Jan/Feb 1996
Issue #85
Models for Community Organizing
Issue-focused organizing, collaboratives, bricks & mortar development – all offer challenges and opportunities. Is there a best way? Many organizations began as neighborhood groups organized against something, but over the years, however, their agendas changed. As groups became increasingly involved in the physical rebuilding of their communities, they abandoned confrontational strategies in favor of negotiation and partnering, often with the very people they once protested against. Among development groups that want to return to or begin organizing, the resulting departmental tensions may turn self-defeating. This issue looks at an alternative model for community organizing, and collaborative efforts to bring about change.
Comprehensive Community Initiatives: Lessons in Neighborhood Transformation
In the September/October 1995 issue of Shelterforce, William Traynor wrote that the principle of “community building” is gaining prominence among community-based organizations and their funders. One important branch of this […]
Community Building & Community Organizing Issues in Creating Effective Models
It’s time for organizers to take their boxing gloves off, for developers to take their hard hats off, and for funders to come out from behind their desks, to begin a serious dialogue about how organizing can be integrated into – and, yes, drive – community development strategies.
Organization Profile Asian Americans for Equality
During the early 1970s, living conditions for Asian-American residents of New York City’s Chinatown typified those found in turn-of-the-century slums. In Lower East Manhattan, the area had always been a […]
Community Development – Is There a Right Way?
Fight City Hall and win. That’s what housing advocates did in Bloomington, Indiana, after gentrification and development made low-income housing dangerously unavailable. In the best tradition of confrontational, issue-oriented organizing, […]
Billions for the Rich, Pennies for the Poor
Once again the top 1% score big with the mortgage interest deduction The current debate over several Republican flat tax proposals has renewed public attention on the mortgage interest deduction […]
Not Another Parking Lot
Fight City Hall – and WIN! It took almost a year, but solid strategic planning and tenacious grassroots organizing paid off for affordable housing activists in Bloomington, Indiana. After an […]
Continuing Lack of Resolution in Washington
We are now firmly into that peculiar form of government known as a Continuing Resolution (CR). To call it a form of government may be too generous; rather, it would […]