The Woodlawn Organization

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING The Power of Collective Action Through Civic Protest The alarming physical, social and economic decay of the community led Woodlawn residents to organize for change. A coalition of over 100 neighborhood associations, churches and civic organizations, together with well-known community organizer Saul Alinsky, in 1960, formed the Temporary Woodlawn Organization, popularly known as T.W.O., was granted. The Reverend Arthur M. Brazier was the first spokesman and became the second president after Reverend Robert L. McGee. Under the leasdership of these visonariey and dynamic individuals, T.W.O. began a unified movement for self-determination. Through pickets, boycotts and demonstrations, residents pressured merchants, slum lords and city bureaucrats to respond to their demands for fair business practices, imporoved schols and city services. "The idea that black communities were disorganized was reallt a fallacy. What they had to do was join together so the power of their collective weight could be felt around the city," says Bishop Brazier