A few quick comments/questions. (4.00 / 1)

Another great diary as usual.  I haven't had time to digest it completely, but would just like mention a few things.

we struggled to find a good issue to "cut" out of the "problem" of health care

Identifying appropriate, winnable, popular issues seems to me like it would be one of the biggest hurdles in creating and expanding community organizations.  I think while you can fairly easily convince people that they need to focus on stopping babies from being thrown in the river, its a much bigger step to identify ways to do this.  Another related issue is that many people, myself included, have very limited experience with local and state governments and would have a very difficult time in identifying targets for a particular issue.  This latter problem would probably lead to many achievable issues being overlooked or neglected because they don't know how to find an appropriate target even when one exists.  Perhaps education on the function of various local and statewide government agencies with specific examples would expand the toolchest of potential organizers.  Because of our recent primary election, I realized just how little I know of what various elected officials actually do (yet alone appointed commissions, etc).

I won't go into all of the details of our negotiations or our engagements with the local district to help make the school nurse funding a reality.

Although I understand that tactics are specific to individual cases, I think the details of this and similar experiences would be invaluable to potential organizers.  Again, I would expect that the main problem in training new organizers would be their lack of knowing how to proceed with the details, rather than their understanding of or commitment to the generalities.

And finally, forgive my ignorance, but is what you're doing really community organizing?  It seems to me that you're a small activist group working with government agencies with little mass involvement (analogous to the "lawsuits aren't organizing" message in your previous article).  This is undoubtedly due to my limited understanding of various models of organizing, but is there a role for the larger community here?  I don't see how this leads to personal empowerment.

Wow, that sounds a lot like criticism, but I only ask because I'm trying to learn and think your efforts are quite admirable.  Thanks.

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by: Reframing the Debate @ Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 02:03:33 AM UTC

If we can frame the issue (0.00 / 0)

then we can start generating wider participation through our churches.  It's at that point, for this specific issue, that the larger campaign starts.  

Criticism is good :)

Part of the point of this diary is that more of community organizing involves small groups of leaders than people think.  At least in my limited experience.

Interestingly enough, Alinsky cut details out of his second organizing book because he worried that organizers would try to reproduce his specific ideas instead of coming up with their own to fit the unique needs of particular situations.

But I may go into the details later.

--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

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by: educationaction @ Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 02:17:00 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

I think (4.00 / 1)

I think part of the reason people are asking "is this really community organizing?" is because you haven't gone into details about how you make these demands and win the conflict.

Understanding how the "community" part of the community organization is involved in actually making the noise and winning the battle might clarify how this really is empowering even if the leadership functions relatively autonomously.

Right now, you make it sound much like the more middle class groups who sit down with city government, present a problem, and work out a solution to everyone's liking. But this is different from that partly 1) because the problems being solved are the problems of a much more disadvantaged community, but also 2) because the community is probably essential to winning the conflict.

At least, that's my understanding.

I continue to enjoy this series a lot. Maybe one of these days I'll actually read some Alinsky.

I support John McCain because children are too healthy anyway.

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by: Sam L @ Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 15:01:35 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Good Points (0.00 / 0)

If you go for any Alinsky, I'd recommend Reveille over Rules for Radicals.  Rules is more instructional, but Reveille gives a better sense of the story behind the instructions.

--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

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by: educationaction @ Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 17:04:09 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

curious (4.00 / 1)

There's an analogous argument in development circles which I buy more (that you need a small disciplined bureaucratic cadre that's autonomous from society to make appropriate policy decisions).  It might actually get better results in terms of policy, but the question is how sustainable it is without the use of massive coercion.  And since you don't have that option, how sustainable is this approach if you're actually serving the people in your base?  And why was the state willing to go along with it?  To reduce political pressure from you (i.e. a buyoff?)?  

I think this comment was appropriate:

And finally, forgive my ignorance, but is what you're doing really community organizing?  It seems to me that you're a small activist group working with government agencies with little mass involvement (analogous to the "lawsuits aren't organizing" message in your previous article).  This is undoubtedly due to my limited understanding of various models of organizing, but is there a role for the larger community here?  I don't see how this leads to personal empowerment.

How does what you're doing build social/economic power for your base or more broadly for social justice aims?  You win a demand, yes, but it's the demand of a small group as they define the best interests of other people, won through a political deal with people who are part of the bureaucracy.

Here is an alternative - trying to figure out what people meant by "discipline."  Going into further depth in conversation to see what the attitudes actually were and whether there was some other issue that they were talking about (poor school quality, etc.).  To me, the word is not really meaningful as an idea - it's just a norm blaming students, as you pointed out.  But it might have to do with poorly run schools (i.e. leadership problems) or poorly funded schools or issues external to the school environment.  

Or your base might be projecting random ideas that are not really progressive onto other people (like the whole "teenage immigrant welfare mothers on drugs" thing that a lot of working class citizens bought into), in which case, they're not the people you should be organizing on this issue - but then you could, as you did, find another issue on which to organize them.  And organize them.

I don't know if that's coherent, but just my thoughts.

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by: dr anonymous @ Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 13:49:55 PM UTC

Indeed (4.00 / 2)

I think you are right on in your comment.

Aaron,

I get the feeling that you're bashing democratic mass organizations more to be edgy than to be constructive.

As I have noted before, the progressive vision of a world fully driven by egalitarian democratic participation is a dream, a fantasy.  The truth is that democracy is expensive.  Extensive resources are required every time one seeks to involve large numbers of people in decision-making.  Only very privileged people could think that this could happen on a continual basis.  Historically, poor people's movements have been much more hierarchical than progressives (including many progressive scholars and historians) have imagined.

Really? You get that impression? I'd certainly want to see evidence to back that historical assertion up. It seems pretty clearly to be the opposite case: only when those in privilege take over/co-opt working class movements do we get the worst kinds of anti-democratic and authoritarian tendencies and regimes: from both Paris Communes, to Russia in 1917, to Spain in '36, to Hungary in '56, to Argentina in 2001, etc. I could go on.

And instead of just calling it expensive, let's be clear: democracy is hard work. And especially when one is negotiating with bureaucrats for policy changes, it's a lot easier to forgo (and look down upon) mass participation - easier for you, at least. Real democracy doesn't happen when people are just polled; of course you're likely to get rather unprogressive results. The process of educating and maturing the community's political consciousness has to go hand in hand with the introduction and integration of the democratic process: if we have just the first process, it's mere propagandizing and manipulation; if we have just the second, it's little better than the latest SUSA poll.

Join the fight to give students a real voice on campus: Forstudentpower.org.

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by: Liberaltarian @ Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 15:37:44 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Well, I'm referring to aspirations (0.00 / 0)

of people who are usually looking from the sidelines, not the actual work of people who are actually engaged.  

Certainly the middle-class tends to focus on process and flat organization in their own organizations.

You are right that it would be better to do education all the time.  But the fact is that the organization I'm working with simply doesn't have the resources to pull this off and to do the other work.  So it isn't perfect.  

And exactly what would we educate about around this issue?  We don't really have a solution, yet.  We could talk about health as an issue.  But there's the danger of talking about the problem and generating disempowerment without the capacity to actually do something concrete.  

WHO is going to do the work of "educating and maturing the community's consciousness?"  It looks great in the ideal, but it doesn't just happen.  And doing one thing with limited resources almost inevitably means NOT doing something else.  

Let me acknowledge that I wrote this intentionally as an incitement, intentionally stressing the controvertial aspects.  Because you are right in the abstract.  But can we make this work in reality?

--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

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by: educationaction @ Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 17:15:40 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

And you may be right (0.00 / 0)

perhaps we should have pursued the "discipline" issue more.  It wasn't my decision.

But would that have been the most productive use of resources?

Perhaps I should have put this post up more in the form of a question, since I'm really playing out questions I have that aren't very PC and that I don't have any easy answers to.

--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

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by: educationaction @ Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 17:19:06 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

As I noted above (0.00 / 0)

the work done by the small group is prep work for a wider organizing effort.  The nurses example was one that did involve wider involvement, but probably didn't require it.  Which illuminates some of the unexpected complexities of this work.  It doesn't always follow the standard structure.  

Of course, not needing to mobilize large numbers of people and leaders is a problem as well.  It's the actual action that builds your power and the commitment and understanding of members.  So you should be doing both at the same time, and often are by having different issues at the forefront at different times.  But I'm not necessarily presenting our efforts as examples of the "best" of organizing.  

For example, the Jobs Committee of my my organization has been doing more active mobilizing while the education committee has been doing more research work.  

It would be better if we had coherent opportunities for broad participation all the time, but we don't, really, right now.

Part of the problem may be that I'm only giving a piece of the bigger picture, here.  So I accept that.  But it's tough to do in a small space.  And as Paul noted, it's already getting long for a post.

--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

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by: educationaction @ Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 17:09:57 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

i think you know all the theoretical critique of this :) (4.00 / 1)

so i won't rehash it from above.  The only thing that disturbed me was that it was labeled organizing - I think that's dangerous when so many thing (and I have been funded by things like this) are labeled organizing which are not, which exacerbates the problem of limited funding for organizing that you've pointed to a few times.  As has been pointed out before by others, it's not necessarily a coincidence that funding structures (whether by intent or structure) are often geared to support work that doesn't mobilize people or build power.

But thank you for presenting this, for being clear here about strengths and flaws as well as the theory.  It is, honestly, appreciated.  I know that one of the things that's often missing from conversations about organizing are detailed conversations about real world examples because people get stuck in exactly the same kind of argument that I'm giving above - because "organizing" as a label has cache, but it's possible to value other kinds of work (like service or advocacy) and end the squabbling we all have and at the same time have honest conversations about organizing efforts, their strengths and flaws, what they mean for organizing theory, etc.  And it's a kind of work (whether paid or unpaid ;) that people are so emotionally tied to, that it becomes hard to talk about and separate a critique of the work from a critique of the theory behind the work from a critique of the self.  I know that happens to me, and sometimes, it really annoys me :)

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by: dr anonymous @ Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 18:01:11 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

thanks for this response. (0.00 / 0)

Writing something like this is a bit anxiety provoking.  After a couple of these responses I felt a little like "what did I say?"  And at least some of what I am talking about is the result of being imperfect people in an imperfect organization.  And some of it may reveal my own limitations--perhaps even my own privilege speaking.  Others will need to decide.

But this question of honesty is key.  These are things that we don't want to talk about.  We don't want to have to think that sometimes democracy is just too expensive to pursue at any moment, because it brings up real and very legitimate questions about control and authority and inequality and etc.  I think this piece could have been written a bit less "aggressively", and more as a process of self-questioning, but it is what it is given the limited time I had to bang it out.

So thanks.  

Let me push you a bit on one thing, however.  

This IS organizing.  I'm not entirely clear you were arguing it wasn't, but let me respond anyway.  Only organizing groups, people deeply involved in the ongoing work of a group, can cut issues like this.  It's not service work, and it's not academic work.  it's quite pragmatic.  Without clear and effective issues to work on, organizing groups die a quick or more often lingering death.  That's why what I'm writing is so troubling.  Because it is "organizing" work that isn't really happening through what looks like traditional organizing.  And that seems and is troubling in a range of ways.  

You could fund a think-tank to work on the dental issue, for example, but they might not fully understand the kind of issue that a group like MOVE needs to be able to coalesce around it and be effective.  The local dental task force wrote a report, quite earnestly, with something like 15 different little recommendations.  You can't fight for 15 recommendations.  From an organizing perspective, the document was basically useless.  Everybody at the table got their little piece of the pie, and no coherent vision emerged.  And I'm sure they thought it was a quite useful blueprint.  

While the process I describe doesn't seem so "democratic", and it isn't, a good issue is just the thing that a group like MOVE can turn around and use to engage large numbers of people and new leaders in democratic approaches to action and strategy.  

So again, we return to questions about what aspects of organizing are most conducive to robust democratic engagement on a broad scale.  

--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

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by: educationaction @ Wed Jun 18, 2008 at 20:08:09 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

i think this comes back to basic definitional questions about organizing (0.00 / 0)

is organizing an ethic that we implement in our lives?
Is it a profession?
Is it an industry?
Is it a component of social movement building?

I think unless we answer these questions (for ourselves), and identify people who think along the same lines as us, we will get nowhere.  The real question that's getting papered over in the common terminology of "organizing" is what are we doing and what are its effects.  That's it - nothing more, nothing less.  As to whether we like those effects - well, I'd give a marxist rendering of how we decide what we like and what we don't.

Personally, I would rather see mass movement building followed by the creation of norms that will build human respect, than anything else.  I think, for me, the question you're getting at is whether that always happens in a way in which the process itself is reflective of the end goals.  I haven't made up my mind on that issue, because it goes into analyses of political economy, scarcity, possibilities and limitations, that I haven't resolved for myself.

So yes, "organizing" - which I prefer to think of as movement building - should be informed by some norms, but those norms are going to be specific to a society, to a locality, to the ideologies of the people leading and the people following (not necessarily as understood in terms of formal relationships), to sustainability (more social than financial in my mind), etc.

So in terms of practical effects, I support things that promote this as far as I can understand that they do so.  So I guess I would ask if you feel like the imperfect example you were giving did so and if so, how, with the understanding that hopefully we're all on the same side here (again going back to the marxist reading of who is on what side).

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by: dr anonymous @ Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 12:50:01 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Movement Building and Organizing (0.00 / 0)

Actually, organizers generally do not see themselves as "movement builders."  And, in fact, there are significant issues in the connections (or lack of connections) between organizing and larger movements.

We can quibble about terminology, but let me be clear about what I'm talking about.  Organizing tries to create stable "organizations" that can embody and maintain the power of a community.  This is very different than more amorphous and multiply supported "movements" generally around specific issues.  Organizing in my vision is more than an ethic, and can, for some members, be a profession.  But for most, involvement in organizing is as an unpaid or partially paid leader, not as a salary-paid support person.  

How does one "build" mass movements?  What specific components can we build that are likely to support the emergence of these and to help them sustain themselves in fallow times?

I would say that the imperfect example I'm discussing does support the kind of movement building you are talking about, however.  If people don't really care about the specifics of a program--as long as they serve purposes that they can get behind and that excite them--then do we need broad democratic engagement in the issue development?  

It's important to stress that without a concrete and at least seemingly winnable issue to work on, except in unique moments like the Vietnam war, it's hard to get people engaged in coherent collective action.  In fact, framing an issue may in some cases (like this one?) need to happen before the movement building aspects happen.  

Further, as I noted, if you can get a couple of these dental programs, in particular, the existence of the programs and the possibilities they reveal may generate more movement building elsewhere.  

Does this count as coopting working-class movements as another commenter noted? Maybe (although, again, congregational organizing isn't exactly working-class) or maybe not.  It could also be seen as creating some of the conditions of the possibility of the emergence of such movements.  

Clearly we don't have an explosion of such movements right now.  So it may be that ideological commitments to particular visions of what "counts" as empowerment MAY be standing in our way, at least to some limited extent.

The silence out there is deafening.  I'm worried pragmatically about how to change that in ethical ways.  And this may require us to grapple with non-PC questions that make us uncomfortable, without losing sight of the key ethical and pragmatic issues around what really "counts" as empowerment or power.  

--Aaron Schutz (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

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by: educationaction @ Thu Jun 19, 2008 at 16:00:33 PM UTC

[ Parent ]