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July 2022 Newsletter
Issue #65
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Community organizing is a strategy used by social movements, labor unions, under-represented communities, and marginalized groups to gain rights, win collective political power, and create positive change. Done well, it is one of the most powerful strategies for social change.
There are many examples of small communities that generated major media awareness, transformed culture, and overcome major, systemic oppression through smart, effective organizing (all with limited money, resources, and social support).
Purpose
Community organizing aims to organize, mobilize and educate people to build a sense of community. By doing so, the community gains power and influence over issues concerning their welfare. It works by:
- Bringing together people and/or institutions to engage in collective dialogue and action for change;
- Building grassroots leadership by training members of the community in organizing and civic engagement skills;
- Building political power by mobilizing large numbers of people around a unified vision and purpose;
- Recognizing that problems and their solutions are systemic and thus focusing on accountability, equity, and quality for all, rather than the gains of some;
- Understanding that systems are a central part of community’s well-being and that improving them also includes building the economic, cultural, and political well-being of the community;
- Aiming to alter longstanding power relationships in communities;
- Bringing public attention to an issue, demonstrating that large numbers of people are concerned;
- Putting pressure on decision-makers or public systems when necessary.
Origins
Saul Alinsky is commonly recognized as the founder of community organizing. Alinsky emerged as a community organizer in the second half of the 1930s. His thinking about organizing was strongly influenced by the emerging labor movement in the U.S. at the time. His approach emphasized:
- Democratic decision making
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Development of indigenous leadership
- Support of traditional community leaders
- Addressing people’s self-interest
- Use of conflict strategies
- Working for specific and concrete results.
Facts & Figures
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There are over 41,000 community organizers employed in the United States.
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57% of organizers are women and 43% are men.
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Female organizers earn 99% of what men earn.
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The average age of an employed organizer is 42.
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The most common ethnicity of community organizers is White (59.1%), followed by Hispanic or Latino (20.3%), Black or African American (9.1%), Asian, (6.7%) and American Indian and Alaska Native (2.4%).
- The majority of community organizers are located in New York and Chicago and are most in demand in Chicago.
- Community organizers are more likely to work at private companies than educational organizations.
Steps of Community Organizing
- Assess needs and problems
- Prioritize
- Formulate achievable objective
- Work out alternatives
- Work out a plan of action
- Mobilize resources
- Implement action
- Evaluate
Tips
- The single best organizing tactics are direct advocacy and direct action.
- Think of a "brand." Social movements work and grow because they become powerful, recognizable images or words.
- Start with an event. Effective organizing always starts with meeting people in person.
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Inter-religious Foundation for Community Organization (IFCO)
A national ecumenical agency that assists the poor and disenfranchised though community organizing. Develops and sustains hundreds of community organizations and public policy groups to fight human and civil rights injustices. Provides technical assistance, trained organizers, makes and administers grants, and uses a global network of grassroots organizers, clergy, and other professionals to advance the struggles of oppressed people for justice and self-determination. Learn more.
For more Community Organizing resources,
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Revolutionary Nonviolence:
Organizing for Freedom
By James M. Lawson Jr. An account of the philosophy and power of nonviolence organizing, and a resource for building and sustaining effective social movements. Demonstrates how we can overcome violence and oppression through organized direct action, presenting a roadmap for a new generation of activists. Michael K. Honey and Kent Wong reflect on Rev. Lawson's talks and dialogues, from his speeches at the Nashville sit-in movement in 1960 to his lectures at UCLA, provides a comprehensive introduction to Rev. Lawson's teachings on how to center nonviolence in successfully organizing for change. Read more.
For more Community Organizing resources,
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Corporate Responsibility Program
A ministry of the Benedictine Sisters that addresses actions and behaviors of the corporations in which the Sisters hold stock. The program uses the power of stock ownership to raise critical issues with management, workers, boards of directors and the public. Some of the issues raised, using resolutions and dialogue, include:
- Human rights policies and policy implementation
- Pay disparity between executives and lowest-paid workers
- Access to and affordability of health care
- Working conditions, especially in foreign factories supplying US goods
- Diversity on corporate boards of directors
- Antibiotics in the food supply chain
- Drug pricing, especially as it affects access to medicines
- The human right to water as it relates to corporate pollution and overuse
- Ecological issues such as greenhouse gas emissions, the implications of hydraulic fracturing (fracking), transparency regarding toxins and carcinogens in products and climate change and its impact on the most vulnerable.
For more Socially Responsible Investing resources, click here.
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First Step Alliance
A non-profit organization committed to charitable and educational causes that help advance successful reentry and sustainable financial independence for justice-involved individuals. Seeks to partner with community-based organizations, financial institutions, Departments of Corrections and other agencies, to fulfill their mission.
Their goals are to:
• Empower people through providing access to free educational resources.
• Strengthen families and communities by enhancing access to critical financial services.
• Connect with other mission-aligned organizations to increase their reach.
• Donate to organizations that support their targeted communities.
For more on the Criminal Justice System,
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"American Scar”: The Environmental Tragedy of the Border Wall
A 13-minute documentary from The New Yorker that features activists exposing an ecocide at the U.S.-Mexico border that could alter the evolutionary future of North America. Learn more.
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The Green Bible:
Words of Love for a Suffering Planet
By Stephen Bede Scharper & Simon Appolloni. Reflections and excerpts from salient sources that engage ones senses and deepen ones understanding of the word of God during this time of environmental degradation. Read more.
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Seeking Safety at the U.S. Mexico Border
A 4-part series of short animated videos from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, narrated by UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Ben Stiller and UNHCR high profile supporter Mindy Kaling. Looks at the rights of people forced to flee and the responsibility we all have to protect them. Part 1 focuses on "What is Asylum?" Part 2 looks at "Who Seeking Asylum?" Part 3 examines "What is the Right to Seek Asylum" and Part 4 highlights "Who's Responding to the Needs of Asylum Seekers?" Watch now.
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Interfaith Welcome Coalition
A faith-based movement that collaborates with others on behalf of the changing needs of asylum seekers, refugees and at-risk immigrants -- primarily from Central America. Provides basic support to people on their journey, educates and advocates to change the systems that impact immigrants. Learn more.
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Tax the Rich! How Lies, Loopholes, and Lobbyists Make the Rich Even Richer
By former BlackRock executive Morris Pearl, the millionaire chair of the Patriotic Millionaires, and Erica Payne, the organization’s founder. Offers an insider’s tour of the nation’s tax code, explaining exactly how “the rich”—and the politicians they control—manipulate the U.S. tax code to ensure the rich get richer, and everyone else is left holding the bag. Unapologetically dismantles the “intellectual” justifications for a tax code that virtually guarantees destabilizing levels of inequality and consequent social unrest. Infographics, charts, cartoons, and lively characters including “the Werkhardts” and “the Slumps” make a complicated subject accessible and illuminate the practical reforms that can put America on the road to stability and shared prosperity before it’s too late. Read more.
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Witnessing Whiteness: Confronting White Supremacy in the American Church
By Kristopher Norris. Explores the challenges that lie at the intersection of race, church, and politics in America and argues for a new ethic of responsibility to confront white supremacy. Provides in-depth analysis of the ways whiteness, as a process of social/identity formation, is fueling racial division within American Christianity and the inadequacy of efforts at racial reconciliation to fully address the challenges white supremacy poses.
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Gabby Giffords Won't Back Down
Tells the story of former Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Gifford's fight to recover following an assassination attempt in 2011, and her new life as one of the most effective activists in the battle for gun violence prevention and in promoting understanding of the language condition aphasia. Featuring extensive verité filming of Gabby and her husband, astronaut-turned-Senator Mark Kelly; interviews with Barack Obama and other friends and colleagues; and exclusive access to videos taken in the weeks following her near-death experience. It is the story of a rising star transformed by an act of violence, and a close-up portrait of the marriage that sustains her. Watch the trailer.
(Only in theaters July 15)
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Simplify: 7 Guiding Principles to Help Anyone Declutter Their Home and Their Life
By Joshua Becker. A celebration of living more by owning less. Calls for the end of living lives seeking and accumulating more and more possessions by highlighting the enjoyment of living with less. The book is based on a rational approach to minimalism and full of personal stories, practical tips, and inspiration. Read more.
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Women Engaging the Catholic Social Tradition: Solidarity toward the
Common Good
Edited by Erin M. Brigham, Mary Johnson SNDdeN. A collection of essays that point out that the Catholic Social Tradition has concentrated on the labor of white males and assumes a patriarchal structure. They ask where are women in most papal documents and commentaries on them? Where is the home? Where are women of color, and where are women who toil in non-unionized sectors such as domestic work? Where are the women in the teachings aimed at achieving justice for migrants? The essays use the framework of Catholic Social teaching as a context for broadening the understanding of the Church’s teaching and of scholarship. Read more.
For more Catholic Social Teaching resources,
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Social Justice Film Institute
In collaboration with Seattle University Film Program, PopUp Justice and Meaningful Movies, fosters social justice filmmaking through youth education, script development, production assistance for works in progress, competitive challenges, and special events. Focuses on progressive topics including tribal rights, environmental justice, Black Lives Matter, surveillance and privacy, LGBTQ issues, restorative justice, workers' rights, austerity, globalization, prisoner rights, and more.
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A group of Christian scholar-activists at the Sider Center of Eastern University in Pennsylvania that works for a fuller expression of Christian faithfulness and more just society. Combines biblical scholarship with astute policy analysis to further economic justice, support interdependence, promote racial and ecological justice, and make the world a better place. Learn more.
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God, History can be somewhat misleading for us because we are not, at least in this country, typically a historically oriented people. As a result, we often bring a bit of naivete to the stories of history, reading them as if they are simply stories fairly disconnected from us, mostly irrelevant and no bearing upon the present of the future. Hence, we move too fast through history. So we can be led at times to think, as one person has sardonically put it, what’s a little slavery among friends? Or for that matter, what’s a little discrimination and segregation in the past, if we can all agree not to make too big a deal of it now? As a result, God, we have little hope of making much real change because making change requires first telling the truth—for without the truth there can be no real repentance or real repair. We ask, then, that you forgive our debts—by reorienting us to a truthful pursuit of justice: one that is willing to take an honest look at the past and its exploitations, its exclusions, its trespasses so that we might begin to learn where amends need to be made in present and future constructed from its ruins. And in doing so, lead us not into a temptation of dismissal, denial, or deflection but deliver us to be the kind of oddball, misfits within an unjust society still wracked by racial exploitation, exclusion, and denigration who are willing to tell the truth and to pursue the justice that truth reveals in the pursuit of your strange, new kingdom. Amen.
Dr. Dan Rhodes
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Important Dates This Month
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Individuals Honored This Month |
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July 2nd
When you hate, the only person that suffers is you because most of the people you hate don't know it and the rest don't care.
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July 2nd
I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…. We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice
but to do better.
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July 5th
The Gospel has to grow little feet.
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July 6th
Love is the absence of judgment.
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July 7th
Peasant people don't have a chance to share in the riches that the planet can offer because some people are taking off so much of the pleasures of this world, and there's only so much to go around.
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July 12th
When the whole world is silent, even one voice becomes powerful.
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July 18th
No one is born hating another person because of skin color, background, or religion.
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July 25th
Two months ago I had a nice apartment in Chicago. I had a good job. I had a son. When something happened to the Negroes in the South I said, 'That's their business, not mine.' Now I know how wrong I was. I was. The murder of my son has shown me that what happens to any of us, anywhere in the world, had better be the business of us all.
Mamie Till, Emmett's mother
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Since 2017, there have been more than 280,000 visitors to the Social Justice Resource Center website. We provide a wide variety of facts and figures on specific social issues as well as thousands of free resources including films, publications, links to other organizations, prayers, quotes, principles of social justice, key dates throughout the year, action ideas, Diocesan office contact information and biographies of famous people who have worked for social justice.
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