CO/MOTION is a comprehensive organizing guide developed by the Alliance for Justice for youth who want to make social change. The guide covers a full range of topics and introduces them in a youth-friendly way, including cartoons, real-life stories, sample flyers, and Ask BUSTER, an advice column for new organizers. CO/MOTION presents easy, practical organizing tools ranging from running a campaign to the details of facilitating a meeting. Using the media, conflict resolution, fundraising, budgeting, and evaluation are also covered.

CO/MOTION borrows from many well-known organizing models such as the Alinsky style of organizing from the Midwest Academy. The model charts basic steps in organizing a winnable campaign in a community, such as planning an action. The guide also provides easy-to-use tools in strategizing, such as the power analysis chart (adapted from the Environmental and Economic Justice Project) and the Message Box, a tool for creating an effective message.

The guide provides limited information about more complex topics such as defining power and even conflict resolution. Both topics require in-depth training and discussion that a guide simply cannot address on its own. All organizers need a great deal of training, creativity, resource people in the community, and the ability to adapt their skills to their local environment. CO/MOTION is a perfect primer for the new organizer who is already getting the support s/he needs.

Reviewed by Lisa Nakamura. Lisa works with Asian Pacific American youth in the San Francisco Bay Area.

1998. 250 pp., $30 (student rates available)

Published by Alliance for Justice
2000 P Street, NW, Suite 712, Washington, DC 20036
phone: 202-822-6070
http://www.comotionmakers.org/manorder.html

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