Helping people and communities develop the tools to shape their own futures has long been a focus of the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation. The following edited transcript is from one of seven videos by Mott in which those working in the field of community organizing reflect on the lessons, opportunities and challenges for creating lasting social change.
Question: What is community organizing and who is it for?
Nelson Carrasquillo
El Comité de Apoyo a los Trabajadores Agrícolas
Glassboro, New Jersey
Community organizing, as I define it, is organizing members of a community in a proactive way to decide what they want to do in their community. It is not a process of someone from the outside deciding, “Okay, this is what needs to happen in this community,” and then making the decision in the absence of the people who live there. This is what happens today, it’s the normal way of doing things in society.
You need to organize the community in order to present a united front, to deal with the situation. And it is up to the community to decide what they want to do. That is a process in itself, in which people make their decisions known. But because of a lack of knowledge, experience and access to information, most of the time they don’t know how to go about it. The concept of organizing is to enable them to have that information, to have an understanding of the process and to be in a position to make a decision and take a position to address it.
Leone Jose Bicchieri
Chicago Workers’ Collaborative
Chicago, Illinois
We can’t necessarily tell someone who has the basic opportunities in life what they need to do; it’s their choice. What we look at is that there are too many people who don’t even have their basic necessities met. If we can work with those folks so they have enough power to “bring up the floor,” in a way we kind of feel like everyone else is better off. It’s like if the canary in the mine is okay, the miners are okay. For us, we’re trying to help everyone, but we believe we do that by lifting up those at the bottom.
Dee Washington
Neighbors for Better Neighborhoods
Greensboro/Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Most of us, if there’s a problem or something goes wrong, we say, “I know what I’ll do, I’ll get on the Internet, I’ll call whoever and I’ll make a complaint.” But there are communities in America that are afraid to have a voice because of what could happen to them. We’re not all living in the same America.
These communities are afraid to speak out. They don’t have the tools, they don’t have a computer. And who helps them? Who helps them to recognize that they have a voice and are a part of America? You know, “You live in America, you do have some rights.” Who helps them? And if not you or me, then who? You know, it’s like being poor in America isn't a crime, but we treat it that way.