THEORY

As sure as power tends to corrupt, so too does powerlessness. When you view power as a community instrumentality (as opposed to solely an individual one), then powerlessness precedes poverty. The fundamental reason that our communities lack the services and infrastructure we need and deserve is because we lack the power successfully to demand them. Indeed, according to the late philosopher Hannah Arendt, a collective public voice is THE source of political power. Such a collective voice is necessary in the communities UPAS serves.


UPAS was founded to help families address the factors outside school boundaries that not only pose barriers to learning, but also inhibit local quality of life as a whole. It works to build organizations that assemble a powerful collective voice by and for the residents of underserved communities to demand positive social change. It defines organizing as developing a collective of people to learn the skills of public life in order to make demands of people with power to affect positive social change in our communities.


Broad-based organizing is an approach to effecting social change through community organizing, which generates long-term power for community members and develops permanent structures and systems for organizing. Unlike other forms of organizing and social action, broad-based organizers serve and engage diverse groups of community members who want to work in solidarity for mutual self-interest and support them in building power to act effectively in public.