Edward Chambers, Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) National Director, died 10 years ago on April 26, 2015.  We stop to remember "Big Ed” Chambers, as Studs Terkel affectionately and respectfully called him, for his leadership to create the modern IAF after the death of IAF’s founder & Ed Chambers’ mentor Saul Alinsky.   IAF organizers and leaders are inheritors of the IAF legacy Ed Chambers created along with other organizers and leaders of his and our generation—50+ IAF organizations across the US and abroad, 130 professional organizers and many thousands of trained leaders building and wielding power, doing politics, and winning proudly and strategically to make change on housing, immigrant rights, criminal justice reform, and more at the local level, state, and national levels.  We share these remembrances from 10 years ago to honor Ed Chambers—our teacher, agitator, and public friend. Willam Chambers Sam Freedman in New Yorker Michael Gecan, IAF Co-Director Emeritus Sister Christine Stephens, former IAF Co-Director

[Excerpt] Before Barack Obama brought a spotlight to the term “community organizer,” Gecan had been one for years, guiding communities on how to work with politicians to fix problems. “Going Public” (2012) is his account of putting these principles to work in a New York City neighborhood where a housing crisis had left the area in such decline that it was once described as “the beginning of the end of civilization.” Local leaders, with Gecan’s counsel, spent years embracing their collective power to fight for the change they wanted, holding civic leaders such as Ed Koch and Rudy Giuliani to account until the community’s goals were achieved with the building of thousands of new homes. Gecan’s tale of dogged persistence in the face of political bureaucracy offers an inspiring look at what citizens can do to make a difference in a democracy.  7 Great Political Books, Washington Post  [pdf]