Community organizing

Organized community groups seek accountability from elected officials, corporations and institutions as well as increased direct representation within decision-making bodies and social reform. Where negotiations fail, these organizations seek to inform others outside of the organization of the issues being addressed and expose or pressure the decision-makers through a variety of means, including picketing, boycotting, sit-ins, petitioning, and electoral politics.

The history of community organizing in the United States summed up four periods:

1880 to 1900
People sought to meet the pressures of rapid immigration and industrialization by organizing immigrant neighborhoods in urban centers. 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. During this period The Newsboys Strike provided an early model of youth-led organizing.

1900 to 1940
Community organization was established distinct from social work, with much energy coming from those critical of capitalist doctrines. Studs Terkel documented community organizing in the depression era, perhaps most notably that of Dorothy Day. Most organizations had a national orientation because the economic problems the nation faced did not seem possible to change at the neighborhood levels.

1940 to 1960
The emergence of the distinctive approach of Saul Alinsky spurred new thought and new blood into community movements. Those influenced by Alinsky were (and still are) concerned with social justice without having socialist thought as their primary framework. Alinsky promoted greater awareness of community organizing in academic circles, and those affiliated with Alinsky trained a generation of organizers, including César Chávez.

1960 to present
The American Civil Rights Movement, the anti-war movements, the Chicano movement, the feminist movement, and the gay rights movement all influenced and were influenced by ideas of neighborhood organizing. 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. Less dramatically, civic associations and neighborhood block clubs were formed all across the country to foster community spirit and civic duty, as well as provide a social outlet.

Many of the most notable leaders in community organizing today emerged from the National Welfare Rights Organization. John Calkins of DART, Ernesto Cortes of the Industrial Areas Foundation, Wade Rathke of ACORN, John Dodds of Philadelphia Unemployment Project and Mark Splain of the AFL-CIO, among others.

Again
"Change doesn't happen from the top down. It happens from the bottom up".

There are people she just insulted and degraded.
These people risked their lives and fought the government who was doing nothing for the people.

Jane Addams - In 1889 she and her friend, Ellen Gates Starr co-founded Hull House in Chicago, Illinois, one of the first settlement houses in the United States. At its height, Hull House was visited each week by around two thousand people. Its facilities included a night school for adults, kindergarten classes, clubs for older children, a public kitchen, an art gallery, a coffeehouse, a gymnasium, a girls club, a swimming pool, a book bindery, a music school, a drama group, a library, and labor-related divisions. She was probably most remembered through the institution of her adult night school which set the stage for the continuing education classes offered by many community colleges today.

She worked with George H. Mead on social reform issues including promoting women's rights, ending child-labor, and the mediating during the 1910 Garment Workers' Strike. Although academic sociologists of the time defined her work as "social work", Addams did not consider herself a social worker. Indeed her work was really the beginning of community work in America.

Saul Alinsky - In the 1930s, Alinsky organized the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago (made famous by Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle on the horrific working conditions in the Union Stock Yards). He went on to found the Industrial Areas Foundation while organizing the Woodlawn neighborhood, which trained leftist organizers and assisted in the founding of community organizations around the country. In Rules for Radicals (his final work, published one year before his death), he addressed the 1960s generation of leftist radicals, outlining his views on organizing for mass power. The documentary, ","[1] claims that "Alinsky championed new ways to organize the poor and powerless that created a backyard revolution in cities across America."

Gale Cincotta -  a community activist from the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, led the national fight for the US federal Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The CRA requires banks and savings and loans to offer credit throughout their entire market areas and prohibits them from targeting only wealthier neighborhoods with their lending and services, a practice known as redlining. She was a co-founder of the National Training and Information Center in Chicago, and served as its executive director from 1973 until her death in 2001. From 1972 to 2001 she served as chairperson of National People's Action, a coalition of some 300 community organizations throughout the United States.

Daniel Berrigan - Berrigan, his brother Philip, and the famed Trappist monk Thomas Merton founded an interfaith coalition against the Vietnam War, and wrote letters to major newspapers arguing for an end to the war.

In 1967, his brother was arrested for non-violent protest and sentenced to six years in prison. This, and his belief that his support of POWs during the war was not acknowledged and appreciated, further radicalized Berrigan against the U.S. government.

Berrigan's diplomatic visit to Hanoi with Howard Zinn, during the Tet Offensive in January 1968, resulted in the return of three American airmen, the first American POWs released by the North Vietnamese since the U.S. bombing of that nation had begun. The event was widely reported in the news media and discussed in a variety of books including Who Spoke Up?

César Chávez - was a Mexican American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers. Supporters say his work led to numerous improvements for union laborers. He is considered a hero for farm laborers, and opposed both documented and undocumented immigration to help keep wages higher and improve work safety rules. He is hailed as one of the greatest American civil rights leaders after Martin Luther King, Jr. His birthday has become a holiday in four U.S. states. Many parks, cultural centers, libraries, schools, and streets have been named in his honor in cities across the United States.

Dorothy Day - was an American journalist turned social activist and devout member of the Catholic Church. She became known for her social justice campaigns in defense of the poor, forsaken, hungry and homeless. Alongside Peter Maurin, she founded the Catholic Worker Movement in 1933, espousing nonviolence, and hospitality for the impoverished and downtrodden.

John W. Gardner - President of the Carnegie Corporation, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon Johnson, was subsequently the founder of two influential national U.S. organizations, Common Cause and Independent Sector, as well as the author of numerous books on improving leadership in American society and other subjects. Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1964.

Gardner's term as Secretary of HEW was at the height of Johnson's Great Society domestic agenda. During this tenure, the Department undertook both the huge task of launching Medicare, which brought quality health care to senior citizens, and oversaw a massive investment in education with the passage of the landmark Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 that redefined the federal role in education and targeted funding to poor students. Gardner also presided over the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In 1970, Gardner created Common Cause, the first non-profit public interest group in the United States. He also founded the Experience Corps.

Ernesto Cortes - is a community organizer affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS).

Cortes is known primarily for his efforts in organizing COPS in San Antonio, Texas, though he also influenced the development of other IAF affiliates in Houston, El Paso, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and New York City. Cortes is currently the director of the Southwest Region of the IAF.

Samuel Gompers - was an American labor union leader and a key figure in American labor history. Gompers founded the American Federation of Labor (AFL) and held the position as president of the organization for all but one year from 1886 until his death in 1924. He promoted harmony among the different craft unions that comprised the AFL, and opposed industrial unionism. Focused on higher wages and job security, he fought against both socialism and the Socialist Party.

Myles Horton - was an American educator, socialist and cofounder of the Highlander Folk School, famous for its role in the Civil Rights Movement.

A poor white from Savannah in West Tennessee, his social and political views were strongly influenced by theologian Reinhold Niebuhr under whom he studied at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. Along with Don West and Methodist minister James A. Dombrowski of New Orleans, he founded the Highlander Folk School (now Highlander Research and Education Center) in his native Tennessee in 1932, and remained its director until 1973. The school based itself in a concept originating in Denmark: "that an oppressed people collectively hold strategies for liberation that are lost to its individuals . . . The Highlander School had been a haven for the South's handful of functional radicals during the thirties and the essential alma mater for the leaders of the CIO's fledgling southern organizing drives."

Mother Jones - Active as an organizer and educator in strikes throughout the country at the time, she was particularly involved with the United Mine Workers (UMW) and the Socialist Party of America. As a union organizer, she gained prominence for organizing the wives and children of striking workers in demonstrations on their behalf.

She became known as "the most dangerous woman in America", a phrase coined by a West Virginia District Attorney named Reese Blizzard in 1902, when she was arrested for ignoring an injunction banning meetings by striking miners. "There sits the most dangerous woman in America", announced Blizzard. "She crooks her finger--twenty thousand contented men lay down."

Martin Luther King, Jr. - was one of the main leaders of the American civil rights movement. A Baptist minister by training, King became a civil rights activist early in his career, leading the Montgomery Bus Boycott and helping to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. His efforts led to the 1963 March on Washington, where King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, raising public consciousness of the civil rights movement and establishing King as one of the greatest orators in American history. In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means.

John L. Lewis - was an American leader of organized labor who served as president of the United Mine Workers of America from 1920 to 1960. He was a major player in the history of coal mining. He was the driving force behind the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, which established the United Steel Workers of America and helped organize millions of other industrial workers in the 1930s. After resigning as head of the CIO in 1941, he took the Mine Workers out of the CIO in 1942, then back into the American Federation of Labor in 1944.

Fred Ross, Sr. - was an American community organizer. He founded the Community Service Organization (CSO), which, with the support of the Industrial Areas Foundation, organized Mexican Americans in California. The CSO gave a young Cesar Chavez his first training in organizing, which he would later use in founding the United Farm Workers.

Ross was born in San Francisco. He graduated from the University of Southern California in 1936, intending to become a school teacher, but was unable to find work during the Great Depression. Instead, he managed a migrant labor camp near Bakersfield. The experience led him to become an organizer.

He left the migrant camp to work with Japanese-American internees. In work funded by the American Friends Service Committee, he sought to improve the conditions for and to effect the release of the internees. After the war, he returned to the Southern California, where he worked with African-Americans and Mexican-Americans to fight school and housing segregation.

There are also Americans at home who watched, participated and sacrificed. Sarah Palin you benefited from these achievements. Many are Proud of of these figures for fighting for them. Especially Women, AA, labor workers, Middle class, poor, children, Jews, Latino and so many more.

We need to make videos of these Hero's and their accomplishments and also Palin's remarks against them.

It will prove Obama's point that we are the change advocates
NOT Washington.
Make people ask what has the government done for us?
Who really stepped up after katrina?

We need to bring up her responsibilities as Mayor/Governor and then bring up organizations in Alaska that are helping single mothers since Palin cut the budget.