Why Organizers Fail: The Story of a Rent Strike

Why Organizers Fail: The Story of a Rent Strike by Harry Brill offers a rare inside look at the dynamics of grassroots political action and the difficulties of sustaining power among the poor. Based on the author’s close association with a fourteen-month rent strike in “Presentation City,” the book documents how four black militants—steeped in the rhetoric of Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and the Black Panther Party—organized tenants to resist deteriorating conditions in public housing. Wh...