Editors' Introduction

MIKE MILLER AND AARON SCHUTZ

In the pages that follow, we have assembled a range of articles, documents, organizational papers, and interviews about the tradition of community organizing that began with Saul Alinsky and the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). From its origins in Chicago in the late 1930s, Alinsky's approach spread across the country, increasingly diffusing into other parts of the world.

The book is structured around the work of five of his most important colleagues — Ed Chambers, Tom Gaudette, Dick Harmon, Fred Ross, and Nicholas von Hoffman —supplemented with speeches by leaders and documents from the organizations they built. We also include pieces by organizers who either worked directly with Alinsky or followed in his footsteps, and who, in ways we will discuss, diverged from his path. Together, these texts show how different organizers and leaders have adapted and elaborated Alinsky's theory and practice in their work.

Many of these items appear in formal publication here for the first time; they were previously available only on untranscribed audiotapes or in early, mostly obsolete, and often difficult-to-read formats, such as mimeographed, dittoed, Thermo-Faxed, or Xeroxed pages. A few have remained well known among organizers, passing from hand to hand in flyspecked photocopies of photocopies. Others have mostly been forgotten. We drew some of them from university archives and the extensive collection of papers preserved by Miller during his long organizing career, and learned about others through citations in reference lists and discussions with other organizers. From a broad corpus of possibilities, we selected what we believe represent the best or most important examples of this shadow literature of organizing.

Mostly created by practitioners for audiences already deeply interested in the field, there is a directness to these texts —a vibrancy and sense of urgency often lacking in many of today's more abstract or textbook-like introductions to organizing. As we explain in introductions to each section, because these documents were created for particular purposes at particular moments of history, many reflect the issues and circumstances of the time they were written and should be read with this in mind. We hope you find them as interesting as we have.

What Is Community Organizing?

In an interview with T. George Harris, Alinsky said, "When people are organized, they move in ... to the central decision-making tables. [They] say, 'This is what we want.... We are people and damn it you are going to listen to us....' They are admitted to the decision-making tables ... on the basis of power."

Community organizing brings powerless and relatively powerless people together in solidarity to defend and advance their interests and values. Through their organizations, they speak with people power to established power on matters that affect them in their daily lives. They speak on major issues that might affect tens of thousands (or even millions), and on small but important issues like a stop sign at a dangerous intersection.

Community organizing groups typically start by trying to negotiate with decision-makers who have the authority to make the changes they want: elected officials, private sector owners, executives and administrators in bureaucracies, and the like. Decision-makers, however, are used to making unilateral decisions. They feel accountable only to those who already have substantial influence, wealth, or power. They rarely need to respond to everyday people and their concerns. As a result, decision-makers often simply ignore the people's requests to meet with them. Even when they do sit down, they generally try to defuse concerns without really listening or negotiating real change.

Action, at this point, inevitably involves conflict.

In fact, community organizing welcomes conflict as a tool to build people power. Only when adversaries recognize that there is power on the other side do they enter into real negotiations.

For example, tenants in a rat-infested, high-rent, no-services apartment building might organize themselves and seek changes from their landlord. When the landlord refuses to meet with them, they might start picketing...