Community organizing and interorganizational network changes in a justice system reform coalition in Chicago

Community organizing occurs when residents collaboratively investigate and take collective action on issues that concern them. These issues of concern often include safety, educational quality, community development, improvements to neighborhoods and the physical environment, and access to health care, affordable housing, transportation and employment opportunities. Often, these concerns are local manifestations of macro-level forces, such as neoliberal globalization and structural racism. In order to achieve changes in local policies and systems in spite of these forces, residents often seek to build longlasting local organizing initiatives that are capable of sustaining social action, holding decision-makers and institutions accountable to address concerns of local residents across a variety of issues. Organizing is therefore a way for local residents to enhance their quality of life in tangible ways while simultaneously resisting and challenging oppressive sociopolitical forces and working to advance social justice. Many local organizing initiatives are built as coalitions or federations of smaller geographically- or institutionally situated efforts. Just as labor-organizing federations support efforts across many different workplaces, community organizing federations (often termed initiatives) support efforts within and among community centers, faith-based institutions, schools, neighborhood organizations, and other nonprofit and voluntary organizations. For example, the Southwest Organizing Project (SWOP) in Chicago currently lists 37 member institutions including faith-based institutions (for example, a Lutheran church, an Ethiopian Hebrew congregation, and the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, itself a separate federation), a number of elementary, middle, and high schools, a community development corporation, and several social service organizations. Many times, this type of federated structure is used for two purposes: (1) to equip local organizing committees or efforts within each member institution (sometimes termed affiliates), which may organize around issues of their own choosing, and (2) to create a broader federated structure that can carry out campaigns on issues of concern across the initiative or federation.