Community Organizing + Advocacy Skills

Catalog description

No one can make change alone! This skills course provides students with the tools they need to get started building power in their own local context. We'll review community organizing as a theory of change and discuss how it fits into a larger vision of civic engagement and urban democracy. Students will practice the hard skills that community organizing requires -- community outreach, leadership identification and assessment, campaign strategy, and powerful tactics that move your targets. On day one we’ll talk about the history and theory behind organizing, as well as different approaches and theories for power-building. We'll begin to explore the basics of group formation, community-based outreach, and leadership identification. On day two, we'll focus on leadership development, building effective teams, and we’ll talk about applying the methods of organizing to campaigns to win policy change and practice advocacy techniques. Drawing on examples from Chicago and New York City, we will discuss recent experiments with urban governance, including inside-outside strategy and “co governance.” By the end of the course, students will have gotten a taste for community organizing in New York City and will be able to apply it to their local contexts.