We all know that coming together makes a difference, that there is power in numbers. Yet, it can be challenging to move beyond just reacting to events to sustaining organizing for change over time. The key is choosing efforts that help address concrete community concerns and have some short term “wins” (and support a long term vision) so you can keep momentum and energy up.

There are at least four important "steps" in organizing for change:

• Getting together with others to discuss shared vision and to identify potentially “hot” issues
• Gathering information on these issues including how people feel about them so that whatever you choose to take on is relevant and draws other key folk in
• Developing the campaign – who would mostly likely join you, what do you need to win, examine the power relations, etc.
• Do the thing – implement the campaign, work the media, track your progress and generally keep things moving

It's not enough to simply react to issues with demands and counter demands. At some point, if we are serious about building community power, we must shape and initiate public policy. Following are basic steps in shaping proactive, community-generated policies. Of course, these tools are not a recipe but a guide from which to begin your strategy.