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Saul David Alinsky was an American community activist and political theorist. His work through the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation helping poor communities organize to press demands upon landlords, politicians, bankers and business leaders won him national recognition and notoriety. Responding to the impatience of a New Left generation of activists in the 1960s, Alinsky – in his widely cited Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer (1971) – defended the arts both of confrontation and of compromise involved in community organizing as keys to the struggle for social justice.
Thomas A. Gaudette (1923–1998) was a community organizer who worked in the Austin neighborhood of Chicago. Originally a businessman, Gaudette became interested in neighborhood organizing through his Catholic Church activism. Gaudette helped form a neighborhood group, along the lines of those organized by Saul Alinsky, on the far West Side of Chicago called Organization for a Better Austin. OBA was concerned with poor schools and neighborhood decline.
Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other or share some common problem come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest.
New City is one of Chicago's 77 official community areas, located on the southwest side of the city in the South Side district. It contains the neighborhoods of Canaryville and Back of the Yards.
The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) is a national community organizing network established in 1940 by Saul Alinsky, Roman Catholic Bishop Bernard James Sheil and businessman and founder of the Chicago Sun-Times Marshall Field III. The IAF partners with religious congregations and civic organizations at the local level to help them build organizations of organizations, referred to as broad-based organizations by the Industrial Areas Foundation, with the purpose of strengthening citizen leadership, developing trust across a community's dividing lines and taking action on issues identified by local community leaders.
Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals is a 1971 book by community activist and writer Saul D. Alinsky about how to successfully run a movement for change. It was the last book written by Alinsky, and it was published shortly before his death in 1972. His goal was to create a guide for future community organizers, to use in uniting low-income communities, or "Have-Nots", in order for them to gain by any effective, non-violent means social, political, legal, environmental and economic wealth and power. Inside of it, Alinsky compiled the lessons he had learned throughout his experiences of community organizing from 1939 to 1971. He targeted these lessons at the current, new generation of radicals.
Edward Thomas Chambers was the executive director of the Industrial Areas Foundation from 1972 to 2009, a community organizing group founded by Saul Alinsky. Chambers was born in Clarion, Iowa to Thomas Chambers and Hazella Downing. He is credited with developing systematic training of organizers and leaders of congregation-based community organizations, and establishing relational meetings as a critical practice of organizers. He is the author of Roots for Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action, and Justice. A memorial article in The New Yorker called him "community organizing’s unforgiving hero." He died of heart failure in Drimoleague, Ireland in 2015.
Michael Gecan is a community organizer in New York City affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation. He was trained in part by Saul Alinsky. He is lead organizer for East Brooklyn Congregations and other New York-based organizations. He is the executive director of United Power for Action and Justice, a Chicago Based Industrial Area Foundation affiliate. He is the author of Going Public: An Organizer's Guide to Citizen Action. ISBN 1-4000-7649-8.
Community organizing describes a wide variety of efforts to empower residents in a local area to participate in civic life or governmental affairs. Most efforts that claim this label operate in low-income or middle-income areas, and have adopted at least some of the tactics and organizing techniques pioneered by Saul Alinsky and his Industrial Areas Foundation. Other organizations in this tradition include PICO National Network, Gamaliel Foundation, and Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART).
The Arab American Action Network (AAAN) is a Chicago-based community center founded in 1995 to strengthen the Arab immigrant and Arab American communities in the Chicago area by building their capacity to be active agents for positive social change. As a grassroots nonprofit, its strategies include community organizing, advocacy, education, providing social services, leadership development, cultural outreach, and forging productive relationships with other communities.
Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, was born on August 4, 1961, in Honolulu, Hawaii to Barack Obama, Sr. (1936–1982) and Stanley Ann Dunham, known as Ann (1942–1995).
The Chicago Annenberg Challenge (CAC) was a Chicago public school reform project from 1995 to 2001 that worked with half of Chicago's public schools and was funded by a $49.2 million, 2-to-1 matching challenge grant over five years from the Annenberg Foundation. The grant was contingent on being matched by $49.2 million in private donations and $49.2 million in public money. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was one of 18 locally designed Annenberg Challenge project sites that received $387 million over five years as part of Walter Annenberg's gift of $500 million over five years to support public school reform. The Chicago Annenberg Challenge helped create a successor organization, the Chicago Public Education Fund (CPEF), committing $2 million in June 1998 as the first donor to Chicago's first community foundation for education.
Faith in Action, formerly known as Pacific Institute for Community Organization, is a national network of faith-based community organizations in the United States. The organization is headquartered in Oakland, California, with additional offices in San Diego and Washington, D.C. The organization believes in a society free of economic oppression, racism and discrimination. Its stated mission is "to increase access to health care, improve public schools, make neighborhoods safer, build affordable housing, redevelop communities and revitalize democracy."
The Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART) is a national network of 23 local faith-based community organizing groups across nine states. DART provides training and consultation for local leaders and professional organizers, giving local communities the skills they need to uncover and take action on pressing local problems. As of 2007, DART is the fourth largest congregation-based community organizing network in the United States.
Marshall Ganz is the Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Introduced to organizing in the American civil rights movement, he worked on the staff of the United Farm Workers for sixteen years, became trainer and organizer for political campaigns, unions and nonprofit groups, and returned to Harvard where he earned his PhD in Sociology (2000). He is credited with devising the successful grassroots organizing model and training for Barack Obama’s winning 2008 presidential campaign.
The Transportation Equity Network (TEN) is a project of the Gamaliel Foundation and a grassroots organization with more than 350 community organizations in 41 states in the United States. TEN's stated goal is "to create an equity-based transportation system by connecting local transportation campaigns with D.C.-based advocacy."
Pilsen Neighbors Community Council is a grassroots organization that was founded in 1954. Its organizing efforts focus on civil rights issues such as education, health care, housing and immigration reform. They are responsible for ground breaking events in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois, in the United States. PNCC was the lead organization in helping build Alivio Medical Center, that is now a very important institution in the Pilsen neighborhood. They are also instrumental in the building of Benito Juarez High School.
The Developing Communities Project (DCP) is a faith-based organization in Chicago, Illinois. DCP was organized in 1984 as a branch of the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC) in response to lay-offs and plant closings in Southeast Chicago in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1986, DCP was incorporated as a not-for-profit organization under the leadership of its first executive director Barack Obama. It continues to provide literacy, job training and leadership development programs, for which it has received multiple awards, such as the 2007 Chicago Community Organizing Award.
The Chicago Community Trust is the community foundation serving Chicago, suburban Cook County, and the Illinois counties of DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry, and Will. Established on May 12, 1915, it is the third largest community foundation in the country as of 2019, with assets of more than $3.3 billion. The Trust awards more than $360 million annually in grants and has awarded more than $2 billion in grants since its founding. The Trust received gifts totaling almost $469 million during the 2019 fiscal year.
Heather Booth is an American civil rights activist, feminist, and political strategist who has been involved in activism for progressive causes. During her student years, she was active in both the civil rights movement and feminist causes. Since then she has had a career involving feminism, community organization, and progressive politics.
References
- Jacobsen, Dennis A., Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001). ISBN 0-8006-3244-3
- Mazullo, Jill, "Organizing for Regional Equity: The Gamaliel Foundation," Poverty & Race, (September/October, 2004).
- Obama, Barack, "Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City," pp. 35–40 in After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois, edited by Peg Knoepfle (Springfield: Sagamon State University, 1990). ISBN 0-9620873-3-5
- Swarts, Heidi J. Organizing Urban America: Secular and Faith-based Progressive Movements. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-8166-4839-9