Active Outline
General Information
- Course ID (CB01A and CB01B)
- POLID060C
- Course Title (CB02)
- Advanced Community Organizing
- Course Credit Status
- Credit - Degree Applicable
- Effective Term
- Fall 2023
- Course Description
- Community organizing efforts by people working together to improve their campuses, neighborhoods, and cities is the focus of this course. The course prepares students at an advanced level to become professional organizers, campus leaders, and effective citizen advocates. The history, theory, and different approaches to grassroots community organizing, sometimes using selected case studies as illustration, will be explored at an advanced level. Ideas from the current context for organizing, the impact of social change theories, organizing strategies, tools and new methodologies used in community organizing will be analyzed and then applied. (Off campus field trips may be required.)
- Faculty Requirements
- Course Family
- Not Applicable
Course Justification
This course will be taken as part of the Political Science Department community organizing class series and meets a General Education requirement for °®¶¹´«Ã½. It is CSU transferable. This course belongs on the ICCE Leadership and Social Change Certificate of Achievement. This course complements students' development in key concepts, theories, and challenges in community, labor, and campus organizing at an advanced level. This course is cross-listed.
Foothill Equivalency
- Does the course have a Foothill equivalent?
- No
- Foothill Course ID
Formerly Statement
Course Development Options
- Basic Skill Status (CB08)
- Course is not a basic skills course.
- Grade Options
- Letter Grade
- Pass/No Pass
- Repeat Limit
- 0
Transferability & Gen. Ed. Options
- Transferability
- Transferable to CSU only
| °®¶¹´«Ã½ GE | Area(s) | Status | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2GDX | °®¶¹´«Ã½ GE Area D - Social and Behavioral Sciences | Approved | |
| 2GES | °®¶¹´«Ã½ GE - Environment Sustainability and Global Citizenship | Approved |
| CSU GE | Area(s) | Status | Details |
|---|---|---|---|
| CGDY | CSU GE Area D - Social Sciences | Approved |
Units and Hours
Summary
- Minimum Credit Units
- 4.0
- Maximum Credit Units
- 4.0
Weekly Student Hours
| Type | In Class | Out of Class |
|---|---|---|
| Lecture Hours | 4.0 | 8.0 |
| Laboratory Hours | 0.0 | 0.0 |
Course Student Hours
- Course Duration (Weeks)
- 12.0
- Hours per unit divisor
- 36.0
Course In-Class (Contact) Hours
- Lecture
- 48.0
- Laboratory
- 0.0
- Total
- 48.0
Course Out-of-Class Hours
- Lecture
- 96.0
- Laboratory
- 0.0
- NA
- 0.0
- Total
- 96.0
Prerequisite(s)
Corequisite(s)
Advisory(ies)
EWRT D001A or EWRT D01AH or ESL D005.
POLI D060B or SOSC D060B
Limitation(s) on Enrollment
(Not open to students with credit in the cross-listed course(s).)
(Also listed as SOSC D060C.)
Entrance Skill(s)
General Course Statement(s)
(See general education pages for the requirements this course meets.)
Methods of Instruction
Lecture and visual aids
Discussion of assigned reading
Discussion and problem solving performed in class
In-class essays
In-class exploration of Internet sites
Homework and extended projects
Field observation and field trips
Guest speakers
Collaborative learning and small group exercises
Collaborative projects
Assignments
- Read and critically engage with books and articles as assigned.
- Writing:
- A series of analytical pieces that build parts of a community organizing plan at an advanced level.
- Develop talking points or other document for engaging media as part of a community organizing plan at an advanced level.
- A series of analytical pieces that build parts of a community organizing power map at an advanced level.
- Participation:
- Engagement in classroom activities and discussions.
- Active involvement with ongoing projects associated with the community organizing issues chosen by the class.
Methods of Evaluation
- Short papers or oral reports that will assess students ability to define, describe and explain the perspective of the discipline of Political Science, especially as it applies to the role of community organizing in the discipline and/or compare and contrast the history and contemporary situation of community organizing, especially within the context of campus and neighborhood constituencies, including people of color, immigrants, gender-based, sexuality-based, and class-based constituent groups.
- Group collaborative learning assignments that will assess student's ability to examine, compare and integrate diverse strategies in bringing about social and political change and/or identify, compare and contrast contemporary models and methods of mass and individual communication and "messaging" for community organizing.
- Self-Assessment and Peer Assessment tools that assess students ability to identify and evaluate various strategies for volunteer and leadership recruitment, deployment, development and retention.
- Comprehensive cumulative project and/or portfolio that will provide final overall assessment of students ability to identify key steps in creating an overall community organizing campaign.
Essential Student Materials/Essential College Facilities
Essential Student Materials:Â
- None.
- None.
Examples of Primary Texts and References
| Author | Title | Publisher | Date/Edition | ISBN |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bill Lofy & Wellstone Action, Politics the Wellstone Way (Minneapolis: University of MN Press, 2005) | ||||
| Steve Phillips, Brown is the New White (The New Press: NY, New York, 2018) | ||||
| Kim Bobo, Jackie Kendall, and Steve Max, Organizing for Social Change: Midwest Academy Manual for Activists, 4th Ed (The Forum Press, 2010) |
Examples of Supporting Texts and References
| Author | Title | Publisher |
|---|---|---|
| Marjorie Minkler, ed., Community Organizing and Community Building for Health and Welfare, 3rd ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers, 2012) | ||
| Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals (Vintage Books, 1989) | ||
| Francis Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward, Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (Vintage Books, 1979 | ||
| Randy Shaw, The Activist's Handbook: Winning Social Change in the 21st century (UC Press: Berkeley, 2013) |
Learning Outcomes and Objectives
Course Objectives
- Define, describe and explain the perspectives of the social science disciplines, especially as they apply to the role of community organizing at an advanced level.
- Compare and contrast the history and contemporary situation of community organizing, especially within the context of campus and neighborhood constituencies, including people of color, immigrants, gender-based, sexuality-based, and class-based constituent groups at an advanced level.
- Identify, compare, and contrast diverse strategies in bringing about social and political change at an advanced level.
- Identify, compare and contrast contemporary models and methods of mass and individual communication and "messaging" for community organizing at an advanced level.
- Identify and evaluate various strategies for volunteer and leadership recruitment, deployment, development and retention at an advanced level.
- Identify and formulate key steps in creating an overall community organizing campaign at an advanced level.
- Compare and assess the histories of how community organizing movements have developed and obtained their goals (or failed) in the United States versus in non-U.S. settings.
- Compare and appraise the contemporary and historical micro and macro social dynamics in which democratic grassroots leaders have usually operated.
- Examine, appraise, and compare factors leading to the development of social protest consciousness in social protest and community organizing movements with specific attention to issues of ethnicity, race, class, ecology and gender.
CSLOs
- Evaluate community organizing processes and outcomes at an advanced level.
- Assess how individuals and groups can affect community organizing processes and outcomes at an advanced level.
- Demonstrate the capacity to participate effectively in community organizing at an advanced level.
Outline
- Define, describe and explain the perspectives of the social science disciplines, especially as they apply to the role of community organizing at an advanced level.
- Social Science as the study of people as members of society and the study of social structures/institutions.
- Political Science as an examination of: institutional power structures and the nature of social authority; the universal need for social mechanisms to determine the legitimate distribution of societal resources and burdens ("who gets what, when and how") and the resulting tendency for conflict in human affairs; and the variety of social, economic, and governmental institutions, movements and activities that seek to respond to and sometimes to resolve political conflict.
- Education and Leadership Development Studies as an aid in: forming a nuanced and integrative understanding of traditional leadership theories and critical perspectives; understanding organizations as complex, social and bureaucratic systems within a larger political environment; producing knowledge and interventions that build the capacity within schools, communities, and organizations to work towards justice; and developing competency as leaders by practicing reflexivity and self-awareness grounded in a social justice orientation.
- Women's Studies as an examination of power and gender roles and how they vary for women, men and non-binary people of different racial, ethnic, class and sexuality groups; an examination of the varying positions of women in society, emphasizing the diverse nature of women's experiences, including an investigation of family, work, beauty images, social movements and the media; and a multi-faceted discipline including such diverse perspectives as: liberal feminism, socialist feminism, ecofeminism, radical feminism, and multisystems feminism.
- Environmental Studies as a multidisciplinary academic field which systematically studies human interaction with the environment in the interests of solving complex problems.
- Psychological and Social Psychological approaches to individual, social, and institutional behavior.
- Sociological methodologies such as macro- and micro- institutional analysis.
- Economic analysis that explores the micro and macro systems for the production, allocation and distribution of social and material resources.
- Jurisprudential approaches which examine formal and informal systems of law, regulation, and social control.
- Historical methodologies which explore and interpret the development of human events over time.
- Compare and contrast the history and contemporary situation of community organizing, especially within the context of campus and neighborhood constituencies, including people of color, immigrants, gender-based, sexuality-based, and class-based constituent groups at an advanced level.
- Compare and contrast the history and contemporary situation of student community organizing
- Compare and contrast the history and contemporary situation of community organizing among people of color, with particular attention to the civil rights movement and the current immigrants rights movement.
- Compare and contrast the history and contemporary situation of gender-based and sexuality-based community organizing.
- Compare and contrast the history and contemporary situation of issue-based community organizing with particular attention to the environmental sustainability movement.
- Compare and contrast the history and contemporary situation of class based organizing, (especially in the labor movement) in light of a shifting domestic and global economy.
- Compare and contrast "community organizing" versus "service learning" and/or "charitable" models of community engagement.
- Identify, compare, and contrast diverse strategies in bringing about social and political change at an advanced level.
- Appraise the value of grassroots engagement in the electoral arena on a community's ability to effectively advocate for community interests.
- Appraise the value of popular grassroots community organizing on a community's ability to effectively advocate for community interests.
- Appraise the value of developing public policy on a community's ability to effectively advocate for community interests.
- Examine and analyze the consequences of combining public policy, electoral engagement and grassroots organizing on a community's ability to develop grassroots leaders who are able to organize and advocate for community interests.
- Identify, compare and contrast contemporary models and methods of mass and individual communication and "messaging" for community organizing at an advanced level.
- Examine the importance of understanding the audience with whom one is trying to communicate and how to connect with this audience.
- Examine the effectiveness of personal and public narrative in communicating a message both for the recruitment and retention of volunteers as well as for conveying a political message to a mass public.
- Examine the best methods of creating a message that includes a statement of the problem, an explanation of the solution and an effective "ask" for grassroots political participation.
- Compare and contrast the way that messaging varies when examined from the perspective of ones constituents versus ones opponents and the necessity of understanding opposing points of view in order to create an effective message.
- Identify, compare and contrast various communication mediums available for grassroots community organizers.
- Identify and evaluate various strategies for volunteer and leadership recruitment, deployment, development and retention at an advanced level.
- Learn to prioritize recruitment efforts through identification of most likely prospects in strategically important constituencies.
- Recognize the importance of one-to-one personal contact and relationship building.
- Identify various leadership and work "styles" such as task leadership, strategic leadership, vision leadership, process leadership, etc
- Learn to identify the values, worldview, experiences, and knowledge-base of prospective volunteers and leaders.
- Recognize and identify how key emotional/affective experiences and states effect volunteer recruitment, development and retention with a special focus on the role of love, friendship and positive emotion, but also negative emotions of anger, indignation, grief, etc.
- Learn to identify, assess, and best deploy the skills and other resources potentially offered by prospective volunteers and participants in grassroots organizing and the importance of making an "ask" as a key element of volunteer mobilization.
- Identify and formulate key steps in creating an overall community organizing campaign at an advanced level.
- Recognize the value of identifying long-term goals & short-term strategic and tactical objectives in building effective community organizing campaigns.
- Identify, assess and develop resources (sometimes also called "strategic capacity") available within ones community that can be deployed to recruit, educate, inspire and mobilize citizen advocates and organizers to influence the outcomes of community organizing campaigns.
- Identify and assess various methods of creating a long-term "culture of organizing" within ones community.
- Identify key decision-makers and assessing the best way to influence the outcomes of the decisions that will be made. This process is also sometimes known as "power mapping."
- Recognize the value of coalition and alliance building as one component of expanding the strategic capacity of a community organizing campaign.
- Combine all elements of a power map and resource assessment to create an organized but flexible overall community organizing campaign plan.
- Compare and assess the histories of how community organizing movements have developed and obtained their goals (or failed) in the United States versus in non-U.S. settings.
- Environmental movements
- Labor, Class and Workers Rights Movements
- Civil rights and cultural identity movements of people of color
- Feminist movements
- Student Movements
- Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Movements
- Religious/Faith-Based movements
- Anti-colonial and anti-capitalism movements
- Compare and appraise the contemporary and historical micro and macro social dynamics in which democratic grassroots leaders have usually operated.
- Identify and explore critical substantive issues facing our society around which grassroots leadership is developing (e.g., environmental sustainability, gender roles and gender inequality, the collapsing economy, joblessness, rising school fees, racism, etc)
- Identify and compare diverse individual and group behavior patterns and political/cultural ideologies that lead to and frame individual and group experiences of grassroots leadership, paying particular attention to issues of gender, race and social class.
- Identify and compare common dominant and subordinate group reactions to the emergence of grassroots leadership: e.g., resistance, acceptance, cultural patterns of "internalized domination"and "internalized oppression," internal and external attacks on leaders, feelings of efficacy versus feelings of powerlessness, etc, paying particular attention to issues of gender, race and social class.
- Examine, appraise, and compare factors leading to the development of social protest consciousness in social protest and community organizing movements with specific attention to issues of ethnicity, race, class, ecology and gender.
- The effects of segregation, subordination, and cooptation on the development and sustenance of a consciousness and social protest and community organizing.
- Common dominant and subordinate group reactions to oppression; e.g., resistance, internalized domination, internalized oppression.
- Comparison of variations in protest mentality among group members in the development, success, and/or failure of grassroots social movements.
