The Toolbox

Community Organizing

In 2014, the People’s Climate March brought hundreds of thousands of people to the streets of New York City. The gathering did not solve the climate crisis. But it was a signal moment in a growing social movement. Time will tell if that movement can wield enough collective power to bend the carbon curve.

Photo by Julie Dermansky

I am because we are

The very phrase “community organizing” reveals a paradox. “Community” is that most ineffable and human of substances: entwined threads of place, language, and history. Yet “organizing” suggests rigid lattices and strict hierarchies; it describes attempts to impose order upon disorder.

At its best, community organizing does both. It is the art of finding order in the common interests, angers, and hopes of a group of human beings. It is not the only such discipline. Others do the same in different contexts, such as management, teaching, and coaching.

What separates community organizing is its focus on power.

Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”¹ Community organizing begins with recognizing the need to grapple with the power of those whose decisions matter to us.

But, as Mario Lugay of Movement Commons emphasizes, organizing requires a next step: ...