Editing Introduction to Organizing (section)

== Power ==
Organizing focuses on power: who has it, who doesn’t, and how to build enough of it to shift the power relationship and bring about change. Dr. Martin Luther King described power as “the ability to achieve purpose” and “the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change.”<ref>King, Martin Luther, Jr. (1967). “Where Do We Go From Here?” Annual Report Delivered at the 11th Convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Atlanta, GA. Retrieved from <nowiki>http://www-personal.umich.edu/~gmarkus/MLK_WhereDoWeGo.pdf</nowiki></ref>

In organizing, power is not a thing or a trait. Organizers understand power as the influence that’s created by the relationship between interests and resources. Here, '''interests''' are what people need or want (e.g. to protect a river, to stay in public office, to make money), while resources are assets (e.g. people, energy, knowledge, relationships, votes, and money) that can be readily used to achieve the change you need or want. Understanding the nature of power – that it stems from the interplay between interests and resources – and that we must shift power relationships in order to bring about change, is essential for the success of our organizing efforts.

From the example above, the community organizing to make hospitals safe spaces for undocumented people may ask questions aimed at ‘tracking down the power’ – that is, inquiring into the relationship between actors, and particularly the interests and resources of these actors in their struggle. For instance, they might ask questions like: what are our interests, or, what do we want? Who holds the resources needed to address these interests? What are their interests, or, what do they want?

In doing so, the community may realize that the local health authority is a key actor, that several health authority board members in this community have ambitions to run for political office and so value their public image, and in turn, the community holds the resources of people, relationships in the community and with the media, and an ability to tarnish their image that could shift this power relationship and bring about change.