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: How would you describe the current state of community organizing?
Jack McKay
Food AND Medicine
Brewer, Maine
My take on the world right now – and, really, for quite a while – is that we have to dig deeper in the community to build power. We also have to do more to build international solidarity. In terms of creating lasting change locally, we’ve busted down huge barriers between union and nonunion groups, between progressive groups and union organizations, and that has made a huge difference. At Food AND Medicine, we’ve worked with the labor movement to take charity and turn it into solidarity, and create experiences where people can become leaders and create a different image of who workers are and create different possibilities of what workers can do. At that point, we’re creating power and bringing relationships together.
Maria Belén Seara
PUEBLO
Santa Barbara, California
Our issues have been challenged in the field and in the media, but there are also some opportunities that we can take advantage of. We’ve seen in the last two years, especially with national campaigns, a better use of such tools as text messaging and online campaigns. These have really helped to get people engaged in ways that maybe they were not able to before. At the same time, we cannot rely only on those tools and field organizing is as important as it was in the past.
Dianne Swan
Rosedale Block Cluster, Inc.
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
This is a great time to bring together people who traditionally haven’t worked together. There is a great need and excitement around linking relationships, of linking people and communities and cities. We’re working with people in Philadelphia around the shared issues of greening our communities, of preventing our youth from dropping out of school and things like that. It’s an exciting time.
Rev. Paul Cromwell
German Forum on Community Organizing and
European Community Organizing Network
Community organizing in Europe is relatively new, but there’s also a very high level of interest in the strategy and a lot of talk about citizen participation and social inclusion. What I’m finding throughout Europe is that people are hungry for very practical skills to create change, which is a significant part of what community organizing can provide.
We now have partner organizations in a dozen different European countries with a high level of interest in organizing. Some have gone through a “listening” process, they’ve researched and solved issues relating to infrastructure, such as better garbage collection. In Katowice, Poland, the city council meetings are now open to the public and have recorded votes – things we take for granted in the United States in terms of openness, transparency and democratic practices. So, overall it is a time of challenge and a new set of practices, but also a great deal of excitement and beginning the implementation of community organizing in Europe.