(Another installment in this excellent series. - promoted by Paul Rosenberg)
Externally, community organizing groups split the world into an always flexible "us" and "them." Until fairly recently, the group I work with, at least, didn't look very closely at the internal fractures we had across boundaries of race and class. However the social and cultural power of privileged and less privileged members can create destructive patterns if they are not dealt with directly from the beginning.
In my limited experience in Wisconsin with CHANGE--a congregational organizing group that is a member of the national National Organizing network--I have watched a range of race and class issues emerge that were not dealt with effectively. (Later I'll talk about how intermediary organizations like National Organizing work with local groups).
From what I have read elsewhere (see also this and this ), a reluctance to focus specifically on race and class in favor of more pragmatic and general visions of "self interest" and coalition building has been a problem with mainline community organizing groups more generally. This has led to the development of new groups outside of the larger national groups that deal more directly with issues of racial identity, nationalism etc. More recently, I know that groups like National Organizing have begun to address these issues more directly, but since my participation has been mostly limited to local work in our education committee, I am not a part of these wider discussions in the network.
