Prestige Network of 546 Social Justice Organizers in New York City, 2013-2014
In September 2015, INCITE launched the Organizing for New York research project—the first comprehensive study of organizers across social justice struggles in New York City. Using a respondent-driven sampling design, the goal of the project is to understand the sets of understandings and practices that make organizers most effective at social change work, and to see how these understandings and practices differ across different sub-networks of organizers.
As a part of this project, researchers asked social change leaders to identify those leaders whose work they most respect. They then asked the same question, iteratively, to those to whom they were referred. Over the course of several iterations, they have been able to “map” the field of social change leaders in the city. Current projects related to organizing for New York include identifying and interviewing intersectional organizers to understand how their position impacts their ability to make social change.