A revealing and practical guide to community organizing that pulls together the accumulated lessons, strategies, and secrets from Si Kahn's 45 years of experience at the forefront of many civil rights, labor rights, and other social justice battles. About Si Kahn Si Kahn has worked for over 40 years as a civil rights, labor and community organizer and musician in the Southern United States. Si is the executive director and founder of Grassroots Leadership, a non-profit organization that advocates for several causes, including prison reform, improved immigration detention policies, and violence prevention. Most of the profits from Kahn's musical performances benefit this group. He has also been involved with Save Our Cumberland Mountains, an environmentalist group opposed to strip mining in Appalachia. Si performs regularly at concerts and festivals throughout North America and Europe. Si's music has been praised by people ranging from Mary Chapin Carpenter ("Keep writing your wonderful songs, the world needs them so much") to Studs Terkel ("Si Kahn fuses life with song"). Feature articles and reviews have appeared in the "Washington Post," the "New York Times," "USA Today," "Rolling Stone," "Bluegrass Unlimited," "Performing Songwriter," "Dirty Linen," "The Progressive," "The New Republic" and "Sing Out!." His songs have been translated into Welsh, Hebrew, Swedish, French, and Drents, a Dutch dialect. His grandfather Gabriel Kahn, his mother Rosalind Kahn, and his father Benjamin Kahn, a rabbi, taught Si the rudiments of rhythm and harmony as a child. Si is also a member of Local 1000 of the American Federation of Musicians, AFL-CIO; a trustee of the Labor Heritage Foundation; and the official poet laureate of the North Carolina labor movement by unanimous vote of the convention in 1986. Originally from State College, Pennsylvania, Kahn moved to the south as an activist in the Civil Rights Movement. Si Kahn and his wife, Elizabeth Minnich, live in Charlotte, North Carolina. |