Introduction to Community Organizing Across Difference

Undergraduate / Graduate

This class is about community organizing and how organizing brings about collective action within communities and across differences. Through analysis of historical and contemporary community organizing efforts, you will learn how organizing mobilizes people to gain power and influence over public policy and decision ¬making that directly impact them. We will focus on questions pertaining to organizing and building power in and among low-¬income, and working poor communities as well as communities marginalized by factors including gender, race, faith, ethnicity, national origin and sexual preference. The course will introduce students to the work necessary to build coalitions and to understand one's positionality before engaging in community-based work. Conceptual models of organizing and theories of change will be introduced. The course includes the "nuts¬-and-¬bolts" of organizing, from strategic visioning to campaign development to one-¬on-¬one engagement. You will have the opportunity to learn, discuss, and employ different organizing skills and techniques through in-¬class exercises and group projects. The analytic approaches you learn will help you think critically and relevantly about the power of social change and how it is strengthened as communities across differences coalesce. The organizing and leadership skills and tools will be useful for your future work as organizers, as social workers, and as active participants in social change efforts in which you engage.