Community organizing is the practice of bringing people together, face to face, to solve local problems and, sometimes, change the distribution of [Page 180]power. The practice is associated mostly with Saul Alinsky, but the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States also organized people on a local basis.

Community organizing usually begins with a trained community organizer entering a community that has been excluded from power, from which investment has been withdrawn, or both. The organizer talks to residents, often by utilizing a practice called door-knocking, where he or she literally goes door to door asking about residents' concerns. Once the organizer has identified the concerns about which people feel strongly, he or she will call meetings so that residents can ...