Community organizing is the process by which people come together to identify common problems or goals, mobilize resources, and, in other ways, develop and implement strategies for reaching the objectives they want to accomplish.

As you can see, it's a big idea -- it's really a way of looking at all of the work that we do. Because of that, it encompasses many of the other ideas discussed in the Tool Box. For example, effective community organization will generally include:

• Gaining an understanding of the community. The first key step is learning what the community is like, and what is important to its residents.
• Generating and using power. There are many types of power; depending on the nature of your organization and your long term goals, your organization may have (or need) different types. Different kinds of power include:
• Political or legislative power -- for example, you could work to pass laws to make it more difficult for young people to get hold of alcohol or tobacco
• Consumer power -- your organization might organize a boycott against a company whose policies are environmentally unsound
• Legal regulatory power -- your organization might take a delinquent landlord to court
• Disruptive power -- employees of an organization might go on strike as part of a demand for better working conditions
• Articulating issues. A crucial part of effective organizing is being very clear about what people find important, and what you feel should be done about it.
• Planning purposeful action. Action planning is central to effective community organization.
• Involving other people. Community organizing works in large part because of the strength that exists in numbers. The idea that "what we can't do alone, we can often accomplish together" is what community organization