Case Study: ZOTO and the Twice-Told Story of Philippine Organizing

This case study focuses first on Zone One Tondo Organization, the famed ZOTO that rallied thousands of its people to its cause in the mid-1970s, moving from failure to strength then strength to weakness; and gently probes the complex interplay of events that account for ZOTO’s later “silent” years. It also focuses on PECCO or Philippine Ecumenical Committee for Community Organization, harbinger of the gospel of community organizing or CO initially a la Alinsky but also drinking from the wells of liberation theology and Marxist ideology, with compulsion from the latter driving the community to its dissolution in 1976-1977.