Linda Stout is the author two books, numerous articles and a variety of other resources. Please browse below to see a selection of Linda’s best resources.
In far too many organizational meetings, equal speaking opportunity seldom results in equal say. Factors such as race, class, and personal history too often inhibit open dialogue within and among groups, which can lead to a sense of disenfranchisement within the organization, and subsequently, disillusionment with the movement.
Collective Visioning is the first visioning method to address these hurdles in the organizing process and to fully enable members to share their opinions without hesitation. Linda Stout uses her background and her own personal experience of marginalization within the organizing community to show how trainers can be more mindful of the diversity of their members as they strive toward a common goal.
Bridging The Class DivideAgain and again social change movements – on matters from the environment to women’s rights – have been run by middle-class leaders. But in order to make real progress toward economic and social change, poor people – those most affected by social problems – must be the ones to speak up and lead.
Bridging The Class Divide tells the inspiring story of Linda Stout’s life as the daughter of a tenant farmer, as a self-taught activist, and as a leader in the progressive movement. It also gives practical lessons on how to build real working relationships between people of different income levels, races, and genders. This book will inspire and enrich anyone who works for change in our society.
From Linda Stout’s 2011 book Collective Visioning, How Groups Can Work Together for a Just and Sustainable Future comes six exercises you may use for your online visioning work. Updated for use in an on-line environment and available free to use, with proper credit and acknowledgement of source, for your work in creating a just and sustainable world. Click here for the exercises.
All Spirit in Action publications are free to download and use as long as proper credit and acknowledgement of source is made in that use. This right does not extend to Bridging the Class Divide and Other Lessons For Grassroots Organizing by Linda Stout or Collective Visioning: How Groups Can Work Together for a Just and Sustainable Future by Linda Stout.
Take 10 Workbook
In 2021, we completed this 52-page TAKE 10 Workbook to use in conjunction with our trainings. The workbook highlights 11 exercises to deepen and strengthen a group’s civic engagement, issue-based work and leadership. The exercises are designed to help groups think more deeply about their organizing and how to build leadership with an engaged and committed group of volunteers.
In it, we share strategies for strengthening a group’s organizing work around issues that affect their community. From goals to messaging to avoiding burn-out, we discuss the challenges they face. Throughout our training and coaching process and now with this workbook, we support them to find leaders and volunteers so they can win on the issues they care about most.
Please feel free to share this workbook with others.
To purchase a print copy of the TAKE 10 Workbook, please visit here.
Please share this workbook with others.
Download the Take 10 Workbook here.
El Libro de Trabajo TAKE 10
El libro de trabajo TAKE 10 está diseñado para ayudarle a pensar más profundamente y creativamente en su trabajo para justicia social. Ofrecemos once ejercicios detallados para fortalecer su trabajo organizativo y el liderazgo. Los ejercicios muestran cómo construir un grupo de voluntarios involucrados y compremetidos que puedan movilizarse en torno a problemas que afectan a su comunidad. Desde las metas hasta los mensajes y evitar el agotamiento, analizamos los desafíos a que los activistas se pueden enfrentar y discutimos cómo apoyarlos para ganar en los temas que más les importan.
Para comprar una copia impresa del libro de trabajo TAKE 10, visite aquí.
Por favor, comparta este libro de trabajo con otros.
Descargue el libro de trabajo Take 10 aquí.
How Rural Organizing Can Build Power
Two weeks, 1,600 miles, 11 hotel stays, 13 organizations.
In June 2021, Bethsaida Ruiz (a Spirit in Action trainer and board member) and Linda Stout took a road trip to eastern North Carolina, meeting with folks who have been part of our TAKE 10 trainings whom we’d only seen on Zoom. Over the last year and a half, Blueprint NC, a partnership of organizations committed to building independent power for an anti-racist, inclusive democracy, had asked us to provide these groups with training and coaching in organizing and civic engagement. We were then asked to make a deep assessment of the region’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, using in-person interviews with their partners and stakeholders who had been part of TAKE 10.
Our assessment resulted in this final report, “How Rural Organizing Can Build Power.” The report contains many important recommendations that, we hope, will improve our state’s ability to engage with and support rural organizing in eastern North Carolina and serve as a model for other states.
This was a journey of discovery for Spirit in Action as well as Blueprint NC. We hope it will be as inspiring for you as it was for us. Download and read the entire report here.
Spirit in Action’s Guide to Working in Diverse Groups
This small yet powerful tool is a guide to holding and nurturing the spaces that generate movement in us and those around us. Please use this as a reflection tool or as a basis for instruction in your organizing and movement building work. To get a free copy of our Guide to Working in Diverse Groups please download here.
Guía Para Trabajar en Grupose Diversos de Spirit in Action
Esta pequeña pero poderosa herramienta es una guía para sostener y nutrir los espacios que generan movimiento en nosotros y en quienes nos rodean. Utilice esto como una herramienta de reflexión o como base para la instrucción en su trabajo de organización y construcción de movimientos. Para obtener una copia gratuita de nuestra Guía para trabajar en grupos diversos, descárguela aquí.
Occupy the Present, Change the Future: A Collective Visioning Guide
We invite all people who are dedicated to social transformation to join us in a process of Collective Visioning. This process involves intentionally bringing people together across social divides and generating a positive vision that is long-term, expansive and solutions-driven. Our process is outlined below and detailed in our downloadable Collective Visioning Guide. We encourage folks to meet in diverse, small groups (ideally 20-40 participants) and spend at least three hours moving through the process together. To get a free copy of our Collective Visioning Guide please download here.
We build a broad and interconnected social force committed to collectively transforming the world by working with communities to Reimagine culture, Resist domination, Reform institutions and Recreate society.
REIMAGINE: Conceptualizing New Systems – We are in a critical period of social evolution that requires new ways of being. In order to generate a just world, we must be able to imagine what a society based on partnership, inclusion, and interdependence looks like. This strategy area engages how we think about ourselves in relation to each other and the whole and taps our individual and collective ability to engender new cultural norms. Approaches can include the arts, the creative process, media and cultural and spiritual traditions.
REFORM: Working Within the Current System – The current structures in society have real impact on our daily lives and our ability to self-determine. While we work on building new structures, we must simultaneously change the structures of society that are in place now. We understand that the very immediate and real needs of people who lack food, housing, well-paid work, safety and opportunity need to be addressed, especially if we seek to build a base from the ground up that is led by those most impacted by injustice. This strategy tackles immediate needs and requires our current social and political institutions to provide remedies to pervasive social problems. Approaches can include human services and policy development.
RESIST: Working On the Current System – Throughout history, we have seen that “power concedes nothing without demand.” Resistance struggles have given rise to our greatest wins. To address the root causes of injustice, we are often called to stand against the destruction of what we hold dear. This strategy analyzes and challenges our current political and social institutions by contesting their legitimacy and by directly confronting how they perpetuate inequity. Approaches can include direct action, community organizing and electoral work.
RECREATE: Generating New Systems – The future we envision calls for the creation of new institutions and practices to take the place of the broken ones that have not been serving us. As we resist and succeed at dismantling current unjust systems, we will need to erect new institutions and paradigms. This strategy enables us to experiment with new ways of constituting our society by building entirely new models, forms of governance and leadership structures. Approaches can include democratic schools, restorative justice processes, local economies, and open source technologies.
Spirit in Action’s Facilitating Circles of Change Curriculum Guide
The collective wisdom gathered from the Circles of Change formed the foundation for the Spirit in Action Facilitating Circles of Change Curriculum Guide, published in 2005. The four main sections of the Circles of Change curriculum guide embodied the understanding of the core strategies for building a broad-based movement that achieves transformational social change. These core strategies continue to evolve from the insights and understandings of those who are using them. Please download the guide here.
