Wade Rathke shares almost 50 years of organizing experience with a look at the "nuts and bolts" of how ACORN was organized and able to build a mass membership and major victories in the United States, Canada, and around the world in plain language that can inform organizers, leaders, activists, and policy makers about how to change and build power.

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Building Power, Changing Lives: The Story of Virginia Organizing What does it take to build a successful, diverse, powerful grassroots organization in a state that once housed the Capitol of the Confederacy? Virginia Organizing has been working for 20 years to build power and create change all across the state of Virginia—starting in the farthest region from Richmond to empower directly affected people whose voices are often drowned out by systemic oppression and traditional political power structures. From a local campaign in 1998 to diversify an all-white jury pool in Lee County to Virginia Organizing leaders being arrested for immigration reform in Washington, D.C. in 2014, Building Power, Changing Lives: The Story of Virginia Organizing tells the story of how one growing organization is persistently working for long-term, sustainable change in Virginia. Ruth Berta and Amanda Leonard Pohl. Published 2015.

Global Grassroots is a new compilation edited by ACORN founder, and Social Policy editor Wade Rathke. With essays from organizers new and old Global Grassroots looks at the emerging consensus - and emerging differences - in the field of organizing.

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In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, urban planners, pundits and corporate power-brokers wrote off the iconic Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans as uninhabitable for its African-American community, who were denied the right of return to the homes they had lived in for generations. Two years on the Lower Ninth, the touchstone for every debate about the city's future, has become a unique example of success in a city still struggling to reconstruct itself. In this agenda-setting new book, Wade Rathke tells the story of this popular struggle against seemingly insurmountable odds, from the perspective of those at the heart of the fight to save New Orleans for its people.

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The federal government may have failed the poor, argues organizer and ACORN founder Wade Rathke, but there is another way: wealth-building. In Citizen Wealth, Rathke shows how food stamps, unemployment insurance, and tax relief offer temporary, stop-gap fixes but dont address the systemic problems that keep people from building up the assets they need to create a stable life for themselves and their families. A real, workable plan to end poverty, Rathke argues, requires a two-pronged approach.

A new collection of essays by organizers, brought to you by Social Policy Magazine. Lessons from the Field captures the unique nature of organizing in rural communities, and outlines successful campaigns and strategies with national impact. The essays include hard-earned stories of reflection and experience from lifelong organizers while bringing together a diverse range of voices from across America to examine the challenges and opportunities for building progressive movements in the "red states."

Campaigns: Lessons from the Field outlines how issue-based campaigns build peoples’ power and deliver victories, with sections on Jobs, Income, Health, Housing, Rights and Safety, Taxes and City Services, Land and Resources, and Development.

Essays include contributions from Nik Belanger, Lew Finfer, Mike Miller, Drew Astolfi, Claire Gallagher, Bill Pastreich, Steven Kest, Judy Duncan, LeeAnn Hall, Zach Polett, John Anderson, Marva Burnet, Davin Cardenas, Adrien Roux, Randy Shaw, Dine’ Butler, David Tozzo, Beth Butler, Ruth Rinehart, Joe Szakos, Emily Bloch, Nick Ballard, Anny Cullum, Robert Fisher, Fred Brooks, Daniel Russell, Eloise Maulet, Dominic Moulden,
Gregory Squires, Randy Cunningham, Darcy Pumphrey, Kenneth Reardon, Antonio Raciti, and Wade Rathke, who also served as editor for the volume.

If you want to move an issue to a solution, you need a campaign and Campaigns: Lessons from the Field details the way it is done by community organizers and community organizations every day working in field.

Professor Kenneth Reardon in Building Bridges tells the 10-year saga of building partnerships between a university in Illinois and various community groups in East St. Louis, which transformed their neighborhoods and the lives of students and participants against all obstacles.

If you want to build effective partnerships between academia and community, you need Building Bridges: Community and University Partnerships in East St. Louis. Paperback is $20 (plus shipping).