The third edition offers new and more established ways to approach community building and organizing, from collaborating with communities on assessment and issue selection to using the power of social media to enhance the effectiveness of such work. Numerous case studies ranging from childhood obesity to immigrant worker rights to health care reform are provided as well as a “tool kit” of appendixes that includes guidelines for assessing coalition effectiveness, exercises for critical reflection on power and privilege, and such training tools as “policy bingo.”
History is full of stories of the oppressed rebelling against the oppressor, only to reinstate an equally oppressive system. What we learn from oppression is how to oppress. If we want a truly transformative politics, then we must take up methods that embody the kind of world we want to create; we have to change deeply embedded beliefs and behaviours. In this engaging and passionate book, long-time community organizer Joan Kuyek offers important insights and concrete tools to encourage people to get involved in social justice action at the community level. In Canada, activists are frustrated with their inability to effect change in the global economic system, overwhelmed by the number and complexity of issues and too often unaware or dismissive of the efforts of other activists. As a result, social forces for justice and the environment are fragmented and ineffective, and the economic elite grows more powerful. Community Organizing argues that it does not have to be this way. Suggesting that most of our attempts at change and community-building fail because we cannot get along with each other, Community Organizing starts at the community level to describe how we can work together and create organizations based on dignity and respect. It provides strategies to build movements from the community to assert democratic political power and tools to create a culture of hope in this time of despair. This book offers the means to reclaim political power in Canada.
Providing new insight into an important community development challenge, this text looks at how to stimulate the formation of community-based organizations and effective citizen action in neighbourhoods.
Considered to be a classic book for social work practitioners, this thoroughly updated edition covers more recent literature, research findings, case illustrations, and cross-cultural perspectives. This edition also reviews and tries to explain the changes in community organization that have taken place in the last decade. It introduces new theoretical viewpoints--exchange theory and organizational change theory--to help better understand these changes. Theoretical material concerning reciprocity and alienation is also introduced in this edition. Other themes are: relative deprivation; accountability; stages of group development and participatory benefits; methods and techniques of community assessment; contracting prospective members and outreach; theories and techniques of establishment rapport; leadership and its development; and organizational theory. ISBN 0-231-05462-9: $24.00.
"The world is changing rapidly and the practice of community organizing needs to change with it. Representing both an homage to, and a departure from the "alinsky traditions" of organizing, Consensus Organizing offers techniques that are specifically designed for urban and rural communities struggling to succeed in the global economy and the information age. Ohmer and DeMasi are experienced organizers who offer a relentlessly thorough examination of the process of bringing diverse communities together to make change and to bridge the ethnic and economic divisions that keep many communities from succeeding." —Bill Traynor Executive Director, Lawrence CommunityWorks Inc. A person doesn′t have to be a consensus organizer to think like one. Consensus Organizing: A Community Development Workbook—A Comprehensive Guide to Designing, Implementing, and Evaluating Community Change Initiatives helps students and practitioners begin to think like consensus organizers and incorporate this way of strategic thinking into their lives and their work. Through a wide range of exercises, role-play activities, case scenarios, and discussion questions, this workbook presents the conceptual framework for consensus organizing and provides a practical and experiential approach to understanding and applying consensus organizing to address a range of issues. This workbook is designed to be used by itself or along with Mike Eichler′s text Consensus Organizing: Building Communities of Mutual Self Interest (SAGE, 2007). Key Features and Benefits Provides a step-by-step guide on how to conduct a community analysis of both internal and external neighborhood resources Brings consensus organizing to life through case studies based on the real-life experiences of the authors Offers field exercises that engage the reader in applying and practicing consensus organizing Provides practical tools that community organizers and practitioners can use in their daily work Includes a sample job description, work plan, monitoring report, and field report for hiring and supervising consensus organizers Presents tools for describing and evaluating consensus organizing and community-level interventions Accompanying Website Instructors and students have access to the many activities and cases on the accompanying website.
This book provides a brief introduction to what is variously called "faith-based," "congregation-based," and "institution-based" community organizing. Grounded in a composite case study of an actual organizing effort, it shows how local communities can be organized for power. Key organizing concepts and strategies are illustrated with stories of real encounters with leaders, communities, and powerful opposition figures. In the approach described here, civic and religious institutions come together to give the community a collective voice. Organizers help a community build a powerful organization rooted in core values of democracy and the social justice teachings of the world's great religious traditions. Saul Alinsky developed the foundations of the tradition of organizing described here, an approach that remains dominant in the U.S. today. Alinsky rooted power deeply in the lives, relationships and institutions of marginalized and oppressed people. In his early organizing days, his organizations brought together a wide range of institutions: religious congregations and labor unions, as well as mutual aid, self-help, athletic, sororal and fraternal, neighborhood and other voluntary associations. By the late 1970s, as non-congregational neighborhood associations fell into decline, organizers in the Alinsky tradition started looking more carefully at how to sustain the vibrancy of the religious institutions that remained. Organizers sought to help congregation members become co-creators, rather than consumers, of the life of their churches, and worked to help members connect their faith more directly to action in the world. In this way, they helped make both faith and the action more meaningful. This little book tells the story of one congregation that was a member of a "broadly-based community organization," and how a community organizer assisted its development as a true community.
Privatization has been on the right-wing agenda for years. Health care, schools, Social Security, public lands, the military, prisons-all are considered fair game. Through stories, analysis, impassioned argument-even song lyrics-Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich show that corporations are, by their very nature, unable to fulfill effectively what have traditionally been the responsibilities of government. They make a powerful case that the market is not the measure of all things, and that a vital public sector is an indispensable component of a healthy democracy.
Community organizers build solidarity and collective power in fractured communities. They help ordinary people turn their private pain into public action, releasing hidden capacities for leadership and strategy. In Collective Action for Social Change , Aaron Schutz and Marie G. Sandy draw on their extensive experience participating in community organizing activities and teaching courses on the subject to empower novices to think like an organizers.
Now in its third edition, Progressive Community Organizing: Transformative Practice in a Globalizing World introduces readers to the rich practice of progressive community organizing for social change while also providing concrete tools geared toward practitioner skill building. Drawing from social movement scholarship and social theory, this book articulates a transformative approach to organizing that embraces emergent strategies and healing justice. It emphasizes framing processes and the power of stories using story-based strategy and digital activism. Embracing intersectional organizing, the book addresses topics such as identity politics, microagressions, internalized oppression, and horizontal hostility with attention to recentering and allyship as a growth-oriented journey of solidarity and liberation. Readers will engage with case studies focused on issues such as poverty, racial justice, immigration, housing, health and mental health, and climate crisis. This new edition includes: Expanded content on transformative change approaches including healing justice New content on the role of digital technology and social media in organizing Case studies of the Poor People’s Campaign and Extinction Rebellion Emphasis on the power of stories and story-based strategy for organizing and issue framing Transformative organizations with attention to feminist and decolonized organizational structures and cultures Expanded chapters on strategies and tactics focusing on power analysis and a range of tactics from direct action to resilience-based organizing The book will be of interest to students and practitioners who want to become more skilled in structural analysis, praxis, and self-reflexivity through critical and transformative engagement with historical and current social problems, social movements, and social welfare.
