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If They Build it, They Will Come—or Letting the People Decide: Lessons in Building Community Participation, Partnership, and Public Trust for Social and Economic Justice

This verse of Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching (originally from the sixth century, BC) is one of my favorites in teaching community organizing students, as it says, at its core, that when the action or task is accomplished, the community owns the process of change. This tenet that echoes forward to Let the People Decide has obviously been around a lot longer than the title of at least two great subtitled books, Robert Fisher’s (1994) Neighborhood Organizing in America and J. Todd Move’s (2004) Black Freedom and White Resistance Movements in Sunflower County, Mississippi, 1945–1986 , as well as the mastheads of countless current Web sites and blogs from both the far right and left. For those in community practice, the concepts of citizen participation, community-controlled development, democratic decision-making, local ownership of business or processes, and many other similar themes around the adage of “let the people decide” are among their core values and beliefs. For this first issue of our now 19th volume—20th anniversary just around the corner—of The Journal of Community Practice, we are pleased to present a range of articles and book reviews that examine concepts of community control and citizen participation as central to effective