Si began his organizing career in 1965 in Arkansas with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, more popularly known as SNCC, the student wing of the Southern Civil Rights Movement. During the War on Poverty, he served as the deputy director of an eight-county community action agency in rural Georgia, and coached the first racially integrated Little League team in that part of the state.

During the 1970's, he worked with the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) during the Brookside Strike in Harlan County, Kentucky, and was an Area Director of the J.P. Stevens Campaign for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). These historic labor struggles are portrayed in the movies Harlan County U.S.A. and Norma Rae. Si founded Grassroots Leadership in 1980, and served as its Executive Director until February 1st, 2010 when he became Executive Director Emeritus.

Grassroots Leadership recently won a major national victory through its Campaign to End Immigrant Family Detention, when the Federal government ended the appalling practice instituted by the Bush Administration in which children as young as infants were imprisoned together with their parents. The New York Times wrote, "The decision to stop sending families there - and to set aside plans for three new family detention centers - is the Obama administration's clearest departure from its predecessor's immigration enforcement policies."

Si's songs of family, community, work and freedom have been recorded by more than 100 artists and translated into half a dozen languages, including French, Welsh, Hebrew, Swedish, Drents (a Dutch dialect) and Plattdeutsch (Low German). Such songs as Aragon Mill (also recorded as Oregon Mill, Belfast Mill and Weave and Spin), Gone Gonna Rise Again, Go To Work On Monday, and Rubber Blubber Whale have become a part of the oral tradition, and are sung in folk clubs and living rooms around the world.

Si has performed at concerts and festivals in Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England, Northern Ireland, Canada and the U.S. His musical body of work includes 15 albums of original songs for adults and children, plus a collection of traditional labor, civil rights and women's songs recorded with Pete Seeger and Jane Sapp. Si's 15th CD, Thanksgiving, his third on the Dutch label Strictly Country Records, was recognized in November 2007 as the #1 CD, #1 song and #1 artist by the Folk-DJ list, which tracks international radio airplay.

Strictly Country Records is releasing Si's 16th CD Courage in April 2010, concurrently with the publication of his latest book Creative Community Organizing: A Strategy Manual for Rabble-Rousers, Activists and Quiet Lovers of Justice. Courage, about the quiet heroism of everyday people, features production and instrumentation by legendary Swiss banjo player Jens Krüger, with liner notes and harmony singing by Grammy-winning country artist Kathy Mattea.

One of Si's favorite musical experiences was being asked by Harper-Collins to set to music and record the classic children's books Runaway Bunny and Goodnight Moon. He has composed original music and lyrics for half a dozen films and videos, including the labor videos The Turning Point, We're Not Leaving, Shout Youngstown and One Voice, and the PBS documentary, Hazardous Wastes: The Search for a Solution.

Si is a member of the organizing committee for Local 1000 of the American Federation of Musicians, AFL-CIO; a past trustee of the Labor Heritage Foundation; a lifetime member of the International Bluegrass Music Association and of the Folk Alliance; and the official poet laureate of the North Carolina labor movement by unanimous vote of the convention in 1985. He is represented worldwide by Real People's Music in Chicago, and in Europe by ADASTRA Arts and Leisure in Yorkshire.

Si is has also spent over 30 years as a composer, lyricist and book writer for musical theater, with past productions and readings at the Goodspeed Opera House's Norma Terris Theatre; the Berkeley, Milwaukee and Tennessee Repertory Theatres; the York and Amas Musical Theatre Companies in Manhattan; and the Nora Theatre Company in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some Sweet Day, based on the history of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (SFTU) and developed by The Playgroup in Knoxville, was revived in 2007 at Ramapo College in Mahwah, New Jersey.

Si's musical-in-progress Immigrant, starring six-time Grammy nominee John McCutcheon as labor agitator, songwriter and martyr Joe Hill, had its world premiere reading on April 22, 2009 at Judson Memorial Church in Washington Square, produced by Amas Musical Theatre as their contribution to New York's Immigrant Heritage Week. Si has recently been commissioned by the Bread and Roses Heritage Committee in Lawrence, Massachusetts to write a musical in honor of the 100th anniversary of that historic strike, which will take place in 2012.

Si's most recent musical Silver Spoon, a romantic musical comedy that brings together Upper East Side investment bankers with Brooklyn-dwelling Jewish garment worker trade unionist Communists, will have a full five-week production at The Nora Theatre Company beginning May 19th, 2011.

Si's most recent book prior to Creative Community Organizing is The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy (Berrett-Koehler 2006), co-authored with public philosopher Elizabeth Minnich, his partner and spouse.

Si is the author of two widely used organizing handbooks, How People Get Power and Organizing: A Guide for Grassroots Leaders, which together have sold over 80,000 copies. Both were published by McGraw-Hill, and later reissued by the National Association of Social Workers Press. As a result of his 1974 study The Forest Service and Appalachia, published by the John Hay Whitney Foundation, he was invited to testify before the U.S. Senate in hearings that resulted in substantially increased federal payments in lieu of taxes to hundreds of poor mountain counties from Alabama to New York.

He has authored or co-authored several studies and reports on organizing, as well as the Si Kahn Songbook and articles in such publications as The Nation, Liberal Education, Alternet, New York University Law Journal, The Journal of Community Practice, Social Policy, Southern Exposure, New South, South Today, Southern Patriot, Mountain Life and Work, People's Appalachia and Old Time Music Magazine. He wrote the section on community organizing for the 19th edition of the Encyclopedia of Social Work, published by the National Association of Social Workers Press.

Reviews of Si's CDs, books and musicals, as well as personal profiles, have appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, The Progressive, The Nation, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, the Chicago Tribune, the Charlotte Observer, Creative Loafing, the Chronicle of Philanthropy, Rolling Stone, Variety, Performing Songwriter, Sing Out!, Bluegrass Unlimited and Bluegrass News. He is a frequent guest on community and public radio stations throughout North America, and has appeared on Mountain Stage, E-Town, Prairie Home Companion and the late Studs Terkel's nationally syndicated interview show.

A long time volunteer in the field of philanthropy, Si is the founding chair and a continuing board member of the Jewish Funds for Justice, a national Jewish foundation that supports local community organizing projects dealing with the root causes of poverty. He was also the founding chair of Changemakers, a national foundation dedicated to deepening, diversifying and democratizing community-based philanthropy.

Si Kahn received his A.B. degree magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1965. He left school twice during his Harvard career: once to write and translate poetry in Spain, a second time to work with SNCC during the Southern Civil Rights Movement. His senior thesis on the 12th century Provencal troubadour William IX of Aquitaine won the Susan Anthony Potter Prize in Comparative Literature.

Thirty years later, in 1995, he received his Ph.D. in American Studies with a specialization in Cultural Studies from The Graduate College for Interdiscplinary Arts and Sciences of The Union Institute. His doctoral project, Habits of Resistance: Cultural Work and Community Organizing, is published by University Microfilms. He also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of New England.

Si has been a Fellow of the John Hay Whitney Foundation and of the Ford Foundation's Leadership Development Program. A public television broadcast of his musical Some Sweet Day won the ACE (Award for Cable Excellence) in 1982. The video We're Not Leaving, produced by the United Steel Workers of America, for which he wrote and recorded the title song and soundtrack, won the Silver Screen Award at the U.S. Industrial Film Festival in 1985. Six children's CDs by John McCutcheon, for which Si co-wrote the majority of the songs with John, have been Grammy finalists.

On June 10th, the national organization 21st Century Democrats will present Si with their Solidarity Forever award. Previous honorees have included the late Senator Paul Wellstone, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Congressman John Lewis, Senator Al Franken, Senator Kirsten Gilibrand, Governor Howard Dean, and filmmaker Michael Moore.

Si served in the U.S. Army Reserves during the Vietnam era (1965-1971). As a member of the 317th Military History Detachment, he wrote the official U.S. Army histories of Fort McPherson, Georgia; Fort Bragg, North Carolina; and the XVIII Airborne Corps in World War II. In 1970, in recognition of his community organizing work in North Georgia, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution recognized him with one of six "Georgia Soldier of the Year" awards.

Elizabeth Minnich and Si Kahn have three adult children, Simon, Jesse and Gabe. Gabe carries on the family musical tradition as a hip-hop writer, producer and performer.