SENTIENT TIMES June/July 2002
Book Reviews
The
Democracy Owners’ Manual
A Practical Guide To Changing The World
By Jim Shultz
Rutgers University Press
ISBN # 0-8135-3037-7
“I wish I had Jim Shultz’s The Democracy Owner’s Manual when I started organizing and lobbying nearly 40 years ago. Shultz adds a distinctive voice to why citizens who take the initiative and organize will thwart and best the powerful. He engages the reader with language that is simple, wise, perceptive, and profound.” - David Cohen, codirector, Advocacy Institute
“Jim Shultz’s book is a wonderful first step for anyone who wants to be effective at protecting the environment, or fighting for economic and social justice.” - Carl Pope, executive director, Sierra Club
“For parents and others who want to make a difference, The Democracy Owner’s Manual lights the way.” - Carol Ruley, past vice pres., National PTA
The Democracy Owners’ Manual is a unique, hands-on guide for people who want to change public policy at the local, state, or national level. A combination of policy and advocacy basics, the book offers a clear presentation of the issues and debates activists are likely to encounter as well as a lucid, example-rich guide to effective strategies and actions with many tools of citizen activism including strategy development, organizing, coalition building, lobbying, using the Internet and more.
Newcomers and veteran activists alike will find this book an invaluable treasure chest of ideas and stimulating stories to help them tackle the issues they care about. The Democracy Owners’ Manual also lends itself for university courses in political science, public administration, social work, public health, environmental studies, and other disciplines that touch on public policy and political change.
The Democracy Owners’ Manual covers the most basic debates that citizen advocates face—taxes and budgets, environmental protection, health reform, civil rights and more—while offering readers a solid analysis and a preview of the arguments on both sides.
Jim Shultz, executive director of The Democracy Center, was formerly an assistant to the California Legislature and a California lobbyist with Common Cause and Consumers Union. Shultz has trained thousands of civic advocates in the United States, Latin America, and Africa. Having taught political science, policy analysis, and public administration to both undergraduates and graduate students at San Francisco State University, Jim Shultz has written with students in mind and the book draws from the curricula used in those courses. To aid university instructors in teaching policy and advocacy The Democracy Center has also created a set of teaching modules using The Democracy Owners’ Manual—from the basic to the more advanced—which can be incorporated into university courses dealing with political science, public health, social work, environmental studies, urban studies and many other fields. To copy materials of interest visit www.democracyctr.org, where you can also preview the book.
The Democracy Center has an on-line electronic publication distributed on an occasional basis to more than 2000 nonprofit organizations, policy makers, journalists and others throughout the US and worldwide. To be added to the distribution list send an e-mail note to info@democracyctr.org.
The Global Activist’s Manual
40 Local Ways to Change the World
Edited by Mike Prokosch & Laura Raymond
Nation Books, New York
ISBN # 1-56025-401-7
Three hundred workers in North Carolina are newly jobless. Continued cutbacks by Southern giants like Bell South and International Paper will put thousands more North Carolina workers out of a job this year. “Local issues like layoffs, immigration, and family farm failures are part of a larger global picture that affects us all,” writes Mike Prokosch, co-editor of The Global Activist’s Manual.
In the globalization movement, the puppets and protests in Seattle were just the tip of the iceberg. What we don’t see are the stories and struggles of family farmers, immigrant laborers, and environmentalists. With 40 contributing writers from around the country, The Global Activist’s Manual takes us from Oakland, California, to Bangor, Maine—a journey that connects local economic concerns to international global trade rules. Case studies include:
Raleigh, NC United Students Against Sweatshops pushed the University of North Carolina to join the Workers Rights Consortium, an initiative to improve working conditions in garment factories around the world.
Greenback, TN The 32 Industrial Renewal Network set up meetings between laid-off workers in Tennessee with Mexican maquiladora workers who “took their jobs.”
Atlantic, Iowa PrairieFire, a rural advocacy organization, led farmer-to-farmer exchanges. Iowans traveled to Belgium, France, and Germany to find that local farmers there also struggled to survive in a corporate-controlled agribusiness market.
Boise, Idaho Native Forest Network started an education campaign in Chile and Mexico about the negative effects of large-scale logging on Idaho’s now depleted forest lands.
Barbara Briggs of the National Labor Committee writes that “the challenge of this generation is to figure out how to transform the global economy.” The Global Activist’s Manual offers case studies, lessons, strategies, and a big picture perspective to meet that challenge head on.
Mike Prokosch is the Global Coordinator for United for a Fair Economy and creator of United for a Fair Economy’s “Globalization for Beginners” workshop, which he has led for thousands of people all over the U.S. He has networked activists across the nation through a globalization clearinghouse at www.globalroots.net. United for a Fair Economy is a national, independent non-profit that puts a spotlight on the damaging consequences of growing economic inequality. Co-editor Laura Raymond works on prison reform in northern California.
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