Most people, faced with a problem in their neighborhood or workplace, feel they can do little alone. They are usually right. A single tenant complaining about a broken boiler is easy to ignore. Forty tenants who have agreed together on what they want, and what they will do if they do not get it, are much harder to ignore. Community organizing is the work of bringing people together into lasting relationships and organizations so they can act collectively on shared problems.

Power as acting together

Organizers talk about power constantly, and they mean something specific. Power is not only domination or money. The political philosopher Hannah Arendt, in On Violence (1970), described power as arising from people's ability to act in concert: no single person has it, a group has it for as long as it holds together. Organizers use a similar idea: power is the ability to act together to get things done.

In public life there are two main sources of power: organized money and organized people. Those without much of the first must build the second. That is the basic logic of organizing.

Organizing, mobilizing and advocacy

Three activities are often confused. The labor organizer and writer Jane McAlevey, and the political scientist Hahrie Han, among others, have drawn useful distinctions between them, summarized here in paraphrase.

• Advocacy: professionals or experts act on behalf of a group, through lawsuits, lobbying or reports. The affected people may be grateful but are not central actors.
• Mobilizing: turning out people who already agree for a march, a petition or a vote. It can produce big numbers quickly, but the same small group of activists does most of the work, and participants are mainly asked to show up.
• Organizing: building the capacity of people to act for themselves, especially people not already active. It focuses on developing new leaders, so the organization grows stronger over time.

Han's research, in paraphrase, found that the most effective civic associations combine mobilizing with organizing: they use transactional asks to reach many people, but they also invest in developing members' skills, relationships and responsibility.

All three have their place. Advocacy brings expertise; mobilizing brings numbers. Organizing's claim is that durable change needs a base of people who can act again and again, and that this base must be built.

What organizers actually do

Organizing is less dramatic than it looks on the news. Most of the work involves:

• Talking with people one at a time to learn what they care about.
• Finding and developing leaders.
• Helping groups choose issues they can win.
• Planning campaigns and actions.
• Reflecting on what worked and what did not.

A famous principle in the organizing tradition, often called the iron rule, states it simply: never do for others what they can do for themselves. The organizer's job is not to be the hero but to help others discover and use their own power.

Self-interest and the common good

Organizers speak openly about self-interest, meaning the things people genuinely care about: their families, homes, jobs, safety and dignity. This is not selfishness. Most people act on behalf of others because of real connections in their own lives. Organizing tries to link these individual concerns to a shared public purpose.

Critics of organizing raise fair points that later levels examine: it can be slow, it can create conflict, and it can be used for good or bad ends. Its defenders reply that in a democracy, people without wealth have few other ways to be heard.

Worked example: three ways to fix a bus route

The county announces it will cut weekend service on bus route 12, which many elderly residents and shift workers use. Three groups respond in different ways.

The advocacy group. A nonprofit hires a transportation expert who writes a report on the route's importance and meets privately with the transit director. The report is excellent. The director thanks them and says the budget is tight. Riders never hear about the meeting.

The mobilizing group. An activist network sends an online petition to its email list. Within two days it has 3,000 signatures, mostly from people who never ride route 12. The petition is delivered. The director notes it, and the cut proceeds.

The organizing group. A small team begins riding route 12 on weekends and talking with passengers. They hold one-on-ones with riders, a church usher, a home health aide, a retired machinist, and find that many feel ignored. Several riders agree to host meetings in their buildings. Over six weeks, seventy riders form a committee. They choose a specific demand, research the budget, and pack the next transit board meeting, where riders themselves tell their stories. Two board members ask the director to find the money. Service is restored.

Notice the differences. The advocacy group had expertise but no visible base. The mobilizing group had numbers but not the right people, and nobody whose relationship to the issue was deep. The organizing group was slower, but it built power among the people most affected, and it now has seventy members and several new leaders ready for the next fight.

The best approach often combines all three: the expert's report, the wide petition, and the riders' committee each add something. But only organizing leaves behind a group that can act again.