Community-based organizations have been a distinctive feature of American democratic life since the founding of the Republic, one that Alexis de Tocqueville praised as evidencing Americans’ unique ability for what he called, “the art of association.” Such organizations have been thought of as integral to American civic life, knitting together an ethnically diverse population through mediating between localities and neighborhoods and the more formal institutions of government. In contemporary usage, the term “community organizing” very often refers to a form of community-based action, which, like labor union movements, relies primarily on the use of confrontational tactics.

Although collective action certainly existed in urban neighborhoods prior to the development of this model, community organizing in the US today remains most closely associated with the figure of Saul Alinsky (1909–72). Alinsky developed his model of direct action based on his experiences as a labor union organizer with the Council of Industrial Organizations (CIO). In contrast to community development work undertaken in many other national contexts, which usually relies primarily on governmental sources for funding and which tends to emphasize service delivery Alinsky called for community organizations to raise their own funds and to remain politically autonomous.

His legacy lives on in many neighborhoods around the United States, although very few of the organizations existing today were actually founded by either Alinsky or his direct “heirs.” The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), based in New York City, NY, continues to train organizers according to Alinsky’s model. In any case, despite a variety of organizational structures and a multiplicity of different kinds of tactics and philosophies, Alinsky remains a seminal figure.

Over the past twenty years, there has been such an outpouring of works on the Citizen Action movement in the United States that it would be impossible to include mention of them all here. The best sources for an overview of the nature and role of both Alinskystyle neighborhood organizations and many other types of grassroots movements as well are books by H.C. Boyte. See: Boyte, H.C. (1989) CommonWealth: A Return to Citizen Politics, New York: The Free Press; Boyte, H.C. (1984) Community is Possible: Repairing America’s Roots, New York: Harper and Row; Boyte, H.C. (1980) The Backyard Revolution: Understanding the New Citizen Movement, Philadelphia: Temple University Press; Boyte, H.C. and Kari, N. (1996) Building America, Philadelphia: Temple University Press; and Evans, S. and Boyte, H.C. (1986) Free Spaces: The Source of Democratic Change in America, New York: Harper & Row.