Leadership & Organizing

 

"Organizing Is –Organizing is providing people with the opportunity to become aware of their own capabilities and potential."

Fred Ross Sr., 1989

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and this will continue till they have resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those who they suppress."
-- Frederick Douglass, 1849

 

What Is Organizing?

Organizers identify, recruit and develop leadership; build community around leadership; and build power out of community. Organizers bring people together, challenging them to act on behalf of their shared values and interests. They develop the relationships, motivate the participation, strategize the pathways, and take the action that enable people to gain new appreciation of their values, the resources to which they have access, their interests, and a new capacity to use their resources on behalf of their interests. Organizers work through "dialogues" in relationships, motivation, strategy and action carried out as campaigns.

Organizers interweave relationships, motivation, strategy and action so that each contributes to the other. One result is new networks of relationship wide and deep enough to provide a foundation for a new community in action.  Another result is a new story about who this community is, where it has been, where it is going -- and how it will get there. A third result is a strategy envisioning how a community can turn the resources it has into the power it needs to get what it wants. An a final result is action as the community mobilizes and deploys its resources on behalf of its interests -- as collaboration, claims making, or both.

Organizers develop new relationships out of old ones - sometimes by linking one person to another and sometimes by linking whole networks of people together. Relationships grow out of exchanges of interests and resources, the commitment to sustain them, and the creation of a shared story.

Organizers engage people in discerning why they should act to change their world – their values – and how they can act to change it – their strategy.

Organizers motivate action by deepening people’s understanding of who they are, what they want, and why they want it: their values. Mobilizing feelings of urgency, hope, anger, self-worth, and solidarity that facilitate action, they challenge feelings of inertia, fear, apathy, self-doubt, and isolation that inhibit action. Organizers engage people in articulating this call to action as a shared story of the challenges they must face, the choices they must make, and the hope that can inspires to courage the make these choices now – a story of self, a story of us, and a story of now.

Organizers engage people in deliberating about they can turn what they have (resources), into what they need (power) to get what they want (their interests): strategy. Power is the influence our resources can have on the interests of others who hold resources that can influence our interests. Organizing often requires using our resources to mobilize power interdependently with others whose interests we share to challenge the power exercised over us by others whose interest conflict with our own.

Organizers challenge people to take the responsibility to act. For an individual, empowerment begins with accepting responsibility. For an organization, empowerment begins with commitment, the responsibility its members take for it. Responsibility begins with choosing to act. Organizers challenge people to commit, to act, and to act effectively.

Organizers work through campaigns. Campaigns are highly energized, intensely focused, concentrated streams of activity with specific goals and deadlines. People are recruited, programs launched, battles fought and organizations built through campaigns. Campaigns polarize by bringing out those ordinarily submerged conflicts contrary to the interests of the constituency. One dilemma is how to depolarize in order to negotiate resolution of these conflicts. Another dilemma is how to balance campaigns with the ongoing work of organizational growth and development.

Organizers build community by developing leadership. They develop leaders by enhancing their skills, values and commitments. They build strong communities through which people gain new understanding of their interests as well as the power to act on them -- communities which are bounded yet inclusive, communal yet diverse, solidaristic yet tolerant. They develop a relationship between a constituency and its leaders based on mutual responsibility and accountability.

©Marshall Ganz, Kennedy School, 2006
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k2139

 

Never do for other what they can do for themselves.

-The iron rule of organizing

 

 

The Organizing Tradition

 

The Montgomery Bus Boycott

Often times the only thing that we hear about this movement is that Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus. However, the Montgomery bus boycott has a long, important and deep-rooted history made possible by African American and white citizens.

This movement is an important part not only of African American history, but also American history because it proved to be a catalyst for one of the greatest humanitarian movements of all time.

The Montgomery Bus Boycott represents a great example of an organize effort that included leaders that acted responsibly, relational building, organizations that work together under a common goal and tactics that were innovating.

 

 

More information on the Montgomery Bus Boycott
http://home.att.net/~reniqua/what.html

 

Gandhi –Salt Satyagraha

 

The Salt Satyagraha was a campaign of non-violent protest against the British salt tax in colonial India, which began, with the Salt March to Dandi on March 12, 1930. It was the first act of organized opposition to British rule after Purna Swaraj, the declaration of independence by the Indian National Congress. Mahatma Gandhi led the Dandi march from his Sabarmati Ashram to Dandi, Gujarat to make salt, with growing numbers of Indians joining him along the way. When Gandhi broke the salt laws in Dandi at the conclusion of the march on April 6, 1930, it sparked large scale acts of civil disobedience against the British Rajsalt laws by millions of Indians.
Gandhi was arrested on May 5, 1930, just days before his planned raid on the Dharasana Salt Works. The Dandi March and the ensuing Dharasana Satyagraha drew worldwide attention to the Indian independence movement through extensive newspaper and newsreel coverage. The satyagraha against the salt tax continued for almost a year, ending with Gandhi's release from jail and negotiations with ViceroyLord Irwin at the Second Round Table Conference. Over 80,000 Indians were jailed as a result of the Salt Satyagraha. The campaign had a significant effect on changing world and British attitudes toward Indian independence,[4][5] and caused large numbers of Indians to actively join the fight for the first time, but failed to win major concessions from the British.

 

Keep Mario Home

 

Mario Rodas was born in Guatemala but moved to Chelsea, MA with his parents when he was twelve years old. He is an honors students and a leader of his community. In March 6, 2006 Mario was detained by immigration, even though immigration was looking for someone else with a warrant.

Luckily Mario was a member of the Student Immigrant Movement (SIM). This video highlights that campaign that was done in order to keep him in the country and how students in Massachusetts came together for him.

Mario is currently in the country going to college and continuing being a leader of SIM.

 

"Leadership – You don’t develop new leaders, you push people into taking action by refusing to do it yourself. You are then providing them the opportunity to become aware of their own capabilities."

-Fred Ross, Sr. 1989

 

What are you waiting for get organized?!?