Occupation: Organizer

A trenchant history of community organizing and a must-readfor the next generation of organizers seeking to learn fromthe successes, failures, and contradictions of the past. The community organizing tradition is long overdue for reexamination. InOccupation: Organizer, scholar and activist Clément Petitjean traces that historyfrom its roots in the Progressive movement to its expansion and diverging pathsduring the social movements of the 1960s and '70s, when Saul Alinsky became themost popular "professional radical" in the US while groups like Student NonviolentCoordinating Committee, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Black Panthersrecast organizers as horizontal, antihierarchical spadeworkers-those who do thework as part of the community, rather than standing apart from it. But in the years since, the professionalization of organizing work has onlyincreased, despite the critiques. Only by grappling with its limitations and pitfalls,Petitjean insists, can we learn to build durable, effective organizations for change.