![]() ![]() Veteran labor writer David Moberg recently offered this list when reflecting on the work of National People’s Action, or NPA, one of today’s leading coalitions of community-based groups. Build organizations, not movements… Focus on neighborhoods and on concrete, winnable goals.” Hang around social movements for a while and you will no doubt be exposed to the laws of Chicago-style community organizing: “Don’t talk ideology, just issues. ![]() The most lasting of Alinsky’s prescriptions are not his well-known tactical guidelines - “ridicule is man’s most potent weapon” or “power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have.” Rather, they are embedded in a set of organizational practices and predispositions, a defined approach to building power at the level of local communities. The desire to re-examine maxims such as "build organizations, not movements" is an exciting development-one that opens the door to interaction between those focused on building long-term "people's organizations," as Alinsky called them, and those exploring the dynamics of strategic nonviolence and disruptive mass mobilization. ![]()
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