Our Shared Struggle: The International Imperative for Repair

On September 16, 2023, OBI director was a featured speaker in a forum hosted by the de Young Museum as part of the Kehinde Wiley Speaker Series (organized around the exhibition of Kehinde Wiley’s An Archaeology of Silence). The event, moderated by...

A Model of Targeted Universalism to Advance Equity and Promote the Well-Being of All Children

The Help Me Grow (HMG) Model is an innovative solution that provides an early childhood system of care and utilizes targeted universalism as a framework to advance equity.

Slow and Mainstream Wins the (Far Right) Race

A few months ago, I managed a focus group exploring attitudes towards climate with young Spanish progressives from urban centers. Whenever I manage focus groups, I like to begin with the question “what are the most important issues facing the country...

Single-Family Zoning in the Fresno Region

Introduction The authors would like to thank Joshua Cantong, Data Analyst at the Othering and Belonging Institute for their valuable insights and contributions. This brief report continues our series investigating the extent of restrictive and...

Environmental Justice from the Bottom-Up

In recent years, advocates’ push for development without displacement in California has been incorporated into state grant-making pilot programs like the Equitable Community Revitalization Grant. Investments in urgently needed low-income housing...

Targeted Universalism Bibliography

The framework of targeted universalism has been a compelling framework for work in many different contexts. The sources referenced in this bibliography reflect this diversity of uses and application areas. Targeted universalism is a framework that focuses on policy and program design...

Bridging and Power Building Paper Series

This series looks at the longstanding art and science of organizing, in relation to today’s social dynamics. Our premise is that for us to build power, we need to bridge across lines of difference in ways more radical than ever before. This series is authored by a working group from across California...

Concluding Thoughts on Bridging and Power Building

At the outset of the B4B working groups’ journey, we envisioned a set of trainings, analytical and strategizing tools, and shared bridging tenets that shape our practice (toolbox), politics, and culture. If we are successful, we will see...

Community Organizing, Electoral Work, and Bridging

The most basic premise of electoral work is grounded in breaking. Campaigns must draw a line in the sand between themselves and their opposition, providing a firm “us-and-them” distinction that is crystal clear. In the elections themselves of course, there are winners and there are losers...

The Strategic Implications of Mass Mobilization as a Tactic

Mass mobilization as a tactic–without linking it to community organizing, base-building, and civic engagement–has some very useful aspects and also some steep downsides. The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) Movement and the Black Lives Matter movement illustrate...

Coalitions: Vision, Bridging, Belonging

Coalitions, at their best, ensure that we are stronger than the sum of our parts. If a coalition is defined as a set of distinct groups joining together for a shared goal, we might expect that this, by its nature, involves bridging...

The Center for Third World Organizing Model’s Essential Components

In the 1980s, Gary Delgado, an Alinsky-trained organizer, challenged the country’s dominant grassroots power building model by asserting that (1) communities of color should be organized by young people of color; (2) organizations and campaigns should reflect...

The History of the Alinsky Organizing Model and Its Practice within Community and Organized Labor

Saul Alinsky was a native of Chicago, a vital manufacturing and transportation hub for the country in the 1930s. Scores of meat packing companies, warehouses, and train lines converged on the Second City and employed thousands of...

Organizing, Power Building, and Bridging

If progressives are to win, transformative change in the long run, we will not do so by achieving piecemeal policy victories for individual target groups. Rather, victory will be in shifting people’s worldview about themselves and the kind of society they want...

Belonging Design Principles

Design Principles for Building Belonging Across our planet, people are looking for effective ways to build just, equitable, and inclusive institutions that serve and support everyone. Even more challenging, we’re looking for ways to do so without...

Explore Othering and Belonging

Transformative Research Toolkit

Introduction We have seen and participated in transformative research strategies that defeated proposed jail expansions, won millions of dollars for community-prioritized programs, and built new community-led organizations that changed a political...
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Depolarization Day

Want a chance to hear from experts studying the root of what’s driving us apart and how we come back together? Eager to build the skills to listen empathetically, elicit narratives of connection, and interview professionally? Looking for a chance...

Book Talk: Before Gentrification, with Tanya Golash-Boza

Dr. Tanya Golash-Boza's book Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC's Racial Wealth Gap explores how redlining, incarceration, anti-blackness, and gentrification have resulted in DC becoming an extremely unequal city. She presented her book...