Organising the 21st century city
By Kurt Iveson, first published in the Sydney Morning Herald on October 9 2018. Premier Gladys Berejiklian’s intervention to insist the Sydney Opera House allow blatant Racing NSW advertising on its sails is objectionable for many reasons. Most worryingly, it signals a new intensification of the ongoing privatisation of our public spaces through advertising. The …
Continue reading “Why the creeping sell-off of public space for private ads is so wrong”
This article was first published in the Community Development Journal. The Global Spread of Community Organising: how Alinsky-Style community organising travelled to Australia and what we learnt Abstract: Community organising refers to a particular way of working in public life that aims to enhance the capacity of community leaders to act for the common good …
Continue reading “Taking Community Organising Down Under – how we built the Sydney Alliance”
Have you ever had that feeling of dread that you don’t really know where you live? For me, that was triggered while living in New York and being peppered with questions like “how many people are Christian in Sydney and which denominations are biggest? How many are not white?”, and not knowing the answers. I …
Continue reading “Rebuilding civil society in Sydney: the Sydney Alliance”
On the western side of Cape Town’s inner city are a string of what looks like unused buildings. From the outside they appear that they must be empty. Broken windows, damaged roofs. If you were a tourist here you wouldn’t “see” them – just a haze as you enter the city on one of …
This article by Amanda Tattersall was first published on The Conversation on 7 November 2017. It is part of the Democracy Futures project, a joint global initiative between The Conversation and Sydney Democracy Network. The project aims to stimulate fresh thinking about the many challenges facing democracies in the 21st century. Almost every global city has a similar dynamic – …
Continue reading “In the ‘fearless city’, Barcelona residents take charge”
If you have ever been involved in social change work, you have probably puzzled over the question – what is the right balance between digital organising and face-to-face organising? For instance, when is the tech world just “clicktavism,” and when does it open up spaces that can change the world? In a study of the …
This article by Amanda Tattersall was first published in The Conversation on August 25, 2014. In the wake of the Second World War, Karl Polanyi wrote that the public arena is made up of three interconnected sectors: the market, government and civil society. He argued that democracy thrives when these three are in balance. If only that …
Continue reading “Community organising aims to win back civil society’s rightful place”