| Challenges of Issue "Cutting"
As I noted in my earlier "What is Organizing" posts, community organizing groups generally focus on winning on specific and relatively narrow "issues" that are cut from much broader "problems." A "problem" is something enormous and vague-like world hunger. Because it is very difficult to fight to change "problems" organizers carve very specific and discrete "issues" from problems that can be won in a relatively limited time. Forcing county government to give one million dollars to a local food bank is a good example of an issue cut out of the problem of world hunger.
As I noted earlier, there are a range of criteria that help organizers decide what might "count" as a good issue. Good issues are simple, they generate a visceral sense of injustice in a broad spectrum of the public, and there is a specific "target" that can make the necessary change, and this target is someone or some institution that you are likely to have the power to influence, among other aspects. (Those who are interested can see this detailed draft lecture from my online organizing class on criteria for issues).
As experienced organizers will tell you, cutting a good issue is extremely challenging. In part, this is because there are real tensions between the different criteria. For example, you have to balance the desire to "win" with the desire to fight for something important enough to bring new people and power to your organization. You want to fight for things that will really make a difference for your constituencies, but sometimes it is hard to frame these things in ways that really generate a visceral response. (Increased reimbursement rates for dentists so they will serve poor children may be a key need, for example, but it is difficult to get people excited about giving relatively privileged dentists more money.) And the kinds of changes you most want to achieve (like more funding for local schools) may exceed the power you have available (school funding is mostly a state issue in my area, but our organization is only city-wide).
Long Term Planning
Multi-issue community organizing groups are generally structured by committee. There might be committees for education, for health care, for prison reform, etc.
In the ideal, each committee would take the time to envision what the best long-term change in their area might look like. What, for example, would a truly equitable school system look like? It would make sense to back up from this broader vision and plan one's individual issue campaigns so that they were designed to lead to this long-term goal. And then the different issue committees could get together to see how to bring their area-focused plans together into a broader effort, seeking ways their different visions might support each other.
Hopefully, you can already see how difficult this kind of effort would be, especially given the limited time staff and volunteers of such programs already have. It is hard enough just to "cut" issues and plan for individual campaigns, and some groups have trouble even pulling this off.
Best Laid Plans
These challenges are magnified by the fact that good issues rarely emerge in the abstract. They are "cut" out of the specific history and relationships of the particular context in which an organization works. With respect to schools, to cite a few real examples from my own experience, at one moment there may be an opening for nutrition programs, at another moment an effort to eliminate bussing may provide an opportunity for resistance, at another moment the State may be open to health care efforts based in schools.
You rarely get to choose what you will fight for in any simple and predictable way, although hopefully you can focus on particular areas for some extended period of time. As I have noted before, there is a tension between maintaining the expertise necessary to operate successfully in a particular issue area, and the ability to take advantage of emergent opportunities for action.
Further, as you can see, these issues are related to each other in a general way, but don't clearly fit together into a long-term plan for social change. They represent relatively discrete opportunities to improve the lives of children, but it is difficult to see any larger vision of social transformation across them.
To some extent, the nutrition and the health care efforts, at least, seem like they imply a world in which schools embrace responsibility for a range of social service efforts, even if this vision was not consciously intended by the groups fighting for these discrete issues. But this raises questions about the plusses and minuses of choosing schools as the site for these services. In other words, by happening to fight for these issues, has this group unintentionally started to foster a broader vision of social transformation based in schools? And what might the drawbacks of such a solution be? Since the group probably hasn't even noticed that it is at least implicitly promoting such a vision, it hasn't even asked these questions.
Tensions Between Local Improvement and Social Destructiveness
At this point, it seems helpful to examine some partially imaginary examples of the kinds of tensions that can be created by a narrow focus on issues without a broader sense of social vision.
The Catch-22 of Police Protection
It is not uncommon for organizing groups to demand more police protection for residents in one way or another. This could range from increased police patrols, to efforts to have drug houses removed, and more.
But it is at least arguable that the enormous presence of police in central city areas, and their constant harassment of youth, focus on drug enforcement, etc., has at least partially created the very problems that residents now want them to eliminate. There is good evidence, for example that at least as many people sell and use drugs in rich suburbs as in the central city. But enforcement in wealthier areas is not even of the same magnitude. Partly as a result of this and other issues of structural and individual racism, a huge percentage of African Americans, especially, end up in prison. I won't take the space to give these issues the attention they deserve. For my purposes, the take home point is that more police engagement may actually be intensifying larger social problems even if it may help reduce a few local challenges (and even that is open to dispute).
The Catch-22 of Increased Funding for Non-Profits
I mentioned fighting for more money for a local food bank above as a "good" issue. Another might be more funding to support local drug-treatment. Winning on either of these issues would have a concrete impact on the lives of real people in the community.
But at the same time, this approach to solving social problems, targeted funding for non-profit services, may actually serve to obscure the larger problems these groups are addressing, and may reduce the possibility of achieving the kinds of changes we really need.
Janet Poppendieck's Sweet Charity carefully deconstructs the logic of the "emergency" food system that has burgeoned over the last few decades. She shows how these efforts have made people feel like the "hunger issue" is being taken care of, and has relieved pressure for wider efforts to reduce poverty. Further, she points out that giving people food is actually an incredibly inefficient way to deal with food problems. People may not get the food they need or want, their nutrition may be compromised, the lack of money to pay for food may lead supermarkets serving cheaper and better food to leave poor areas, and on and on. The fact is, she shows, food stamps are a much better and more efficient way to support poor people, along with other forms of income support.
Much the same argument could be made about drug treatment. Funding a few drug treatment centers almost inevitably leads to rationing of treatment, since a discrete block of funding is rarely enough to treat everyone who needs it. Thus, people who are finally ready to get treatment may not be able to get it until they have relapsed, and those who inevitably relapse after treatment (it often takes a few tries) may not be able to get back in. And, to link to the discussion of police, above, many of these people end up in prison where they are unlikely to get much treatment. Further, such efforts concentrate a particular group of addicts in particular settings, isolating them away from those better off who have actual insurance and who don't have to go to "county." What we really need is better and more broadly available health insurance so that everyone has access to drug treatment when they need it. But by having "county" facilities available, there is, again, a release valve, however limited, that makes it seem like we are "doing something" about addiction for poor people.
Yet, the kinds of changes we really need-more money for food stamps and better insurance, for example-are extremely difficult to fight for. For a range of reasons, they don't fit the criteria of "good" issues as well as discrete $$ for drug treatment and for food efforts do.
"Wins" on issues like these may build the power of the organization, but they may also actually make it more difficult to reach the kind of society where problems of hunger and addiction are less oppressive for those on the lower economic rungs of society.
Beyond Ideology to Pragmatic Vision
The answer is not to embrace the kind of often simplistic "ideology" that contributed to the destruction of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Abstract and decontextualized visions of a better society, however sophisticated, can be illuminating in a general sense, but they don't really address the challenges I am focusing on, here.
Instead, what I am thinking at the moment is that it would be helpful to have a series of documents exploring the tensions of particular issue areas as well as relationships between particular issues and longer-term visions of social transformation.
What about a document that discusses the plusses and minuses of different approaches to hunger, for example? I imagine something written in direct and concrete language, listing specific examples of issues (school nutrition? food bank funding? food stamps?) and discussing the benefits and limitations of each.
This could also include examples of broader, longer-term visions, discussing the strengths and weakenesses of each. What would a food stamps-based social transformation look like? What would a comprehensive non-profit-based solution look like? What would a broader income-support solution look like? And what are the practical challenges and benefits of each?
Actionpedia
In a rapidly changing world, you wouldn't want these to be static documents. Instead, perhaps there could be a "actionpedia" that would allow them to emerge out of the multiple experiences of different organizers and leaders, including sections for ongoing dialogue and disagreement.
I could imagine that issue committees thinking about working on the food issue, or police protection, for example, pulling up a few pages that would quickly give them a sense of the key characteristics of their particular area. It would not tell them what to do, but would instead introduce them to key tensions they would need to carefully negotiate. At the same time, this document would indicate how the group's individual decisions might link to larger visions of social change.
A key tension, here, would be between inclusivity and brevity in the text. You would not want it to lose any pragmatic usefulness by burying these concerns under obsessive verbiage. And you would not want them to give people the impression that there is some "cookie-cutter" approach to issue development that short-circuits traditional learning and research efforts. (In other words, you wouldn't want these written by academics.)
The field would need to experiment with different formats. The best document that no one on the ground has the time or interest to actually use won't do anyone much good. To the extent that these fluid "white papers" gained a reputation for helping groups avoid pit-falls without shutting down creativity, however, I think they could begin to help us start to grapple more concretely and broadly with "the vision thing" in organizing.
(Note, I know there is working going on in different arenas trying to deal with the "vision" issue. I'd love to hear from readers about some of these that I don't know about.) |
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