Szakos began his work in eastern Kentucky working on housing development in David (Floyd County) in 1979. He worked as a reporter for the Martin Countian in Inez, Kentucky in 1980–81, and field coordinator for the Appalachian Alliance in 1982. In December 1982 he became coordinator of the Kentucky Fair Tax Coalition (KFTC), which became Kentuckians For The Commonwealth in 1988. After ten years with KTFC, Szakos spent a year in 1993-94 as director of a community organizing project in Nagykovácsi, Hungary. He returned to the U.S. in 1994 to become the founding executive director of the Virginia Organizing Project. [1] In August 2010 the group shortened its name to Virginia Organizing. [2]
In a 2005 paper Szakos emphasized the need for a collective recruitment plan for community organizers. He has completed two books on community organizing with his wife, Kristin Layng Szakos. One book (We Make Change, 2007) is based on 81 interviews with community organizers across the country about what they do and why they do it. The other (Lessons from the Field, 2008) is a compilation of essays written by experienced rural community organizers, sharing lessons they have learned.
In 2009, Szakos was arrested by his own health insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross, after he tried to ask why his organization's premiums had risen 14%. [3]
The Highlander Research and Education Center, formerly known as the Highlander Folk School, is a social justice leadership training school and cultural center in New Market, Tennessee. Founded in 1932 by activist Myles Horton, educator Don West, and Methodist minister James A. Dombrowski, it was originally located in the community of Summerfield in Grundy County, Tennessee, between Monteagle and Tracy City. It was featured in the 1985 documentary film, You Got to Move. Much of the history was documented in the book Or We'll All Hang Separately: The Highlander Idea by Thomas Bledsoe.
James Morris Lawson Jr. is an American activist and university professor. He was a leading theoretician and tactician of nonviolence within the Civil Rights Movement. During the 1960s, he served as a mentor to the Nashville Student Movement and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He was expelled from Vanderbilt University for his civil rights activism in 1960, and later served as a pastor in Los Angeles for 25 years.
John Adair was an American pioneer, slave trader, soldier, and politician. He was the eighth Governor of Kentucky and represented the state in both the U.S. House and Senate. A native of South Carolina, Adair enlisted in the state militia and served in the Revolutionary War, during which he was twice captured and held as a prisoner of war by the British. Following the War, he was elected as a delegate to South Carolina's convention to ratify the United States Constitution.
Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) is a grassroots community organization under the original name of the Kentuckian Fair Tax Coalition. It began when 26 people from 12 countries met in Hazard on August 17, 1981. Though statewide, KFTC has deep roots in eastern Kentucky where coal mining remains the dominant industry. KFTC is a multi-issue organization of working-class families, with a history of working for land reform, environmental justice, and low income assistance programs. In the 1980s, KFTC was part of a campaign to end strip mining using the broad form deed and has since continued to provide support to the Appalachian region. Joe Szakos was one of the founding organizers.
The Brick House was a social center in Louisville, Kentucky that was inspired by and modeled upon ABC No Rio in New York City. The Brycc House was organized in "Do-It-Yourself" (DIY) volunteer working groups to support community based projects. The project contained groups in areas that worked with art, music, bike repairs, radio station, photography, internet access, comics, gardening, power saving practices, entrepreneurship, a lending library, a free clothing closet, and maintenance of the building.
James Luther Bevel was a minister and leader of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement in the United States. As a member of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and then as its Director of Direct Action and Nonviolent Education, Bevel initiated, strategized, and developed SCLC's three major successes of the era: the 1963 Birmingham Children's Crusade, the 1965 Selma voting rights movement, and the 1966 Chicago open housing movement. He suggested that SCLC call for and join a March on Washington in 1963. Bevel strategized the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, which contributed to Congressional passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Kentucky was a southern border state of key importance in the American Civil War. It officially declared its neutrality at the beginning of the war, but after a failed attempt by Confederate General Leonidas Polk to take the state of Kentucky for the Confederacy, the legislature petitioned the Union Army for assistance. Though the Confederacy controlled more than half of Kentucky early in the war, after early 1862 Kentucky came largely under Union control. In the historiography of the Civil War, Kentucky is treated primarily as a southern border state, with special attention to the social divisions during the secession crisis, invasions and raids, internal violence, sporadic guerrilla warfare, federal-state relations, the ending of slavery, and the return of Confederate veterans.
Amanuel Melles is a Canadian community organizer, a scientist and the current Executive Director of the Network for the Advancement of Black Communities.
Virginia Organizing, formerly known as the Virginia Organizing Project (VOP), is a non-partisan grassroots organization in the state of Virginia. Founded in 1995, Virginia Organizing brings people together to address issues that affect the quality of life in their local communities. Notably, Virginia Organizing engages in community organizing that is both multi-issue and multi-constituency, with a focus on people who have traditionally had little voice in society.
Appalachian Volunteers (AV) was a non-profit organization engaged in community development projects in central Appalachia that evolved into a controversial community organizing network, with a reputation that went "from self-help to sedition" as its staff developed from "reformers to radicals," teaching things from Marx, Lenin and Mao, in the words of one historian, in the brief period between 1964 and 1970 during the War on Poverty.
David Walls is an activist and academic who has made significant contributions to Appalachian studies and to the popular understanding of social movements. He is professor emeritus of sociology at Sonoma State University (SSU) in California, where he was dean of extended education from 1984 to 2000.
Gerald Anthony Neal is an American politician and attorney. He is a Democratic Party member of the Kentucky Senate, representing District 33 since January 1989.
The Journey of Reconciliation, also called "First Freedom Ride", was a form of nonviolent direct action to challenge state segregation laws on interstate buses in the Southern United States. Bayard Rustin and 18 other men and women were the early organizers of the two-week journey that began on April 9, 1947. The participants started their journey in Washington, D.C., traveled as far south as North Carolina, before returning to Washington, D.C.
The following is an alphabetical list of articles related to the United States Commonwealth of Kentucky.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the United States Commonwealth of Kentucky:
Social Policy is a quarterly magazine focused on labor and community organizing around the world. Its contributors are a mixture of academics, activists, leaders, and organizers.
Occupy Charlottesville was a social movement in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, that began on October 15, 2011, in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street and the rest of the Occupy movement. The downtown Lee Park encampment was taken down on November 30, 2011, when 18 members of the movement were arrested and charged with trespassing. The group failed to establish a campsite after the eviction, although they continued to hold their 'General Assemblies' and participate in targeted actions for several months thereafter. The group's protests target social and economic injustice both locally and nationally.
The RECLAIM Act was simultaneously introduced in the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives on March 27, 2017 by Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Representative Hal Rogers (R-KY-5). The bill authorizes the use of funds generated by Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 (SMCRA) to be invested in communities adversely affected by the cessation of mining operations in the area.
Joseph “Joe” Richard Wright was a member of the Kentucky State Senate from 1976 to 1992 representing the state’s 5th district. From 1981 to 1992 he was the Majority Floor Leader for the Democratic Party.
Leonard Woods was an African-American man who was lynched by a mob in Pound Gap, on the border between Kentucky and Virginia, after they broke him out of jail in Whitesburg, Kentucky, on November 30, 1927. Woods was alleged to have killed the foreman of a mine, Herschel Deaton. A mob of people from Kentucky and Virginia took him from the jail and away from town and hanged him, and riddled his body with shots. The killing, which became widely publicized, was the last in a long line of extrajudicial murders in the area, and, prompted by the activism of Louis Isaac Jaffe and others, resulted in the adoption of strong anti-lynching legislation in Virginia.
