Abstract
Just about anyone active in labor education over the past forty years has heard of Playbook’s author, Eric Mann. From his role in SDS to his leadership of the successful fight to keep the Ford plant open in Los Angeles to his establishment of the Strategy Center and its Bus Riders’ Union project, Mann has been a leading creative thinker and actor on the labor left. The Strategy Center’s own extensive publishing and Mann’s regular radio show on Pacifica Network/KPFK have kept him and these projects in the public view. Playbook for Progressives, his latest project, is an attempt to distill his experience as an organizer (either workplace or community) into twelve roles plus sixteen pithy pieces of advice.
Naturally, he fails—as all attempts of this sort must fail to some extent. Organizing is just too complicated for sixteen (or sixty) recommendations to cover the topic. But he fails gloriously. Mann’s twelve roles, as many of us have taught in steward education classes for years, cover all the expected bases, though with more wit than many of us manage. They also include less commonly listed roles like: foot soldier, fund-raiser, and cadre, to go along with the traditional roles of recruiter, strategist, tactician, agitator, and political educator. Each role comes with three to five pages of description laced with relevant examples and enough detail to create some serious discussion if read critically. Mann does not shy away from controversy in this book, as he has not in his political life. For instance, some readers will not agree with Mann’s description of an organizer’s role as the long-term strategist and visionary of the organization, but with the “meat” he provides in his explanation, this idea could spark a great discussion.
In his list of actual characteristics (“qualities”), Mann does a masterful job of breaking down the skills every organizer should work to develop. In nearly fifty years of organizing activity myself, I have seen no better list. He clearly understands that these qualities can be developed—they are not inherited traits. His mixing of references to paid staff and volunteer organizers can get a bit confusing at times, but we can all agree that both are organizers and basically need the same characteristics to succeed.
One can quibble about some things left out, such as how best to choose organizers (elected, hired, or volunteer). Linked to these omissions is a lack of discussion on issues of internal democracy, the impact of outside funding, and a tendency to collapse all organizational work under the heading “organizing.”
While remarkably forthcoming and detailed about his examples drawn from organizations in recent and not-so-recent history (names and dates included), he is a bit coy about the work of radical organizations from which many of his exemplary organizers came. This is a rich history and readers could gain from Mann’s critical view of it. The absence of an index, though common these days, is unfortunate and makes it difficult to go back to a favorite quote or story.
Despite the quibbles, this book is a must-read for labor educators and anyone with the temerity to try to teach organizing in these times. The clear, provocative prose is just waiting for class discussion and then, perhaps a letter to the author. He might even read it on the air.