Organizing is Not a Silver Bullet

Locating Community Organizing as Part of an Ecology of People Power Strategies that Change Our Cities

Abstract

In proclaiming the strengths of organizing as a way of making change, community organizing practitioners and scholars can sometimes slip into the habit of seeing organizing as superior to other forms of change. This is particularly true of the Alinsky tradition. As long-time organizers and supportive scholars ourselves, it is something that we are not only aware of but guilty of. This article describes this as ‘silver bullet’ thinking, and we explore its lineages and limits in Alinsky-style organizing. We argue that seeing organizing at the top of a hierarchy of strategies can get in the way of organizers finding common cause with people who use different approaches to making change. As a way forward we place community organizing amongst a broader ecology of urban change practices. The paper introduces the concept of people power strategies, drawn from a seven-year study of urban social change across the globe, and documents five dominant people power strategies in the city – playing by the rules, mobilizing, organizing, prefiguring and running for office. We argue that each of these strategies has distinct strengths and limits and has an important place in urban change-making, and that within this ecology organizing has distinct advantages in developing leaders and building relationships across difference. We end by arguing that an ecosystem approach has the potential to help disorganize and reorganize how organizers relate to and build power with others in the city.