Joe Szakos

Infobox Person
name = Joe Szakos

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image_size = 180px
caption = Joe Szakos, June 2007; photo by Laura Ramirez
birth_date = March 8, 1954
birth_place = Greenburg, PA
occupation = community organizer

Joe Szakos (b. March 8, 1954) is a community organizer and author. He was coordinator of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) from 1981 to 1993, and has been executive director of the Virginia Organizing Project since 1994.

Early life

Joseph Szakos was born March 8, 1954, in Greensburg, PA. His paternal grandparents were Hungarian immigrants, and his maternal grandparents were Italian immigrants. He earned a bachelors degree from Washington and Jefferson College, graduating in 1976 with honors in political science and sociology. He earned a masters degree from the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago in 1979.

Career as Community Organizer

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.

In the "About the Author" paragraph in his 2005 [http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers2005/szakos.htm paper] on the need for a collective recruitment plan for community organizers (published on the [http://comm-org.wisc.edu COMM-ORG website] ), he states that he is "currently working on two books on community organizing with his wife, Kristin Layng Szakos. One book is based on more than 75 interviews with community organizers across the country about what they do and why they do it. The other is a compilation of essays written by very experienced rural community organizers, sharing some of the lessons they have learned."

Bibliography

*Kristin Layng Szakos and Joe Szakos, "We Make Change: Community Organizers Talk about What They Do - and Why" (Vanderbilt University Press, 2007). ISBN 978-0-8265-1555-1
*Joe Szakos and Kristen Layng Szakos, "Lessons from the Field: Organizing in Rural Communities" (American Institute for Social Justice, 2008).

External links

* [http://www.virginia-organizing.org Virginia Organizing Project]
* [http://www.kftc.org Kentuckians for the Commonwealth]