FEATURED ITEM:
	Organize! Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Manual for Activists

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BOOKS

Organize! Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Manual for Activists If you want to learn the nuts and bolts of direct-action organizing, start here. The Midwest Academy, and its hugely successful program training progressive organizers, has been developing and using this curriculum for years. The third edition is considerably expanded and updated. It covers the waterfront—how to build coalitions, use the media, work with unions and religious organizations, raise money and much more. At its core, it's really all about the techniques ordinary people can use to win more power and create some of the changes they deserve. Available from The Union Shop Online.™

Tin Men There's a whole lot more to tin men than the character in the Wizard of Oz. For centuries, sheet metal workers and the artisans who preceded them have used their materials to portray various human figures—"robot, clown, space cadet, knight, cowboy, athlete," as the retired shipwright and carpenter Archie Green describes it. A highly respected and much-beloved folklorist, Green happened to see a couple of tin men on exhibit at the San Francisco Craft and Folk Art Museum several years ago. They caught his imagination. This history and description of tin men, enriched by Green's many friendships and contacts among Sheet Metal Workers, is the fascinating result. Available from The Union Shop Online.™

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism Where most of us see disaster and upheaval, global capitalism and its minions see golden opportunities. That's the shrewd and terrifying insight of journalist Naomi Klein. She describes how after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans saw its public schools fall victim to privately run charter schools. Following the military coup in Chile, economist Milton Friedman advised dictator Augusto Pinochet on strategies for imposing a market economy there. The list is painfully long, from Iraq to Poland to China. As Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz wrote, "Klein provides a rich description of the political machinations required to force unsavory economic policies on resisting countries, and of the human toll." Available from The Union Shop Online.™

FILM

The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck didn't believe The Grapes of Wrath—maybe the most powerful novel of social consciousness ever written by an American—could be made into a film. Luckily, he was wrong. This story of Dust Bowl farmers who lost their land and made their way West during the Depression was both a popular success and an artistic milestone. The New York Times praised it as "destined to be recalled...whenever great motion pictures are mentioned." Woody Guthrie was inspired by it to write his most famous songs, the "Dust Bowl Ballads." After 68 years, it will still enchant and haunt and inspire you as few films can. Available from powells.com.

CD

We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions Johnny Cash once called Pete Seeger "a good American as I've ever met." Listen to this album and you'll understand in a new way what Cash had in mind. Bruce Springsteen covers Seeger's songbook of classical American folk tunes—but instead of redoing them in the spare style of the master, Springsteen brings together musicians playing accordion, fiddle, washboard, horns and more in a wonderful and rollicking gospel/blues/R&B/folk hootenanny. They perform songs like "John Henry," "We Shall Overcome" and "Froggy Went A-Courtin'" in ways you've never heard before. Available from amazon.com.