How to spark a social movement: The dignity of a job, Pt II (Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing)

by: educationaction

Sat Jan 16, 2010 at 12:30

In Part I, I argued that this may be a promising moment for sparking  a social movement around the "right to a job" in America,  despite all appearances to the contrary.    

In his response to   Part  I , jeffroby noted  that

the dilemma of your post is  the getting from here to there.  You call for organizations and organizers  to do this and that.  But getting them to do this and that is not going  to happen in the absence of some kind of organization dedicated to getting  them to do this and that. . . .  

[Y]ou have to do more.  You have to start wrestling with how to get from  here to there.  

 In this post, I try, with some trepidation, to do just that, to envision  what kind of organization could "spark" a social movement  in this country.

The Right to a Job: An "Organizing" Moment, or a "Movement" Moment? (Core Dilemmas of Community

by: educationaction

Sun Nov 01, 2009 at 11:00

Community Organizing Groups Are Inherently "Conservative"  

Carefully weighing the power they have, organizers seek measurable "wins" that will allow them  to build power.  Step by step, they seek to strengthen their "organizations" into durable voices for poor and oppressed people.  Organizers seek that little crack where they can pry open the power structure just  a little bit more.

Movements  Are More Like Uncontrolled Explosions  

Movements burst on the scene,  often without warning, when people won't tolerate the status quo anymore.   A movement is always more organized than it generally looks on the outside,  but it is not "an" organization.  In movements, a shifting  collection of organizations, individuals, groups, and leaders come together  for fluid, unpredictable mass struggle.    

The Limits  of Organizing  

Frances Fox Piven and her late  colleague Richard Cloward famously dismissed organizing as mostly ineffectual.   Real change, they argued, only comes when movements explode.    

While I have also criticized  aspects of the organizing approach, I believe Piven and Cloward went too far.  But they made an important  and undeniable point:    

Visionary movements  have dramatically changed American society.   Pragmatic organizing has not.  

A Movement  Moment?  

It is hard to see any movement  in the offing in America.  Poor people, especially, are beat down.   Tired.  Isolated.  Overwhelmed.  Unorganized.  Apathetic.      

But did anyone really predict  the movements of the past?  (A Civil Rights movement in the deep  South in the 1950s?  How ridiculous.)      

The truth is that movements  rarely simply "happen."  Existing resistance organizations  almost always catalyze and nurture the emergence of movements.    

Is it time for organizers to  put away their cost-benefit analyses and power charts, at least for a few targeted issues?      

Is now the time to fight for what we really need instead of for often mediocre (if still important) scraps  that are all we think we can wrest from the powerful?      

I explore these questions on  the flip.  

(For those new to this series  see summaries of the organizing model:   Part  I  and   Part II .)