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Community

Organizing
Strategies
“Leave No Evacuee
Behind!”
The Fight for A Just New
New Orleans
Why Organizing Is So
Important?
• Fundamental social change happens
when people come together to
organize, advocate and create
solutions to injustice.
• Communities that are working for
social justice need tools to create
and sustain healthy organizations
We Face An Unprecedented
Organizing Challenge !
More Than Two Years After Katrina:
• New Orleans Pre-Katrina Population 454,000 people Post –Katrina 254,000
people
• New Orleans Pre-Katrina African-American population 302,000 Post-
Katrina Population 89,000 loss of 213,000
• 60,000 families in LA still in 240 sq. ft trailers or less-usually at least 3 to a
trailer
• Homeless rate is exploding! More than 17,000 homeless.
• Estimated by LA Hurricane Task Force that NOLA needs at least 30,000
affordable rental units
• 80% of 5100 NOLA occupied public housing units remain closed by order of
HUD, set for demolition and redevelopment even though experts have
found the buildings structurally sound and that costs for repair would be
significantly less.
• New Orleans Public Education system is being destroyed! NOLA now the
charter capital of the US. Public schools that did not flood and having
strong parental support and high test scores flipped into charters. There
are still public schools without libraries, too few teachers, and even less
certified teachers, more security guards than teachers, few supportive
services such as counselors, social workers for students, teachers and staff
who are still suffering post-traumatic stress disorders..
• Health Care in crisis! Charity Hospital which saw 350,000 visits a year
remains closed as well as half of NOLA ‘s hospitals.
• Mental Health – CDC reported that 45% of city residents reported
“significant stress or dysfunction” and another 25% were worse. A suicide
rate more than triple before the storm. 534 psychiatric beds shrank to
about 80 estimated that only about 8 beds available daily. Jails becoming
`New Challenges Require
Greater Strategy and Skills
• Importance of strategic sense
• Increased importance of a race class perspective
• Social political and economic context
characterized by globalism.
• Resurgent conservative movement
• Requires a deeper strategic capacity than most
organizations have today
• Range of skills required: more than just good
recruitment methods and creative action
planning. Need systems for internal leadership
development, consciousness raising, strong fact
research, creativity in framing issues and the
ability to generate broad media attention!
Learn Organizing Models –
Innovate Based On
Neighborhood Realities!
• Saul Alinsky – IAF – has been called “the father of
community organizing”
Key Principles
3. Role of organizer and leader should be distinct with local
volunteer leaders and professional staff.
4. The building of the organization should be the major
expression of communities growing power; recognizing
that people power is mostly a matter of having
overwhelming numbers.
5. Issue campaigns should be focused on a specific,
individual decision maker.
6. Organizing should target winning immediate concrete
changes based on the “needs, interests, and issues” of
local people rather than on a explicit ideology.
7. The mode of organxing should be 24/7 : the organizer
needs to devote all emotional, physical and intellectual
resources to the work.
Expanding Approaches
from the Alinsky Model
• Fred Ross – former IAF West Coast
Director - Community Service
Organizations – reacting to limits in
the institutional model – developed
individual-membership model -
Cesar Chavez built United Farm
Workers - house meetings
connected through social aid and
family networks –Mutualistas –
mutual aid groups forming
purchasing coops and revolving loan
funds. Building toward strategy of
Expanding Approaches
from the Alinsky Model
• John Baumann and Dick Helfridge –founded organization
Peoples Institute for Community Organizing – established
the model for faith-based organizing.
Key Principles:
• Congregations of all denominations are the building blocks
of these community organizations.
• Focus on “the whole for Community Organizing –
established the model for faith-based organizing.
Congregations of all denominations are the building blocks
of these community organizations
• Developing “LOM’s” - Locally Organized Ministries”.
• Focus on “the whole person” and “respect for human
dignity” and “creation of just society” implicit criticism of
IAF reliance on formal leadership and “non-ideological”
(sometimes leading to a crass and overly pragmatic
approach and other shortcomings in developing leaders
among the rank and file of the participating institutions.)
Expanding Approaches
from the Alinsky Model
• ACORN – Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now – Wade
Rathke
• First to design a replicable model of
individual membership organization.
ACORN’s continued outreach to individuals
and its continued commitment to
organizing the very poor makes it an
important supplement to IAF and PICO
institutional models that some times only
marginally address the question of the
unorganized.
Other Approaches
• Ella Baker
• In order for us as poor and oppressed
people to become a part of a society that
is meaningful, the system under which we
now exist has to be radically changed. This
means that we are going to have to learn
to think in radical terms. I use the term
radical in its original meaning—getting
down to and understanding the root cause.
It means facing a system that does not
lend itself to your needs and devising
means by which you change that system.
Ella Baker
• Ella Baker understood that laws,
structures, and institutions had to
change in order to correct injustice
and oppression.
• Key to the process: Involve
oppressed people, ordinary people,
infusing new meanings into the
concept of democracy.
• Finding their own individual and
collective power to determine their
lives and shape the direction of
Ella Baker :
The “Outsider Within."
Summary of
Community
Organizing Principles
Be Clear On The Problem &
Focused on The Facts!
• Clarity on the problems that need to
be addressed, solid evidence for their
critique, the ability to reach large
numbers of people with both analysis
and proposals
Who Will Lead?
• The importance of recruiting people
from among the most affected by
social and economic problems
• Connected questions – structure,
culture, outreach methods and the
dilemmas of combining organizing
and service
You Frame Them Or They
will Frame You!
• The principles of progressive issue
development, reinforcing the need to
design explicit criteria to guide issue
choices
Direct Action
• The critical role of direct action in our
work and ways to design and
conduct actions that further
campaign goals
Build Leadership –Build A
Movement
• The principles of leadership
development –systematic leadership
programs rooted in popular
education models
Know Your Enemy
- Know Yourself
• The need for excellent research and
ways to generate and use it
Coalition Building
• The principles of building effective
alliances and networks combining
the strength of organized
constituencies
Issue Development
Criteria
• Gives sense of power, changes
conditions and shifts power relations.
• Worthwhile
• Non-Divisive
• Clear demands
• Clear Target
• Easy to understand
Issue Development
Criteria
• Winnable
• Attracts Allies
• Reveals Race, Class, Gender
inequities.
• Clear Time frame
• Leads to other issues
• Creates New Handles
• Variety of tactics needed
Planning An Action
• Questions to think about when planning a
direct action?
• What is the issue?
• What are the demands?
• Who is the target?
• Where can find the target? Why are
holding this target responsible?
• Do we have members that can testify?
• Do we have someone who can speak
about our demands?
Planning An Action 2
• What is the plan for the action?
• Announcement
• Set up – making the case
• Confrontation – presenting the demands
• Climax – getting the response
• Conclusion – how will we end?
• Can this action draw the media?
• Will this action draw sympathy and support for
our demands and place the blame for the
problem on the target?
• Contingency planning. What could go wrong?
What is our contingency plan?
Assign Roles and other
Preparation
• Who is scouting the location of the
action?
• Who are going to be the leaders out
front ( MC’s, testimonials, etc)
• Who is dealing with the target?
• Who is the chant leader?
• Who is the media spokesperson?
• Who is managing the visuals?
• Other roles?

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