Analysis of the Peoples Temple—Applies community organizing practice theory to understanding the history and tragic end of the Peoples Temple in the Guyana jungle. (6 pp.)
Basics of Parliamentary Procedure (GTP Training Guide #36)—Question-and-answer format explains basics of getting recognized by a chairperson, making a motion, and "calling for the question." (2 pp.)
Before and After the Action—Describes the essentials of action planning and review (ca. 1980). (3 pp.)
Bi-Annual Strategic Evaluation (GTP Training Guide #42)—Guide to bi-annual strategic organizational inventorying and evaluation for faith-based, congregational community organizing projects. (3 pp.)
Conflict and Cooperation in Macro Theory and Practice—Proposes and describes the dynamics of a cycle of cooperation, competition, conflict, and negotiation in community organizing. (5 pp.)
Congregational Organizer's Primer—Outlines initial steps in congregational community organizing, from relationship-building with clergy to workshops and organizing committees. (6 pp.)
Congregational Organizing: Relationship-Driven Leadership Development—Explores leadership development in the context of institutional corruption, unification, and reconstruction. (6 pp.)
Credentialing (GTP Training Guide #45)—Guide to organizational credentialing in one-to-ones (phone and in-person), meetings, and actions. (3 pp.)
The Decade of Grassroots Activism—Review of The Backyard Revolution (Temple University Press, 1980) by Harry Boyte. (3 pp.)
Democratic Planning—Advocates and defines a grassroots, democratic approach to planning in contrast to rational, incremental, and mixed scanning forms. (13 pp.)
Dialectic of Social Action (Diagram)—Schematic depiction of the relationship between contingencies of social learning and exchange and the social construction of ideological realities. (1 p.)
A Doorknocker's Guide to Canvassing—Includes canvassing knowledge and skill basics, parts of the pitch, and myths and facts. (4 pp.)
Faith Into Action—Congregational Community Organizing in Orange County, California—Case study of PICO approach used by the interfaith federation, Orange County Congregation Community Organizations. (7 pp.)
Gather the People—Manual on Jewish congregational community organizing. (132 pp.)
Grassroots Lobbying (GTP Training Guide #46)—Outlines role of coalitions in lobbying, choosing a decision-maker to lobby, questions to help devise a lobbying campaign strategy, preparation of a policy brief, meeting with a decision-maker, and testifying at legislative hearings. (8 pp.)
Grassroots Organization Campaigns (GTP Training Guide #17)—Outlines information on basic principles, issues and targets, approaching allies, a barebones campaign model, and tactics. (2 pp.)
Grassroots Organization Meetings (GTP Training Guide #11)—Outlines essentials for planning and conducting meetings. (2 pp.)
Grassroots Organizer's Roles (GTP Training Guide #3)—Outlines four different perspectives, drawn from diverse sources, on the grassroots organizer's roles. (3 pp.)
Impatience of the Soul—Links the contemporary pattern of violence in the U.S., the pressures faced by most Americans, and the need for a "commonwealth of faith" that is organized for action. (3 pp.)
Key Learnings in Congregational Community Organizing Workshops—Outlines the foci of congregational community organizing workshops. (3 pp.)
Media (GTP Training Guide #26)—Includes brief text and extensive outline. (4 pp.)
Meeting Miscellany—Covers miscellaneous essentials for effective meetings. (5 pp.)
Micro and Macro Tensions in Generalist Practice—Considers dissimilarities that create tensions between micro and macro forms of practice and teaching. (3 pp.)
Negotiations (GTP Training Guide #14)—Includes brief text and extensive outline. (6 pp.)
Neighborhood Government Through Special Districts—Examines the role of special districts in the context of community organizing for social change (ca. 1981). (4 pp.)
Neighborhood Organizing Committees—A to Z of building neighborhood organizing committes. (8 pp.)
New England Town Government—Considers the directly democratic form of New England town government as an organizational model for empowered urban social infrastructure, based on an historical survey of the town government form from colonial to modern times. (9 pp.)
New World Coming (Organize, Organize!) [sheet music]—Music, in a Woody Guthrie style, suitable to be sung at organizing actions and events.
New World Coming (Organize, Organize!) [streaming audio]—The file will open and play only if you have an mp3 player installed on your computer's hard drive.
On Jewish Congregational Leadership—Reflections on leadership, focusing especially on appropriate aspects of leaders' character. (2 pp.)
Organizational Structure and Culture (GTP Training Guide #7)—Describes the characteristics of organizational structure and culture, their relationship to community organizing, and some implications for the organizer's role. (4 pp.)
Organizer Evaluation—Detailed instrument for evaluating community organizer job performance. (3 pp.)
Organizer One-to-Ones in Faith-Based, Congregational Organizing—Reviews a full range of material from which an organizer might choose elements to incorporate in a one-to-one visit, including: credentialing; vision, values, and religious legitimization; personal biography and surfacing pressures; strategic organizing vision; and stumbling blocks. (9 pp.)
Our Crisis of Faith: On Redeeming Ourselves, Our Faith Communities, and Our Country—Looks at the linkage of mass bureaucracy to loss of faith and political corruption, and the necessity to enliven faith by organized congregational action. (4 pp.)
Paper-Driven to Paperless: Technology Implementation Drives Program Innovation—Case study of transforming social service program to turnkey database management system. (6 pp.)
Political Liberty and Neighborhood Government—Proposes grassroots organizing as the vehicle to expand and institutionalize political liberty (ca. 1978). (3 pp.)
The Poor in the Hebrew Bible—Selected verses from Tanakh (Torah, Prophets, and Writings). (2 pp.)
The Power Bind—Paper by Warren Haggstrom that describes the formation and demise of the Syracuse Community Action Training Center (ca. 1964-65), which employed Saul Alinsky and Fred Ross, and Haggstrom's concept of the "power bind" and its implications for community organizing. (60 pp.)
The Price of Social Development—Highlights massive inner-city educational failures as symptomatic of contemporary community organizing's inability to achieve social development, and considers precursors to a strategic vision for faith-based community organizing. (9 pp.)
The Prophets—Excerpts from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel's classic study. (5 pp.)
It's the Public Powers, Stupid!—Article on the necessity for two-tier government in urban areas, with public powers granted to directly democratic neighborhood organizations, to satisfy both political and economic empowerment needs and to stop the "endless cycle of repression, rebellion, and reform." (12 pp.)
Seeding the Vision: The "Faith Link" in Congregational Community Organizing—Explores the need for biblical foundation in bringing faith to life in organized congregational action. (4 pp.)
Social Infrastructure Organizing Technology—Practice theory based on social learning, exchange, construction of reality, and development, plus micro and macro practice technologies. (120 pp.)
Social Learning [Theory] and Community Organizing—Describes social learning theory concepts and procedures, and outlines organizing technology based on social learning, with applications in the micro to mezzo range and exploration of modeling methodologies. (Authored in 1978 by Moshe ben Asher under his former English name, Michael Silver.) (95 pages)
Social Work Heuristic—Schematic illustration of linkage between the contemporary social condition of mass alienation from political and economic power, the historic goals of social work, the "pathological" effects of unaddressed poverty, oppression, and injustice, individual and collective empowerment objectives, and models of social work practice. (1 p.)
Staff Development and Leadership—Explores the challenge of staff development, a leadership strategy for staff development, the primary role of leaders to maximize staff development, the basic tools of leadership development that drive staff development, and the measure of successful leadership development. (4pp)
Team-Building and Participation: Guide to Tips on Principles and Practices—Guide to multiple lists of tips on building successful teams and contributing to them as members. (15 pp.)
The Triple-A Flyer—A primer on the basic principles of designing effective flyers. (2 pp.)
Unified Community Organizing Theory—Provides a unified theoretical description of the community organizing action field based on theories of social learning, social exchange, social construction of reality, and social development; and proposes a set of related theory-based practice roles for community organizers. (42 pp.)
Vill Economics—Explores issues and concepts related to the economic viability of small-scale political institutions, reviews surveys of "decentralization experiments," and considers the potential for small-scale (neighborhood) government to play an ecocomically useful role in providing neighborhood-based health care service delivery. (Authored in 1978 by Moshe ben Asher under his former English name, Michael Silver.) (84 pages)
Workshop on Intra-Organizational Accountability & Confrontation—Workshop outline for training leaders and organizers on the essentials of intra-organizational accountability and constructive confrontation, with particular focus on failure to challenge non-feasance and malfeasance from fear or anxiety at the prospect of confrontation, and the development within the organization of a "culture of accountability." (8 pp.)
Writing Daily Macro Practice Notes—Principles, guidelines, and extensive examples for writing community planning, organizing, and development practice notes. (9 pp.)
You Too Can Organize A Government—Essentials for neighborhood organizations to acquire and exercise public powers as the lower tier of two-tier metropolitan government federations. Originally published by ACORN in The Organizer. (8 pp.)
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