UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA WGS 498/GSJ 598

SEMINAR (M7)

What is activism and community organizing? What is a Community?

Before we delve into learning about activism, organization and intersectionality, we must start with a closer look at the concept of “community” itself. A wide range of works in the field has produced both competing and complementary definitions of community.  

The following attributes as characteristic elements in any community:

• Communities are organized in different ways.
• A community is about people though places offer context to the relationship amongst its members.
• People live in multiple communities.
• Communities are nested within each other.
• Communities have formal and informal institutions.

Make a list of which communities you are a part:

1.

2.

3.

Activism and Community Organizing

In Community Development Practice: From Canadian and Global Perspectives  (2022), Mahbub Hasan writes:

Community organizing refers to bringing community members together and providing them with the tools to help themselves or work towards common interests. It requires determination, perseverance, a clear plan with goals, reliability, follow-through, and a willingness to compromise (Citizen Committee for New York City).

Community work starts with community organizing. As community workers, we reach out to the community in good and challenging times. We start with listening to the community and acting together to strengthen relationships among its residents and members. We work together with the community to address their needs.

Community organizing is a process. The most critical step in community organizing is to inform and educate people on socio-political, economic, and environmental issues and encourage their participation in community development. Once people are aware of their issues and feel connected with their community, they will show their interest in the community development process, such as sharing stories, analyzing problems, developing actions, receiving training, and connecting with resources that help themselves and community members. (https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/communitydevelopmentpractice/)

Types of Community Organizing

Community organizing can be distinguished between Organizing for Resource Provision and Organizing for Transformation. Activism for Resource Provision is focused on bringing much-needed resources to the community. Organizing for Transformation involves activism focused on eradicating the structural barriers that cause resource scarcity for the community

Can you come up with other examples for each of these two distinct forms of organizing and activism?

Intersectionality in Research and Community Organizing 

For researchers, intersectionality provides a conceptual lens to resist tendencies to homogenize marginalized communities and their members. Instead, intersectionality offers insight into the concept of “complexity of community” as a tool to understand the diverse lives and needs of community members associated with different forms of community organizing. 

Furthermore, approaching activism and organizing through an intersectional framework allows for critical awareness of positionality and power. This reflexivity is important for researchers studying activism and for community organization members as this approach develops a consciousness about the power differences within and amongst the members involved in organizing. Once a recognition of intersecting inequalities is established, the researcher can develop and even devise new tools and methodologies, such as storytelling, visual methodologies and autoethnography to make space for documenting the experiences of the heterogeneous communities and their community members. 

In order for intersectionality to be an effective tool for data collection and analysis, researchers need to ground their understanding of it in context, history, and experience.

In the assigned resource for this module “Can the Dalit woman speak?”, K, Ravi Raman demonstrates how researchers can use intersectionality as a theory and methodology to understand the activism of labour organizations of the Global South. The article looks at Dalit women workers of the tea plantations of Munnar (Munnar tea estate is in the southern Indian province of Kerala) and studies their activism and organizing strategies during a job action in 2015. This labour movement involved grassroots-level organization and included protests and strikes that were led and organized by Dalit women. 

Further Resources: 

Also look at “Ten Tips For Putting Intersectionality into Practice” for examples of current social movements incorporating intersectionality into their praxis.

Background: Diversifying Leadership

 Watch (5:26 mins)

The Sustainabiliteens: Creating an Intersectional Climate Movement

While you watch, consider the following:

• According to the video, why and how does intersectionality matter for the climate justice movement?
• What is the argument the video makes for a diversified leadership of the climate movement?
• What is BIPoC joy and how does it matter to organizing?

Think of social movements or social justice issues in your life and environment or a social issue you care about: What is your positionality vis a vis this movement or issue? How might this shape your contributions or understanding of this social justice issue?

We already encountered similar questions about positionality in the previous module on policy. And we have encouraged you to think about positionality vis a vis your own work in this course and beyond. How does your positionality shape your interests, your contributions and your understanding of the issues you care about? 

In the last module, we already considered reflecting on social location and positionality as central to intersectional policy. However, it would be mistake to assume that intersectionality’s attention to social location and positionality means one should only care or be interested in issues relevant to one’s own social location or positionality. Quite the opposite, at its root intersectionality is about fostering solidarity and coalition politics with other oppressed groups.  

Soldarity-based alliances with members of other marginalized communities are also an issue raised in the video by the Sustainabiliteens you just watched. A pivotal question is how can embracing intersectionality lead to meaningful solidarity-based alliances with members of marginalized communities? 

We already encountered calls for solidarity and coalitions in some of the foundational texts we read earlier in this course, such as the 1977 statement by the Combahee River Collective and Crenshaw’s 1989 “basement” metaphor, which we discussed in Module 3. In Crenshaw’s metaphorical basement, people who face multiple oppressions are crowded together. Some individuals are lifted out through the ceiling. But Crenshaw observes that only those facing a single form of barrier or oppression—such as gender or race—are lifted up. This metaphor is relevant to many social justice struggles and highlights the danger when social justice activism only addresses one vector of identity or oppression. Staying with and dramatizing Crenshaw’s metaphor, those facing multiple intersecting forms of oppression are left “rotting in the basement.” One conclusion from this is that those who face multiple forms of oppression and experience the worst consequences of issues like climate change, rather than being ‘left in the basement, instead, should lead and set the agenda for the climate justice movement.

 In the video, we see this argument play out by a teen from a marginalized community raising the issue of intersectionality in climate justice activism. The teen climate justice advocate is someone from a group rarely represented in the climate justice movement who not only joined the leadership but emphasizes the importance of multi-marginalize folks leading. Thus we focus in this module on diverse representation in the climate justice movement.

Relatedly, consider how it is problematic when the climate justice movement is predominantly constituted and led by white individuals from the Global North, who collectively are responsible for creating the conditions of an uninhabitable planet, while those most affected by climate change are largely missing from leadership roles.