Organizing

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Organizing or Community Organizing (CO) (German: Quartiersmanagement) describes a bundle of measures for community work . It is used at the district level or to recruit members - e.g. B. trade unions or church parishes - and used to strengthen the assertiveness of (disadvantaged) groups. The settlement movement ( Arnold Toynbee , Great Britain), radical democratic community work ( Saul D. Alinsky , USA) and integrative community work (Murray G. Ross, USA) are considered to be traditional lines . Saul D. Alinsky, the founder of Community Organizing, called on July 14, 1939 for the first gathering of the " Back of the Yards Movement" in the slums of Chicago . Under the guidance of community organizers, residents are empowered and encouraged to act actively for their own interests and often against the interests of large companies, individual entrepreneurs or powerful state institutions.

concept

The concept of community organizing consists of a repeated cycle of three steps: listening , researching and acting .

An organizer asks the residents individually about their interests in the development of the district. A variety of aspects become known through listening. These are presented and discussed at a meeting. In the research phase, known solutions, possibilities for implementation and contact persons are sought. Once the problems have been identified, the trading phase follows. Decision-makers and the public are involved in the implementation and if necessary. Resistance processed democratically.

application

For this purpose, the large unions in the Anglo-American region maintain their own organizing institutes, in which professional activists (“organizers”) are trained whose full-time work consists in going to companies with low wages, poor working conditions and mostly low levels of organization to attract workers to union membership. In the second step, a labor dispute is then organized together with the employees for previously concretely defined goals, in which the employees are mostly also heavily involved. US unions have thus gained several million new members in the past few decades.

In Germany, the large unions began to use organizing as a strategy in individual pilot projects. Political parties and other foundations are addressing the issue. Projects are also increasingly emerging in the municipalities.

The film Bread and Roses by Ken Loach shows the work of an organizer using the example of the "Justice for Janitors" campaign of the US service union SEIU.

Organizing outside of the union movement

Barack Obama worked as a community organizer, Hillary Clinton wrote her bachelor thesis on this topic and interviewed Saul Alinsky. Both Obama and Clinton have used Alinsky's methods of electoral mobilization. The concept of community organizing was successfully applied in the election campaign for the US presidency in 2008 in the campaign of the winner Barack Obama.

Transformative organizing

A further development of Alinsky’s thoughts led to Transformative Organizing . In extension of the original approach, the change in social consciousness in the individual is also brought into focus. This should enable system-changing reforms. The development of leadership skills, entering into strategic alliances and building a movement are also among the goals of transformative organizing .

Web links

Germany

Community Organizing Forum Materials and information on Community Organizing trainings
Citizen platforms

Berlin

Hamburg

Cologne

Munich

Great Britain

literature

  • FOCO (Formun Community Organizing) / Foundation Participation (ed.) (2014): Handbuch Community Organizing. Theory and Practice in Germany. Bonn, ISBN 978-3-941143-15-9
  • Maruschke, Robert (2014): Community Organizing. Between Revolution and Securing Rule - A Critical Introduction. edition assemblage, Münster. 128 pages. ISBN 978-3-942885-58-4 .
  • Frank Kornberger, Wolfgang Ruber, Joachim Kolb (2008): Organizing: Strategy and Practice. Berlin / Munich / Brussels, ISBN 978-3-938456-26-2 .
  • Ulrich Brinkmann, Hae-Lin Choi, Richard Detje, Klaus Dörre, Hajo Holst, Serhat Karakayali, Catharina Schmalstieg (2008): Strategic Unionism: From Crisis to Renewal ?: Outlines of a Research Program Wiesbaden, ISBN 978-3-531-15782- 5
  • Leo Penta (2007): Community Organizing: People change their city. ISBN 978-3-89684-066-0 .
  • Peter Szynka (2006): Theoretical and empirical foundations of community organizing with Saul Alinsky (1909–1972). A reconstruction. Bremen, ISBN 3-88722-656-9 .
  • Michael Gecan (2002): Going Public. 25 Beacon Press, Boston, ISBN 978-1-4000-7649-9 .
  • FOCO Forum Community Organizing eV (Ed.): Forward to the roots ... Community organizing in the USA a perspective for Germany? , Foundation cooperation 1997, ISBN 3-928053-50-7
  • FOCO Forum for Community Organizing (Ed.), Forward to the roots… ; Community Organizing in the USA - A Perspective for Germany? , Focus documentation on self-help and civic engagement No. 29, Verlag Stiftung Zusammenarbeit , Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-928053-50-7 , (PDF 527 kB)
  • John P. Kretzman, John L. McKnight (1997): Building Communities from Inside Out: A Path Toward Finding and Mobilizing a Community's Asset. ACTA Publications, Chicago, ISBN 978-0-87946-108-9 .
  • Marion Mohrlok, Michaela Neubauer, Rainer Neubauer, Walter Schönfelder (1991): Let's Organize! Community work and community organizing in comparison. AG SPAK publications, ISBN 978-3-923126-81-1 .
  • Gary Delgardo (1991): The Sixties Movements: Roots of Community Organization. In: Klaus Selle (Ed.): Instructions for self-help ... between “community organizing” and service close to the market. WOHNBUND, Dortmund. Pp. 83-96, ISBN 978-3-924352-63-9 .
  • William E. Fulmer (1982): Union Organizing: Management and Labor Conflict. ISBN 978-0-275-90797-6 .
  • Willms, Tobias (2007): Trade union strategies against precarious employment relationships , diploma thesis in political science, Berlin http://www.labournet.de/diskussion/gewerkschaft/debatte/willms.pdf
  • Jane McAlevey: No halves - building power (unions) through organizing , VSA-Verlag , Hamburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-96488-000-0

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Peter Szynka: community organizing. (PDF; 195 kB) A way to more participation. In: FachForum Berlin. Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung , 2011, accessed on November 13, 2015 (No. 8). ISBN 978-3-86872-693-0
  2. ↑ Ingrid Wagner. Community work in social work. Lines of tradition - current developments - (target) directions . In: magazine adult education.at. Edition 19, Vienna 2013, pp. 04–1 to 04–9. ( PDF 3.7 MB )
  3. ^ Zack Exley. The New Organizers, What's really behind Obama's ground game in Huffington Post , May 25, 2011
  4. ↑ Daniel Reitzig. Transformative Organizing in krisentheorie.de , July 24, 2018
  5. ↑ dico-berlin.org DICO German Institute for Community Organizing