ABSTRACT
Community organizing is about letting the people decide...helping people clarify their self-interest, giving them the kind of information they need to do that: who they need to talk to, what they want to do about an issue. (Alta, 53-year-old white middle-class female)
If you go to knock on somebody’s door and say, “Have you got a problem?” The response has always been the same, “Yeah, I’ve got a problem.” And of 20 doors, you can get 10 who will say, “Yeah, let’s do something about it.” (Jack, 58-year-old white middle-class male)
To me what I love about [community organizing] is sitting down with a woman who has never once written a letter in her life, and just the fact that she can go to the state capitol and testify on her behalf. Or go to a state legislator and tell him, “You’re screwed up; I want this...!” And just to someone who has a thirdgrade or a fi fth-grade education, a woman that, like I am, has been oppressed all her life, come out of that shell and learn to say, “I want change. I am going to stop being the victim. And this is time for us to take over. Enough is enough!” (Carmen, 42-year-old working-class Latina)
And that’s what Rootz [the HIV intervention program that organizes young men of color who have sex with men] does: understand the cultural barriers and what makes these guys take risks. The group has looked at the cultural barriers for Latino men which is machismo, which is religion for the African American and West Indian population. A lot of them had this fear that because they were having sex with men, because they were bisexual, because they were gay, that they were going to go to hell so why should I use a condom. (David, 26-year-old West Indian working-class male)
It [the demonstration] was just one of those events that really showed some good solidarity between labor unions, student groups, global activists....It’s just an overwhelming feeling of solidarity and overwhelming support when you can get together with people who are like minded, that are willing to stand
up and walk beside you as strangers, but you’re not [strangers], because you’re united by these ideologies. And it’s just such an empowering feeling. So, if nothing else, even if every battle doesn’t win a piece of legislation, it doesn’t matter because you’re getting people together, getting them energized, and that’s part of the thing. (Kevin, 25-year-old white working-class male)
What we have to do is go out and organize ever greater numbers of workers because we’re in...a class war. So we have to get more soldiers on our side in order to win that war. (Laura M., 34-year-old white middle-class female)
I think it’s [the goal] about shifting power in our society. I think it’s about equal access to resources. Education, universal healthcare, childcare, all those things. When I think about [single issues], I’m like, “alright, this is what they want to do.” And they’re taking this privileged identity and they’re saying, “Let’s make it even more privileged.” And so, instead of working on something like same-sex marriage, I think we should all together, holistically, be working on universal healthcare, childcare, all that as a way that everyone can equally access all these things....I really believe in multi-issue organizing and recognizing the connections
Well, the fi rst time that the bill got introduced on second parent adoption, I mean, there was some work, some grass roots actually, of course, went on, but after we lost we knew we needed to beef that up. And, so that’s when we increased the efforts, and in fact, we had lots of house meetings with legislators and their constituents who supported the second parent adoption bill. It was such a powerful lobbying effort. So, we just continued the same kind of grass roots organizing efforts once we moved to marriage. (Ann, 43-year-old white middle-class female)
This is my second term as town committee member and, as a spokesperson in our district, we have not used our positions to address priorities of the community. And what I’ve decided to do over the last several months is that we actually meet with different constituent groups, and we say, “Hey look, what are the priorities from you?” We’re working with other constituent groups and saying, “Hey, look. Bring your priorities to us. We’re not trying to supplant your power, or override you, or anyone else.” But if you bring to us, the town committee members, and say, “Look, these are the priorities of the community,” then we’ll tell elected offi cials. And we’ve made the process as transparent as we possibly can. We’re going out in the community letting folks know that is what time it is in North Hartford. (Andrew, 44-year-old African American working-class male)
It was back in fall of I think it was 2002, the tipping point for me was the buyout of the Courant [the city’s newspaper] by the Tribune Corporation and
between different oppressions. (Beth, 25-year-old white working-class female)
having it be the paper of record for the city. We felt like we needed to create something new and having Hartford people tell their stories that weren’t being reported. So the idea of joining that bandwagon [the independent media center], jumping on and opening up one here in Hartford, just expanding that independent media movement. So that’s what sort of motivated it. And I hadn’t been really involved in media before, it just sounded like a new exciting thing. (Josh, 28-year-old white working-class male)
When individuals who, for whatever reason, fi nd themselves working for social change and seek assistance on how to do it, they typically do not look to sociological frameworks or scholarly research. Most just learn by doing but some consult the variety of organizing manuals and handbooks or attend the few organizing institutes that now exist.1 Typically, these manuals and institutes draw from activists’ experiences and present guidelines, criteria, or checklists on the varying components of the organizing process (e.g. Loeb 2004; Shaw 2001). Topics such as “developing a strategy” or “organizing new constituencies” give pointers on developing long-term and short-term goals, identifying constituencies, allies, and targets, and creating organizational structures that encourage outreach as well as action. These suggestions are useful and some of them dovetail with the concerns of social movement scholars who examine many movements in many contexts to fi nd patterns in strategy development or organizational structure.
