Community organizing draws on several traditions that overlap and sometimes argue with each other. Knowing them helps you see why organizers do what they do.

Labor organizing

Modern organizing owes a great deal to the labor movement. Workers learned that individually they had little bargaining power, but together they could negotiate wages and conditions. Unions developed many techniques organizers still use: one-on-one conversations, worker committees, mapping a workplace, and escalating actions up to the strike. A famous example is the Flint sit-down strike of 1936 to 1937, in which autoworkers occupied General Motors plants in Michigan for about six weeks until the company recognized the United Auto Workers union.

Saul Alinsky

Saul Alinsky (1909 to 1972) applied labor methods to neighborhoods. In 1939 he helped build the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council in Chicago, uniting churches, unions and residents near the stockyards. In 1940 he founded the Industrial Areas Foundation, which still trains organizers. His book Rules for Radicals (1971) set out his approach. Among its ideas, in paraphrase:

• Power is not only what you have but what your opponent thinks you have.
• Never go outside the experience of your own people; try to go outside the experience of your opponent.
• Make opponents live up to their own rules.
• A good tactic is one your people enjoy; one that drags on too long becomes a drag.
• Pick a specific target and make it concrete.

Alinsky was hard-headed about self-interest and conflict, and he rejected ideology in favor of practical results. Critics argue that his focus on polarizing and personalizing targets can be harsh, and that his approach often built strong local groups that did not connect to broader movements.

Ella Baker and group-centered leadership

Ella Baker (1903 to 1986) worked for the NAACP, helped run the early Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in 1960 organized the conference of student sit-in leaders that led to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She distrusted movements built around a single charismatic figure. She argued that movements make leaders more than leaders make movements, and that ordinary people, given support, could lead themselves. Her ideal is often called group-centered leadership: developing many leaders among ordinary people rather than relying on one leader at the top.

The civil rights movement

The civil rights movement combined many traditions. The Montgomery bus boycott (1955 to 1956) lasted 381 days. It was prepared by local groups, including the Women's Political Council, whose members distributed leaflets overnight calling for the boycott. Training centers such as the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee, founded by Myles Horton and Don West in 1932, taught organizing and literacy; Septima Clark's citizenship schools, developed with Highlander, helped Black Southerners learn to read so they could register to vote. SNCC organizers in Mississippi in the early 1960s worked patiently, living in communities and supporting local leaders.

Farm workers and public narrative

In California, Fred Ross trained Cesar Chavez in the house meeting method, and Chavez and Dolores Huerta built the union that became the United Farm Workers. The Delano grape strike and boycott began in 1965, launched by Filipino farm workers and joined by Chavez's union; by 1970 many table grape growers had signed union contracts.

Marshall Ganz, who worked with the farm workers for many years and later taught at Harvard, developed a method called public narrative. In paraphrase, it teaches leaders to tell three linked stories: a story of self (why I am called to act), a story of us (what values we share), and a story of now (the urgent challenge we face and the choice before us).

Worked example: two traditions, one problem

Imagine a mid-century industrial town where a factory has been dumping waste into the river beside a working-class neighborhood. How might organizers from two traditions in this level approach it?

An Alinsky-style organizer would start by meeting with existing institutions, such as churches, union locals and neighborhood clubs, and build a coalition among them. She would identify the factory manager as a specific target, research his company's public promises about being a good neighbor, and plan tactics that make him live up to his own rules. Perhaps residents would bring jars of river water to the company's annual community picnic. The tactic is within residents' experience, outside the manager's, and enjoyable for participants. The organizer would be openly focused on winning.

An organizer in Ella Baker's tradition would move more slowly. She would spend weeks in the neighborhood, staying in homes and listening, looking for people who are already quietly trusted. She would hold workshops so residents could learn to test the water, read permits and run their own meetings. Her success would be measured partly by how many local people could lead without her.

Both approaches could win. The first is likely to be faster and more confrontational; the second is likely to build deeper local leadership. Critics of the first worry it can depend on the organizer's skill and leave little behind; critics of the second worry it can be too slow when harm is ongoing.

A leader trained in Ganz's public narrative might pull them together at a big meeting: a story of self about her child's asthma, a story of us about the neighborhood's pride and history, and a story of now about the permit hearing next month and the choice everyone faces.