The Scholarship and Practice of Community Organizing

An Assessment, Vision, and Call to Action

Abstract

In this essay, we introduce The Community Organizing Journal (COJ) with an appreciative and critical overview of organizing practice and scholarship, a vision for greater collaboration and growth together, and a call to action. Faced with a global political, economic, socio-cultural, and environmental ‘polycrisis,’ more than ever we need to build on organizing’s rich heritage of leadership development, expanding and projecting grassroots power, and creating diverse multicultural communities to help us achieve a vision of a just and sustainable global community. While organizing practice and scholarship have accomplished much, they face common challenges of strategy, fragmentation, and resources. We examine and suggest ways of meeting these challenges, situating COJ as part of an emerging worldwide conversation around the practice and scholarship of organizing, and calling on the organizing community to work together more intentionally and strategically.