This book introduces the vibrant, conflictual, and yet deeply relational world of community organizing Community organizers build solidarity and collective power in fractured communities. They help ordinary people turn their private pain into publication, releasing hidden capacities for leadership and strategy. Organizing groups thrive amid what Saul Alinsky called "hard reality:" the "sweeping passions," "conflict, confusion, seeming chaos," and "drama" of the public realm. This book will transform your understanding of civic action and social change in America. Book jacket.