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Community organizing
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Community organizing is a process by which people living in proximity to each other are brought together in an organization to act in their common self-interest. Unlike other forms of more consensual "community building," community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless. A core goal of community organizing is to generate durable power for an organization representing the community, allowing it to influence key decision-makers on a range of issues over time.
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Encyclopedia
Community organizing is a process by which people living in proximity to each other are brought together in an organization to act in their common self-interest. Unlike other forms of more consensual "community building," community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless. A core goal of community organizing is to generate durable power for an organization representing the community, allowing it to influence key decision-makers on a range of issues over time. In the ideal, for example, this can get community organizing groups a place at the table before important decisions are made. Community Organizers work with and develop new local leaders, facilitating coalitions and assisting in the development of campaigns.
Common aspects of 'community organizing groups'
Organized community groups attempt to influence government, corporations and institutions, seek to increase direct representation within decision-making bodies, and foster social reform more generally. Where negotiations fail, these organizations seek to inform others outside of the organization of the issues being addressed and expose or pressure the decision-makers through a variety of means, including picketing, boycotting, sit-ins, petitioning, and electoral politics. Organizing groups often seek out issues that they know will generate controversy and conflict. This allows them to draw in and educate participants, build commitment, and establish a reputation for winning. Thus, community organizing is usually focused on more than just resolving specific issues. In fact, specific issues are often vehicles for other organizational goals as much as they are ends in themselves.
Community organizers generally seek to build groups that are democratic in governance, open and accessible to community members, and concerned with the general health of the community rather than a specific interest group. Organizing seeks to broadly empower community members, with the end goal of distributing power more equally throughout the community.
The three basic types of community organizing are grassroots or "door-knocking" organizing, faith-based community organizing (FBCO), and coalition building. Political campaigns often claim that their door-to-door operations are in fact an effort to organize the community, though often these operations are focused exclusively on voter identification and turn out.
FBCOs and many grassroots organizing models are built on the work of Saul Alinsky, discussed below, from the 1930s into the 1970s.
Grassroots and "Door-Knocking" Groups
Grassroots organizing builds community groups from scratch, developing new leadership where none existed and organizing the unorganized. It is a values based process where people are brought together to act in the interest of their communities and the common good. Networks of community organizations that employ this method and support local organizing groups include National People's Action and ACORN.
"Door knocking" grassroots organizations like ACORN organize poor and working-class members recruiting members one by one in the community. Because they go door-to-door, they are able to reach beyond established organizations and the "churched" to bring together a wide range of less privileged people. ACORN tends to stress the importance of constant action in order to maintain the commitment of a less rooted group of participants.
ACORN has a reputation of being more militant than faith-based (FBCO) groups, and there are indications that their local groups are more staff (organizer) directed than leader (local volunteer) directed. The "door-knocking" approach is more time-intensive than the "organization of organizations" approach of FBCOs and requires more organizers who, partly as a result, can be lower paid with more turnover.
Unlike existing FBCO national "umbrella" and other grassroots organizations, ACORN maintains a centralized national agenda, and exerts some centralized control over local organizations. Because ACORN is a 501(c)4 organization under the tax code, it can participate directly in election activities, but contributions to it are not tax exempt.
Faith-Based Community Organizing (FBCO)
Faith-based community organizing (FBCO), also known as Congregation-based Community Organizing, is a methodology for developing power and relationships throughout a community of institutions: today mostly congregations, but these can also include unions, neighborhood associations, and other groups. Progressive and centrist FBCO organizations join together around basic values derived from common aspects of their faith instead of around strict dogmas. There are now at least 180 FBCOs in the US as well as in South Africa, England, Germany, and other nations. Local FBCO organizations are often linked through organizing networks such as the Industrial Areas Foundation, Gamaliel Foundation, PICO National Network, and Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART). In the United States starting in 2001, the Bush Administration launched a department to promote community organizing which included faith-based organizing as well other community groups.
FBCOs tend to have mostly middle-class participants because the congregations involved are generally mainline Protestant and Catholic (although "middle-class" can mean different things in white communities and communities of color, which can lead to class tensions within these organizations). Holiness, Pentecostal, and other related denominations (often "storefront") churches with mostly poor and working-class members tend not to join FBCOs because of their focus on "faith" over "works," among other issues. FBCOs have increasingly expanded outside impoverished areas into churches where middle-class professionals predominate in an effort to expand their power to contest inequality.
Because of their "organization of organizations" approach, FBCOs are able to organize large numbers of members with a relatively small number of organizers which are generally better paid and more professionalized than those in "door-knocking" groups like ACORN.
FBCOs focus on the long-term development of a culture and common language of organizing and on the development of relational ties between members. They are more stable during fallow periods than grassroots groups because of the continuing existence of member churches
FBCOs are 501(c)3 organizations. Contributions to them are tax exempt. As a result, while they can conduct campaigns over "issues" they cannot promote the election of specific individuals.
Coalition Building
Coalition building efforts seek to unite existing groups like FBCOs and grassroots organizations, as well as civic associations, social clubs, advocacy groups, think-tanks, other churches, and other assorted groups to more effectively pursue a common agenda.
Power vs. Protest
While community organizing groups often engage in protest actions designed to force powerful groups to respond to their demands, protest is only one aspect of the activity of organizing groups. To the extent that groups' actions generate a sense in the larger community that they have "power," they are often able to engage with and influence powerful groups through dialogue, backed up by a history of successful protest-based campaigns. Similar to the way unions gain recognition as the representatives of workers for a particular business, community organizing groups can gain recognition as key representatives of particular communities. In this way, representatives of community organizing groups are often able to bring key government officials or corporate leaders to the table without engaging in "actions" because of their reputation. As Alinsky said, "the first rule of power tactics" is that "power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have." The development of durable "power" and influence is a key aim of community organizing.
Political Orientations
Community organizing is not solely the domain of progressive politics, as dozens of fundamentalist organizations are in operation, such as the Christian Coalition. However, the term "community organizing" is generally used to refer to more centrist or progressive organizations, as evidenced, for example, by the reaction against community organizing in the 2008 US presidential election by Republicans and conservatives on the web and elsewhere.
Fundraising
Organizing groups often struggle to find resources. They do not receive funding from government since their activities often seek to contest government policies. Foundations and others who usually fund service activities generally don't understand what organizing groups do or how they do it, or shy away from their contentious approaches. The constituency of progressive and centrist organizing groups is largely low- or middle- income, so they are generally unable to support themselves through dues. In search of resources, some organizing groups have accepted funding for direct service activities in the past. As noted below, this has frequently led these groups to drop their conflictual organizing activities, in part because these threatened funding for their "service" arms.
Recent studies have shown, however, that funding for community organizing can produce large returns on investment ($512 in community benefits to $1 of Needmor funding, according to the Needmor Fund Study, 157 to 1 according to the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy study) through legislation and agreements with corporations, among other sources, not including non-fiscal accomplishments.
History of community organizing in the United States
Robert Fisher and Peter Romanofsky have grouped the history of "community organizing" (also known as "social agitation") in the United States into four rough periods:
1880 to 1900
People sought to meet the pressures of rapid immigration and industrialization by organizing immigrant neighborhoods in urban centers. Since the emphasis of the reformers was mostly on building community through settlement houses and other service mechanisms, the dominant approach was what Fisher calls social work. During this period The Newsboys Strike provided an early model of youth-led organizing.
1900 to 1940
Community organizing was established distinct from social work, with much energy coming from those critical of capitalist doctrines. Studs Terkel documented community organizing in the depression era, perhaps most notably that of Dorothy Day. Most organizations had a national orientation because the economic problems the nation faced did not seem possible to change at the neighborhood levels.
1940 to 1960
Saul Alinsky, based in Chicago, is credited with originating the term community organizer during this time period. Alinksy wrote Reveille for Radicals, published in 1946, and Rules for Radicals, published in 1971. With these books, Alinsky was the first person in America to codify key strategies and aims of community organizing. He also founded the first national community organizing training network, the Industrial Areas Foundation, now led by one of his former lieutenants, Edward Chambers.
The following quotations from Alinksy's 1946 "Reveille for Radicals" gives a good sense of his perspective on organizing and of his public style of engagement:
A People’s Organization is a conflict group, [and] this must be openly and fully recognized. Its sole reason in coming into being is to wage war against all evils which cause suffering and unhappiness. A People’s Organization is the banding together of large numbers of men and women to fight for those rights which insure a decent way of life. . . .
A People’s Organization is dedicated to an eternal war. It is a war against poverty, misery, delinquency, disease, injustice, hopelessness, despair, and unhappiness. They are basically the same issues for which nations have gone to war in almost every generation. . . .
War is not an intellectual debate, and in the war against social evils there are no rules of fair play. . . .
A People’s Organization lives in a world of hard reality. It lives in the midst of smashing forces, dashing struggles, sweeping cross-currents, ripping passions, conflict, confusion, seeming chaos, the hot and the cold, the squalor and the drama, which people prosaically refer to as life and students describe as “society.
1960 to present
The American Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movements, the Chicano movement, the feminist movement, and the gay rights movement all influenced and were influenced by ideas of neighborhood organizing. Experience with federal anti-poverty programs and the upheavals in the cities produced a thoughtful response among activists and theorists in the early 1970s that has informed activities, organizations, strategies and movements through the end of the century. Less dramatically, civic associations and neighborhood block clubs were formed all across the country to foster community spirit and civic duty, as well as provide a social outlet.
The Loss of Urban Community and Its Effect on Organizing
During these decades, the emergence of an ongoing process of white flight, the ability of middle-class African Americans to move out of majority Black areas, and the professionalization of community organizations into 501(c)3 nonprofits, among other issues, increasingly dissolved the tight ethnic and racial communities that had been so prevalent in urban areas during the first part of the century. As a result, community organizers began to move away from efforts to mobilize existing communities and towards efforts to create community, fostering relationships between community members. While community organizers like Alinsky had long worked with churches, these trends led to an increasing focus on congregational organizing during the 1980s, as organizing groups rooted themselves in one of the few remaining broad-based community institutions. This shift also led to an increased focus on relationships among religion, faith, and social struggle.
The Emergence of National Organizing Support Organizations
A collection of training and support organizations for national coalitions of mostly locally governed and mostly FBCO community organizing groups were founded in the Alinsky tradition. The Industrial Areas Foundation was the first, created by Alinsky himself in 1940. The other key organizations include ACORN, PICO National Network, Direct Action and Research Training Center, and the Gamaliel Foundation. The role of the organizer in these organizations was "professionalized" to some extent and resources were sought so that being an organizer could be more of a long term career than a relatively brief, mostly unfunded interlude. The training provided by these national "umbrella" organizations helps local volunteer leaders learn a common "language" about organizing while seeking to expand the skills of organizers. The Midwest Academy, based in Chicago, provides week-long training in organizing nationally to organizers and leaders who are not part of these established national organizations. The Center for Third World Organizing provides training focused on "change efforts in communities of color."
The distinction between an "organizer" who staffs a community organization and "leaders" who make decisions and provide the public face of their groups was increasingly standardized over these years, even in many organizations not linked to "umbrella" training groups as the Alinsky tradition became increasingly influential.
Examples of Community Organizers
Many of the most notable leaders in community organizing today emerged from the National Welfare Rights Organization. John Calkins of DART, Ernesto Cortes of the Industrial Areas Foundation, Wade Rathke of ACORN, John Dodds of Philadelphia Unemployment Project and Mark Splain of the AFL-CIO, among others.
There are many other notable community organizers: Heather Booth, César Chávez, Lois Gibbs, Ella Baker, Huey P. Newton, Mary Harris "Mother" Jones, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Nader, Barack Obama, Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, and Paul Wellstone.
Youth Organizing
More recently has come the emergence of youth organizing groups around the country. These groups use neo-Alinsky strategies while also usually providing social and sometimes material support to less-privileged youth. Most of these groups are created by and directed by youth or former youth organizers.
Barack Obama and the 2008 Presidential Election
Prior to his entry into politics, President Barack Obama worked as an organizer for a Gamaliel Foundation FBCO organization in Chicago. Marshall Ganz, former lieutenant of César Chávez, adapted techniques from community organizing for Obama's 2008 presidential election. Overall, however, the strategies used for this campaign were put to the service of electing Obama, representing fairly standard, if insightful, forms of voter mobilization, and not towards the development of independent organizing groups.
At the 2008 Republican National Convention, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani sarcastically mocked Obama's role as a community organizer, asking the crowd "What does a community organizer actually do?", and was answered with resounding applause. This was seconded by the Vice Presidential nominee, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, who stated that her experience as the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska was "sort of like being a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities." In response, some progressives started saying that "Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate (the Roman Prefect who is believed to have ordered the execution of Jesus) was a governor", a phrase produced on bumper stickers and elsewhere.
What community organizing is not
Understanding what community organizing is can be aided by understanding what it is not from the perspective of community organizers.
- Activism: Activists engage in social protest without a coherent strategy for building power or for making specific social changes.
- Mobilizing: When people "mobilize" they get together to foster a specific social change, but have no long term plan. When the particular campaign that mobilized them is over, these groups dissolve and durable power is not built.
- Advocacy: Advocates speak for others instead of trying to get those affected to speak for themselves.
- Social Movements: A broad Social movement often encompasses diverse collections of individual activists, local and national organizations, advocacy groups, multiple and often conflicting spokespersons, and more, held together by relatively common aims but not a common organizational structure. A community organizing group might be part of a “movement.” Movements generally dissolve when the motivating issue(s) are addressed, although organizations created during movements can continue and shift their focuses.
- Legal Action: Lawyers are often quite important to those engaged in social action. The problem comes when a social action strategy is designed primarily around a lawsuit. When lawyers take the center stage, it can push grassroots struggle into the background, short circuiting the development of collective power and capacity. There are examples where community organizing groups and legal strategies have worked together well, however, including the Williams v. California lawsuit over inequality in k-12 education.
- Direct Service: Americans today often equate civic engagement with direct service. Organizing groups usually avoid actually providing services, today, however, because history indicates that when they do, organizing for collective power is often left behind. Powerful groups often threaten the "service" wings of organizing groups in an effort to prevent collective action. In the nonprofit world there are many organizations that used to do community organizing but lost this focus in the shift to service.
- Community Development: Consensual community development efforts to improve communities through a range of strategies, usually directed by educated professionals working in government, policy, non-profit, or business organizations, is not community organizing. Community development projects increasingly include a community participation component, and often seek to empower residents of impoverished areas with skills for collaboration and job training, among others. However, community development generally assumes that groups and individuals can work together collaboratively without significant conflict or struggles over power to solve community challenges. One currently popular form is Asset Based Community Development that seeks out existing community strengths.
- Nonpartisan Dialogues About Community Problems: A range of efforts create opportunities for people to meet together and engage in dialogue about community problems. Unlike community organizing, the effort in contexts like these is generally to be open to a diverse range of opinions, out of which some consensus may be reached. A Study circle is a good example of this. While dialogue also happens inside organizing groups, of course, the focus there is on generating a collective and singular "voice" and on wresting resources and power away from "others."
Community organizing for international development
One of Alinsky's associates, a Presbyterian minister called Herbert White, became a missionary in South Korea and the Philippines and brought Alinsky’s ideas, books and materials with him. In the Philippines, he helped start a community organization in the Manila slum of Tondo in the 1970s. The concepts of community organizing spread through the many local NGO and activists groups in the Philippines.
Filipino community organizers melded Alinsky's ideas with concepts from liberation theology, a pro-poor theological movement in the developing world, and the philosophy of Brazilian educationalist Paulo Freire. They found this community organizing a well-suited method to work among the poor during the martial law era of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos. Unlike the communist guerrillas, community organizers quietly worked to encourage critical thinking about the status quo, facilitate organization and the support the solving of concrete collective problems. Community organizing was thus able to lay the groundwork for the People Power revolution of 1986, which nonviolently pushed Marcos out of power.
A 1974 manual summarizing some of the Filipino experience of community organizing Organizing People for Power actually became quite popular in the South Africa, among activist groups organizing communities in Soweto.
The concepts of community organizing have now filtered into many international organizations as a way of promoting participation of communities in social, economic and political change in developing countries. This is often referred to as participatory development, participatory rural appraisal, participatory action research or local capacity building. Robert Chambers has been a particularly notable advocate of such techniques.
Bibliography
- Robert Fisher and Peter Romanofsky, Community Organizing for Urban Social Change: A Historical Perspective (Greenwood Press, 1981). ISBN 978-0313214271
- Robert Fisher, Let the People Decide: Neighborhood Organizing in America (1984; Twayne Publishers, 1997). ISBN 978-0805738599
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/10533392
- Neil Betten and Michael J. Austin, The Roots of Community Organizing, 1917-1939 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990). ISBN 0-87722-662-8
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/19556345
- Harry C. Boyte, Commonwealth: A Return to Citizen Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1989). ISBN 0-02-904475-8
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/19815053
- Mark Warren, "Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). ISBN 978-0-691-07432-0
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/44728155
- Heidi Swarts, "Organizing Urban America: Secular and Faith Based Progressive Movements (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008). ISBN 0816648395
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/154789894
- Edward Chambers, Roots for Radicals (New York: Continuum, 2003). ISBN 0826414990
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/51848381
- Dennis Shirley, Community Organizing for Urban School Reform (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997). ISBN 0292777191
http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/36051356
- Shel Trapp, Dynamics of Organizing: Building Power by Developing the Human Spirit (Self published, 2003)(paperback.) Available from the National Training and Information Center, 312-243-3035, Review: http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/135/trappreview.html
- Peter Szynka, Theoretische und empirischen Grundlagen des Community Organizing bei Saul D. Alinsky (1909-1972)Eine Rekonstruktion (Bremer Beiträge zur Politischen Bildung. Akademie für Arbeit und Politik der Universität Bremen, Bremen 2006) ISBN 3-88722-656-9..
See also
- Category:Community organizers
External links
- --Includes archives of original research, links to organizations and other resources, and an ongoing listserv.
- --Description of what community organizing is, what community organizers do, and good links for more information.
- David Walls,
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- --Designed not to teach practice but instead to introduce novices to the way organizers in the Alinsky tradition "think."
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- --Ganz developed the "organizing" strategy for Obama's presidential campaign.
- --Videos of the "organizing" training developed by Ganz for Obama's presidential campaign.
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