Calling All Community Organizers!

PACC is sponsoring an interesting event just south of us next week, focusing on the role a community can play in democracy and action.  A very interesting topic for our time in history.

Pratt Area Community Council

hosts Gabriel Thompson, Author of Calling All Radicals:

How Grassroots Organizers Can Save Our Democracy.

The event will take place on Oct. 6^th at 6 p.m. at the

Restaurant Flatbush Farm on 74^th St. Marks Ave., in Brooklyn

The Pratt Area Community Council (PACC), one of the most active not-for-profits in Brooklyn, which prioritizes low and medium income housing issues, is hosting a book reading by author and former PACC community organizer, Gabriel Thompson. Mr. Thompson was the Director of Organizing at PACC from 2002 to 2004. Mr. Thompson will be reading excerpts from his book Calling All Radicals and signing copies afterwards.

“Calling All Radicals is a marvelous book, which is both instructive and inspiring. If taken to heart by the coming generation, it could have a profound effect on the history of this country.” - Howard Zinn, author of A People’s History of the United States.

"Vivid and engaging, full of concrete stories about what it means to build democracy from the ground up." - Paul Loeb, author of Soul of a Citizen and The Impossible Will Take a Little While

About PACC (Prattarea.org):

PACC is known for Housing Development and Property Management. Our Home Services program encourages homeownership through a wide range of products and services. PACC offers workshops, access to lenders, mortgage and down-payment grant packages, foreclosure prevention counseling, outreach and education about predatory lenders, financial education workshops and counseling for debt management and savings plans. PACC also mobilizes residents and develop community leaders to confront broader concerns like the lack of affordable housing, gentrification, and displacement. PACC is the central hub that links low income tenants in the neighborhoods of Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, and Northwest Bedford Stuyvesant with community organizing skills, leadership development, and direct services. We organize and provide ongoing support to more than 30 tenant associations every year. PACC’s staff responded to more than 700 tenant inquiries just last year. Nearly 200 of those inquiries were evictions related to the displacement pressures that low-income tenants are experiencing throughout our neighborhoods. PACC takes a long-term approach to resolving tenant and community problems. Over the past year, PACC worked in 59 neighborhood buildings and with 625 tenants to form tenant associations and block associations and to build new community gardens.

About the Book:

Forty-seven million Americans without healthcare. Soaring economic inequality. Environmental racism. Slumlords and sweatshop owners. Every year, students leave high school and college eager to tackle the crises facing the United States. But how, exactly, does one go about building social justice movements and strengthening our democracy?

Calling All Radicals argues that we can reclaim our democracy in the old fashioned way through grassroots organizing. Beyond campaign sound bites and the occasional election, democracy is about focusing on the development of leaders, taking collective action, and building power among groups usually ignored and abused. In essence, organizers are democracy "scouts" who recruit formerly inactive, sometimes cynical people to play their part in our unfolding democratic experiment.

Using the organizing activities of the author as a backdrop, Calling All Radicals examines the practice, philosophy and history or organizing, with interviews from veteran activists and chronicles of successful campaigns like a group of inner-city teens who help push through a groundbreaking anti-lead poisoning law and immigrants who force hospitals to provide life-saving translation services.

With inspiring stories, resources to connect readers with employment and training opportunities, and real-world advice, Calling All Radicals is the perfect book for anyone interested in stepping into the world of organizing and activism. For more information, and to read an excerpt of the book, go to www.callingallradicals.org.

The event is free and light refreshments will be served. Please call 718-522-2613 ext. 28 to RSVP or send an email letter to Sujatha_Snyder@prattarea.org.