Re: The Expropriation of Community Organizing Techniques by the Gig Economy

Wade
You really ought to know better!
Our use of public narrative is all about organizing and NOT mobilizing. A marketing firm can come along, call what its doing "self, us, now", when its just another from of packaging, branding and messaging. Nor is "self, us, now" meant to stand alone but, rather, integrated with five other practices that include relationship building, strategizing (power), structuring, and acton - a way of developing leadership, building community around that leadership and building power from the collective resources of that community. You of all people ought to be clear about the fact that people who don't get it, don't want to get it, or want to "use" ican take the name of an organization - like ACORN for example - and give it meaning that serves their purposes as the expense of what the organization is all about. But it is also true that "community organizers" could have been doing a much more aggressive, imaginative, and courageous job of linking their work to the far broader public political discourse that has ignored "community organizing" except during the Obama blip. I was fortunate to have been introduced to organizing not in the Alinsky model or the canvassing/mobilizing model but in the context of movement building. That approach to organizing focussed not only on enabling particular communities to build the power they need to address particular local challenges but also engaging in a discursive mission with the broader world. It's one reason so many people today fail to get the difference between organizing an mobilizing. The first year I taught my course in public narrative (which came out classes I had been doing on organizing and moral leadership, as well as work with Sierra Club local chapters, someone said, "Oh! I see. This is about how to package yourself." "No" said Jianti Ravi from Gujarat, "this is not about how to apply a gloss from the outside but to bring out the glow from the inside."
Its about organizing, my friend, not "mobilizing", deep organizing.