Perfect book for anyone that needs a good bump. It’s well written and easy to read. The advice is simple and made for everyone.

This is a hard book to rate as it is two different books at the same time. One is a memoir of the author's experiences and the other is a how-to book. This is based around protesting. How to do it effectively. How to get the most attention, how to create the urgent crisis moment as to effect the change desired.

The memoir parts were interesting, yet the division of the how-to and teaching moments stopped the momentum. This could be a book you pick up and read the portions that reach out to you. The author, Fithian was involved in several different movements, and with this variety can reach perhaps a larger audience.

This is a good book for libraries, for people researching on how to get their voice heard and effect change.

This took FOR-EV-ER to read, because it was not engrossing at all. I appreciate Fithian's expertise in organizing and the various lessons, techniques and tips she provides throughout this book. However, the rambling tales of her time during various protest movements was tedious and disjointed and ultimately didn't paint her in a positive light: she jumps from movement to movement, event to event, with no real indication of what her personal convictions actually are (the one exception is when she's describing the Occupy movement and she talks about the people in danger of losing their homes - there is the honesty, the empathy, the passion that's lacking elsewhere). Is she just there - everywhere from Justice for Janitors to Shut Down the CIA to Tahrir Square to the Battle in Seattle to Standing Rock to Ferguson - to provide her organizing expertise to those who are driving the movement, or is she really truly passionate about the issues the movement is trying to tackle? It's not always clear to me, and frankly a lot of her stories come off as a bit self-centered. After reading Shut It Down, I don't know anything more about Fithian's life or motivations, nor about the movements themselves (the essays need more WHY in order to spark the reader's attention and sense of justice). I do know more about the nuts and bolts of organizing, though, so at least the book accomplished that mission.

In site of the blurb, I wanted this book to feel more like a memoir. As it is, it does give something me insight into organizing, but not quite a step by step how-to and not quite a satisfying memoir.