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Struggle & Movement

Fisher on community organizing through the 1970s

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Another post on Robert Fisher’s Let the People Decide, that starts back in 1886 (pt 1) to root this in some of the US’s history, and the last post on the 1960s…all too brief as I think about it. But time marches on, Fisher takes us through the 1970s, and it’s interesting to consider the decade from Fisher’s view. Sadly at no point does fashion enter the discourse.

The New Populism of the 1970s

The 1970s was certainly a very bad time for cities — I very much appreciate, as I say, how Fisher weaves in some of the political and economic context for the organizing that was happening. As he writes

Neoconservative strategies for urban change became commonplace. Using models of “planned shrinkage” or “triage,” officials planned to bulldoze or ignore the poorest areas of the city. (136)

And they did to a great extent, I can’t really imagine watching that, going through that..

Fisher opens a section on the roots of the New Populism with a quote from Tom Hayden, ‘The radicalism of the 1960s has become the common sense of the 1970s’. He cites Mike Miller of the Organize Training Center in SF (hi Mike!) as describing “the basic values of the new populism are the values of democracy.” Fisher continues with a full quote: “Its fundamental analysis is that “unchecked power has become concentrated in the hands of a very small number of people who are at the helm of the major corporations of the nation.”

So what does Fisher mean by populism here in this context?

While it is critical of elements of the economic system, it sees bigness and unaccountable power, rather than capitalism, as the fundamental problem. (139)

Despite Hayden’s quote, Fisher describes community organizing through this decade as working to tone down from the 1960s, to return to Alinsky and rebuild.  Given the repression and that people in power recognized Alinksy’s work as much less threatening than that say of SNCC,  such a return could be helpful in achieving concrete wins. Fisher writes that while Alinsky himself and earlier Alinskyite organizations in mid 1960s through 1970s ‘practiced ideology of equality and the tactics of non-violent confrontation of the civil rights movement’, they would come to shift over this second decade ‘from a civil rights orientation to an emphasis on negotiation and community development’ (142).

Fisher also notes the way that community organizations themselves became more conservative over time (thought he notes most organizations had a life of only around 6 years, so survival into conservatism was rare, an interesting thing to think about). TWO in Woodlawn became involved in development, built housing, ran a head start program, moved into ignoring radical roots in demanding long-term change and instead bargained to improve conditions on a very local level.

Neo-Alinskyism

This chapter opens with a quote from ACORN  president Steve McDonald:

Some people say what does ACORN want? The answer is simple: We want sufficient power in our cities  and states to speak–and be heard–and heeded–for the interest of the majority of citizens. We want to participate in community and civil affairs, not as second class citizens because we don’t drive Rolls Royces, but as men and women committed to a better future where our concerns are met with justice and dignity; where wealth, race and religion are insufficient excuses to prevent equal participation and impact in government; where any person can protect his or her family and join with others in community strength; and where, as ACORN’s slogan goes, “the People Shall Rule.” That is what ACORN wants. Nothing more and nothing less.
–Steve McDonald, ACORN president, quoted p 145

He describes the central program of community organizing in this decade:

The essence of neo-Alinskyism in the 1970s was to develop more political organizations rooted in neighborhoods, grounded in local concerns, and focused on winning concrete gains. The goal was to advance social and economic democracy, empower people, and challenge power relations within and beyond the neighborhood.

There were many such organizations, most of them able to

acknowledge that fundamental social change in this country demands a multi-issue, multiclass, multiracial, national effort that rests on grassroots organizing but goes beyond the neighborhood or community units. (146)

These are organizations that broke away from the IAF model, which Fisher argues had become highly professionalized and large-scale. Of course, this mode  has continued in parallel, and been most successful in Mexican-American communities of the South West, where churches remained very strong and were willing to play a role in local issues.

I definitely need to read more about Fred Ross, who worked with Alinsky but shifted the model in important ways, as he emphasized door-to-door, issue organizing (and Cesar Chavez of course). He also inspired the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), and out of this came Wade Rathke who would start up ACORN to avoid what we saw as weaknesses of NWRO which often divided neighbors

The ACORN Model as summarised by Fisher:

  1. You, the organizer, are sent to a community — you don’t come with an issue, but openly organize for social and economic justice for low and moderate income people
  2. Develop internal contacts. Get people’s name, go to their homes for talks.
  3. Organize the first house meeting. Want it to be representative of the community, under 12 people. This will become a committee, begin to identify issues (149)
  4. Promote the organization. Go door to door with organizing committee, engage people.
  5. Honor the organizing process. Do not make assumptions, remain open, create index files on people you meet.
  6. Identify an issue. This should appeal to most people, it doesn’t matter the issue, but that people get involved, the organizer presents options and way to deal with it
  7. Hold a neighborhood meeting. Big event, invite everyone you have contact with. Get membership — ‘The dues are significant not only because they provide some funding but, more important, because people relate differently to an organization that they own. (151)

Fisher’s critique — that they still tended to stay away from issues that would ‘jeopardise a victory’. Like racism… The thinking was very much like that of Alinsky’s, and organizers avoided issues that undermined unity and clouded the focus on the “real enemy.” (151)

Winning, noted by some, was an ‘obsession’ with ACORN.

ACORN also moved towards electoral politics, to hold power rather than just pressuring those in power. As Fisher writes, there was also:

a strong tendency in ACORN and related efforts to remain staff intensive, to see the organizer as an “expert” who practices a method, almost a “science,” of organizing. In some projects grassroots participation tended to appear only at selected and critical times–at mass meetings, direct actions, and elections… (153)

Political education was de-emphasized, pragmatism made the rule, the goal to move from one victory to the next rather than moving more slowly through a process of education. This probably isn’t entirely fair to many local chapters, but I only worked with them very tangentially in LA. This theme of electoral power has certainly been picked up by other groups though.

I have his book on ACORN sitting in a stack, not sure when I’ll get a chance to read it, but hopefully not before too long.

It can’t be ignored, of course, that some of these  ideas have also been taken up by more right-wing neighbourhood groups like ROAR (Restore Our Alienated Rights) in Boston with their ‘a,b,c’ program: antiabortion, antibusing, anticommunism. A working class organization but affiliated with business. Although seen as aberrations, Fisher writes that these were the other side of populism without conscious political education. He’s probably right about that.

Alinsky style and tactics were also taken up by community development organizations through this decade and into the next, but Fisher notes how they tended to become steadily more conservative both in tactics and vision as they established themselves. Having only known the well established versions, I’d certainly agree that this was true in many, but not all cases.

This was also a decade of growing numbers of women getting involved and moving into leadership. There was also a growing realisation that successful organizing not actually built on self-interest alone, but also idealism and the implementation of people’s own vision.

But more on that, surprisingly, in the 1980s.

[Fisher, Robert (1994) Let the People Decide: Neighborhood Organizing in America. New York: Maxwell Macmillan International.]

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Struggle & Movement

Mike Miller: community organizing

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Mike Miller’s Community Organizing is exactly what it says — a (very) short book, and a good very practical introduction to the updated basic style of Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Area Foundation (IAF)’s kind of community organizing that has its roots back in the 1930s. There is, as always, and emphasis on democracy in the preface:

‘Community organizing’ applied democratic ideals and practices to specific contexts… (1)

First line of the book proper though?

‘Power’: the ability to act effectively in the world. (3)

The focus is on the organizer:

The first organizer in one of these organizations is typically an outsider. Because the people inside the community have histories of rivalry, any initiative taken by a local person or group is likely to leave out some people and groups, heightening conflict. (3)

Miller writes the book developing a kind of real-life example of an organizer coming into a community, which gives a good concrete view of the process as it is supposed to work, and also means it is full of practical advice if you are going to do things this way. While Alinsky himself was quite flexible for much of his career (see his own book, and Myles Horton’s description of his strengths) the IAF model has moved to work only through faith organizations (see more below). After being invited (and paid) they start with an initial set of workshops:

participants learned about community organizing and its relationships to the American democratic tradition, to the teachings of their own religious faith, and to the specific problems facing them. their members, their neighbors and their congregations. More than anything else, they learned, at least in the abstract, that building an organization was more important than any particular issue. In fact, they came to realize that this organization-building was the key to an effective struggle for justice… (5)

What follows is key to the methodology: one-to-one meetings. Out of this, leaders are developed

organizers have a core meaning for “leader.” … someone with a following. (6)

That’s not entirely universal, but a good place to start. Miller talks about social capital and the mediating institutions of civil society, why the IAF focused on most deeply rooted institutions — ie churches and other faith based institutions. He quotes extensively from a document called Organizing for Family and Congregation, published by the Industrial Areas Foundation in 1978, and written by then-director Ed Chambers. It gives  for the theoretical ideas and context underpinning the IAF’s approach with great clarity:

Our country is in…crisis…. The intermediate voluntary institutions including churches–are ineffectual in a power relationship with the powerful. As a result, the middle is collapsing, confused. The economic and political middle is being sucked dry by a vacuum — a vacuum of power and values. Into that vacuum have moved the huge corporations, mass media and “benevolent” government… (10)

This is so much about the middle, seems to stop its analysis of what is wrong with the world at a fairly shallow level. PICO (People Improving Communities through Organizing) is a spin-off on the Alinsky approach also founded in faith-based organizing. Their 2011 statement of vision and purpose goes rather more to the point:

We pledge to teach, preach and organize to unify people of faith around reducing poverty and increasing economic and racial justice. We will challenge our elected leaders from both parties to put the needs of working families, the poor and the common good of our nation ahead of short-term political calculus and special interests. Join us in making America a land of opportunity for all people. (15)

Miller describes why Alinsky-style organization moved towards this exclusive focus on faith-based organizing — he argues that the 1970s saw other voluntary and community organizations ‘atrophied’ or co-opted in search of funding, thus faith-based organizations became seen as the

only value-based, stable organizations in many low- to moderate-income communities.

And of course, in organizing through such stable institution with large membership bases,

The organizer formula, “Organized people plus organized power” was met. (16)

There is some discussion of ACORN here, Miller notes their work as a different model developing out of Alinsky’s associate Fred Ross’s work, a model which builds membership into the organization directly.

So back to IAF model in progress, the organizer has been doing lots and lots of one-ones, over a few months she ‘knows’ the city. She asks the leaders to come together. Together they pick their first issues, which are ‘Immediate, specific and winnable’ (23), Miller adds they are also believable and non-divisive (24). This is because he argues that skepticism is the biggest problem, the organizer needs a win to show people what they are capable of.

So what does it take to move decision makers? First a political understanding of their position and the political moment:

…they must be very secure and very powerful and thus not constrained by the threat of rivals and competitors. Or, they must see that the price paid to maintain the status quo is not worth paying. (29)

One or other of these will define the strategy. Miller’s organizer Jeanne must prepare for the conflict and confrontation (in traditional Alinsky style).

Almost everything Jeanne had to teach came together in the preparation for meetings with ‘decision-makers,’ the meetings themselves, and the post-meeting evaluation. The drama of a three-act play unfolds, with heroes and villains, the uncertainty of how the plot will unfold, the high point of tension, and the final resolution. (31)

This emphasis on narrative is interesting, the technique of role-playing is of course key in preparation for the meeting or action to pressure those in power. From my own experience, this is necessary (if not sufficient) for success. Miller emphasizes that the organizer must ensure that the leaders are not afraid to press the yes or no question, they must cut through the ‘fogging’. I love that word, it’s exactly what politicians and bureaucrats do. Miller writes

Most powerful people know how to deal with conflict. Most are used to dealing with conflict. It is the powerless who see conflict as somehow uncivilized. Decision-makers know this, and often seek to use this sense of misplaced politeness to control. (30)

So true.

He outlines some key tests for good tactics. They:

  • should contribute toward winning

  • …should contribute to building an organization — involve more people in active roles, deepen skills and self-confidence, recruit new allies and members, broaden appeal to wider public (34)

In a nutshell.

Miller briefly talks about role of education, that community organizing can’t simply be about getting more power and resources for one group or victory will simply maintain power relations intact by simply substituting one group for another. He does works through a sample workshop that helps educate more broadly around political issues.

These are the quick and dirty basics, which boiled down to bare essentials as they are, give quite a good idea of what Miller would consider those essentials to be…of course, his analysis goes much deeper elsewhere, given his decades of work in both SNCC and the IAF, and his current position as Executive Director of the ORGANIZE! Training Center, definitely check out their website:

The purpose of the ORGANIZE! Training Center (OTC) is to strengthen democracy by supporting strong, participatory, democratic organizations whose principal constituency is people of low- and middle income. OTC is committed to social, environmental, and economic justice for all, to a democracy that is based on the active participation of all its citizens and residents, and to building strong communities based on the ideas of individual responsibility, solidarity, and our interdependence as human beings.

Since “community organizing” is widely used with many meanings, we place our work in what has come to be known as the “Alinsky tradition” and the work done in the Deep South by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (“Snick”). More broadly, we place our work in the tradition of radical democracy as expressed in American history by the industrial labor movement of the 1930s, the early period of the Populists, the Knights of Labor, the Abolitionists and those American revolutionaries for whom independence from Britain and democracy were equally at the core of their philosophy. We root our work in the social and economic justice, and moral teachings of the world’s great religions, and the small “d” democratic tradition.

[Miller, Mike (2012) Community Organizing: A Brief Introduction. Milwaukee: Euclid Avenue Press.]

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