SC
Professor Gross
Community Organization and Action
Notes from week 9/7/99 #1
Community Organizing
Community Organizing:
assembly of parts into a coherent whole: creating
a system, each part with a specific function
Organizer:
person involved with planning i.e., labor union;
wants to organize workers
**Goal of Community Organizing:
uniting efforts and putting them together to
achieve an outcome**
Model:
different tactics to achieve outcomes
tactics depend upon environment, community, specific issues, etc..
**Before choosing a tactic you must
evaluate what is going on**
Types of tactics:
1)Protest: Rally, March, Demonstration,
Boycott
2)Political Action: Voter registration,
Lobbying, Campaigning
3)Mutual Aid: Co-op, Small business
unions, Self-help, Development organizations
4)Organizing Development: Conventions,
house meetings
5)Fund Raising: Phone banks, Door-to-door,
Canvassing neighborhoods
6)Media: Press conferences, Publications,
Leaflets
**Organizing is a tactic to achieve
a goal or outcome, anyone or group can use them.
They DO NOT always = Change**
(Reading in course pack by Rubin)
Suggestions to good organizing:
1) Boldly define the problem, you may
have to redefine the problem more than once
2)Flexibility is a necessity
3)Know your opposition, you can try to
co-op them or work with them. You may also have to disarm or isolate them.
Build a library basis for organization
Who are the people?
What are the obstacles?
What is? vs What ought to be?
**You must always lock in your victory
at the height of power**
i.e., political change of laws
History of Organizing:
1) Gives you a collective memory
2) Allows us to legitimize our efforts
Five Stages in Organizing History
Stage One:
Social Welfare (neighborhood organizing)
period.
1895-Depression
- industrial revolution = radical economic
change (rural to urban shift)
- thought problems could be resolved with
education & communication
i.e., settlement houses established
to provided service to community
- inhumane aspects of industrialization
existed
- thought they could resolve problems
with education and the assumption was immigrants and people of the neighborhoods
just didn’t understand
- people who worked in settlement houses
lived in the community while they helped
- today(1990’s) education and communication
are still the key components of organization
- tactics from period = block-by-block