Joe Szakos

Joe Szakos (born March 8, 1954) is a community organizer and author. He was coordinator of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC) from 1981 to 1993, and was the executive director of Virginia Organizing from 1994 to 2017. After stepping down from the directorship, he became the Lynchburg Chapter organizer until his retirement in November of 2020.

Joe Szakos
Joe Szakos, June 2007; photo by Laura Ramirez
BornMarch 8, 1954
Greensburg, PA
Alma materWashington & Jefferson College
University of Chicago
Occupationcommunity organizer

Early life

Joseph Szakos was born March 8, 1954, in Greensburg, Pennsylvania. His paternal grandparents were Hungarian immigrants, and his maternal grandparents were Italian immigrants. He earned a bachelor's degree from Washington and Jefferson College, graduating in 1976 with honors in political science and sociology. He earned a master's 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.[1] In August 2010 the group shortened its name to Virginia Organizing.[2]

In a 2005 paper Szakos emphasized the need for a collective recruitment plan for community organizers. He has completed two books on community organizing with his wife, Kristin Layng Szakos. One book (We Make Change, 2007) is based on 81 interviews with community organizers across the country about what they do and why they do it. The other (Lessons from the Field, 2008) is a compilation of essays written by experienced rural community organizers, sharing lessons they have learned.

In 2009, Szakos was arrested by his own health insurance company, Anthem Blue Cross, after he tried to ask why his organization's premiums had risen 14%.[3]

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 Kristin Layng Szakos, Lessons from the Field: Organizing in Rural Communities (American Institute for Social Justice, 2008). ISBN 978-0-9799215-0-6

Notes
  1. Ruth Berta and Amanda Leonard Pohl, Building Power, Changing Lives: The Story of Virginia Organizing (Social Policy Press, 2015).
  2. Joe Szakos and Ladelle McWhorter, "Virginia Organizing: The Action is at the State Level", Chapter 12 in Transforming Places: Lessons from Appalachia, ed. by Stephen L. Fisher and Barbara Ellen Smith (University of Illinois Press, 2012), p. 197; Building Power, p. 158.
  3. http://my.firedoglake.com/jasonrosenbaum/2009/11/25/charges-dropped-against-joe-szakos-the-anthem-blue-cross-customer-arrested-for-questioning-rate-increases/
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