Silberman Curriculum

Despite the strides made by Black women in community organizing, we have yet to see representation of black women within our curriculum at Silberman School of Social Work. Below is the description of the Community Organizing method marketed to prospective students via the Silberman school site. Underneath, you’ll find the syllabi for Community Organizing classes at the institution; we’ve highlighted text that we were presented with in the classes that have involved the work of Black Women in Community Organizing.

Community Organizing, Planning, and Development

This concentration develops students’ competence for community-based practice. It stresses the skills, techniques, and strategies needed to mobilize both people and resources to solve basic social problems at either the neighborhood or citywide level. The social planning and social reform aspects of social work practice are underscored in seeking change to alleviate individual and family problems. Education and training are developed in collective action, advocacy, program evaluation, proposal writing, community outreach, legislative advocacy, and other vital organizing roles.

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING, PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT I

COURSE DESCRIPTION 

Community Organization, Planning and Development I (COP & D) is an introduction to the history of community organizing in social work, the basic theories and models of community organizing and change, strategic frameworks utilized by practitioners in the field, and fundamental organizing skills the student will need in their professional roles as a social work practitioners of community organizing.  This course has been completely redesigned given the unprecedented moment we are now living in—one filled with equal amounts of great peril and great possibility.  That the latter triumphs over the former will greatly be determined by the quality of organizing that unfolds over the coming years. Our goal by the end of your time in our program is that you will be well prepared to be a vital participant in that organizing.

Students will explore how to maximize tactical and strategic advantage within their own community-based field settings. Students will have the opportunity to enhance skills and understanding of the complexity and components of organizing with diverse communities based on geography, issues, identities, and/or positionalities. Models of community organizing will be introduced with a focus on deepening your understanding and utilization of flexible and adroit organizing tactics and strategies capable of short-term mobilization and long-term staying power needed for systemic change. Special attention will be paid to organizing across and within difference: social issues such as class, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, age and ability in the context of organization are discussed. Students will continue to explore their own background, histories, values, styles, assumptions and experience to enhance self-awareness and tactical use of self in assessment, intervention and evaluation of community change efforts. 

The proliferation of the internet and the advent of social media has revolutionized community organizing around the world. From Occupy Wall Street (Juris, 2012; Tufekci et al. 2013) and the Arab Spring (Howard et al, 2011), to the Black Lives Matter movement (DeFreece & Carney, 2016), social movements are using social media to engage citizens and organize actions. Social media, particularly as accessed through cell phones, has become the preferred coordination tool for social movement mobilization around the world (Shirky, 2011). This course will introduce students to digital organizing and traditional models—both needed by today’s organizers). 

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING, PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT III

COURSE SESSIONS AND WEEKLY READINGS

Please Note:  We are aware that some of these SSW 743 readings were offered in previous iterations in either SSW 741 or SSW 742, especially on material from the Midwest Academy and their allies.  We are offering them here alongside other readings throughout the term as a way to deepen your strategic insight as well as tactical flexibility as such material deserves study and reflection within new organizing settings

Weeks One and Two: Your Present-day Organizing Context Is Based on History and Context: Where Does Social Work Fit?

Week Three: Handling External Conditions through Internal Clarity & Flexibility About a Direction Forward: Developing Your Internal Strategic Vision

Week Four: Alternative Visions and Platform from the Corporate-Funded Grass Roots: The Sustained Strategic Vision of the Christian Coalition

Weeks Five-Six: Embody the Change You Seek? Models and Complications of Leadership

  • *brown, a. (2017) Principles of emergent strategy: pp 1-40.
  • *Fabricant, M. (2010) Chapter five 107-126
  • *Burghardt, S. (2020) “From Islands of Possibility to Workplaces of Beleaguered Labor,” & “Fight or Flight: the New and Updated Forced March from Exhausted professional to Part-Time Clinician,” pp35-66.
  • *Horton, M. (1994). “Charisma” 113-129. 
  • *Ransby, B. (2003) The preacher and the organizer. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement. Chapel Hill, N.C.:  University of North Carolina .pp 170-195.
  • *Tufecki, Z. 92017) Leading the leaderless. pp. 49-82.
  • *brown a. (2017) “Intentional adaptation.” (pp. 52- 82).
  • *Burghardt, S. (2020) “From Cultural Competency to Fighting Systemic Racism in 500 Not-So-Easy Steps.” The End. 87-108.
  • Freire   (2000) Chapter one. Pedagogy of the oppressed. (NY: Continuum Press.)
  • *Khan-Cullors, P., & Bandele, a. (2018). What to do when they call you a terrorist. In When they call you a terrorist: A black lives matter memoir San Francisco, CA: Deckle Edge. pp 166-232.
  • Warren, M., King, R., Ortiz-Wythe, B, Belloy, P., Zapata Calderon, J.,  Martinez, P., (2021)  Intersectional Organizing and Educational Justice Movements: Strategies for Cross-Movement Solidarities. The Assembly. https://www.colorado.edu/journal/assembly/2021/03/11/intersectional-organizing-and-educational-justice-movements-strategies-cross-movement

Weeks 7-9: Grappling with Power: Tactical and Strategic Choice, Constraint and Dilemma

Perhaps our most crucial challenge in sustaining progressive movements is understanding, using and leveraging power for sustained change. There are these two dilemmas here:  Dilemma 1: How does the group make best choices tactically and strategically given power arrayed against it and internal division?  Dilemma 2: Subsequent to constructing a power analysis what are the organizing practices necessary to build the power to launch and win a campaign?

Forms of Decision-Making: Internal Organizational Power and the Development of Tactic and Strategy

  • *brown, a. (2017) Tools for emergent strategy facilitation; Interdependence and decentralization; Resilience. pp 213-237; 83-102; 123-150.
  • *Ransby, B. (2003) Fighting her own wars. pp 105-147.
  • Smucker, R. (2017 Life of the oppositional group. pp. 71-101.
  • Bolotsky, J. Beware the tyranny of structurelessness. In Boyd & Mitchell, 2016 (pp. 102-103).
  • *Mineri Joan and Paul Getsos. (2007) How to Organize for Power in Your Own Community: Tools for Radical Democracy. Chardon Press pages-165-208.
  • *Fabricant, M. (2010) Building community to change community. pp 107-125

Weeks Nine-Ten: Using Power, Strategy and Tactic for Sustained Organizing Campaigns

  • *brown, a. (2017) 51-82
  • Burghardt, S. (2020) “The Evidence In In: Expedited Core Competencies and the Fast Track to Diminished Social Work Education.” The End. pp 67-86.
  • *Fabricant, M. (2010). Growing Community Power.  Pp 203-240.
  • Freire ,P. (2000). Chapter Two.
  • *Engler M. and Paul Engler (2016) This Is An Uprising:New York New York Introduction and chapter 2, pages145-168
  • *McAlevey, J. (2018) No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power. Oxford University Press: New York and London. Chapter 4.
  • Smucker, J. (2017) Aspiring hegemonic; beyond the low plateau.pp 103-129;131-153
  • *Deparle, J. (1990, January 3). Rude, rash, effective, ACT-UP shifts AIDS policy. NY Times. https://nyti.ms/29wjbwV
  • *Mineri Joan and Paul Getsos. (2007) How to Organize for Power in Your Own Community: Tools for Radical Democracy. Chardon Press pages- 283-300, 183-207
  • France,David.(2020)”TheActivists:ACTUPNYTimes.https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/13/t-magazine/act-up-aids.html?referringSource=articleShare

Week 11:Organizing Lessons from the Pandemic

 Housing  

Labor

The Uprising

 Electoral

 General

Week 12. Looking at the Past to Extract Lessons for the Future

Week 13.Building Coalitions: Lessons from New York State Campaigns

Week 14: From Reaction to Transformation

  • *Black Lives Matter (2021) “Mission and Value Statements.” https://mission-statement.com/black-lives-matter-blm/
  • *brown, a. (2014) “Resilience.” Resilience. pp 213-237.
  • *Burghardt, S. (2020) “How Many Cases Does It Make a Cause? ‘Don’t Fret, Organize!’…for Years to Come!”  The End, pp 109-142.
  • *Engler M. and Paul Engler (2016) This Is An Uprising:New York New York Introduction and chapter 2, pages145-168