The Institutionalization of Women’s Community Organizing: How the War on Poverty Shaped Todays Leadership Development

• In Event: 20861 - Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 10: Organizations, Tactics, and Strategies

Abstract

The institutionalization of community organizing is the process by which community organizing activities become embedded in institutions. These institutions are federally recognized nonprofit organizations that support organizing work and play an important role of providing relative financial stability to sustain and expand local organizing. War on Poverty policies in the 1960’s motivated the institutionalization of community organizing, creating openings for women centered organizing institutions. For over 15 years, these policies provided direct funding for community organizing projects largely run by women of color (Naples 1998; Orleck 2005). Social movement scholars like Francis Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward argue that when organizing becomes embedded in institutions, they are weakened, largely because of federal oversight that restrict their activities. I suggest the institutionalization of community organizing widened the opportunities for women, particularly women of color, to engage in leadership development and formal leadership roles in organizations, which previously were predominantly exclusive to men. Using the experiences of two long-term Chicago based organizers, I chronicle the institutionalization of women’s community organizing highlighting the importance of creating organizing institutions specific to women and caregivers. While much focus has remained on the immediate public impacts of War on Poverty policies, including its failures to end poverty, I explore the long-term transformative effects of its programs, including the visibility of women’s organizing and the progressive organizing of economically marginalized mothers of color that continues today.

Author

• Jennifer Elena Cossyleon, University of California Merced