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Chapter 3 looks at complementary aspects of trust and mistrust in community development. Using a framework of development from above versus development from below, the author analyzes the tactics, strategies, and programming practices implemented by two distinct types of community groups: nonprofit lead agencies and grassroots organizations. Whereas the lead agencies focused on the goals of the New Communities Program, including social service provision and relationship building, the grassroots organizations combined community development practices with community organizing to expand local development and increase the leadership skills of residents. Grassroots actions included expanding public transportation, holding aldermanic summits, and transforming negative perceptions of their communities. These processes highlight the growing divide between formal development policies, which aimed to transform the individual, and local responses, which aimed to transform structural inequities while also developing local leadership potential.

Although Brazil may be perceived as the Latin American country which has experienced the least progress through land reform that has been initiated by the state, this country is not without the motivation to provide land to the poorest rural groups. In contrast, however, to the earlier attempts in the 1960s, these endeavours are initiated not by the government, but from nationally organized groups of small squatters communities which is furthered by one of the most prominent grassroots organizations in the country — the Rural Landless Workers' Movement (MST). MST has already been able to establish a large number of land reform settlements through convincing families to utilize ‘unproductive’ land and asserting negotiation to the government for the title to property.

This chapter examines the role of trade unions during the Umbrella Movement. One would expect democratic trade unions in Hong Kong to follow in the footsteps of their counterparts in other newly industrialized countries (NICs) and play a key role in the Umbrella Movement. However, trade unions and grassroots organizations played only a supportive role. The failure of trade unions to call a general strike and their alliance with grassroots organizations that had a limited capacity to mobilize workers' participation have significantly weakened trade unions' political influence during the movement and led to their marginalization in the first post-Umbrella Movement Legislative Council (LegCo) election and afterwards. The limitations of the democratic trade unions to mobilize their members during the Umbrella Movement in turn are due to structural, institutional, and ideological factors, namely political division in trade unionism, weak workplace organizing power, and the liberal ideology of the political elites in Hong Kong. Although this chapter focuses more on the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU), the main trade union center in the prodemocracy camp, the analysis also covers grassroots organizations such as Neighbourhood and Worker's Service Centre (NWSC) as they are also part of the democratic labor movement broadly.

The chapter draws together the main lessons of the book. Post-modern campaigning places increasing emphasis on local campaigning focussed in marginal seats as an integral part of parties’ national campaign strategies. Local campaigning mobilises voters, raises turnout, and can shift the results in closely fought competitions. Party grassroots organisations in the constituencies are therefore a central plank in this strategy. But for the most part, they are in a parlous state financially – dependent on their own resources and fund-raising activities, but with little money and few members of which to draw.

This chapter examines the involvement of social movements in the reconstruction efforts in Haiti after the earthquake. Some local activists were eager to start organizing right after the earthquake. As days passed, growing numbers braved recurring aftershocks to make their way across unidentifiable landscapes by foot, because many roads were impassable by vehicle. Grassroots organizations were soon building coalitions to map out emergency responses and advocacy strategies. This chapter considers the social movements' strategies to activate public engagement in the reconstruction process and how they reacted to their exclusion from meetings with foreign donors, such as France and the United States.

This chapter describes how a team of US civil-rights attorneys worked with grassroots organisations to file and win a landmark environmental-justice class action against the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transport Authority (MTA). The plaintiffs alleged that MTA operated separate and unequal bus and rail systems that discriminated against bus riders who were disproportionately low-income people of color. The parties settled the case in 1996 through a court-ordered Consent Decree in which MTA agreed to make investments in the bus system that would total over $2 billion, making it the largest civil-rights settlement ever.

This chapter examines the state of affairs in Haiti a year after the earthquake. It begins by discussing the return of Jean-Claude Duvalier, who was charged with corruption and embezzlement but defied house arrest, touring around town in a luxury automobile. It then considers what Haitians and grassroots and nonprofit organizations felt regarding Duvalier's return. It also describes the cholera epidemic that struck Haiti as well as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's decision to resume deportations of people with “serious criminal convictions.” Given health and sanitation conditions in Haiti, especially in its deportee holding cells, the chapter shows that the move was opposed by human rights and refugee organizations.

This chapter examines the identity politics underlying the actions, decisions, analyses, and ideologies of the social movement organizations and actors who aided and undermined the effectiveness of the public housing movement in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In particular, it considers the struggle to halt demolition of public housing units throughout the city after Katrina. Like the efforts to privatize the city school district, attempts to rid New Orleans of public housing stock were well under way before Katrina, but the conditions of mass exodus and weakened grassroots organizations created an opportunity for opponents of public social provision to advance their agenda. Once viewed as a necessary feature of its urban landscape, public housing was the object of scorn in many corners of the city prior to Katrina, with some viewing the removal of this housing stock as the remedy to the city’s crime rates and general economic development woes. The chapter chronicles the efforts of organizations such as Community Concern Compassion (C3)/Hands Off Iberville to defend the right of displaced residents to return to their apartments after Katrina.

This chapter discusses the role of activism and youth engagement in the 2004, ’08, and ’12 presidential elections. Drawing on work with grassroots political organizations and interviews with the five major national hip hop organizations (League of Young Voters, Hip-Hop Congress, National Hip-Hop Political Convention, Hip-Hop Caucus, and Hip-Hop Summit Action Network), the chapter reveals how activists and political organizers have successfully used hip hop to increase youth involvement in electoral politics. The interview probes the contentious relationship between independent hip hop political organizing and Democratic Party strategy.

To sustain their campaign (and other) activities, especially in marginal seats, political parties must raise and spend money. But how well-resourced are local parties? New rules on financial disclosure for political parties allow insight into the financial health of the local party organisations which represent Britain’s main political parties in the constituencies. The picture which emerges suggests that, in many parts of the country, the major parties’ grassroots organisations are in a parlous state, surviving on very limited resources indeed. Under current legislation, local party organisations with annual turnovers in excess or £25,000 must make financial returns. Only the Conservatives’ grassroots were sufficiently healthy to put many local parties over this threshold: over half of local Conservative associations made returns in the year of the 2010 election, compared to around one-sixth of Labour and Liberal Democrat local parties. For all parties, local income and expenditure patterns were heavily skewed: most local parties raised and spent little, while only a very few had high turnovers. Much of the fund-raising effort was locally generated. The Conservatives and (to a lesser extent) Liberal Democrats were able to provide central support for particularly strategic local parties, but Labour was not.

This chapter examines how things were in Haiti six months after the earthquake. In some ways, everything had changed, while in many ways Haiti remained the same. The political class was still apathetic in the face of desperate citizens' needs. Political protests had stopped at the start of the World Cup because people suddenly had more important things to do. Another thing about the conclusion of the World Cup, which saw Argentina fail to reach the finals: the electricity that had been guaranteed during the past month to power the TVs would become irregular again. Everywhere the topic of conversations was the earthquake. Many of the horror stories about the disaster had evolved into dramatic tales, complete with humor. Grassroots organizations met continually to develop their strategies for political change, while demonstrators regularly took to the streets. This chapter concludes by quoting a supporter of Argentina in the World Cup: “We've lost the battle, but we haven't lost the war.”

As a result of women’s advocacy, Scotland has taken a gender-based approach to addressing domestic abuse. The Scottish government, unlike other countries in the United Kingdom, recognizes domestic abuse as an issue that disproportionately affects women and is associated with historical cultural assumptions about gender roles in society. The Scottish government has identified the “3Ps” necessary to address domestic abuse—protection (legal remedies), provision (responsive services), and prevention—and has oriented its governmental efforts around the 3Ps. Although progress in responding to domestic abuse has been made, in large part thanks to the work of grassroots and women’s organizations, that progress is fragile, and the changes associated with the gender based approach need to be more firmly embedded.