ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the concept of empowerment in the theory and in the experience of the residents of the Route 2 project. It explores the populist-pluralist difference and discusses die clientelist position. The populists view empowerment as the process of forming an empowering community and disempowerment as the process by which the empowering community is lost. Very few words are as important to the practitioners and theoreticians of community organizing as the word empowerment. For the populists who focused on the formation of community the empowerment problem of structure and agency began when residents decided to try and wrestle their homes from Caltrans. The pluralists, believing that interests necessarily are in conflict, question the possibility of empowerment taking place through dialogue. The pluralist leadership used the word empowerment regularly when organizing Route 2 Foundation for Human Concerns. The pluralists wanted an equal chance to participate in the power the state had to offer.
