Beyond Resistance: Organizing as a Bridge for Power Building and Deep Systems Change

When people think about organizing, they often see it as a force to dismantle oppressive systems, expose failures, and build alternatives outside of institutions. Meanwhile, systems change is seen as slow-moving, mechanistic, policy-driven reform confined to institutional board rooms.

But what if these two approaches—organizing and systems change—aren’t opposing forces at all?

Catharsis in Community Organizing

For me, organizing was an outlet for the pain I carried growing up in a mixed-status immigrant family. I saw my mom struggle to create a loving home that shielded us from the realities of life in Bell, California. I love my city—the friendships, the community—but it also took too much from us. It claimed friends, family, and loved ones across generations. We often praise resiliency without acknowledging that it is the scar tissue we each carry with us in face of injustice.  

Organizing gave me purpose. It helped me to channel frustration, grief, and lived injustices into collective power and action. It also taught me about power—how to build it through authentic relationships and how to collectively forge a future out of uncertainty.

When I moved to Arizona and began my career, I was fortunate to learn from the best—a group of people who didn’t just witness Arizona’s history; they reshaped it. In our collective fight against Arizona’s entrenched conservative and anti-immigrant legislature, I witnessed how leaders—rooted in the audacity of hope, the vibrancy of youth, the wisdom of elders, and a spiritual center grounded in righteous indignation—came together to resist SB 1070. Over more than a decade, these organizers and community leaders turned Arizona purple, making it one of the most politically significant states in the country. They didn’t do it through luck, but through power-building, infrastructure-building, and the best organizing in the nation.

Bridging Organizing and Systems Change

As I reflect on both personal and professional experiences, I see the necessity of marrying community organizing with deep institutional systems change. The end goal is the same, but the approach, language, and tactics may seem different. The truth is, they depend on each other for lasting change.

Too often, organizing is seen as something external—pressuring institutions from the outside. Meanwhile, systems change is treated as something done to communities, not by them. But systems don’t change themselves. Institutions are inherently built to favor consistency and reliability and are averse to change unless an external force—organized people—demands transformation. The key here is that these demands must take into account the inner workings, processes and constraints within these institutions.

Systems change without grassroots power leads to symbolic victories that lack enforcement, accountability, or longevity. At the same time, organizing without an institutional strategy results in temporary wins that can be easily reversed with the next leadership transition or policy shift.

What This Looks Like in Education

If you want to see the depth of complexity in systems, look at our education system—it’s a tangled web of overlapping jurisdictions at the federal, state, county, and local levels, with conflicting policies, funding streams, and competing interests. Meanwhile, school leaders in a mid-sized district must manage over 1,000 employees, educate thousands of students, and meet the needs of an entire local community.

At ALL In Education, we’ve doubled down on leadership as the key to improving outcomes. We develop leaders at every level—parents, emerging changemakers, and seasoned advocates—because leadership is the lever that moves systems. The question then becomes: how do we rally around our alumni who are ready to create change?

We’ve seen them go on to become philanthropists, nonprofit leaders, school administrators, and school board members. But without an ecosystem of support, their effectiveness is stifled. Political in-fighting, governing boards at war with school leaders, leaders set up to fail—without real infrastructure, change-makers are left adrift in a constellation of hope and ambition, without the power to reach real progress.

Yet we’ve also seen what’s possible.

In the Roosevelt School District (RSD), a rare convergence of leadership—parents, the superintendent, the school board—has demonstrated what happens when you cultivate community organizing, power-building, capacity development, and expert systems change.

At the heart of this movement are our Mami Maravillosas and Padres Poderosos—parent community leaders who, despite the weight of poverty, immigration status, employment instability, and housing insecurity, have not only prioritized their children’s education but have emerged as powerful voices for change in South Phoenix.

An Experiment in Bridging Community Power for Systems Change

This work has given us a glimpse of what’s possible when organizing and systems change efforts align. The RSD experience has taught us the importance of the following:

• Courageous Leadership – Transformational change requires leaders who are unafraid to make difficult decisions, prioritize equity, and use their positions as extensions of the movement, not endpoints of it.
• Authentic Family and Parental Engagement – Parents must be empowered as decision-makers, not just consulted, through leadership programs, structural inclusion, and policies that reflect their lived experiences.
• Co-Governance: Shared Power, Shared Responsibility – Communities must move beyond influencing policies to understanding how institutions are governed and held accountable, ensuring decision-making authority is redistributed to those most impacted.

By embedding organizing into systems change and ensuring public accountability through clear metrics, we move beyond symbolic reforms and toward real transformation that communities can see and measure.

The Call to Lead

The dominant narrative that organizing is only about disruption limits its potential. The best organizers don’t just tear systems down—they rebuild them in the image of the communities they serve.

This shift challenges the tired reform vs. revolution debate and asks: What does it look like when we do both?

A mentor once told me, “Leadership is accepting responsibility for enabling others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.” 

This moment calls for all of us to lead, to refine our leadership, and to build shared purpose in the face of an uncertain future.

Organizers, parents, school leaders—we must come together, build collective resilience, and refuse to lose hope. Because the stakes are too high. And we’re just getting started.