1 Producing knowledge and practicing democracy: Capacity-building in social movements* by Janet Conway A snapshot: social struggle and social learning The emergency meeting attracted over sixty people: a mix of social agency staff, housing and anti-poverty activists, people on welfare, church people and others. Alarming news about dramatic cuts to municipal social services had galvanized people. Subsidized childcare and special housing and medical care assistance to welfare recipients and supplementary aid for people with disabilities were being eliminated. Hundreds of positions were being cut in the city’s Homes for the Aged: what would be the impact on care for the poor, frail and high-needs seniors who lived there? what about the loss of hundreds more decent jobs in a workforce reeling from a post-free trade recession? Over the next four extraordinary months in the winter of 1992, an ad hoc coalition known as Fight Back Metro! orchestrated mass public action such as had never been seen at Toronto’s Metro Council. 1 Hundreds of people made deputations before Council about the impacts of the cuts on their lives, on their capacity to work and or participate in the life of the city. Mass deputations and unruly public presence at Metro Council were shocking new developments that opened up and slowed down Council’s decision-making process and exposed it to the glare of *This is the peer-reviewed version of the following article: J. Conway, “Producing knowledge and practicing democracy: capacity-building in social movements,” Humanity & Society 26.3 (August 2002): 228-244, which has been published in final form at http://has.sagepub.com/content/26/3.toc, doi: 10.1177/016059760202600304. 1 Prior to the restructuring of municipal governance in 1997, Metro Council was a directly-elected body responsible for metropolitan-wide concerns. It included representation from six member municipalities. Major areas of spending included policing, public transit and community and social services.