March for the ADA
photo: Tom Olin
Welcome —
I made this website to help folks who want to make changes in our communities. It is about using people power to make these changes. I’ve written it from a disability perspective because that is my experience, more specifically from the perspective of my thirty or so years so of working with the disability rights group ADAPT, as well as centers for independent living, cross disability coalitions, advocacy and student groups.
Even though this information comes from a disability experience, it applies to all kinds of movements and all types of folks. Community organizing is not unique to one or another community. The techniques described here were originally designed to organize neighborhoods, and have been used for all kinds of social movements: women’s rights, civil rights, gay rights, animal rights, unions, tea party rights and much more. An old ADAPT of Texas member, Bill Scarborough, once described our movement saying “to boldly go where everyone else has gone before.” Well maybe not everyone has gone here before, but many folks have.
One thing I have found is that old things recycle. They may change, but the gist is the same. So, though these techniques are not new, they still apply; think of them as tried and true. People have used them to create many diverse and beautiful outcomes, and no doubt, you can do the same.
If you get into it, you can find tons of material on community organizing and really many of the principles of business books/blogs, how-to-advocate manuals and the like are based on similar ideas. However, if you really get into this I recommend you put your energies into doing, listening and learning from your experiences.