Community organizing

Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest.

Unlike those who promote more-consensual community building, community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless. Community organizing has as a core goal the generation of durable power for an organization representing the community, allowing it to influence key decision-makers on a range of issues over time. In the ideal, for example, this can get community-organizing groups a place at the table before important decisions are made. Community organizers work with and develop new local leaders, facilitating coalitions and assisting in the development of campaigns.

Organized community groups attempt to influence government, corporations and institutions, seek to increase direct representation within decision-making bodies, and foster social reform more generally. Where negotiations fail, these organizations quickly seek to inform others outside of the organization of the issues being addressed and expose or pressure the decision-makers through a variety of means, including picketing, boycotting, sit-ins, petitioning, and electoral politics. Organizing groups often seek out issues they know will generate controversy and conflict, this allows them to draw in and educate participants, build commitment, and establish a reputation for winning. Thus, community organizing is predominantly focused on more than just resolving specific issues. In fact, specific issues are often vehicles for other organizational agendas as much as they are ends in themselves.

Community organizers generally seek to build groups that are democratic in governance, open and accessible to community members, and concerned with the general health of a specific interest group, rather than the community as a whole. Organizing seeks to broadly empower community members, with the end goal of "distributing" power more equally throughout the community.

The four basic types of community organizing are grassroots or "door-knocking" organizing, faith-based community organizing (FBCO), broad-based and coalition building. Political campaigns often claim that their door-to-door operations are in fact an effort to organize the community, though often these operations are focused exclusively on voter identification and turnout.

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