being forwarded by VOP organizers.
-RVA Foodie

With two major presidential candidates - Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton - offering their experience with community organizing as evidence of their ability to lead the country, many Americans are beginning to wonder just what a community organizer is.

We Make Change: Community Organizers Talk About What They Do - and Why, a timely book by writer/editor KristinLayng Szakos and Virginia Organizing Project Executive Director Joe Szakos, helps to demystify this little-known profession and offer a glimpse into the daily lives of the people who make changing the world their life's work. The book has just been published by Vanderbilt University Press.

A FREE public event will be held:

September 30 at 4:00 p.m.
at the L. Douglas Wilder library,
Virginia Union University in Richmond.

Joe Szakos will be on hand to give a reading from the book and to autograph copies. We Make Change will be available for sale. All royalties from the book will go into a special fund for recruiting and training interns and apprentice organizers.


Background

We Make Change is a lively, readable collection of stories and observations by organizers across the United States. The reader will come away with an insight into this fascinating profession and the people who have chosen it.

Community organizers are the people who work, often behind the scenes, to help come together to effect meaningful change in their communities by building effective community organizations. They are there with the neighborhood group working to bring bank loans to low-income homeowners. They are there with immigrant women organizing to get medical insurance for their families, with small-town environmentalists keeping a toxic waste plant out of their community, with parents trying to get schools to respond to the needs of children with dyslexia, with gay and lesbian students striving to create a safe space in their schools, with groups working to reduce the ravages of racism in their towns and institutions. Wherever there is a well-organized group agitating for progressive social change, chances are there is a community organizer nearby.

We Make Change explores the world of community organizing through the voices of real people working in the field - organizers in small towns and big city neighborhoods, women and men, some in their 20s, others in their 60s, of different races and economic backgrounds. In addition to 14 individual profiles, all 81 interviewees are given voice in chapters like "What is Community Organizing?," How I Started Organizing," "Why Organize?," "Achievements and Victories," "Disappointments Are Inevitable," and "Advice to Aspiring Organizers."

Join us on Sunday, September 30 at 4:00 p.m. in the L. Douglas Wilder Library, located on the campus of Virginia Union University, 1500 North Lombardy Street, Richmond, VA 23220. Parking is located adjacent to the library.

For more information: Cathy Woodson, (804) 261-7497, cwoodson@virginia-orgainizing.org