Practical Radicals: Seven Strategies to Change the World

by Deepak Bhargava, Stephanie Luce

Overview

A clear, expert, and inspiring guide to social change, based on case studies of grassroots movements that won, from two leading community and labor experts

“Our movements must seek and win governing power to achieve our visions for a more just society. This book is a vital resource for progressives who want to win.” —Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair, Congressional Progressive Caucus

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.

Based on interviews with leading organizers, this groundbreaking book describes seven strategies to bring about transformative change. It incorporates stories of organizations and movements that have won, including Make the Road NY, the St. Paul Federation of Educators, the welfare rights movement, the Working Families Party, New Georgia Project, Occupy Wall Street, 350.org, the Fight for 15, and Gay Men’s Health Crisis. Two overarching case studies anchor the book: the brilliant techniques used by enslaved people and their allies to end slavery, and the sinister but effective ways elites imposed our current system.

Practical Radicals offers insights on strategy used by business, military, and political elites, addresses the challenges of overcoming conflict within organizations and movements, and concludes with a discussion of how our movements must adapt to meet new challenges in the twenty-first century.

A book for activists, organizers, and anyone hoping to win the fight for a better society, Practical Radicals is a deeply informed resource designed to help us win on the big issues of our time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620978214
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	11/07/2023
Pages:	480
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Deepak Bhargava has been an organizer and campaigner for over thirty years. A former distinguished lecturer at CUNY, president and executive director of Community Change, and senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, he is now president of the JPB Foundation. The co-editor (with Ruth Milkman and Penny Lewis) of Immigration Matters and co-author (with Stephanie Luce) of Practical Radicals (both published by The New Press), he lives in New York City.
Stephanie Luce is a professor of labor studies and sociology at CUNY and the author of numerous books, including Labor Movements: Global Perspectives, as well as the co-author (with Robert Pollin) of The Living Wage and co-author (with Deepak Bhargava) of Practical Radicals (both from The New Press). She lives in New York City.

Editorial Reviews

2023-08-17
Two community organizers suggest strategies for advancing progressive agendas.

It’s long been observed that the American left fights battles, while the right fights wars. Wars are won by strategy, and “strategy can be taught, and strategists can get better with practice,” write Bhargava and Luce, who teach at the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. One way to get better is to drop assumptions about the moral superiority of one’s cause, abandoning purity of method along the way. It’s hard to forge a united front when there’s a tendency to splinter over the tiniest points of doctrine; when that happens, the “overdogs” win. The civil rights movement is remembered for marches and sit-ins, seemingly impromptu actions, but these were carefully coordinated even as the strategists behind them lobbied legislators, recruited allies, and propagandized to score moral victories. Disruption has its place, the authors write, but so does electoral change, as well as the “momentum model,” which blends action with organization building as organizers “seek out polarizing fights that attract a passionate minority of intense supporters and build a majority of passive support for the cause among the mass public.” Such movements are easily built, relatively speaking, thanks to social media, as was seen with Occupy Wall Street, but more useful still are movements based on mutual care, as with the network that formed around the AIDS epidemic. As the authors argue convincingly, a successful labor movement should step beyond questions of pay and hours and instead examine matters such as structural racism, educating while agitating. The authors close with many pages of workbook-like exercises—e.g., how to build a tenants’ rights network, strategies for reducing homelessness, and how to create a “coalition…between labor, community, faith, and student organizations to fight for a living wage.”

Progressive activists will want to dog-ear, underline, and pore over this well-conceived handbook.

Kirkus Reviews

Praise for Practical Radicals: 
"Progressive activists will want to dog-ear, underline, and pore over this well-conceived handbook."
—Kirkus Reviews

“Our movements must seek and win governing power to achieve our visions for a more just society. This book is a vital resource for progressives who want to win.”
—Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus

"Being right isn’t enough. This crucial resource provides a map of the strategies we need to achieve our freedom dreams."
—Cristina Jiménez, co-founder of United We Dream

“We now face an authoritarian coalition that is ruthless and strategic. Organizers must bring more rigor, depth, and a spirit of experimentation to our strategies if we are to prevail. This crucial book is for everyone who cares about the future of racial, gender, and economic justice and the future of democracy.”
—Dorian Warren, president of Community Change

“Bhargava and Luce bring us a deeply informed and comprehensive analysis of contemporary American social movements. Activists and organizers especially need to read this book, but so do the rest of us.”
—Frances Fox Piven

"People power on a massive scale is the only solution to the crises facing our planet. This important book helps us learn from the lineage of struggle we are part of and shows how we must innovate to meet today’s challenges."
—Varshini Prakash, co-founder and executive director, the Sunrise Movement

"This is the book I’ve been waiting for. It reminds progressives that we have a rich lineage of victories to draw on, from abolition to AIDS activism. And it shows us the multiple strategies we need to win today."
—Felicia Wong, president, the Roosevelt Institute

From the Publisher