So what’s the difference between organizing and advocacy? The words are often used interchangeably - but these two practices are very different from one another.
With advocacy work, organizations advocate on behalf of some group of people: advocating on behalf of women, or people experiencing homelessness. With organizing, though, we don’t speak on anyone’s behalf. Rather, we train people to speak and act for themself in the public arena. Both advocacy and organizing are important ways to achieve change. But if we seek to build power, leadership, and ownership of everyday people over their communities, we must dismantle the idea that only some of us are fit to have a voice or stand up for ourselves.
As Arundhati Roy puts it, “there's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.” The job of an organizer is not to be the voice for others, but rather to help everyday people see the importance of their own voice, and to train them to step into that power. One person speaking for others can be dismissed or placated - but thousands of people speaking with one, united voice become impossible for those in power to ignore.
#communityorganizing #organizer #justice #localpolitics #peoplepower #community
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2 个月Go Adriana Caldera Boroffice, MPA ! ????