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Community Organizing Action Pack
Are you ready to take action and get others involved? Then community organizing might be the right approach for you. To help decide, you'll need to understand what's involved in community organizing and how it differs from other problem solving approaches. You will also need to decide if you have the necessary resources and commitment on hand.
Community organizing is a long-term approach where the people affected by an issue are supported in identifying problems and taking action to achieve solutions. The organizer challenges those he or she works with to change the way things are—it is a means of achieving social change through collective action by changing the balance of power. The tactics and strategies employed by the organizer are similar to the processes of leadership including timing the issue, deliberate planning, getting the attention of the populace, framing the issue in terms of the desired solution, and shaping the terms of the decision-making process."A single bracelet does not jingle"
- African proverb
Community organizing helps to bring out many voices to add collective power and strength to an issue. Community organizing is a key part of an overall strategy to make changes in a community that are widely felt, and that reflect the wishes of the people who are directly affected by alcohol-related community problems. This requires the organizer to not only listen and be responsive to the community, but also to help community residents develop the skills necessary to address their own issues in an ongoing way.
At the heart of community organizing are inclusion, ownership, relationship building and leadership development.
Individual vs. Collective Action
Community organizing looks at collective solutions — large numbers of people who engage in solutions that impact even more people. These people usually live in the same neighborhood, town or block.
Many traditional agency responses look at individual solutions. Agencies tend to focus on the individual as a means to solve public health problems.
Changing the balance of power
Community organizing changes the balance of power and creates new power bases. Groups that organize do not have to be statewide or national in scope, nor do the decision-makers have to be elected officials. Here are some examples from history:
• Civil rights: The boycotts of businesses and busses in the South brought about desegregation and the Voting Rights Act.
• Labor unions: Strikes against conditions in factories throughout the early part of this century led to the 40-hour work week and better working conditions for all workers.
• The anti-war movement: Protests against the war pressured the government to end U.S. involvement in Viet Nam .
Are you ready?
"The community organizer...must constantly examine life, including his own, to get some idea of what it is all about, and he must challenge and test his own findings. Irreverence, essential to questioning, is a requisite. Curiosity becomes compulsive. His most frequent word
is 'why'?"
- Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals, 1971
Do you have what it takes to be a community organizer?
Every successful business or organization has a great leader — or several leaders for that matter. The skills of the community organizer are crucial to the organizing process.
Community organizers think strategically about their work while always keeping the final goal in mind and continually making contributions to the goal. This is especially important in community organizing campaigns to enact or change policies. Qualities include:
• Imagination
• Sense of Humor
• Blurred vision of a better world
• An organized personality
• Strong ego/sense of oneself
• A free, open mind, and political relativity
• Ability to create the new out of the old ( Saul Alinsky, 1971 )
