Sustainability and Social Justice professor co-founds, edits international journal on community organizing
In a time of threats against human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, a Clark University professor has teamed up with colleagues to launch Community Organizing Journal, featuring peer-reviewed articles and reflective essays by academics and practitioners from around the world.
The open-access, online publication is believed to be “the first interdisciplinary and global journal dedicated to community organizing,” says Margaret Post, associate research professor in the Department of Sustainability and Social Justice, affiliated with the School of Climate, Environment, and Society.
“A lot of the people who write, teach, and do research about community organizing are traditional academics,” Post explains. “Although we include articles by academics, we also wanted to create a space for people who are not traditional scholars and would be able to write about the theories, concepts, and practices that they’re living every day as organizers.”
Post is co-editor of Community Organizing Journal (COJ) with Sean Crossland, assistant professor of higher education leadership at Utah Valley University. The founding editorial team includes practitioners and scholars from across political science, sociology, social work, religious studies, and, urban studies and geography. They are based in the U.S. — including at nearby Brandeis, Tufts, and Northeastern universities — and in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
The idea for the journal sprang from the Brown University Community Organizing Initiative, whose members sought to preserve archival notes, interviews and manuscript papers from organizers and activists in the United States, according to Post. The group of longtime organizers also wanted “to bring teachers, scholars, and practitioners into a global conversation about the past, present, and future of community organizing around the world,” she writes with her co-author, Robert Kleidman, associate professor of sociology at Cleveland State University, in an article introducing the journal’s inaugural issue.
“The launch of the Community Organizing Journal comes at a pivotal time, as communities everywhere are striving for justice.”
— laurie ross, dean of the college
Starting in 2021, the editors worked with current and former organizers, researchers, and teachers to create Community Organizing Journal, which launched in March 2025 around the theme “Reimagining the Scholarship and Practice of Community Organizing.”
“Community organizing has accomplished a great deal, and we believe its full promise to contribute to social transformation has not yet been realized,” Post and Kleidman note in an essay titled “The Scholarship and Practice of Community Organizing: An Assessment, Vision, and Call to Action.” They suggest that COJ be situated “as part of an emerging worldwide conversation around the practice and scholarship of organizing” and “call on the organizing community to work together more intentionally and strategically.”
The second issue, to be published this fall, will focus on “Community Organizing and Democratic Visions.” The third, “Innovations in Community Organizing,”is expected to be published in March 2026.
Clark’s Department of Sustainability and Social Justice and Cleveland State University’s Levin College of Public Affairs and Education provided seed money for the journal, and the editors are now seeking additional funding, Post says.
“The launch of the Community Organizing Journal comes at a pivotal time, as communities everywhere are striving for justice; to shape their own futures while remaining connected in solidarity with others,” says Laurie Ross, dean of the college and professor of sustainability and social justice. “At Clark’s Department of Sustainability and Social Justice, we see the journal as a vital space for co-creation, where scholars and practitioners can learn from one another and highlight community knowledge.
“In this moment of profound social and environmental challenges, Community Organizing Journal embodies the relational, democratic, and power-building work that defines effective organizing, the mission of SSJ, and the purpose of the School of Climate, Environment, and Society.”
Post has nearly three decades of experience in the field, working first as a community organizer in California’s Central Valley, Minnesota, and Massachusetts and then as a researcher of social and public policy. For the past 15 years, she has focused on how grassroots nonprofit organizations influence social policy change.
She is the lead instructor of the Department of Sustainability and Social Justice’s annual common seminar, Principles and Ethics in Community Engagement.
This fall, Post is teaching the department’s graduate-level course on Community Power and Change. “The class equips our students with the ability to see what power structures are at play and how, in the systems in which our graduates will work, they organize people to create change,” Post says. “The more people come together, the more change can happen.”
