Taught By:
Janice Fine
Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations
Rutgers University - New Brunswick
jrfine@smlr.rutgers.edu
Read profile here.
Course Description:
Organizing is how people come together to pursue their collective interests. Organizing is moving people into Relationship, Reflection, Storytelling, Leadership, Team-Building and Action in order to:
- Build their collective power
- Take greater control over their own lives
- Achieve shared goals
It is a life skill that students will need no matter the field they end up pursuing or the community in which they end up settling.
Student Campaigns:
How do people come together, build a base and take action to win on the issues they care about? What is power, how does power operate and how do organizations build it and leverage it to win?
The course will cover the building blocks of organizing including:
- Recruitment and Building the Organization
- Forms of Power
- Public Narrative
- Strategic Research and Power Analysis
- Strategy
- Effective Actions and Turnout
- Building Teams
- Coaching
We will read both practical and scholarly work on these topics and explore them through class discussions, exercises, and role plays.
The curriculum and examples are drawn from my twenty-plus years working as an organizer and trainer before entering academia and from classics of organizing, political science, sociology, management, urban studies, economics, public policy and anthropology that shed light on key ideas. I’m always adding to it and welcome your suggestions.