ABSTRACT
The process of choosing an issue is called issue development. To start the issue development process, it is first necessary to understand the difference between personal and social problems, and issues. As Frederick Douglass, the renowned abolitionist, once stated, "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will". Thus, in order to create change, it is critical that a demand is made to the people in power, and this is what an issue allows for. Over the past decade, Scott Myers-Lipton's students in Social Action have used the issue development process to win eleven campaigns. In the fall of 2013, Professor Maria Luisa Alaniz, a faculty member from the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, came into the Social Action course on the second day of class, when the students were beginning the process of choosing their issue, to ask for help on a campaign she was involved with.
