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- Title
What is Organizing?
- Authors
Ganz, Marshall
- Abstract
The article discusses the idea and work behind community organizing. Organizers identify, recruit and develop leadership; build community around leadership; and build power out of community. They develop the relationships, understanding and action that enable people to gain new understanding of their interests, new resources and new capacity to use these resources on behalf of their interests. Organizers work with people to interpret why they should act to change their world--motivation and how they can act to change it--strategy. Empowerment for a person begins with taking responsibility. Empowerment for an organization begins with commitment: responsibility its members take for it. Responsibility begins with choosing to act. Campaign polarize by bringing out those ordinarily submerged conflicts contrary to the interests of the constituency. One dilemma is how to depolarize in order to negotiate resolution of these conflicts. Another dilemma is how to balance campaign work with the ongoing work of organizational growth and development. Organizers build community by developing leadership. They work to develop relationships between a constituency and its leaders based on mutual responsibility and accountability.
- Subjects
COMMUNITY organization; COMMUNITY leadership; SOCIAL action; SELF-efficacy; RESPONSIBILITY
- Publication
Social Policy, 2002, Vol 33, Issue 1, p16
- ISSN
0037-7783
- Publication type
Article