Community organizing
[7] The process of creating empowerment starts with admitting that power gaps and resource inequalities exist in society and affects an individual's personal life.
[21][19][7] In addition, European American feminists delegitimize women who do not follow the traditional gender norms influenced by white domestic middle class womanhood.
[25] Holiness, Pentecostal, and other related denominations (often "storefront") churches with mostly poor and working-class members tend not to join FBCOs because of their focus on "faith" over "works," among other issues.
In Digitally Enabled Social Change: Activism in the Internet Age, authors Earl and Kimport (2011) provide valuable insights into this shift – namely how decreased costs associated with 'Taking Action on the Cheap' have opened up greater opportunities for involvement in religious initiatives or movements.
Digital tools allow faith based groups to spread their message further, better coordinate collective actions across distances and mobilize supporters in unprecedented ways – greatly democratizing this kind of organizing effort.
However, this transition to digital also poses complex challenges that must be addressed on topics such as community identity and collective action – as noted by Earl and Kimport themselves in their book.
Broad-based organizations aim to teach institutional leaders how to build relationships of trust across racial, faith, economic and geographic lines through individual, face-to-face meetings.
[31] Other goals include internally strengthening the member institutions by developing the skills and capacities of their leaders and creating a vehicle for ordinary families to participate in the political process.
In this way, representatives of community organizing groups are often able to bring key government officials or corporate leaders to the table without engaging in "actions" because of their reputation.
These ordinances challenge preemptive state and federal laws that forbid local governments from prohibiting corporate activities deemed harmful by community residents.
More recent rights-based organizing, in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine, Virginia and California has prohibited corporate mining, large-scale water withdrawals and chemical trespass.
Since the emphasis of the reformers was mostly on building community through settlement houses and other service mechanisms, the dominant approach was what Fisher calls social work.
[54] But the dispiriting reality was that however much they might talk about "transforming the system," "building alternative institutions," and "revolutionary potential", their credibility on the doorstep rested on their ability to secure concessions from, and therefore to develop relations with, the local power structures.
Experience with federal anti-poverty programs and the upheavals in the cities produced a thoughtful response among activists and theorists in the early 1970s that has informed activities, organizations, strategies and movements through the end of the century.
[59] There have been many other notable community organizers through the decades: Mark Andersen, Ella Baker, Heather Booth, César Chávez, Lois Gibbs, Mother Jones, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Nader, Huey P. Newton, Barack Obama, and Paul Wellstone.
In response, some progressives, such as Congressman Steve Cohen (D-TN) and liberal pundit Donna Brazile, started saying that "Jesus was a community organizer, Pontius Pilate was a governor", a phrase produced on bumper stickers and elsewhere.
Organizing for America sought to advance the president's legislative agenda and played an important role in building grassroots support for The Affordable Health Care Act.
This includes getting several employers (including the Welsh Assembly) to pay the Living Wage, improving Muslim women's access to leisure facilities, making Wales the world's first Fairtrade nation, improving British Sign Language provision for Deaf young people, getting a Parkinson's nurse to be based in North East Wales, getting a local authority to recycle instead of building an incinerator, and getting a homeless shelter for Wrexham.
Community leaders from TCC's diverse membership work together to actively engage in democracy and decision making, holding regular accountability meetings ahead of elections and building ongoing relationships with power holders.
It expands the community organising movement to include young people from the National Citizen Service (NCS) and ambassadors for the #iwill social action campaign for 10 to 20-year-olds.
In May 2010 Citizens UK held a General Election Assembly at the Methodist Central Hall Westminster with 2,500 people from member institutions and the world media present.
[69] Citizens UK had negotiated to have David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown as the leaders of the three main political parties attend.
Community organising builds these institutions into permanent citizens membership alliances which work together to identify issues and agree ways of introducing solutions.
The power and influence that we seek is tempered by our religious teachings and moral values and is exercised in the fluid and ever-changing relationship with our fellow leaders, allies and adversaries.
"[73] Citizens UK set up the Institute for Community Organising (ICO) as part of its Centre for Civil Society established in 2010 in response to growing demands for its training.
Residents brought their daily life instruments such as empty liquid petroleum gas pots and cooking utensils with the aim to stage a street theatre about losing their home.
Twenty-two people, including social workers, were arrested under the charge of causing obstruction to traffic in Garden Road and attended court hearings.
The NGO SoCO, a university students organization Social Movement Resource Centre and some other citizens joined to form the "Kingland's friends" to support the residents.
In late April, the SoCo decided to withdraw from the "Kingland's friend" and close the case, claiming that "residents were swayed by students associations to plan illegal and violent ways for protest".
The SAR government changed the subvention model to giving a "lump sum grant", which is seen as a measure to depoliticize social work by some scholars.
