Power in Coalition

A new book about building strong labor-community coalitions featuring Chicago’s Grassroots Collaborative: Power in Coalition

The success of the Grassroots Collaborative’s Big Box Living Wage Campaign takes center stage in a new book about coalitions.

Power in Coalition is the first international study to examine successful coalitions between unions and community organizations in three countries. Along with the Collaborative’s living wage campaign it includes chapters on the public education coalition in Sydney and Toronto’s Ontario Health Coalition fight to save universal health care.

Written by Amanda Tattersall, an Australian union and community organizer, the book explores when and how labor-community alliances can simultaneously move a social change agenda, strengthen community-based organizations and renew the power of labor unions. It identifies important lessons for building strong coalitions that are useful for labor and community organizers. For instance, counter to the popular belief that big coalitions are strong coalitions – Power in Coalition argues that “less is more”. A smaller number of powerfully committed organizations will be more successful at sustaining social change and engaging union and community members than a highly broad and diverse coalition where there is little common interest.

Amanda argues success has to be multi-faceted and include not only the social change victories, but also the ability for a coalition to sustain relationships between partner organizations and develop the leadership skills and campaigning capacity of rank and file participants in the campaigning process.

The author, Amanda Tattersall, is an Australian organizer who has been a leader in the student movement and immigration movements as well as an elected official at in Sydney’s central labor council - Unions NSW. She spent two years living in the US researching the book. Over the past three years she has been building a coalition using the lessons she learned – called the Sydney Alliance, it is a diverse coalition of religious organizations, unions and community organizations set to publicly launch in 2011.

Power in Coalition was released in August 2010 by Cornell University Press. To find out more about it visit the book’s website. To purchase a copy from the Collaborative directly for $23 including shipping, click here: