Community Organizing

Community Organizing
Author: Joan Kuyek
Publisher: Fernwood Publishing
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2014-09-01T00:00:00Z
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1552667421

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History is full of stories of the oppressed rebelling against the oppressor, only to reinstate an equally oppressive system. What we learn from oppression is how to oppress. If we want a truly transformative politics, then we must take up methods that embody the kind of world we want to create; we have to change deeply embedded beliefs and behaviours. In this engaging and passionate book, long-time community organizer Joan Kuyek offers important insights and concrete tools to encourage people to get involved in social justice action at the community level. In Canada, activists are frustrated with their inability to effect change in the global economic system, overwhelmed by the number and complexity of issues and too often unaware or dismissive of the efforts of other activists. As a result, social forces for justice and the environment are fragmented and ineffective, and the economic elite grows more powerful. Community Organizing argues that it does not have to be this way. Suggesting that most of our attempts at change and community-building fail because we cannot get along with each other, Community Organizing starts at the community level to describe how we can work together and create organizations based on dignity and respect. It provides strategies to build movements from the community to assert democratic political power and tools to create a culture of hope in this time of despair. This book offers the means to reclaim political power in Canada.

Creative Community Organizing

Creative Community Organizing
Author: Si Kahn
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2010-02-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1605094455

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Privatization has been on the right-wing agenda for years. Health care, schools, Social Security, public lands, the military, prisons-all are considered fair game. Through stories, analysis, impassioned argument-even song lyrics-Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich show that corporations are, by their very nature, unable to fulfill effectively what have traditionally been the responsibilities of government. They make a powerful case that the market is not the measure of all things, and that a vital public sector is an indispensable component of a healthy democracy.

Community Organizing

Community Organizing
Author: Mike Miller
Publisher:
Total Pages: 64
Release: 2012-04-01
Genre: Community development
ISBN: 9780615623214

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This book provides a brief introduction to what is variously called "faith-based," "congregation-based," and "institution-based" community organizing. Grounded in a composite case study of an actual organizing effort, it shows how local communities can be organized for power. Key organizing concepts and strategies are illustrated with stories of real encounters with leaders, communities, and powerful opposition figures. In the approach described here, civic and religious institutions come together to give the community a collective voice. Organizers help a community build a powerful organization rooted in core values of democracy and the social justice teachings of the world's great religious traditions. Saul Alinsky developed the foundations of the tradition of organizing described here, an approach that remains dominant in the U.S. today. Alinsky rooted power deeply in the lives, relationships and institutions of marginalized and oppressed people. In his early organizing days, his organizations brought together a wide range of institutions: religious congregations and labor unions, as well as mutual aid, self-help, athletic, sororal and fraternal, neighborhood and other voluntary associations. By the late 1970s, as non-congregational neighborhood associations fell into decline, organizers in the Alinsky tradition started looking more carefully at how to sustain the vibrancy of the religious institutions that remained. Organizers sought to help congregation members become co-creators, rather than consumers, of the life of their churches, and worked to help members connect their faith more directly to action in the world. In this way, they helped make both faith and the action more meaningful. This little book tells the story of one congregation that was a member of a "broadly-based community organization," and how a community organizer assisted its development as a true community.

Community Organizing

Community Organizing
Author: Ross J. Gittell
Publisher: SAGE
Total Pages: 212
Release: 1998-06-10
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780803957923

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Providing new insight into an important community development challenge, this text looks at how to stimulate the formation of community-based organizations and effective citizen action in neighbourhoods.

Community Organizing

Community Organizing
Author: George Brager
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 460
Release: 1987
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780231054621

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Considered to be a classic book for social work practitioners, this thoroughly updated edition covers more recent literature, research findings, case illustrations, and cross-cultural perspectives. This edition also reviews and tries to explain the changes in community organization that have taken place in the last decade. It introduces new theoretical viewpoints--exchange theory and organizational change theory--to help better understand these changes. Theoretical material concerning reciprocity and alienation is also introduced in this edition. Other themes are: relative deprivation; accountability; stages of group development and participatory benefits; methods and techniques of community assessment; contracting prospective members and outreach; theories and techniques of establishment rapport; leadership and its development; and organizational theory. ISBN 0-231-05462-9: $24.00.

Community Organizing and Community Building for Health and Welfare

Community Organizing and Community Building for Health and Welfare
Author: Meredith Minkler
Publisher:
Total Pages: 489
Release: 2012
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 9780813553009

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The third edition offers new and more established ways to approach community building and organizing, from collaborating with communities on assessment and issue selection to using the power of social media to enhance the effectiveness of such work. Numerous case studies ranging from childhood obesity to immigrant worker rights to health care reform are provided as well as a “tool kit” of appendixes that includes guidelines for assessing coalition effectiveness, exercises for critical reflection on power and privilege, and such training tools as “policy bingo.”

Community Organizing

Community Organizing
Author: David S. Walls
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 216
Release: 2015-02-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0745688160

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This incisive book provides a critical history and analysis of community organizing, the tradition of bringing groups together to build power and forge grassroots leadership for social, economic, racial, and environmental justice. Begun by Saul Alinsky in the 1930s, there are today nearly 200 institution-based groups active in 40 U.S. states, and the movement is spreading internationally. David Walls charts how community organizing has transcended the neighborhood to seek power and influence at the metropolitan, state, and national levels, together with such allies as unions and human rights advocates. Some organizing networks have embraced these goals while others have been more cautious, and the growing profile of community organizing has even charged political debate. Importantly, Walls engages social movements literature to bring insights to our understanding of community organizing networks, their methods, allies and opponents, and to show how community organizing offers concepts and tools that are indispensable to a democratic strategy of social change. Community Organizing will be essential reading for advanced undergraduates and graduate students of sociology, social movements and social work. It will also inform organizers and grassroots leaders, as well as the elected officials and others who contend with them.

Progressive Community Organizing

Progressive Community Organizing
Author: Loretta Pyles
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2013-07-24
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1136271503

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The second edition of Progressive Community Organizing offers a concise intellectual history of community organizing and social movements while also providing practical tools geared toward practitioner skill building. Drawing from social-constructionist, feminist and critical traditions, Progressive Community Organizing affirms the practice of issue framing and offers two innovative frameworks that will change the way students of organizing think about their work. Progressive Community Organizing is ideal for both undergraduate and graduate courses focused on community theory and practice, community organizing, community development, and social change and service learning. The second edition presents new case studies, including those of a welfare rights organization and a youth-led LGBTQ organization. There are also new sections on the capabilities approach, queer theory, the Civil Rights movement, and the practices of self-inquiry and non-violent communication. Discussion of global justice has been expanded significantly and includes an account of a transnational action-research project in post-earthquake Haiti. Each chapter contains discussion questions, written and web resources, and a list of key terms; a full, free-access companion website is also available for the book.

A Match on Dry Grass

A Match on Dry Grass
Author: Mark R. Warren
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2011-09-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9780199912001

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The persistent failure of public schooling in low-income communities constitutes one of our nation's most pressing civil rights and social justice issues. Many school reformers recognize that poverty, racism, and a lack of power held by these communities undermine children's education and development, but few know what to do about it. A Match on Dry Grass argues that community organizing represents a fresh and promising approach to school reform as part of a broader agenda to build power for low-income communities and address the profound social inequalities that affect the education of children. Based on a comprehensive national study, the book presents rich and compelling case studies of prominent organizing efforts in Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, Denver, San Jose, and the Mississippi Delta. The authors show how organizing groups build the participation and leadership of parents and students so they can become powerful actors in school improvement efforts. They also identify promising ways to overcome divisions and create the collaborations between educators and community residents required for deep and sustainable school reform. Identifying the key processes that create strong connections between schools and communities, Warren, Mapp, and their collaborators show how community organizing builds powerful relationships that lead to the transformational change necessary to advance educational equity and a robust democracy.