CHANGE! A Student Guide to Social Action

Dr. Scott Myers-Lipton is Professor of Sociology at San José State University, and is the author of CHANGE! A Guide to Teaching Social Action (Routledge 2022), Ending Extreme Inequality: An Economic Bill of Rights Approach to Eliminate Poverty (Routledge 2015), Rebuild America: Solving the Economic Crisis through Civic Works (Paradigm 2009), and Social Solutions to Poverty: America’s Struggle to Build a Just Society (Paradigm 2006), as well as numerous scholarly articles on racism, education, and civic engagement. Along with his students, he co-founded the successful effort to raise the minimum wage in San José from $8 to $10, the modernization of San José’s business tax, and the Gulf Coast Civic Works Campaign, an initiative to develop 100,000 prevailing wage jobs for local and displaced workers after Hurricane Katrina. He has worked to help students develop solutions to poverty by taking them to live at homeless shelters, the Navajo and Lakota nations, the U.S. Gulf Coast, and Kingston, Jamaica. Scott Myers-Lipton is the recipient of the Manuel Vega Latino Empowerment Award, San José/Silicon Valley NAACP Social Justice Award, the Elbert Reed Award from the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Association of Santa Clara County, the Change Maker Award from the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits, the Teaching Effectiveness Award from the SJSU College of Social Sciences, and the SJSU Distinguished Service Award. In addition, he serves as an Advisory Board Member of the SJSU Human Rights Institute. He lives with his wife, Diane, in San José, and they are the proprietors of the Sequoia Retreat Center.

"The book is very effective, in part because the book is structured to align with the academic semester. Just three weeks into the semester, I can see that my students have already carried out as many actions as they accomplished all semester long last year without the book. The narrative is compelling, the examples from prior college student campaign successes are inspiring, and the focus on policy change is pushing my students to make clearer and more focused demands."Miriam Shakow, Associate Professor of Anthropology, The College of New Jersey"For the past decade, the Bonner Foundation has been exploring how to develop a social action track within our network of 65 plus colleges. With the book, CHANGE! A Student Guide to Social Action, we now have the vehicle to help the Bonner network take this next step. Faculty on all college campuses should consider adopting CHANGE! so as to provide an effective and powerful social action experience for their students, and skilled civic leaders for their communities."Robert Hackett, President, Bonner Foundation"CHANGE! A Student Guide to Social Action comes at a moment in U.S. history that demands the creation of ever more powerful social and economic justice change agents, a job that higher education has done poorly. It’s part roadmap, part compass, part toolkit. But above all, it’s a practical guide for faculty who want to foster a new generation of able and smart activists."Kent Glenzer, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Graduate School of International Studies and Management, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey

• List of IllustrationsStudent VictoriesPrefaceA Message to the Teacher1 Issue Development2 Setting the Tone 3 Change Theory4 Building Power5 Research6 Group Dynamics7 Strategy and Tactics8 Campaign Kickoff9 Campaign Plan10 Campaign Evaluation: Passing It On11 The Hero’s and Shero’s Journey