Si Kahn

Si Kahn’s area of emphasis as a Demos Distinguished Senior Fellow focuses on the role of cultural work as a critical factor helping to create and sustain progressive policy change. 

Kahn helps create cultural vehicles for popular education and communication on important contemporary policy issues, with a particular emphasis on reaching and influencing members of the working class.  These include individual songs, CDs, musicals and novels.  He also works to involve musicians and other artists in coordinated social justice efforts, and provides strategic organizing advice to direct action and corporate accountability campaigns.

Kahn has worked for over 45 years as a civil rights, labor and community organizer, including roles in such historic campaigns at the Southern Civil Rights Movement; the Brookside Strike by the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), the J.P. Stevens Campaign by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) and the successful campaign by Grassroots Leadership to abolish immigrant family detention.

Kahn’s body of work includes six books, 16 CDs, six musicals and one novel.  He is a frequent guest on radio, with more than 100 interviews in 2010.