ABSTRACT
This chapter details how organizations negotiate the neoliberal funding and accountability arrangements while also detailing the more direct instances of state power that threaten their autonomy and existence. It explains the significance of the barriers to community in the 21st century—while making the argument that these interventions become increasingly political in nature and reminiscent of earlier barriers faced by similar grassroots organizations. The chapter shows how at overlapping points of governance, four elements shape, channel, and limit the work of social justice organizations. Organizations could be supported financially by one or more official programs, which then made possible a diverse array of informal community supports that fell well outside what the organizations were being paid to do. As an organization's social influence increases and it begins to question current systems of oppression in a systematic and vocal way, the hindrances become less subtle as significant political threats to organizational survival then activate.
