Information can provide that power and information can be derived from data and GIS technology. The problem is that community groups don't have access to any of these resources. Significant work is required both to get better information to these groups and to help groups take better advantage of this information.
Community groups are a critical part of American democracy.
They provide a conduit between individual citizens and the external bodies that administer and control them. The conduit passes information between the two bodies, but too often operates inefficiently because the information is incomplete. Several years ago I contacted 31 major cities in North America to learn what current neighborhood-level data is distributed to citizens. The results were appalling, at least in the U.S. where the Census is taken only once per decade. Only crime and health data were regularly available.