Start Here.
An organizing reading list by a friendly Minnesota Librarian
Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care
Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba
What fuels and sustains activism and organizing when it feels like our worlds are collapsing? Let This Radicalize You is a practical and imaginative resource for activists and organizers building power in an era of destabilization and catastrophe.
Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)
Dean Spade
As crises mount and multiply, governments fail to respond or exacerbate the problems. What are we to do? Mutual Aid is a radical handbook for anyone who grasps the severity of the global poly-crisis and wants a community-based means to fight back.
A free zine containing excerpts
Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism
Harsha Walia
In Border and Rule, one of North America’s foremost thinkers and immigrant rights organizers delivers an unflinching examination of migration as a pillar of global governance and gendered racial class formation.
On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century
Timothy Snyder
Originally published in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, the prescient ideas contained in On Tyranny prompted The Guardian to anoint Snyder “the leading interpreter of our dark times.” Now those ideas resonate more than ever. On Tyranny is a call to arms and a guide to resistance, with invaluable ideas for how we can preserve our freedoms in the uncertain years to come.
Organising: Start Here
Holly Hammond
The Organising topic in the Commons Social Change Library gathers a wide range of materials to inform the public in relation to community organising and related activities.
Organizing: People, Power, Change
This guide aims to support you in developing your capacity for effective community organizing. Our goal is to provide you with an introduction to organizing and encourage you to explore answers to the following questions: Why am I called to leadership in my community? How will I move others to join me? How will we develop strategy and structure our work together? And how will we achieve our goals?
Unbuild Walls: Why Immigrant Justice Needs Abolition
Silky Shah
Drawing from over twenty years of activism on local and national levels, this striking book offers an organizer’s perspective on the intersections of immigrant rights, racial justice, and prison abolition.
You Already Know How to Organize (episode of It Could Happen Here podcast)
Mia Won and James Stout
You already know how to organize, you just don't realize it. Mia and James discuss the skills and knowledge you already have from things as basic as having a dinner party that will allow you to start organizing today!
Understanding Fascism
Blood Red Lines: How Nativism Fuels the Right
Brendan O'Connor
In Blood Red Lines, journalist Brendan O’Connor investigates the recent history and politics of U.S. nativism, from the dark money-funded think tanks to the militant reactionaries doing battle with antifascists in the streets.
Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilization
Richard Seymour
With meticulous analysis and compelling storytelling, Richard Seymour delves into the ideologies fueling the contemporary right and distorting modern politics into something abhorrent and nihilistic. The battle against disaster nationalism is not just political; it is a struggle for our collective soul and the future of civilization.
Fascism or Genocide: How a Decade of Political Disorder Broke American Politics
Ross Barkan
A deeply reported look at how polarization and compounding crises, including the war in Gaza and threats to democracy, have reshaped American politics. Fascism or Genocide is New York Times Magazine writer Ross Barkan’s sweeping report on the 2024 US election and the decade of political upheaval leading up to it.
Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win
Clara Zetkin
Presented at a time when fascism was a new and little-understood phenomenon, Zetkin’s work proposed a sweeping plan for the unity of all victims of capitalism in an ideological and political campaign against the fascist danger.
How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good
Steve Phillips
How We Win the Civil War helps chart the way forward for progressives and people of color, arguing that Democrats must recognize the nature of the fight we’re in, which is a contest between democracy and white supremacy left unresolved after the Civil War.
No Is Not Enough: Resisting Trump's Shock Politics and Winning the World We Need
Naomi Klein
This timely, urgent book from one of our most influential thinkers offers a bracing positive shock of its own, helping us understand just how we got here, and how we can, collectively, come together and heal.
Why Bad Governments Happen to Good People
Danny Katch
Danny Katch indicts the hollowness of the US political system that led to Trump’s rise and puts forward a vision for a real alternative: a democracy that works for the people.
Immigrant Rights
Banned: Immigration Enforcement in the Time of Trump
Shoba Sivaprasad Wadhia
Banned combines personal interviews, immigration law, policy analysis, and case studies to answer the following questions: (1) what does immigration enforcement and discretion look like in the time of Trump? (2) who is affected by changes to immigration enforcement and discretion?; (3) how have individuals and families affected by immigration enforcement under President Trump changed their own perceptions about the future?; and (4) how do those informed about immigration enforcement and discretion describe the current state of affairs and perceive the future?
Behind Crimmigration: ICE, Law Enforcement, and Resistance in America
Felicia Arriaga
Arriaga contends that the long-term partnership between local sheriffs and immigration law enforcement in places like North Carolina has created a form of racialized social control of the Latinx community.
Discourses of Colonialism
Aimé Césaire
Aimé Césaire eloquently describes the brutal impact of capitalism and colonialism on both the colonizer and colonized, exposing the contradictions and hypocrisy implicit in western notions of "progress" and "civilization" upon encountering the "savage," "uncultured," or "primitive."
Empire of Borders: The Expansion of the US Border around the World
Todd Miller
As journalist Todd Miller reveals in Empire of Borders, the nature of U.S. borders has changed. These boundaries have effectively expanded thousands of miles outside of U.S. territory to encircle not simply American land but Washington's interests.
Immigration Matters: Movements, Visions, and Strategies for a Progressive Future
Edited by Ruth Milkman, Deepak Bhargava, and Penny Lewis
A provocative, strategic plan for a humane immigration system from the nation’s leading immigration scholars and activists
https://search.worldcat.org/title/1226804435
In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States
Ana Raquel Minian
A probing work of narrative history that reveals the hidden story of immigrant detention in the United States, deepening urgent national conversations around migration.
Living “Illegal”: The Human Face of Unauthorized Immigration
Marie Friedmann Marquardt, Timothy J Steigenga, and Philip J. Williams
Based on years of research into the lives of ordinary migrants, Living “Illegal” offers richly textured stories of real people—working, building families, and enriching their communities even as the political climate grows more hostile.
Migrating to Prison: America's Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants
César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández
Migrating to Prison takes a hard look at the immigration prison system’s origins, how it currently operates, and why.
No One is Illegal: Fighting Racism and State Violence on the U.S.-Mexico Border
Justin Akers Chacón and Mike Davis
Countering the chorus of anti-immigrant voices that have grown increasingly loud in the current political moment, No One is Illegal exposes the racism of anti-immigration vigilantes and puts a human face on the immigrants who risk their lives to cross the border to work in the United States.
Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Debunks the pervasive and self-congratulatory myth that our country is proudly founded by and for immigrants, and urges readers to embrace a more complex and honest history of the United States
Remaindered Life
Neferti Tadiar
Remaindered Life is a feminist analysis of the role that the disposable life-times (and not just labor) of dispossessed peoples play in contemporary modes of accumulation of wealth and power
Resisting Borders and Technologies of Violence
Edited by Mizue Aizeki, Matt Mahmoudi, and Coline Schupfer
The border regimes of imperialist states have brutally oppressed migrants throughout the world. To enforce their borders, these states have constructed a new digital fortress with far-reaching and ever-evolving new technologies. This pathbreaking volume exposes these insidious means of surveillance, control, and violence.
The Case for Open Borders
John Washington
A beautifully-written, broadly accessible, and forthright argument for a solution to the migration crisis: open the gates.
The Wretched of the Earth
Frantz Fanon
A landmark text for revolutionaries and activists, The Wretched of the Earth is an eternal touchstone for civil rights, anti-colonialism, psychiatric studies, and Black consciousness movements around the world.
Working Toward Whiteness: How America's Immigrants Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs
David R. Roediger
From ethnic slurs to racially restrictive covenants-the real estate agreements that ensured all-white neighborhoods-Roediger explores the mechanisms by which immigrants came to enjoy the privileges of being white in America.
Becoming an Activist
A Student Guide for Community Organizing
Itzel Calvo Medina
This guide is a collection of anecdotes and lessons the author has learned from being an undocumented, working-class woman of color who is also an organizer and a student, meant to inspire people to organize in their communities and develop the tools they need in the ongoing fight for liberation and freedom.
Against the Romance of Community
Miranda Joseph
Miranda Joseph explores sites where the ideal of community relentlessly recurs, from debates over art and culture in the popular media, to the discourses and practices of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations. She shows how community legitimates the social hierarchies of gender, race, nation, and sexuality that capitalism implicitly requires.
Ally is a Verb: A Guide to Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples
Rose LeMay
By actively listening to the history and current lived experiences of Indigenous peoples, you can take steps to address the inequities they continue to face. Author Rose LeMay notes that if you continually educate yourself, you will see many opportunities to be an ally.
Another World Is Possible: Lessons for America from Around the Globe
Natasha Hakimi Zapata
A new generation of Americans has declared that another world is possible. And yet, the stubborn problems of inequality, climate change, and declining health seem as intractable as ever. Where might different answers lie?
Beautiful Trouble Toolbox
Assembled by Andrew Boyd
An interconnected web of the key strategies and tactics that have inspired people-powered victories & upended the status quo.
Becoming Abolitionists: Police, Protests, and the Pursuit of Freedom
Derecka Purnell
Purnell invites readers to envision new systems that work to address the root causes of violence. Becoming Abolitionists shows that abolition is not solely about getting rid of police, but a commitment to create and support different answers to the problem of harm in society, and, most excitingly, an opportunity to reduce and eliminate harm in the first place.
Building Powerful Community Organizations: A Personal Guide to Creating Groups that Can Solve Problems and Change the World
Michael Jacoby Brown
Using stories and exercises from grassroots organizing experience, this book walks you through the steps of starting a new group or strengthening an old one - to build a better world.
Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha writes passionately and personally about disability justice, on subject such as the creation of care webs, collective access, and radically accessible spaces. She also imparts her own survivor skills and wisdom based on her years of activist work, empowering the disabled--in particular, those in queer and/or BIPOC communities--and granting them the necessary tools by which they can imagine a future where no one is left behind.
Confronting Injustice: Social Activism in the Age of Individualism
Umair Muhammad
Umair Muhammad argues that individual solutions like "buying green" are dead ends and that hope for the future lies in a radical expansion of democracy and the transformation of the economy from one based on profit to one that can meet human needs
Demand the Impossible!: A Radical Manifesto
Bill Ayers
A manifesto for movement-makers in extraordinary times, Demand the Impossible! urges us to imagine a world beyond what this rotten system would have us believe is possible.
Direct Action: Protest and the Reinvention of American Radicalism
L.A. Kauffman
A vibrant, groundbreaking history of American radicalism since the Sixties
Hell No: Your Right to Dissent in 21st-Century America
Michael Ratner and Margaret Ratner Kunstler
A snappy guide to reclaiming the right to dissent—perfect for activists, teachers, and anyone else who wants to exercise their constitutional rights—from the country’s leading constitutional rights group
Lessons from the Ferguson Uprisings
Jeff Ordower and Tory Russell
After the uprising in Ferguson, Jeff Ordower and Tory Russell reflect on comunity organizing in crisis
Map the Power Toolkit
Public Accountability Initiative
This toolkit has been designed to provide people with the tools to conduct power research and develop a research pod, or crew of folks, that have the skills to investigate local corporate bodies and organize against them. You can use this toolkit as a starting point for organizing around a common target with your neighbors and friends, or to strengthen the work of your organization!
Movement Memos (podcast)
Kelly Hayes
An ongoing call to action for movement work and mutual aid efforts around the country. Kelly Hayes connects with activists, journalists and others on the front lines to break down what’s happening in various struggles and what listeners can do to help.
Occupation: Organizer: A Critical History of Community Organizing in America
Clément Petitjean
A trenchant history of community organizing and a must-read for the next generation of organizers seeking to learn from the successes, failures, and contradictions of the past.
Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail
Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward
Have the poor fared best by participating in conventional electoral politics or by engaging in mass defiance and disruption? The authors of the classic Regulating The Poor assess the successes and failures of these two strategies as they examine, in this provocative study, four protest movements of lower-class groups in 20th century America.
Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World
Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce
How do underdogs, facing far stronger opponents, sometimes win? In the tradition of Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce’s Practical Radicals offers winning strategies, history, and theory for a new generation of activists.
Read This When Things Fall Apart: Letters to Activists in Crisis
Edited by Kelly Hayes
A bundle of letters to activists and organizers on the frontlines in catastrophic times from Let This Radicalize You co-author Kelly Hayes
Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals
Saul D Alinsky
First published in 1971 and written in the midst of radical political developments whose direction Alinsky was one of the first to question, this volume exhibits his style at its best. Like Thomas Paine before him, Alinsky was able to combine, both in his person and his writing, the intensity of political engagement with an absolute insistence on rational political discourse and adherence to the American democratic tradition.
Secrets of a Successful Organizer
Alexandra Bradbury, Mark Brenner, and Jane Slaughter
This book will show you how to fight back where you work and win. We've distilled the insights and know-how of generations of organizers into 47 secrets, illustrated with hundreds of real-life examples and practical tips. You'll learn how to identify the key issues in your workplace, build campaigns to tackle them, anticipate management's tricks and traps, and inspire your co-workers to stand together despite their fears.
Solidarity Is the Political Version of Love: Lessons from Jewish Anti-Zionist Organizing
Rebecca Vilkomerson and Alissa Wise
What does the politics of solidarity look like in practice, and how can left-wing organizations grow—in numbers and power—while remaining accountable to the broader movements of which they are a part?
Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy
Edited by Kim Klein
Stir It Up--written by renowned activist and trainer Rinku Sen--identifies the key priorities and strategies that can help advance the mission of any social change group.
The Social Change Map
Deepa Iyer
The Social Change Ecosystem Framework is a practical resource for individuals, organizations, and networks advancing justice, solidarity, and community care. The framework can help us clarify our values and identify the different roles that we can play to support our communities.
Undoing Border Imperialism
Harsha Walia
Drawing on the author’s experiences in No One Is Illegal, this work offers relevant insights for all social movement organizers on effective strategies to overcome the barriers and borders within movements in order to cultivate fierce, loving, and sustainable communities of resistance striving toward liberation.
We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice
Mariame Kaba
What if social transformation and liberation isn’t about waiting for someone else to come along and save us? What if ordinary people have the power to collectively free ourselves? In this timely collection of essays and interviews, Mariame Kaba reflects on the deep work of abolition and transformative political struggle.
Emergent Strategy : Shaping Change, Changing Worlds
adrienne maree brown
Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy is radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help designed to shape the futures we want to live. Change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns. Rather than steel ourselves against such change, this book invites us to feel, map, assess, and learn from the swirling patterns around us in order to better understand and influence them as they happen. This is a resolutely materialist “spirituality” based equally on science and science fiction, a visionary incantation to transform that which ultimately transforms us.
Unshakeable : trauma-informed mindfulness for collective awakening
Jo-Ann Rosen
Unshakeable offers a holistic system for gaining and maintaining the stability of mind needed for personal and social transformation, even in the midst of trauma—with simple, body-based exercises.