Every Monday leading up to the election, McNally Jackson Seaport is hosting journalists and writers to help break down the events of the week, as it relates to their area of expertise for our Engaged Electorate series. These clarifying conversations aim to cut through the waves of information on our newsfeeds, and bring discussion forums to our in-person communities.

This week, we welcome legendary union organizer Marshall Ganz and Planned Parenthood Global Executive Director Lori Adelman. Drawing on decades of activism and on-the-ground experience, these two brilliant speakers will talk about value-driven work, and harnessing collective power for collective good. They will also discuss Ganz's new book People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal, which lays out not only how to organize with intention, but how to succeed. 

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About People, Power, Change: Organizing for Democratic Renewal:

At a moment when our democratic abilities seem to have eroded, and political, economic, and technological forces have weakened the capacity for collective action, People, Power, Change is a once-in-a-generation book for anyone who wants to create real and lasting change.

Marshall Ganz is one of the world's leading authorities on democratic organizing, and this book is the culmination of his decades of teaching, research, and work. In People, Power, Change, Ganz distills for students, practitioners, and activists the principles he has gleaned over the last half-century of creating collective action.

Ganz explores the forces, craft, and learned skill of organizing and provides an actionable framework for how to actually do it. He focuses the book on the creation and substance of relationships, the fuel of values and narrative, the resources and power of strategy, the necessity of structure, and the accountability of action. Across these five organizing ideas, Ganz weaves in his personal experiences from a lifetime of organizing in iconic social movements and campaigns to illustrate how collective action actually works and to build the practices and skills that must be developed to do it with intention and with success.

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This event is co-presented with the New York Working Families Party. Founded in 1998 by labor unions, the NYWFP is leading the fight for social, racial, and economic justice in NY state. By pushing for progressive legislation and by also training, recruiting and supporting progressive leaders to run for office, we form a unique bridge between progressive activism and electoral success. We’re a multi-racial, working class political party fighting for a New York for the many, not the few.

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Marshall Ganz is Rita T. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at the Harvard Kennedy School. He teaches, researches, and writes on the practice of leadership, organizing and action. His book Why David Sometimes Wins (Oxford University Press, 2009), earned the American Political Science Association's Michael J. Harrington Book Award. Ganz works with the Leading Change Network and dozens of other grassroots groups in the United States and around the world to develop critically needed organizing capacity. Introduced to organizing in the Mississippi Freedom movement, in 1965, Ganz joined Cesar Chavez to work to unionize California farmworkers, where he spent the next 16 years. Throughout the 1980s, Ganz led organizing programs in union, community, and electoral campaigns. Having dropped out of Harvard College in 1964, he returned to complete his undergraduate degree in 1992, an MPA in 1993, and a PhD in sociology in 2000. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in divinity by the Episcopal Divinity School in 2010.

Lori Adelman is the Executive Director of Planned Parenthood Global, the international arm of Planned Parenthood Federation of America with regional and country offices in Africa and Latin America. A strategist, advocate, and media maker with 15+ years of experience promoting reproductive, racial, and gender justice. Lori began her career as an intern at Human Rights Watch, and has worked at a host of international non-profits including the United Nations Foundation, Women Deliver, and the International Women’s Health Coalition. She most recently ran the communications, brand, and culture team at Global Fund for Women. In line with her Black feminist values, she loves to make global-to-local connections between the United States and the rest of the world. She's been named to The Root 100 list of the nation's most influential African Americans, and to the Forbes Magazine list of the "30 Under 30" successful people in media.

 

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