Linkes Organizing (Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung)
Summary
“Alltagskämpfe und Community Organizing — Das Beispiel der mietenpolitischen Bewegung in Berlin” (Everyday Struggles and Community Organizing — the Example of the Rent-Political Movement in Berlin) by Hendrik Sander, published as Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung Online-Publikation 17/2017 (ISSN 2567-1235, Redaktionsschluss August 2017). It analyses how the US community-organizing tradition (Alinsky, IAF) lands in the German rent-movement context through the INKOTA-Netzwerk and Berlin tenant initiatives. [source: rls-linkes-organizing]
Body
The publication is positioned in the German left-wing strategy debate around re-embedding left politics in everyday life and concrete work/living conditions (“eine Hinwendung zu den Alltagswidersprüchen subalterner Klassen”) in the context of multiple crises (Neoliberalisierung, Prekarisierung, the crisis of social reproduction) and the right-wing mobilisation around the post-2015 refugee-summer backlash [source: rls-linkes-organizing]. Sander frames community organizing as the response: a practice that aims at “eine ermächtigende und transformatorische Basisarbeit” through direct outreach to subaltern groups and their self-organisation in everyday life [source: rls-linkes-organizing].
The historical lineage the paper draws is the German-left tradition of organising along everyday-life demands — from the traditional workers’ movement with its Bildungsvereine (educational associations) and solidarity networks to queer-feminist, environmental, and solidarity-economy projects [source: rls-linkes-organizing]. The contemporary strategy debate cited is rooted in Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung, DIE LINKE, and parts of the German movement-left; the US reference is Saul Alinsky’s “Community Organizing” (Alinsky 1989) [source: rls-linkes-organizing].
The core conceptual move the paper makes is the Alinsky distinction between organizing and Selbstorganisation (self-organisation): “Ermächtigung im Sinne einer Selbstvertretung von Marginalisierten ist das Ziel. Dabei wird Ermächtigung allerdings explizit organisiert und angestoßen durch politisch geschulte und erfahrene Aktivist*innen. Unter dem Schlagwort leadership building wird die Weitergabe von Wissen und politischen Kompetenzen bewusst orga[ni]siert” — empowerment as self-representation is the goal, but it is explicitly organised and triggered by politically trained activists, with conscious leadership building as the knowledge-and-skill transfer mechanism [source: rls-linkes-organizing].
The empirical case is Berlin’s “mietpolitische Bewegung” (rent-political movement) and the Mietrebell initiatives: their social basis (Mieter*innen-Initiativen — tenant initiatives), how they form, the participants’ motives, the organisational structure of protest (“Das soziale Gewebe des Protestes”), the activity circles, and the continuity-and-movement-cycles dimension. Sander’s own author bio: works in public relations at INKOTA-Netzwerk e.V. in Berlin; focal areas are Marxist hegemony and state theory, transformation strategies, social movements, social-nature relations, and energy policy; active with Attac and Interventionistische Linke [source: rls-linkes-organizing].
Use it for
Citing a German-language left analysis of community-organizing theory translated to the Berlin rent-movement context; using the Sander paper’s organizing-vs-Selbstorganisation framing in a left-organising strategy discussion; citing INKOTA-Netzwerk as the publisher-network connection between movement-organising practice and leftist strategy debates in Germany.
Related
- affinity-groups
- coalition-building
- constructive-programme
- distributed-organizing
- framing-and-narrative
- leadership-development
- one-to-ones
- public-narrative
Sources & verification
- sources/rls-linkes-organizing — grounding: primary — RAW (≈107 KB; full PDF text via rosalux.de — Online-Publikation 17/2017, ISSN 2567-1235, Redaktionsschluss August 2017)
Learn more
- On Wikipedia: Rosa Luxemburg Foundation — CC BY-SA 4.0