An ongoing list of great community organizers who changed the world through their leadership.
Tell us about your favorite Community Organizer!

• Saul Alinsky – Often considered the “Father of Community Organizing.” Chicago advocate credited with being one of the greatest contributors to the foundation of 1960s grassroots political organization. Sought to empower people so that they in turn could improve their own lives. Believed in power of democracy as method for empowerment. As McCain, Palin and all politicians in this country would say, Democracy is the American Value.
• Dorothy Day – for creatively and radically mixing theology and socialism toward creating a common good.
• Paolo Freire – the Brazilian educator and thinker who knew that an effective community organizer empowers communities to solve their own problems, instead of trying to do it for them. He developed the theory of “critical pedagogy” – using education to help oppressed groups see their situation objectively, and to let them see that they DO have value, and they CAN act.
• Gandhi – A major political and spiritual leader of India and the Indian independence movement. He was the pioneer of Satyagraha—resistance to tyranny through mass civil disobedience, firmly founded upon ahimsa or total non-violence—which led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.
• Jesus Christ – The central figure of Christianity and revered by most Christian churches as the Son of God and the incarnation of God.
• Martin Luther King Jr. – An American clergyman, activist and prominent leader in the American civil rights movement. His main legacy was to secure progress on civil rights in the United States and he is frequently referenced as a human rights icon today.
• Harvey Milk – The “Mayor of Castro Street”, the first openly, gay supervisor of San Francisco, he united different communities and helped to defeat California’s Proposition 6 in 1978.
• Power 96 radio station in south Florida – They’ve halped needy children at hospitals with donations from the listeners and raised over $180,000 just a couple of months ago. More recently with all the severe storms, they’ve also started clothes & food drives for the needy in the hardest-hit neighboring islands.
• Mother Theresa – A Roman Catholic nun who founded the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata (Calcutta), India in 1950. For over forty five years she ministered to the poor, sick, orphaned, and dying, while guiding the Missionaries of Charity’s expansion, first throughout India and then in other countries.
• Kathy Nyland – She’s my neighbor and she’s the most amazing advocate for our neighborhood, Georgetown, Seattle. She’s super smart, organizes people, speaks eloquently and plays with the big boys at city hall. She’s 100% awesome and I adore her. One day she’ll be on the Seattle city council.
• Harriet Tubman – An African-American abolitionist, humanitarian, and Union spy during the U.S. Civil War. After escaping from captivity, she made thirteen missions to rescue over seventy slaves using the network of antislavery activists and safe houses known as the Underground Railroad.