DEMOCRATIC ORGANIZING - The Growing Democracy Project

Important Resources

People

Our elite class system is the predominant political and social force in our country at this time. And it has been that way since the beginning of not only our country but virtually all Western societies.

In spite of this America is rich in democratic practices, attitudes, dispositions, organizations, systems, traditions, and committed people. In order to grow our democracy we must use and develop all of these resources as well as create more powerful ones.

In this section we list significant organizations and people who are behind growing our democracy, not just fixing what we have. Our list has four categories: Culture, Group Dynamics, Organizing, and Practice.

We see these as the four key elements in building a long-term democracy movement driven by everyday people in all of our diversity. These four categories are also the primary areas of concentration in our Growing Democracy Learning Labs.

We have begun this list in September 2023, and will add to it continuously. Please contact us if there are people or organizations you think belong on our lists, and tell us why.

Thank you and enjoy your explorations of our resources.

Digital organizing makes mailing lists and raises money. Relational organizing does that while it creates meaning and power. If we want to grow our democracy to become the predominant social and political force, everyday people have to organize on a scale that will meet the scale of the challenges.

“Using power with others… is about attending to more needs of more people, thereby adding both to their power, their capacity to mobilize resources to meet their own needs, as well as to the whole. Time and time again I am astonished by seeing that bringing in more needs results in solutions that tend to be more creative and more robust. I mourn how many people live and die without having this magical experience, because explaining it takes the life out of it…” (Miki Kashtan, “Transforming Power Relations: The Invisible Revolution”)

Ernesto Cortes, Jr.

Cortés is the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) co-chair and executive director of the West / Southwest IAF regional network. He has worked to organize communities in the poor neighborhoods of Texas and throughout the Southwest.

He emphasizes the development of local leadership, training cadres of organizers who become a permanent resource capable of mobilizing their communities at the grassroots.

Cortes is really a teacher. He teaches empowerment. He teaches people to think and act for themselves, to challenge authority, to speak up for their own self-interest. He says power comes in two forms: organized people and organized money.

A collection of his writings and interviews are here.

Lawrence Goodwyn

Goodwyn was an American journalist and political theorist known for his study of American populism. He served as a professor at Duke University from 1971 to 2003.

He was best known for writing Democratic Promise: The Populist Moment in America, a book about the largest democratic movement in American history. The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America, is the abridged version. It became a staple in university history seminars, labor organizing institutes and community activism efforts for years to come.

The Populist Moment - Introduction captures the core of his perspective on the struggle of democracy in our country. Organizing Democracy: The limits of theory and practice (2015) outlines a relational strategy for achieving a politically democratic presence in society.

His 2015 article, “Organizing Democracy: The limits of theory and practice,” pretty much condenses his deep and dynamic understanding of what it will take to build a democratic society.

In 1991 he published Breaking the Barrier: the Rise of Solidarity in Poland. It’s vintage Goodwy. Solidarnosc was the first successful challenge to the Leninist state--the shipworker's strike which began in Gdansk, and which led to the formation of the first free and independent trade union in the communist world, Solidarnosc.

Goodwyn provides a fascinating history of that movement, tracing thirty-five years of working class activism and state repression that preceded and defined the climactic struggle of 1980 on the Baltic coast of Poland.