What is grassroots community organizing?
A. Grassroots community organizing has been long used as a tool for disadvantaged people to gain power to affect the practice of institutions in political and social life. Although organizing is a diverse phenomenon, it draws from the tradition of Saul Alinsky’s neighborhood organizing, and has been enriched by the traditions of the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, and union organizing among others. Community organizing is a process where people are brought together acting in a common self interest in order to achieve common aims. Many groups seek populist goals and the ideal of participatory democracy. Community organizers create social change, and sometimes social movements, by building a base of concerned people, mobilizing these community members to act, and developing leadership from and relationships among the people involved.
