Community organizing in the United States

This article discusses community organizing (CO) in the United States. It is not a comprehensive survey of the entirety of CO in the US context, but instead addresses key components over time and critical themes in CO using particular examples to draw out central lessons for the field. Critical themes include CO’s broad proliferation and organizational diversity, inherent political and contested nature, dialectic contextualization, and limited success. Contemporary efforts such as Asset-based Community Development, ACORN, the Tea Party, immigrant rights organizing, Occupy Wall Street, and the Right to the City Alliance are used to flesh out these critical themes as well as illustrate the current landscape and challenges for CO in the US.