This second edition of Organizing for Power and Empowerment draws on extensive research to portray how social-action organizations have evolved over the past twenty-five years, building power in the struggle for social and economic justice. It explores how organizers increasingly target corporate influence and attacks on democracy. Their strategies and theories of change confront racial, gender, and economic inequity and fight pervasive intersectional injustice.

The book tells the stories of a variety of geographically and racially diverse organizations and features the voices and experiences of more than forty organizers working across a range of issues. The organizers describe campaigns that activate people around issues that matter in their daily lives-work schedules, bail reform, schools, voting, and affordable housing-and connect them to broader topics such as racial justice, immigration, climate change, criminal justice, and workers' rights. They share their thoughts on building community organizations and empowering ordinary citizens to become leaders. The book underscores the leadership of Black Americans, other people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ people as they lead campaigns to address the disparate effects of inequality faced by their communities. It provides detailed analysis of new organizational structures and change strategies, including electoral activism, statewide organizing, and community-labor coalitions. This book sheds important new light on foundational organizing practices and the challenges and opportunities for progressive social action today.

Jacqueline Mondros is professor and dean emeritus of Stony Brook University School of Social Welfare and a past president of the National Association of Deans and Directors of Social Work. With more than twenty-five publications in community organizing, including coauthoring the first edition of Organizing for Power and Empowerment (Columbia, 1994), she has organized in Philadelphia, New York, Miami, and Los Angeles.

Joan Minieri is a longtime leader in the field of social action and has organized in New York and nationally. She is the coauthor of Tools for Radical Democracy: How to Organize for Power in Your Community (2007).