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Mike Miller was well respected by his fellow field secretaries in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee; he has since become known as one of the most experienced community organizers in the nation.
-- Howard Zinn, author, A People's History of the United States.

Full of anecdotes and lore about organizing, Miller is one of the key theorists of the community organizing movement…His writings in the early 1970s were widely reproduced and read by a new generation of young organizers who came from Sixties protest efforts.
-- Community Is Possible: Repairing America’s Roots, by Harry Boyte

“Full of anecdotes and lore about organizing, Miller is one of the key theorists of the community organizing movement…His writings in the early 1970s were widely reproduced and read by a new generation of young organizers who came from Sixties protest efforts.”
-- Community Is Possible: Repairing America’s Roots, Harry Boyte.

“MCO was an important organization during its heyday of 35 to 40 years ago. Many [San Francisco] Archdiocese-related organizations were members…As a newly ordained priest, I remember the excitement and sense of hope that the coalition engendered in the community. That hope empowered many of us to continue to struggle for affordable housing and quality of life issues.”
-- Most Reverend William J. Justice, Auxiliary Bishop of San Francisco, The Archdiocese of San Francisco. From his Greetings to the 40th Anniversary celebration of MCO's Founding Convention, October 4, 2008.

“The largest urban popular mobilization in San Francisco's recent history took place between 1967 and 1973 in the predominantly Latino Mission District…At the peak of its power, in 1970-71, the MCO probably involved up to 12,000…The MCO was, between 1967 and 1973, one of the most successful examples of an Alinsky-style community movement, showing a remarkable capacity to combine grassroots organization with institutional social reform….[Mike Miller was] an experienced community organizer, trained by Saul Alinsky himself.”
-- The City and the Grassroots, Manuel Castells.

“Although the Redevelopment Agency [San Francisco's urban renewal agency] was able to buy up and knock down many blocks of the Western Addition, it was not able to do so in 1968 in another low-income area it had targeted, a Latino neighborhood to the south of the business district known as the Mission District, long the home to the new immigrants who do the janitorial and other service work for those in the central business district. Instead, the Redevelopment Agency drew back in the face of organized opposition from the Mission Coalition Organization….”
-- Why San Francisco Is Different: Progressive Activists…, G. William Domhoff.

“MCO came to encompass more than one hundred churches and block clubs and homeowner, tenant, senior citizen, youth, community social agency, small merchant, and other groups. Their tactics embraced militant marches and demonstrations—rent strikes, sit-ins, and other disruptive actions—mixed with lobbying based on careful research.”
-- City for Sale: The Transformation of San Francisco, Chester Hartman.

“In the late 1960s, the Mission Coalition Organization (MCO) developed in response to the threat of urban renewal, which had already ravaged Chinatown, the Western Addition, and the Fillmore District. The MCO represented over 100 Mission organizations, including local churches, recreation clubs, political groups, block clubs, merchants, and ethnic and cultural organizations…[T]he MCO probably involved up to 12,000 people…and largely succeeded in halting the urban renewal process in the Mission…In addition to preventing urban renewal, the MCO established a legacy of grassroots organizing and community action which continues in the Mission today.”
-- Gentrification in San Francisco’s Mission District: Indicators and Policy Recommendations, Simon Velasquez Alejandrino, Summer, 2000 University of California Masters' Thesis.

Mike Miller has captured the wisdom and experience of people who built a powerful organization that improved the quality of life for their families. He reminds us how organizing makes democracy work.
-- John Baumann, S.J., Executive Director, PICO National Network.

This book challenges today’s community organizers to learn from the past. Agree or disagree with its conclusions, but read it!
-- Martha Prescod Noonan, former SNCC Field Secretary, co-editor, Hands On The Freedom Plow.

Anyone interested in knowing what community organizing is would do well to read this book. Mike Miller is a well-known and respected organizer. He spans the experience from the civil rights movement to today. With today's interest and focus on community organizing, A Community Organizer’s Tale is timely and important.
-- Arnie Graf, Member, National Executive Team, Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).

For more than three decades, Mike Miller has been one of the leading lights of community organizing in the United States. While the results of successful organizing campaigns get media coverage, the backstage hard work – set into a larger social and historical context – rarely do. This book is therefore an important contribution to both academics interested in the topic of grassroots mobilization, and to those “in the experience” who will benefit from vivid and textured accounts of strategies that have worked, and failed.
-- Troy Duster, Director, Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge, New York University.
Former President, American Sociological Association. Former Director, Center for the Study of Social Change, University of California.

Community organizing played a major role in the political formation of President Barack Obama. As a young man, he was trained in the Saul Alinsky model of community organizing. Very few people in this country actually understand what it is. Mike Miller is both a practitioner and a theoretician of the art and science of community organizing. He became one of the foremost experts in the Saul Alinsky model...
-- Gregory Galluzzo, Executive Director, Gamaliel Foundation.

This last election showed the country what a community organizer can do. For those who want to understand what it is really like, how to do it and learn from a master, read this book. It is the real thing. He brings clarity, insight and large lessons from the specifics of his experience organizing in the Mission District in San Francisco. This is a classic case study with relevance to the battles we still face today. Thanks, Mike, for writing it.
-- Heather Booth, Founding Director, now President, The Midwest Academy.

If you were a minister or priest in Nebraska during the mid 1980s and met Mike Miller during those farm crisis times you were challenged to live your faith’s commitment to social and economic justice by becoming part of a community organizing effort. I appreciate his genius in this work and his book which is full of valuable lessons.
-- Rev. Richard Turner, former Executive Director of Ministry and Assistant to the Bishop of the Nebraska United Methodist Conference (retired).

A Community Organizer’s Tale is an excellent "insiders" history of an important transition organization by a skilled and seasoned veteran of that time. Mike Miller and MCO were at the crossroads of civil rights, the war on poverty, and the emerging engagement with community. He loads the book full of insights into organizing and the people who make it happen, while refusing to sand down the rough spots. This is a must-read book--not just for organizers but anyone who wants to understand how to build community and communities in difficult times.
-- Wade Rathke, Chief Organizer, ACORN International.

An absolutely must read for those interested in community and labor organizing.
-- Herb Mills, Former Business Agent and Secretary-Treasurer, International Longshore & Warehouse Union (ILWU), Local 10.

“Organizer’s Tale” takes us on an intimate journey through the world of community organizing. Miller puts the icing on the cake with his argument against “community control. A community organization is meant to be in the crowd with the people shouting, “The emperor has no clothes!” Not parading down the street playing the role of emperor.
-- Shel Trapp, Coordinator (ret), National Training & Information Center, author Dynamics of Organizing.

Valuable first-hand insights into building an effective community organization, engaging neighborhood residents in shaping their communities, providing power and hope to people conditioned to feel powerless, and the downsides of well-intended government programs. The author's candor and self-reflection are a refreshing contrast to the usual ‘I was there and made a difference’ accounts of urban planners, politicians and community organizers.
-- Robert D. Haas, Board Chairman, former President and CEO of Levi Strauss & Co., Mayor Joseph Alioto appointee to the Mission Model Cities Program.

[Y]our book on the Mission Coalition Organization is an outstanding piece of writing, exposition and lesson-drawing. Congratulations on your excellent work!
-- Professor S.M. Miller, ret. Senior Fellow, The Commonwealth Institute; Board of Directors member, Poverty & Race Research and Action Council.

In this time of multiple crises facing the world, nothing is more important than powerful grassroots organizing for social and economic justice and democratic participation. Your book is filled with lessons for today's organizers, students, scholars, civic and religious leaders and concerned public.
-- Elizabeth (Betita) Martinez. author, 500 Years of Chicana Women’s History, editor, Letters From Mississippi, former NATION Books & Arts Editor.

A compelling narrative, this is a sympathetic, but tough minded, analytical assessment based on deep experience with community organizing.
-- Joe Sneed, Professor Emeritus, Liberal Arts and International Studies, Colorado School of Mines. Principal investigator, Joint Mission Coalition - Stanford University Community Development Study.

…a gripping read--an excellent combination of broad political sweep and illuminating detail. For anyone who wants to get their hands on an insider's story of community organizing in the 1960s and 1970s and gain insight into what worked, what didn't, and what from that experience may be useful today, this is an important book.
-- Max Elbaum, author, Revolution in the Air, staff member, War Times/Tiempo de Guerras.

Anyone who has served in elective office, been an inner-city VISTA, social worker, teacher or poverty program worker, or worked in city hall trying to make government more responsive to the needs and interests of “the poor” will learn from this well-told story of how government looks from the outside to those who are trying to change it and make it more responsive.
-- Michael McCone, Director, San Francisco Model Cities Program, 1970 - 1972. Executive Director, California Historical Society, 1990 - 1999.

Students of American social history need to learn the wide range of community organizing endeavors during this dynamic period of social expression and change. Mike Miller's tale conveys the daily hard work, personal stories, and organizational tensions that mobilized and united voices in neighborhoods and communities. This important perspective should be widely engaged in today's climate where the historic values of community organizing are breathing new air and being refreshed.
-- Janet E. Furness, Associate Professor of Social Work, Union University.

It's a great story, offering important lessons for all of us who want a more just society. [It] describes what to do and what not to do to create collective power. It also illustrates problems, such as “macho male” organizing culture, that feminism highlighted with its emphasis on organizational dynamics, cooperative leadership models and the importance of including women at all levels of decision-making.
-- Jo Freeman, feminist scholar, activist, political consultant. Author, The Politics of Women’s Liberation, At Berkeley In The Sixties: Education of An Activist.

I found your 'organizer's tale' fascinating and extremely useful. You have managed to integrate a wonderfully rich historical description with an insightful organizer's analysis of the dynamics of movement building. It is a great case study for a workshop or course on community organizing, and should be of interest to anyone who cares about social and economic justice in our nation's cities.
-- Michael Eisenscher, National Coordinator, US Labor Against the War. Labor Studies Instructor, Laney College.

As the [former] executive director of an association of over 250 foundations and philanthropies from all across the United States, I know how valuable this book will be. I know of no other book on community organizing that effectively tells the exciting story of a community organizing process and also explains the political forces at play both in and on the community organization.
-- Spence Limbocker, former Executive Director, Neighborhood Funders Group. Former Associate Director, Catholic Campaign for Human Development.

This book will have strong appeal for a broad range of people in both academia and community practice. It will make an excellent second text for both undergraduate and graduate courses in fields such as social work, sociology, urban studies and political science. Once it is published, I plan to use it in my own community organizing course.
-- Lee H. Staples, MSW, PhD, Clinical Professor, Boston University School of Social Work. Author, Roots To Power: A Manual for Grassroots Organizing.

* Titles and organizations for identification purposes only.

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