Globalization and Community Organizing: Building Today’s Local-Global Movement in the United States

Economic, political, and social crises are deeply affecting communities throughout the United States. In the United States the long history of genocide of indigenous peoples, enslavement of African peoples, the economic exploitation of working people including many immigrant communities, the inequality of women of these communities and classes, wars of conquest and expansion of the continental U.S., and ecocide (the destruction of the ecosystem through harmful political, economic, and social policies) have shaped the economic and political system of global capitalism in the United States since the country was founded, and some of these practices predated the country’s founding by over three centuries. This system is rooted in white supremacy and gender oppression as part of the overarching domination of society and the state by the rich and powerful-by those who own the economic resources across the country and the globe and form today’s global corporate class (Zinn, 1995; Hennessy and Ingraham, 1997; Smith, 2005).

These forms of injustice and inequality have been reproduced in every century since the late 1400s. In each century resistance and resilience have been a consistent part of daily life. Those communities and classes most adversely affected have organized and struggled against their oppression and exploitation, seeking freedom, liberation, justice, and equality (Kelley, 2002; Mohanty, 2004; Project South, 2004a).