Marching on

Inaugural director of the SNF Agora Institute and political science Professor Hahrie Han has studied for more than a decade how grassroots organizing and collective action produce social change, observing that movements frequently fail to win political power that disrupts the status quo. In this streamlined study, Han, SNF Agora postdoc Elizabeth McKenna, and Michelle Oyakawa look at successful organizing efforts in urban centers of Arizona, Minnesota, Ohio, and Virginia to offer some examples of how these movements broke through to substantive policy changes. Prisms isn't a road map, but the narrative glimpses it offers into how organizers work to get a seat at power's table are indispensable.