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Power to the People: Thirty-five Years of Community Organizing

Updated from The Workbook, Summer 1994, pp. 52-55. An abbreviated version
appeared as the article "Community Organizations," in the Encyclopedia of the
Consumer Movement, ed. Stephen Brobeck (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 1997), pp.
120-122.

Community organizing must be judged a remarkable if unheralded success: over the past

thirty-five years organizers have built several consequential national networks of

grassroots groups, nurtured a dozen training centers, and -- in concert with a variety of

social movements -- greatly enlarged the tactical toolkit of citizen action. Everyone

building grassroots citizens' organizations can draw upon well tested techniques of

protest (rallies, marches, demonstrations, boycotts), political action (voter registration,

lobbying, electoral campaigns), mutual aid (small businesses, co-ops, credit unions, low-

income housing development, economic development corporations), organizational and

leadership development (one-on-ones, house meetings, conventions), fundraising (door-

to-door canvasses, phone banks), and media access (press conferences, issue framing,

publications). Although it has always contained the democratic promise of empowering

the disenfranchised, community organizing is also celebrated by Harry Boyte and

communitarians as embodying visions of public philosophy ranging from civic

republicanism to progressive populism and the cooperative commonwealth.

The label "community organizing" has been attached to a variety of activities drawing on

disparate traditions and historical periods. The turn-of-the century settlement house

movement, exemplified by Jane Addams's Hull House in Chicago, continues to influence

social workers with its example of neighborhood improvement and social uplift. Saul

Alinsky was more attracted to the militant alternative modeled by the CIO industrial

union drives and the radical neighborhood organizing of unemployed councils in the late

1930s. Tactics of nonviolent direct action were refined from the mid-1950s through the
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1960s by the civil rights movement in the South, which, as sociologist Aldon Morris has

shown, mobilized networks of local black churches, NAACP chapters, and black colleges

-- with assistance from such movement catalysts as the Highlander Center and the

Fellowship for Reconciliation. Courageous action by civil rights workers inspired New

Left community organizing projects under the banners of "power to the people" and "let

the people decide." Even the federal War on Poverty's Community Action Program

sporadically encouraged organizing to achieve its mandate of the "maximum feasible

participation" of the poor.

Around 1970 several national networks began to coalesce and develop systematic and

distinctive approaches to community organizing. These include the Industrial Areas

Foundation (IAF), ACORN, Citizen Action, National People's Action, PICO, DART, and

the Gamaliel Foundation. Each was indebted, in greater or lesser degree, to Alinsky and

his early organizing programs in Chicago through IAF. Many influential organizers,

including Tom Gaudette and Fred Ross, Sr., developed their characteristic approaches

based on experience with Alinsky's projects. With IAF support Ross founded the

Community Service Organization in California in 1949, enlisting talented young

organizers Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta to develop a network of organizations in

Mexican American communities, and later worked with them in the United Farm

Workers union. Although Alinsky and many others have argued that community

organizing is a discipline distinct from wider social movements, his early projects drew

energy and inspiration from such movements: Chicago's Back of the Yards

Neighborhood Council was established in 1939 during the Packinghouse Workers

organizing drive, and civil rights activities energized such 1960s projects as The

Woodlawn Organization in Chicago and FIGHT in Rochester.

Methodical training of community organizers can be dated from 1969, when Midas

Muffler founder Gordon Sherman gave Alinsky a sizable grant. As IAF executive

director, Edward Chambers continued the program following Alinsky's death in 1972,

setting training at the heart of IAF's expanded organizing activity, centered on federations

of religious parishes and congregations. IAF's most successful projects have been based

in Texas, where Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) in San Antonio

helped elect Henry Cisneros as the city's first Hispanic mayor. As IAF state director,

Ernesto Cortes, Jr. built a powerful network of six affiliates, collectively known as Texas

Interfaith; he is now the IAF southwest regional organizer. IAF's East Brooklyn

Congregations set up Nehemiah Homes to build 2,100 low-cost houses and became a

model for federal housing assistance. Baltimore's BUILD has tackled education, jobs,

and housing. IAF presently has 57 affiliates in 21 states, Canada, the United Kingdom,

and Germany.

The IAF model of organizing religious congregations into powerful local and regional

networks has been taken up by three other groups -- PICO, Gamaliel, and DART -- most

of whose leaders got their start with IAF.

PICO was founded in 1972 by John Baumann, S.J. as the Pacific Institute for Community

Organization, headquartered in Oakland, California. As it expanded from the West

Coast, PICO characterized its acronym as standing for People Improving Communities

through Organizing. In 2005 it renamed itself the PICO National Network, emphasizing

the autonomy of its affiliated organizations, and its role developing national strategy,

training, and consultation. PICO works to “increase access to health care, improve public

schools, make neighborhoods safer, build affordable housing, redevelop communities,

and revitalize democracy.” Recently PICO has been developing a strategy of

consolidating power in metropolitan areas, and exploring a state-wide effort to influence

public policy on children’s health in California as well as having an impact on such

national issues as immigration reform. In 2008 PICO has 50 local and regional affiliates,

representing 150 cities in 17 states, with 1000 member institutions claiming to represent a

million people.

The Gamaliel Foundation, created in Chicago in 1968 to assist a low-income African-

American community, was reoriented to focus on community organizing when Gregory

Galluzzo was hired as executive director in 1986. Seeing its basic function as training

and leadership development, Gamaliel’s goal is “to assist local community leaders to

create, maintain and expand independent, grassroots, and powerful faith-based

community organizations.” Gamaliel is also refocusing its efforts on wider metropolitan

areas and assessing how to impact national policy on immigration reform. As of 2008

Gamaliel has 60 affiliates in 21 states, Britain, and five provinces of South Africa, and

claims to represent over a million people.

DART, the Direct Action and Research Training Center, was founded in 1982, and has

20 affiliated organizations in six states. John Calkins is the executive director. DART is

headquartered in Miami, Florida, and practices strictly congregation-based community

organization. DART conducts five-day orientation trainings for community leaders and

has a four-month training program for organizers.

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, began in 1970

as a spin-off from the National Welfare Rights Organization, founded by George Wiley,

who enlisted civil rights workers and trained them in an Alinsky-influenced program at

Syracuse University. From a base in Arkansas, Wade Rathke and Gary Delgado

developed a replicable model of forming membership organizations and developing

leaders in low-income neighborhoods -- relying substantially on young middle-class staff

working for subsistence wages. ACORN has established local housing corporations to

rehabilitate homes, and has successfully pressured banks to provide mortgages and home

improvement loans in low-income communities. ACORN has led “living wage”

campaigns in many cities, and has forged alliances with labor unions. The Institute for

Social Justice serves as ACORN's training arm. ACORN claims some 350,000 member

families in 850 neighborhood chapters in over 100 cities.

Also focused on housing, former IAF organizer Shel Trapp and community activist Gail

Cincotta founded National People's Action (NPA) and its associated National Training

and Information Center in Chicago in 1972, to coordinate a loose network of some 300

neighborhood, church, union, farm and seniors' organizations. Emphasizing campaigns

against insurance and bank "redlining," NPA helped pass the Home Mortgage Disclosure

Act of 1975, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, and the National Affordable

Housing Act of 1990. NTIC/NPA showed its organizational maturity by managing the

retirement of Trapp and the death of Cincotta in 2001 with a transition to new leadership

cultivated within its ranks. NPA continues to attract some 1,200 people to its annual

conference in Washington, DC, and 250 to its annual leadership training program.

Inspired by their experience with the civil rights, women's, New Left, and labor

movements, Heather Booth and Steve Max founded the Midwest Academy in Chicago in

1973 and later the associated Citizen Action network. Citizen Action affiliates included

both statewide membership organizations with local chapters and statewide coalitions of

labor, citizen, farm, and senior organizations. All used the door-to-door canvass model

to recruit members and raise money. Citizen Action did extensive electoral work in

support of Democratic candidates, and made national health insurance a priority

campaign. In 1997 the national office of Citizen Action was caught illegally channeling

money to Teamster reform president Ron Carey’s campaign for reelection. Angry
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affiliates demanded the national office be dissolved. In 1999 Heather Booth and others

founded USAction to coordinate the remaining Citizen Action state chapters and help

rebuild the network. In 2007 USAction claims to represent 3 million members in 23 state

affiliates and other associated organizations.

Grassroots organizations outside the national networks have often found it difficult to

move beyond an initial period of enthusiasm and early successes to acquire disciplined

approaches to sustaining and developing their organizations. The need to nurture

independent groups has led to the growing importance of training and technical

assistance centers -- what Gary Delgado calls "training intermediaries." The Highlander

Center in Tennessee, an early example founded in 1932 by Myles Horton, developed a

unique educational approach to grassroots leadership development. Mike Miller's

Organize Training Center in San Francisco draws on his background as a civil rights

worker and an IAF organizer. Si Kahn's Grassroots Leadership in the Carolinas has

initiated an innovative "barriers and bridges" project to deal with such diversity issues as

racism, sexism and homophobia. The Center for Third World Organizing, founded by

ACORN veteran Delgado, works with a network of organizations in communities of

color, as does another spin-off, the Applied Research Center in Oakland. The Western

States Center in Portland serves groups in eight Rocky Mountain and Pacific Northwest

states, providing training conferences for activists and progressive public officials. The

Center for Community Change, headquartered in Washington, DC, provides technical

assistance to community groups across the country. Lois Gibb's Center for Health,

Environment and Justice (formerly the Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste)

plays a similar function as a technical assistance center and conference sponsor for

grassroots groups in the environmental justice movement.

The distinction between social movements and community organizations is increasingly

blurred. An interesting hybrid was Neighbor to Neighbor (N2N), founded by Fred Ross,

Jr., who adapted his father's house meeting model to rally progressives in the 1980s to

oppose U.S. intervention in Nicaragua and El Salvador. In another innovative effort, the

Peace Development Fund blends the role of foundation and training center by providing

small grants, technical assistance, and leadership development to grassroots peace and

social justice organizations across the country. Similarly, on a local or regional level, the

Funding Exchange network of progressive community foundations bring together

activists working on diverse issues through community advisory boards.

Populism has proved to be a double-edged sword: since the 1980s the religious and

populist right borrowed many techniques from progressive community organizers. In a

fascinating parallel to the IAF model, fundamentalist church networks were mobilized by

Beverly LaHaye's Concerned Women for America, Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition,

James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, and Donald Wildmon's American Family

Association to combat abortion rights, pornography, gay and lesbian rights, secularism in

the public schools, and other manifestations of liberalism. On state level, groups like

Lon Mabon's Oregon Citizens Alliance built campaigns against gay and lesbian rights on

a network of fundamentalist congregations. In another surprising parallel, Alan Gottlieb

and Ron Arnold adapted their Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise in Bellevue,

Washington, as a right-wing "training intermediary" to coordinate the Wise Use

Movement, a counter-environmentalist network of ranching, mining, timber, and property

owner associations, as well as hunting, motorcycling, and off-road vehicle clubs.

Community organizing as a vocation continues to present many difficulties, including

poor salaries and limited benefits, stressful working conditions, the absence of clear

career ladders, and the lack of professional development opportunities, mentorship, and
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administrative sophistication. There is no widely recognized union or professional

association, although the National Organizers Alliance has become an important support

system. Emerging university training programs may help define the field, and career

paths could be explicitly expanded to include work with other types of nonprofit

advocacy and service organizations in a variety of movements, as well as labor union

organizing. Recruiting and mentoring young people of color, a vital task, will be easier

when organizing careers are more attractive.

Community organizing continues into the Twenty-first Century with no single guru, no

vanguard organization, and no hegemonic model. Nevertheless, a consensus is growing

that strategies for regional, state, and national impacts must be developed. Both

congregation-based community organizations and direct-membership neighborhood

associations are exploring new partnerships, alliances, and relationships -- with labor

unions, universities, and advocacy think-tanks. The field of community organization has

long had tactical sophistication, and it is now developing a strategic vision of how to win

significant structural reforms in American society. Organizers are exploring alliances

with potential allies, including other social movements, unions, and the state and local

chapters of national activist organizations with middle and upper-middle class members -

- the Sierra Club has been one group open to innovative alliances. Progressive activists

must learn how to connect and mediate among community organizations and these

diverse movements. Only then will they be able to build the majority coalition necessary

to achieve the radical democratic vision embodied in the Arkansas state motto borrowed

by ACORN: "The People Shall Rule."

Brief Bibliography

Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (New
York: Vintage Books, 1972).

Kim Bobo, Jackie Kendall, and Steve Max, Organizing for Social Change: A Manual for
Activists in the 1990s (Washington: Seven Locks Press, 1991).

Harry Boyte, CommonWealth: A Return to Citizen Politics (New York: The Free Press,
1989).

Harry Boyte, Heather Booth, and Steve Max, Citizen Action and the New Populism
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986).

Michael Jacoby Brown, Building Powerful Community Organizations: A Personal Guide

Edward T. Chambers, Roots for Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action, and Justice
(New York: Continuum, 2004).

Carol Chetkovich and Frances Kunreuther, From the Ground Up: Grassroots Organizing
Making Social Change (ILR Press, 2007).

Gary Delgado, Beyond the Politics of Place: New Directions in Community Organizing
in the 1990s (Oakland: Applied Research Center, 1994).

__________, Organizing the Movement: The Roots and Growth of ACORN

Robert Fisher, Let the People Decide: Neighborhood Organizing in America (Boston:
Twayne Publishers, 1984).
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Michael Gecan, Going Public: An Organizer’s Guide to Citizen Action (New York:
Anchor Books, 2004).

John M. Glen, Highlander: No Ordinary School, 1932-1962 (Lexington: The University

Sanford D. Horwitt, Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky -- His Life and Legacy (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989).

Dennis A. Jacobsen, Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing

Si Kahn, Organizing: A Guide for Grassroots Leaders (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982).

Mike Miller, "Organizing: A Map for Explorers," Christianity and Crisis (February 2,
1987), pp. 22-30.

Joan Minieri and Paul Getsos, Tools for Radical Democracy: How to Organize for Power
in Your Community (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007).

Aldon D. Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities
Organizing for Change (New York: Free Press, 1984).

Marion Orr, editor, Transforming the City: Community Organizing and the Challenge of
Political Change (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2007).

Gregory F. Augustine Pierce, Activism That Makes Sense: Congregations and

Mary Beth Rogers, Cold Anger: A Story of Faith and Power Politics (Denton, TX:
University of North Texas Press, 1990).

Marion K. Sanders, The Professional Radical: Conversations with Saul Alinsky (New
York: Perennial Library, 1970).
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Rinku Sen, Stir It Up: Lessons in Community Organizing and Advocacy (San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass, 2003).

Lee Staples, Roots to Power: A Manual for Grassroots Organizing, 2nd edition
(Westport: Praeger, 2004).

Joe Szakos and Kristin Layng Szakos, eds., Lessons from the Field: Organizing in Rural
Communities (New Orleans: American Institute for Social Justice/Social Policy
magazine, 2008).

Kristin Layng Szakos and Joe Szakos, We Make Change; Community Organizers Talk
About What They Do – and Why (Vanderbilt Univ. Press, 2007).

Mark R. Warren, Dry Bones Rattling: Community Building to Revitalize American

Richard L. Wood, Faith in Action: Religion, Race and Democratic Organizing in