SOC 270 Community Organizing and Social Action (3 SH)

This course is an introduction to the history, theories, and tactics of community organizing in the United States since the early 20th century. Community organizing is fundamentally a project of power building within and among groups of people marginalized from existing power structures. In this class, we begin by asking what community is and how power functions and proceed to learn about issues, tactics, and campaigns that have been used in fights for local change over the past century and continue to be used today. We work to understand how local concerns and campaigns to address them are situated within larger structures of power and inequality.