1.2 Campaigning to build the organisation

By beginning with the constituency in organising, campaigning, while integral, becomes secondary. Rather than mobilising a constituency around achieving change on a particular issue, the aim is to mobilise a constituency around the principle of being organised so that the views of that constituency can be represented, whatever the issue might be.

Campaigning, then, is the way that the organisation might represent its views on a particular issue, but the role of organising is to build the necessary power with which a constituency can represent itself. This is true whether you are building the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries or building the Amazon Labour Union.

You will now look at examples of organising practices in the workplace as well as in the community, discussing how organising can create spaces for leadership to emerge, as well as some useful tools for organising in practice.