Why organize problems and promise in the inner city

No cabinet agency has used civic engagement as a major strategy, although I was encouraged by a recent statement from the Dept. Three strategies could have been tried:. Engage the grassroots Obama volunteers from the campaign as community organizers for health care reform, as Steve Teles and I had recommended during the campaign.

We argued that Obama was a better candidate than Hilary Clinton because he had an active base to promote policies.

This would have been civic organizing with a leftward tilt. Organize a nationally representative deliberation in which politically diverse citizens designed the health care bill. This would have been much more neutral approach, but experience suggests that Americans would have adopted a reform at least as liberal as what Congress chose. Build an ongoing civic engagement process into the health care system after the bill passed.

Instead, the Democrats let politicians, hill staff, experts, and lobbyists work out a bill that survived the congressional process—barely—without enthusiastic support from any outside groups. Even on the left, it was regarded suspiciously and contributed to the Democrats defeat in Clearly, the hopes and dreams that propelled Obama to the White House are in disarray.

Wilentz wrote,. Fundamental to the social movement model is a conception of American political history in which movements, and not presidents, are the true instigators for change. Presidents are merely reactive. They are not the main protagonists. Just a few days later, in the New York Times , Krugman concurred. In retrospect, the roots of current Democratic despond go all the way back to the way Mr.

Obama ran for president. During the early years of the civil rights movement, many of these issues became submerged in the face of the clear oppression of segregation. The debate was no longer whether to protest, but how militant must that protest be to win full citizenship for blacks.

Twenty years later, the tensions between strategies have reemerged, in part due to the recognition that for all the accomplishments of the s, the majority of blacks continue to suffer from second-class citizenship.

Related to this are the failures — real, perceived and fabricated — of the Great Society programs initiated by Lyndon Johnson. Facing these realities, at least three major strands of earlier movements are apparent.

F irst, and most publicized, has been the surge of political empowerment around the country. Harold Washington and Jesse Jackson are but two striking examples of how the energy and passion of the civil rights movement have been channeled into bids for more traditional political power. Second, there has been a resurgence in attempts to foster economic development in the black community, whether through local entrepreneurial efforts, increased hiring of black contractors and corporate managers, or Buy Black campaigns.

Third, and perhaps least publicized, has been grass-roots community organizing, which builds on indigenous leadership and direct action. Proponents of electoral politics and economic development strategies can point to substantial accomplishments in the past 10 years. An increase in the number of black public officials offers at least the hope that government will be more responsive to inner-city constituents.

Economic development programs can provide structural improvements and jobs to blighted communities. In my view, however, neither approach offers lasting hope of real change for the inner city unless undergirded by a systematic approach to community organization.

This is because the issues of the inner city are more complex and deeply rooted than ever before. Blatant discrimination has been replaced by institutional racism; problems like teen pregnancy, gang involvement and drug abuse cannot be solved by money alone. At the same time, as Professor William Julius Wilson of the University of Chicago has pointed out, the inner city's economy and its government support have declined, and middle-class blacks are leaving the neighborhoods they once helped to sustain.

Neither electoral politics nor a strategy of economic self-help and internal development can by themselves respond to these new challenges. The election of Harold Washington in Chicago or of Richard Hatcher in Gary were not enough to bring jobs to inner-city neighborhoods or cut a 50 percent drop-out rate in the schools, although they did achieve an important symbolic effect.

In fact, much-needed black achievement in prominent city positions has put us in the awkward position of administering underfunded systems neither equipped nor eager to address the needs of the urban poor and being forced to compromise their interests to more powerful demands from other sectors. Self-help strategies show similar limitations.

Although both laudable and necessary, they too often ignore the fact that without a stable community, a well-educated population, an adequate infrastructure and an informed and employed market, neither new nor well-established companies will be willing to base themselves in the inner city and still compete in the international marketplace.

Moreover, such approaches can and have become thinly veiled excuses for cutting back on social programs, which are anathema to a conservative agenda. I n theory, community organizing provides a way to merge various strategies for neighborhood empowerment. Organizing begins with the premise that 1 the problems facing inner-city communities do not result from a lack of effective solutions, but from a lack of power to implement these solutions; 2 that the only way for communities to build long-term power is by organizing people and money around a common vision; and 3 that a viable organization can only be achieved if a broadly based indigenous leadership — and not one or two charismatic leaders — can knit together the diverse interests of their local institutions.

This means bringing together churches, block clubs, parent groups and any other institutions in a given community to pay dues, hire organizers, conduct research, develop leadership, hold rallies and education campaigns, and begin drawing up plans on a whole range of issues — jobs, education, crime, etc. Once such a vehicle is formed, it holds the power to make politicians, agencies and corporations more responsive to community needs.

Equally important, it enables people to break their crippling isolation from each other, to reshape their mutual values and expectations and rediscover the possibilities of acting collaboratively — the prerequisites of any successful self-help initiative.

By using this approach, the Developing Communities Project and other organizations in Chicago's inner city have achieved some impressive results. However, as early as Alinsky wrote about the necessity of improving the economic life of communities in order to create the foundation for significant change. But until the economy of that community is significantly changed, until the problem of economic security is dealt with, one actually has the paper decoration one finds on the end of lamb chops — but no lamb chops.

Resource provision towards the improvement of economic life is of obvious importance to communities. However, providing resources does not necessarily support either the growth or transformation of communities. Smyth critiques the resources provision approach, as disadvantage is a socially, politically, and economically constructed phenomenon. Simply providing more resources through the structures that create disadvantage will therefore only perpetuate disparity.

Further, resources can be provided that are barely related to the needs of the community p. In this, Smyth foretells of the tendency government has to place responsibility on any party that steps forward. He further warns against shifting focus too far away from material inequities to goals of inclusion and engagement as we can lose sight of the contradictions that generate conditions of poverty and inequity p. Organizing should therefore be aware of the need for resources, as well as for transformation of communities and larger structures.

Building community capacity should focus on leadership development toward political savvy; community power that brings residents and resources strategically together to analyze inequities and solutions; and social capital that bridges relationships in order to bring broad networks together for collaboration toward mutual goals p.

However, the conditions also exist within the values and belief structures of individuals. Expanding the notion of community that one identifies with can thus change the relationship communities of disadvantage have to power.

Members begin to identify themselves not as being a part of a lower class or disadvantaged neighborhood, but of a broad community of people being affected by similar systems and policies. Citing Snow et al. Obama notes that both economic improvements and electoral politics can help to improve the lives of marginalized people p. However, social justice literature broadly and organizing literature more specifically harbors exacting authors who have explored the concept as it relates to the field.

As the scribe and arguable creator of radical organizing, Alinsky in the early s distinguished between organizing for rights and favors, defining work done to further rights as empowering while organizing for favors risks the opposite effect. He asserted that communities should be empowered to fight for their rights rather than asking for favors.

This position critiques the systems, political, economic and social, as having failed to extend similar if not equal rights to all citizens and acknowledges that equal rights and liberties are a part of our constitutional contract. It would therefore be a transformative act of organizing to shift the consciousness of the community from asking for favors to knowing and fighting for their rights; being empowered to do so, the community then transforms the system to ensure the provision of rights and their associated resources, rather than asking for resources without the structural changes that would ensure sustainability of access and provision.

In , Elizabeth Rocha took on the task of attempting to define and map out empowerment. The article therefore serves to address concerns as to what exactly empowerment is and how an individual or community comes about it. Rocha describes empowerment as one of many forms of the broader notion of power, and goes on to typologize the various experiences of power one goes through in becoming personally empowered, and then being a part of community empowerment.

Rocha characterizes five rungs or types of empowerment, beginning with the individual and ending with the community as the locus of power that has political influence.

Both Rocha and Alinsky mark the movement of consciousness, from the individual to the collective level, as the growth of empowerment. Individuals are able to address those issues which affect themselves, and then those issues which affect their community, and lastly there is a linking of personal and communal issues to the broader community affected, nationally and internationally.

Smyth also distinguishes between different types of power, discriminating between relational and conservative power. Relational power Smyth characterizes as the ability to collaborate in order to accomplish a goal, versus conservative power, or power asserted over another. While conservative power seeks influence or domination over members or groups, relational power is the coherence of inclusion and participation that influences and motivates social justice.

There is yet another primary marker for distinguishing empowerment. Staples notes the importance of the participatory process and further asserts that for a community to be truly empowered, it must provide its own leadership. Similarly, the existence of a community-based, member organization that handles multiple issues and is recognized as representative of the community is another hallmark of participation and empowerment.

However, it is important to note that external leadership and skills can be crucial at various points in the life of an organizing campaign, or a community-based organization. For instance, at the beginning of a campaign, especially if there is no existing organization, external leadership might be necessary to mobilize members and resources, as well as to create a campaign or organizational structure.

The key to empowerment is the cultivation of indigenous leadership that will take over. Community empowerment is then evidenced in the presence of sustainable, community-based organizations, member participation, self-advocacy, and indigenous leadership. Analysis A range of authors from Delgado to Fisher and Kling mark coalition building as a key factor for success in community organizing. Yet because resources are scarce, there is much competition between organizations and organizing networks.

Competition pits organizing networks against each other as they vie for membership and resources; networks therefore seek out other progressive organizations to partner with but rarely work with each other Delgado, , p.

While there are many organizational factors at the micro level that explain a lack of resources, the lack of resources available to both communities and organizations can be attributed at the macro level to the two systemic tensions of scarcity and exclusion. Our current neo liberal agenda that prioritizes individualism and competition generates, for example, an education system in which those who cannot afford to pay are excluded from private education Smyth, , p.

Organizing efforts have seen some success at providing resources such as funding for education, housing and health care, as well as supporting the transformation of communities. However, most of us still live in a society where we face these core issues of exclusion and scarcity.

Stall and Stoecker note that race, gender and class remain as barriers to inclusion, yet resources are scarce in most if not all communities p. Even wealthy communities face the threat if not a current reality of water and clean air shortages, though for many communities the risk is markedly more severe than for others. Much community organizing still exists within a competitive and individualistic paradigm; as noted by Delgado, organizing networks seek collaboration with other progressive organizations but not with each other.

Competition between networks hinders larger collective mobilization toward systemic change. How then can we proceed to the next level of systemic or institutional transformation, which would transcend tendencies toward exclusion, competition and scarcity? I believe we must go deeper than community awareness, empowerment and action to the structural consciousness that still holds organizing within a paradigm marked by competition and individualism, scarcity and exclusion.

To reach this depth, we must penetrate ourselves and identify where structural realities are held in our past experiences and current perspectives, and are therefore generating our future realities. The substance Alinsky refers to is the people and the structure that of society. How then through organizing can we transform the substance, the people, ourselves? While organizing has held since its inception radical views of structural change, perhaps the vision of substantive change can reach further into the potential of the substance itself, the potential each of us as individuals hold to transform systemic patterns that live inside of us.

Organizers, both on the ground and those administrating organizations, hold inside of ourselves the systems and agendas of the structures that we have spent our lives within.

Values and belief systems marked by competition and individualism lead us to act unconsciously in ways that perpetuate exclusion and scarcity. Organizations reflect the people who participate in and run them, and people are partial reflections of the systems that they were raised within.

Further efforts at transformative organizing would do well to predicate themselves on the continuing personal transformation of organizers and members.