Winning the war for grassroots empowerment: Benefits of building a public powers movement

Why would a faith-based or turf-based organizing project (already engaged in demanding campaigns) want to get involved in the business of transforming their metropolitan government? Why would they want to create a lower tier of directly democratic neighbor-hood governments with public powers? The effort could take years, even decades to accomplish, and only the most compelling arguments could justify such a commitment of resources, time, energy, and spirit. We have presented many of those arguments in four previous articles published in Social Policy. We won't review them here, except to say: The moment is now. The need to build institutional power wielded directly by the grassroots citizenry is pressing relentlessly.