Community organizing

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Community organizing is a process by which people living in proximity to each other are brought together by an organization to act in their common self-interest. Community organizers may act as area-wide coordinators of programs for different agencies in an attempt to meet community needs for various services. Community organizers may work actively, as do other types of social workers, in community councils of social agencies and in community-action groups. At times the role of community organizers overlaps that of the social planners.^[1]

1 Common aspects of 'community organizing groups'
2 History of community organizing in the United States
3 Community organizing for international development
4 References
5 Bibliography
6 See also
7 External links

[edit] Common aspects of 'community organizing groups'

Organized community groups attempt to influence government, corporations and institutions as well as achieve increased direct representation within decision-making bodies and social reform. 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.

Community organizing is usually focused on more than just resolving specific issues. Organizing seeks to make the participants that they are empowering all community members, often with the end goal of distributing power equally throughout the community.

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.

The three basic types of community organizing are grassroots organizing, faith-based and community organizing, 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.

The ideal of grassroots organizing is to build community groups from scratch, develop new leadership where none existed, and otherwise organize 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. It is a strategy that revitalizes communities and allows the individuals to participate and incite social change. It empowers the people directly involved and impacted by the issues being addressed. A network of community organizations that employ this method is National Peoples Action. 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 such as congregations, unions, and associations. Built on the work of Saul Alinsky in the mid-1900s, there are now 180 FBCOs in the US as well as in South Africa, England, Germany, and other nations.^[2] Local 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.^[3]

Coalition building efforts seek instead to unite existing groups, such as churches, civic associations, and social clubs, to more effectively pursue a common agenda.

Community organizing is not solely the domain of progressive politics, as dozens of fundamentalist organizations are in operation, such as the Christian Coalition.

[edit] 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:

[edit] 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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 1900 to 1940

Community organization was established distinct from social work^{[citation needed]}, 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.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 1940 to 1960

Saul Alinsky, based in Chicago, is credited with originating the term community organizer during this time period. Alinksy wrote two books: Reveille for Radicals, published in 1946, and Rules for Radicals, published in 1971.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] 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.

Many of the most notable leaders in community organizing today emerged from the National Welfare Rights Organization.^{[citation needed]} 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.^{[citation needed]}

There are many other notable community organizers: Jane Addams, César Chávez, Samuel Gompers, Martin Luther King, Jr., John L. Lewis, Ralph Nader, Barack Obama, Pat Robertson, and Paul Wellstone.^{[citation needed]}

At the 2008 Republican National Convention, former New York City mayor Rudolph Giuliani sarcastically mocked Barack 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 the her experience as the mayor of Wasilla, Alaska was "sort of like being a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities."

[edit] 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.

[edit] References

^ http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761563084/Social_Work.html#p5
^ Mark Warren and Richard Wood, Faith Based Community Organizing: State of the Field (Interfaith Funders, 2001).
^ http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/06/20080626-20.html

[edit] 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