Leadership Skills Development Institute - Module 3 - Session 4, Parts A, B and C - Strategy Development in Community Organizing

• NCJ Number: 83298
• Author(s): H T Booth
• Date Published: Unknown
• Length: 0 pages
• Grant Number(s): 79-CA-AX-011
• Sponsoring Agency: US Dept of Justice; Ctr for Community Change
• Corporate Author: US Dept of Justice
• Publication Format: Film
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS. 3 videotapes, total running time 2 hours, 39 minutes, color, 1 inch - the Institute was held in Berkeley Springs, W. Va., May 4-10, 1980. For complete set of tapes for this event, see NCJ-83281-83303.

Annotation

A veteran social action organizer and trainer discusses the principles of direct action organizing for community organizations, describes how to employ these principles in choosing an organizing issue, and outlines five elements needed to develop a successful organizing strategy.

Abstract

Organizers must convince citizens that they can have an impact on the issues. This active community organizing component will give participants a sense of pride, self-worth, and power; will expose the most basic issues; and will lead to more intense and prolonged community pressure to attain goals. Organizers must be specific about their goals, must break them down into parts, and must develop a reasonable plan (or the community will not give its support). They should prioritize issues based on the extent of public support for the issue, on whether or not the organization is capable of handling the problem, and on whether or not adequate community resources exist. Community activists should be specific about the human impact of the problem, target those affected by it, cooperate with institutions to achieve results, and have a followup plan established in advance. The five categories of concern are goals, organization needs (most ignored by local groups) constituencies, target identification, and tactics. Organizers must identify short-term, intermediate, and long-term goals and be able to follow up on short-term goals. Recruitment should be an ongoing process since some volunteers may leave over the long-term, and funding should be arranged in advance. Organizers should address multiple targets, assess their vulnerability, and identify effective actions to take against them. Audience participants each select a key issue and address strategies and problems involved in dealing with it.