Power and the organized community. The basics of participatory democracy.

Initiated by the Autonómia Foundation, we gave a training today with Bálint Vojtonovszki for young Roma and non-Roma who want to apply for the European Union's Youth In Action funds. Our aim was to help participants gain new skills so that they can more effectively reach out to people living in their settlement, involve them in the project preparation process and have more people take a role in the implementation of the project.

Participants increased their knowledge in:
- techniques to increase group cohesion
- community needs surveys: listening tours and one-to-ones
- organizing skills and building the organization
- a good leader and their responsibilities
- facilitation techniques, role of a moderator, how to cope with tension in group discussions, putting together the agenda
- involving new people in group work and recruit members
- power

TRAINING AGENDA

9.00-9.25: INTRODUCTION

9.25-9.35: COMMUNICATION PRINCIPLES. We lay down the principles we want to use when we communicate in the group, thus we learn a technique to moderate a group discussion.

9.35-10.10: IDEAL SETTLEMENT - STRUGGLE FOR POWER
We use the communication principles in the group work, and in an activity we create a situation when community members cannot realize their urban development ideas due to external influence.

10.10-10.25: ORGANIZED COMMUNITY I.
We collect ideas about how a community can become stronger and more effective in representing their interest towards decision-makers.

10.25-10.45: BREAK

10.45-11.15: ORGANIZED COMMUNITY II.
Techniques to involve new people. Introducing the listening tour. We collect ideas how we can identify community issues, involve new members and build the organization.

11.15-11.35: ONE-TO-ONE
Practicing one-to-ones as part of the listening tour.

11.35-12.00: FIRST GROUP MEETING I.
What is a good meeting like? What is the role of the moderator? How can participants contribute to a successful meeting? How do you facilitate a meeting?

12.00-13.00: LUNCH BREAK

13.00-14.15: FIRST GROUP MEETING II.
Preparing the meeting. Elaborating the recruitment plan and the agenda of the meeting.

14.15-14.45: POWER
What is power? Scale line.

14.45-15.00: CLOSE

Thanks to Marci Gosztonyi for brainstorming about the training concept.

Read it in Hungarian.

Our young democracy

Hungary is a young democracy. It will be a healthy and real democracy when more and more social classes and groups will be able to influence and participate in the decision-making processes. In order for this to happen, people usually excluded from decision-making should be able to formulate their demands, get to the table of the decision-makers through community power, and challenge social inequality through democratic means. With a united voice and good tactics, they can achieve real representation. How can we use community organizing to enhance real democracy in Hungary? What is power? Is community organizing only confrontation? This interview with me on a Hungarian community radio station Civil Radio tells us more about these topics.

Civil Rádió: Demokrácia MOST! 2013. január 30., Part 1 (in Hungarian)
Civil Rádió: Demokrácia MOST! 2013. január 30., Part 2 (in Hungarian)

This post is the third in a series where I collect what I like in community organizing in the U.S. "Democracy is not an end but the best means toward achieving these values [equality, justice, freedom, peace, a deep concern for the preciousness of human life, and all those rights and values propounded by Judeo-Christianity and the democratic political tradition]." (Saul Alinsky) Like: community organizing is the catalyst of democracy.

Read it in Hungarian.

The last stop sign - Some comments about the Handbook on Citizen Participation

Roma people and their allies protest against
the Hungarian far-right party, Jobbik
in October 17, 2012. Source: BT

Why is it useful to talk about community organizing in Hungary in a social moment when there is an expanding, wide-based civil cooperation emerging? Why are we talking about community organizing as a novelty when there have been many dynamic organizing projects in Budapest and in the country? What is this if not community organizing?

Community organizing should not be confused with community development, even though there are overlaps in their roots and tools.(1) Coalition building, campaign coordination or activist coordination are organizing but not community organizing, although all of these methods are applied during community organizing. How can community organizing contribute with something new?

Well-developed organizing infrastructure!

In the process of community organizing, people who don't have a say in the decision-making processes organize for social change and to rearrange unfair power inequalities by establishing non-hierarchical citizen organizations - organizations in the structural sense not necessarily in the legal sense. Based on community organizing, the roots of social and economic injustice are sought in the unequal distribution of power and resources among social groups(2), therefore community members ultimately organize for a more equal redistribution of power and resources, through influencing the decision-making processes by democratic means. The North Star of community organizing is meaningful democracy, dignity, and collaboration with allied social groups.

Because community organizing traditionally embraces social justice (understood in line with human rights principles), in many cases, citizen groups are run and if possible led by the participation of socially excluded, oppressed people, but in all cases with those, who are directly affected by the issue. (That's why we don't consider the Hungarian Guard or the Better Future Civil Guard Association or the Tea Party as doing community organizing, because although these groups use community organizing methods, they do not embrace its principles.)

Through citizen participation, the fundamental aim is that excluded social classes and vulnerable groups (discriminated based on their ethnicity, gender, religion or economic status, sexual orientation, age or disability) attain enough power through democratic tactics to have an influence on decision makers.(3) Due to unbalanced power relations, confrontational tactics gain emphasis.

As a result, the group is represented by community members to the decision-makers and to the media; not by professionals, but by people who are generally excluded from participating in our democracy. In case of citizen groups of ethnic, gender or other kinds of minorities, the group is represented not only by those members of these minorities who belong to the elite or the educated middle-class. This is possible because in the process of community organizing, there is great emphasis on popular education, or education in order to increase the citizen toolbox of marginalized groups: peer-learning about social issues and the welfare system, internal trainings on how to talk to the media, role plays on how to meet a decision-maker, to name a few.

In this process, the role of a community organizer is to get to know the members of a community (a neighborhood, a congregation, an institution, or a group of people affected by the same issue, etc.), and, mostly through listening, learn the problems of the community, and identify and support those members, the so-called community leaders who are able to consider and act along community interests and participate in or coordinate the establishment of a democratic group. All in all, the community organizer facilitates or actively shapes the forming of the group, the implementation of pressure tactics, and the process of community learning and, together with the community leaders, nurtures the democratic development of the group. It is essential for a strong organizational structure and a dynamic and democratic expansion of the group that more and more members learn how to become community leaders.

Forms of coalition in community organizing

Citizen organizations can emerge in several contexts and all require a different strategy. In neighborhood-based community organizing, the organizer identifies community leaders and issues in neighborhoods, facilitates the group forming, works on the implementation of pressure tactics and the process of community learning, and then promotes collaboration between these newly-emerged neighborhood-based groups (see the work of Virginia Organizing or examples shared here and here). The community organizer does not start building from scratch: they rely on past or present initiatives, organizations, leaders or members of organizations, or on less elaborated organizational forms, any forms which have structure in the community. Naturally, the community organizer starts organizing upon the invitation or with the consent of some members of the neighborhood, the congregation, or an institution.

In congregation-based community organizing, the community organizer organizes socially inactive congregations into living and welcoming faith communities, or facilitates cross-denominational cooperation on a specific issue. This process is usually preceded by the pastor or some congregational members realizing that they are alienated both in practice and membership from people suffering social injustice. Or they decide to become (more) active around social justice issues, perhaps in cooperation with other congregations. The community organizer here facilitates the process of the faith community making a decision and elaborating an action plan on how their congregation could become more relevant for a socially excluded group, how they could involve them in the congregation, and how they could collaborate with them, if possible, on an egalitarian basis for social change. Or how they could support efforts in collaboration with other congregations (see the Back of the Yards or DART).

In institution-based community organizing, the process is similar again: the community organizer organizes institutions into a common platform around a specific issue, or organizes the members of the institution, or the marginalized groups linked up with the institution (see Chicago Coalition for the Homeless or the Back of the Yards).

When doing issue-based community organizing, the organizer organizes either a group of individuals who are directly affected by the same issue (housing, health care, immigration, etc.) but don't live in the same neighborhood, and they are not the members of the same institution or congregation. It can also mean organizing the collaboration of different types of groups (neighborhood-based, congregation-based, institution-based, issue-based; see examples from the Kentuckians For The Commonwealth here and here, where local people living in the vicinity of the coal mines, high school students, artists, NGOs, etc., are organized in order to have the mountain top removal banned in Appalachia; or Iowa CCI, around nurturing collaboration between farmers and immigrants).

As a result of this, community organizing can support the well-founded collaboration of a wide variety of social groups through a strong and democratic organizational structure, where the poor and oppressed groups can make their voices heard as resolutely and clearly as those civil actors who honestly represent their interests. And besides wanting to reach improvement in their neighborhood and their own life, they want to attain systemic changes, beyond development projects. Through linking the local and national level, community organizations, ideally, do not lose the connection with local issues and interests, and can keep proper balance between local, regional and national goals, while they can strategically use their power.

Some comments about the Handbook on Citizen Participation: "The Last Stop Sign"(4)

The Handbook on Citizen Participation: Community Organizing as a Tool of Enhancing Citizen Participation is one the few publications which talks about community organizing in the context of Central and Eastern Europe. Therefore, it is crucial that it summarizes and introduces some of the initiatives in this region, and through these examples, gives a short overview of the basic principles of community organizing. As a result of this, and the work of the past years, more and more countries have become familiar with the methodology of community organizing. When, however, we try to read the publication with the eyes of an activist who does not know this type of community intervention, most of the case studies would reflect that community organizers' ambitions eventually end in the beautification of a city and city development projects. Six out of the nine citizen groups (and their community organizers) addressed the decision-makers with demands such as building a bridge between two neighborhoods instead of letting the decision-maker simply destroying the old one, introducing environmentally friendly and cheap garbage collection, solving a parking space issue, cleaning an alley, building a park and a playground, preserving a pedestrian area as opposed to a planned gas station, solving garbage delivery, and renovating a sports center and a bus stop. Three groups formed other types of demands such as improving the situation of the unemployed and the workers on public assistance, eliminating homelessness through the enactment of the right to housing and through a well-developed public housing system, and buying medical equipment for a village hospital.

Naturally, in the first set of examples, "small and winnable issues" were picked because citizens were expected to learn how to put pressure on decision makers and wins would encourage more citizen participation. However, based on these examples, it may seem as if community organizing was organizing "for its own sake", as if work went without any strategy or future perspectives, simply in order to encourage citizen participation (which, supposedly, was not the intention of the authors). Although it was made explicit that there was an attempt to reach out to low-income social classes and other vulnerable groups in more or less all the case studies, it is unclear in almost all of the examples, except those of the Hungarian Anti-Poverty Network (HAPN) and The City Is For All, how community organizers, through the issues that are selected, want to contribute to systemic social change and to rearrange unfair power inequalities, which would differentiate community organizing from community development. However, enhanced citizen participation per se does not necessarily lead to the rearrangement of unfair power relations. When we, in a new region, try to elaborate and make appealing the methodology of this community intervention form, it is helpful to make the principles of this methodology and its long-term potential for social change explicit.

It is given a huge emphasis in the tradition of community organizing that a new citizen group should start out with "a small and winnable" issue, rather than something with a blurred long-term vision which may cause controversy in the emerging group (see the community organizing strategy of Alinsky). This strategy is pretty conspicuous in this publication, too, through demands around issues such as garbage collection and delivery, a parking space problem, cleaning an alley, renovating a bus stop, etc. In the tradition of community organizing, it also is stressed that these issues are identified by the community (in a democratic manner). According to the argument, the experience of winning gives impetus to the development of the organization, and wins can enhance membership growth, which is essential for a bigger campaign.

These all seem logical, but it can be very misleading. Gary Delgado (American researcher, lecturer, activist, one of the founding members and organizers of ACORN) recollects a story in his article from 1998 (The Last Stop Sign), when a community organizer (organizer of the Industrial Areas Foundation established by Saul Alinsky) told him that in their organization in New Mexico, a state on the southern border of the U.S., they didn't address the immigration issue because it had never come up with the constituents. As the organizer was a white European-American man, while the constituency was Latino, Delgado is suggesting that the issue might not have been raised due to (an initial) lack of trust rooted in the differences between the origin of the organizer and the constituents, even though the issue obviously carries great relevance for the community. To what extent is the responsibility of the organizer to raise an issue,? asks Delgado, and replies with another example. The Californian authorities wanted to take away the child of a lesbian mother. The neighborhood organization embraced the issue because the director of the organization explained the significance of the case to the board. The director was a lesbian woman. So in this case the community organizer influenced the flow of events, and acted as a "bridge person" between the citizen group and the lesbian mother, or rather between the neighborhood and the LGBT issue, and helped members to understand and accept the relevance of an issue, which they may have rejected before.

Decision makers may retain their power by pitting oppressed groups against one another along ethnicity, gender, class, etc.: Roma people on welfare against low-income non-Roma, the housing poor against the homeless people, the religious against the gay, and in general, marginalized groups against the tax-paying middle-class, while, in fact, the state spends a tiny amount of their tax on welfare assistance. These controversial issues unavoidably come up during community organizing. Furthermore, because somebody is oppressed, it does not mean that they themselves do not exert oppression on someone else such as domestic violence or aggression against animals. For long-term social change, community organizers need to take up contradictory issues, and act as bridge persons and live up to the role of "Hermes, the interpreter".

Is it really an effective strategy when a new organization sticks to "small and winnable issues", fighting for a parking space or stop signs? In the last decade of community organizing, has the gap between small and winnable issues and big and significant social issues, in fact, been bridgeable? Does this really lead us to long-term social change? Delgado continues with these questions.

Right-wing grassroots efforts, which would close abortion clinics, would put gays and lesbians back into the closet, he says, have never organized for stop signs. These groups, he adds, supposedly know that "good organizing issues are deeply felt, controversial." Delgado does not want to deny traditional methods of community organizing: empowering grassroots community leaders, organizing a wide democratic base, or community learning through which marginalized people could prove that they can articulate their issues and they do not need anointed experts. He does not intend to dismiss real victories either: the improvement of public housing, school reform, tax reform. But he also says that community organizing often has "misconceived notions of "wins"" and "is almost completely separate from the parallel world of progressive activism" which, he thinks, achieved significant results (women's movement, gay and lesbian movement, immigrant movement, etc.).

The essence and merit of community organizing is the building of a community infrastructure, which can lay the foundations of a new movement, or can enhance an existing one (see the activities of National People's Action related to the Occupy Movement here or here). Naturally, the progressive activist movements, which Delgado was hailing, could not have evolved in their full potential without an existing community infrastructure, through which participants could mobilize one another. And therefore, it is essential that neighborhood groups fight for less spectacular, smaller issues, so that group identity can shape and citizen participation can become a familiar phenomenon. Accepting all this, it is important what Delgado in 1998 said that "if traditional CO [community organizing] is to become a force for change in the millennium and beyond, it must proactively address issues of race, class, gender, corporate concentration, and the complexities of a transnational economy."

Therefore, I believe, when we speak about community organizing, in particular in Central and Eastern Europe, where we now intend to elaborate the methodology of this community intervention form, it is crucial that the short-term and long-term potential of community organizing (local-regional-national collaboration, collaboration crossing ethnicity, gender, congregations, social classes, building out a community infrastructure which can contribute to an emerging movement), the principles of community organizing (organizing vulnerable groups in the name of social justice), the role of community leaders and leadership development, the significance of community learning and internal trainings, etc., are all well-explained and that case studies are presented in line with these, all done in a strategic framework.

In addition, it is also helpful to make a distinction between community organizing and community development, knowing that both community intervention methods can be effective strategy. Which one to choose depends on several factors: the composition of the community, the internal power dynamics, the relations with the decision-makers, whether or not the decision-maker is open to consider the interests of the most vulnerable groups on an issue, or if the power structure is so unbalanced that confrontation is essential, etc. Building a bridge or a road between two neighborhoods, or having a park, or a parking space, etc. can be both community development and community organizing. The action does not become community organizing simply because it enhances citizen participation (as that is the aim of community development, too) but because the bridge, the road, the park or the parking space are important for the group because, by getting these, they make a step towards the rearrangement of unjust power relations (so they are small and winnable issues, but they have a strategic meaning for the group): because the bridge or the road connects a low-income and a middle-class neighborhood, and the low-income people will have access to the middle-class neighborhood with all of its services; or because through organizing about the park or the parking space, through popular education, it becomes crystal clear for the citizen group that they did not have a park or parking space before because of the unequal distribution of resources. This revelation together with the victory will give impetus to the group and enhance the emergence of new issues and new struggles.

With the past of monarchies and dictatorships citizen participation, collaboration, and the practice of opening up to one another are undoubtedly crucial in the life of the new Central and Eastern European democracies. However, in the shadow of excluding nationalism, or decision-makers neglecting the interests of vulnerable groups, or economic exploitation or the growing far-right, we can be brave and impatient enough to identify bigger goals for long-term social change, without losing sight of the conscious organization development strategy of community organizing, for example, to stop the exploitation of poor workers through the mobilization of workers on public assistance, or the development of the public housing system through the mobilization of homeless people (the goals of HAPN and The City Is For All mentioned in the handbook).

And an American example - for the fans of organization theory...

Organizing communities on a local and national level is not easy. The model of the organization I spent my last year with is very instructive in this aspect. The neighborhood-based and institution-based community organizing models are applied hand-in-hand in several organizations, but in Virginia Organizing (VO), it is even more emphatic. VO has 12 chapters, in 12 different locations in the state of Virginia, which were selected mostly because they are regarded as strategic centers in the region or because there is a high proportion of low-income neighborhoods. Community organizers are based in these areas and they may be local or may have moved to the there upon the call of VO. There is usually one chapter in each location and members may be community leaders in their neighborhoods, may be members or leaders of other organizations, or they may simply come on behalf of their family.

In statewide campaigns (around issues such as health care, immigration, anti-discrimination, budget and tax reform, civic participation, ex-felons' right to vote, economic justice, etc.), the staff of Virginia Organizing builds the coalition with other NGOs. Campaigns at a local, city-level are, for example, job creation through state-funded weatherization programs, or the increased participation of people of color in City Council management positions.

-------------------------------

(1) Community development and community organizing may differ mostly in the sense that, while community development holds that social inequalities are fundamentally rooted in the lack of problem solving skills at a community level and lack of self-help mechanisms due to alienation, community organizing thinks that the root of injustice is the unequal distribution of power and resources. In community development, therefore, the emphasis is on strengthening relationship between the members of the community, utilizing community competences and common problem solving skills, while members try to get the support of the decision-maker and strive for consensus. On the other hand, community organizing holds that the solution is in the more just redistribution of power and resources, so community members collaborate in order to this through influencing the decision-making processes. Due to unbalanced power relations, confrontational tactics gain emphasis. (Jack Rothman (1995): A közösségi intervenció megközelítései)
(2) Community organizing is finding its roots, among others, in the women's movement, the abolitionist movement, the labor movement, the settlement movement, and in the organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky, the African-American Civil Rights Movement, and the Mexican-American Farmworkers' Movement. The methodology of community organizing was elaborated by Alinsky, which has been enriched by almost a century of experience.
(3) Naturally, organizing the middle class can be a strategic goal. Before his death, in 1972, Alinsky saw the potential in organizing the middle class. He thought in a consumer society that the middle class is miserably misled and is oppressed, and because of being a wide social stratum, it can be a good ally for a systemic social change (Playboy Interview, 1972). The ultimate goal, however, is the empowering of marginalized groups. When Alinsky in 1959 organized the Provisional Organization for Southwest Community in the Southwest Side of Chicago with a mainly white American constituency, his ultimate aim was to decrease racist tension in the neighborhood, to bridge the communication gap between the African-American and the white communities and bring about the process of African-Americans peacefully moving in the neighborhood. He, however, finally questioned this strategy. In addition, Iowa CCI organizes white farmers against factory farms on the one hand, and, on the other hand, Latino immigrant workers abused by their employers. The strategy of the organization is that, through common organizational membership, the gap between the two groups will narrow. When Rural Organizing Project talks about welcoming communities, organizing middle class neighborhoods becomes a goal in order to reach immigration justice.
(4) The title "The Last Stop Sign" is adopted from the article of Gary Delgado, quoted in the post. (Gary Delgado (1998): The Last Stop Sign, accessible online at: http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/102/stopsign.html)

Read it in Hungarian.

Next Monday: Who gains admission and who counts white? - Undocumented immigrants organize now and then.

A community organized in a neighborhood of high crime

Jim Field, on the left
Source:
http://jesssteele.wordpress.com

Jim Field is the Director of Community Organizing at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. He has been organizing for 40 years in different neighborhoods of Chicago. This is the synopsis of an interview made in 2012 during my three-week internship with the organization.


In 1992 in Chicago's mostly Polish American, Avondale neighborhood, the most immediate issue was the elimination of crime. How did you start organizing there?
Jim: I kicked off with canvassing. I started in those blocks which were the closest to the headquarters of the gang dominating the neighborhood. I went on the blocks in concentric circles until the residents started to say that their everyday life is not so much affected by the gang's activities. I was tracing potential leaders, one or two people in each block who were affected by the issue. Then I organized a meeting with them. We discussed how the level of crime influences their lives. In the meantime, I tried to make them understand that the authorities will not solve the problem without them putting on pressure.

Were they afraid, were you afraid that the gang would take revenge?

Jim: The gang had already taken revenge. The gang kept them frightened, crimes already happened. The question was if the community is capable of a level of cooperation, as a result of which it could step up against the intimidation. "What if the gang retaliates?" they asked. "The gang has already retaliated, you have been living in fear," I answered. "I am afraid for my child," they said. "If you want your child not to be afraid, you have to do something," I replied. I agitated them. They had to understand that unless they do something, everything will stay as it was. Then I stepped back and let them make the decision. Finally they committed themselves. They also agreed that if a community member was intimidated, they will step up as one against the gang. It also helped them make the decision that I already carried out such a campaign and could tell them that it had been successful in other neighborhoods. As an organizer, you have to take away every excuse they have. They will say in the white neighborhood that it can be done in an African-American neighborhood because they act more collectively, but not here. They will say in an African-American neighborhood that it can be done in white neighborhoods because they can more easily be gathered, but not the African-Americans.

How did the campaign go?

Jim: We started to put pressure on the authorities: we nagged at the police and went to the mayor's house. We generated media attention around the crimes so that it became inconvenient to the authorities not to deal with the issue. Unfortunately, the authorities started to take meaningful action only after a 16-year old girl's throat had been slit. The neighborhood was deeply upset and they started to heavily push the police commander and the state attorney to take action and to take the perpetrator to court. The police finally arrested the gang member and we mobilized the neighborhood so that we could pack the courtroom. On one of the days preceding the trial, however, the gang threw a brick into the window of our office. We immediately convened a gathering and 130 people came. We then decided to show the gang that we are not afraid and we would deliver back the brick to the headquarters of the gang. We wanted this to be a public action, so we announced it to the media. It blew the fuse at the police station, they said we were not allowed to do such a thing. The media loved it. And we insisted on carrying out the action. So two days before the trial, on a Wednesday evening, accompanied by police cars and the media, we marched to the headquarters of the gang and hand delivered the brick. Two days later we packed the courtroom.

Did the gang ever intimidate somebody from the community organization?

Jim: It helped that we worked in close cooperation with the police and we generated media attention to our issues. It happened though that a gang member popped in to our meeting. The new leaders were freaked out. At that meeting a policeman also participated. He said that if somebody is ready to give a testimony, he could arrest the intimidator, but nobody decided to do so.

What is a good leader like?
Jim: A good leader really cares about the interest of the community, and about building the organization. They respect people but can be tough at the same time. I work with leaders' natural instincts. If I am going into a fight with legislators, and I need someone who vehemently expresses their views; I am bringing the pitbull type.


In the beginning of your career, you organized in a Lithuanian neighborhood in Chicago. Without any Lithuanian ancestors, how did you bridge the gap of cultural differences?

Jim: The Lithuanians are a very closed community, and at the beginning, they were reluctant to accept me. I did not give up, I wanted to understand who they are and where they are from. The community organizer is like water - water always finds its way. Most of the people living in that neighborhood are upper-class Lithuanians who migrated to the U.S. after World War II, after the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania. In the meantime, I was searching for those Lithuanians who would talk to me. The second generation was more friendly. I persuaded them to talk in the Lithuanian community media about the issue I identified (it was a badly directed bus service which embittered the life of many in the neighborhood). The older Lithuanians became very angry with me because the younger ones appeared in the media even though they did not speak perfect Lithuanian. But as a result of this incident, I got on friendly terms with a first generation Lithuanian. I was looking for leaders. Organizing is like sifting sand. You are looking for new leaders and new leaders continuously. First I started with the "anointed" leaders, with the president and the vice-president of a Lithuanian organization dating back decades. First I thought I cannot avoid them although they did not do anything else in the name of organizing but drinking beer and talking about the good old years. Then I realized that I don't need to build on them; instead I tried to find those people who do not just pretend to be leaders but are real leaders. And of course I involved the president and the vice-president when it was possible, and they turned out to be good fundraisers because of their connections.

What is a good organizer like?
Jim: A good organizer believes in people, handles them very well and shows patience. They will take the time to grow a leader. They understand power, strategy and tactics. They can bring people together in a collaborative manner and use the media well. They are good at confrontation but also good at building allies: every target is a potential ally, and in one case, they can be worthy of cooperation, but in another case, you have to humiliate them. One of the challenges for an organizer is to understand that they don't have to be liked all the time. If you want somebody to like you, go and get a dog. The role of the organizer may be somewhat schizophrenic: you want to win, but eventually you are not just there to win, but to build a powerful organization.

Read it in Hungarian.

Can homeless folks and service providers join in their struggle?

Springfield, Lobby Day, Nov 29 2011. Source: FB

The Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) was established in 1980 by service providers and charities - it was not initiated by homeless folks. The coalition mobilizes service providers or neighborhood organizations (institutional community organizing) and homeless people. Can the two parties equally assert themselves in different campaigns through this community organizing strategy?


CCH sets its campaign agenda based on research and by canvassing the residents of shelters for the homeless. The organization organizes active listening tours in service providing institutions and the community organizers talk to hundreds of homeless folks. They want to know what the most pressing issues are for their constituency. (Who are you and what have you gone through? What do you think about it? What makes you angry?) Or they ask the opinion of homeless folks on a concrete campaign.

In CCH every new community organizer starts with a listening tour, and in the first month they conduct a one-on-one with at least 50 homeless or formerly homeless people. The people interviewed, however, are not involved in the actual decision-making process, but the campaign goals are set by the staff of the organization.

Personal relationships with homeless folks are very important for CCH community organizers. The one-on-one is an important tool to build trust and to find out to what extent the group is organized and what skills its members have which they could use for the benefit of the whole group. The community organizers try to figure out who can be involved in specific tasks in an action, and determine who are real leaders, those members who are able to represent the interest of the broader community.

The community organizers hold regular events in shelters and they agitate homeless people to accumulate power and get involved in running actions to make the decision-makers accountable. And the leaders tell their own story in different places, take part in talks with decision-makers or less often give interviews to the media. CCH does not stress, however, urging the leaders to establish autonomous chapters (or cells) in their shelters, which can set their own agenda or decide about new campaigns.

Furthermore, CCH does not represent homeless people against service providers. The organization goes no further than mediating between the social worker or the institution and the homeless person. The community organizing strategy of CCH focuses more on issues which both parties have a self-interest in and can line up joint support (e.g., to increase state budget support to service providers or to increase housing benefits), rather than building the movement of homeless people. As a result, the organization does not put particular effort into strengthening cooperation and communication between different groups of different shelters and establish a strong network of organized cells. In addition, CCH in most cases works with people living in shelters or who are affiliated with a service provider. It does not organize people living on the streets and it does not directly represent their interests.

This does not mean that homeless people do not take part in the decision-making processes of the organization. In bigger thematic campaigns, such as the decriminalization of prostitutes and the reentry of former felons, persons who were affected by these issues sit on the campaign planning committees along with representatives of civil society organizations. And homeless or formerly homeless folks sit on the board of the organization or are employed as staff members.

CCH works in most campaigns in different coalitions, therefore service providers are their important allies. Just like in the case of homeless people, community organizers lay great stress on finding out their self-interest. They want to see and feel what kind of cooperation can be in the interest of these institutions and what would make them join the particular campaign. One-on-ones are therefore crucial with the representatives of the institutions, too. (During their listening tour, new community organizers also interview almost 50 shelter representatives besides the 50 homeless or formerly homeless people.) CCH sometimes ally with organizations who have less experience in doing advocacy and campaigning. In this case, they understand and start at the level where partners are the most comfortable and they gradually raise the stakes. Building trust is a process in institutional organizing, too: you have to know who is in the organization, who is worth negotiating with, who is capable of what and what they are ready to do.

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Mobilizing along self-interest

Saul Alinsky

Saul Alinsky organized communities for instance in the slums of Chicago between the 1930s and the 1970s. He worked with teenage gangs, low-income immigrant groups from Europe, excluded African-American communities and racist whites. He was passionate about organizing groups cheated by people in power. He enjoyed seeing how they gain back their human dignity, start to organize themselves, and realize they can have influence on the "big" political and business interests.

For most people, the functioning of a democratic state can be pretty complicated and incomprehensible. Decisions follow decisions, each having a huge impact on our lives, but many people can put up with the assumption that they are not in the position to influence how things work. Or their everyday struggle to make ends meet supersedes any other efforts. Legislators often seem to be distant, they listen only to those who are close to the fire. Due to the uneven distribution of power, communities with less capacity to advocate for themselves can easily become marginalized, which makes them subject to fraud, exploitation or oppression. One of the main tasks of a democratic state therefore would be to create space in the decision-making process for those social groups who need more effort to articulate their demands. In most cases, however, this happens only after putting pressure on the legislators.

But why would those who struggle for survival or assume they have no influence on how things work start to organize themselves? Alinsky says because it is their self-interest. So he traced those concrete, immediate and winnable issues which embittered the lives of most members of the neighborhood. And he wanted to track down those locals who can be allies in building a neighborhood organization. Because if the members of the community realize that together they have the power to influence the decisions on their lives, they will feel less marginalized.

For this Alinsky and his organizers needed to know the neighborhood like the palm of their hand. They started with data analysis: before the field work, they wanted to draw a preliminary profile of the neighborhood. They combed through census data, reports by local planning commissions, and public statistics, then they made an inventory of all the public institutions, associations, sport clubs, social agencies and  local businesses, etc. They carried out research on the history of the neighborhood and its people. They mapped power relations and the network of relationships. They started organizing only then. Obviously, by that point, they had several hypotheses of what the most crucial issues could be for the neighborhood, but they put these in brackets. They wanted to hear from the members what makes them angry. Alinsky's organizers built on people's self-interest.

After the research, they divided the neighborhood into smaller units and started canvassing. They conducted hundreds of interviews, with residents, shopkeepers, leaders of local civil society organizations, church leaders, or people active in other fields of public life. They took thorough notes on the behavior and social habits of the people. They visited new contacts other people mentioned. They used qualitative and quantitative research methods used in sociology and anthropology such as participatory observation, unstructured, semi-structured and in-depth interviews, statistical analyses, etc. At the end of the day they recorded voice reports on their conclusions. They wanted to draw a profile of the fears, sorrows, hopes and skills of people living in the neighborhood.

Area canvassing usually takes one or two months of intensive work. Within this period the community organizers get in touch with the whole neighborhood. Canvassing can happen through many different ways. Organizers can contact those who seemed interesting during the research phase, and they will suggest new contacts to talk to (this is the snowball method applied in sociology and anthropology). Organizers may have acquaintances from earlier and start tracing those networks. New opportunities can also come the their way through sheer coincidence.

Many organizations apply the more direct door knocking. Student volunteers or community organizers visit the members of the neighborhood in their homes, they knock on each and every door to try to identify the crucial issues for the community and make them open to cooperation. Building relations can be very tiring and may hold out little hope in the beginning. But there are communication techniques which make dismantling the walls easier. (For example: "What made you angry recently? "I don't know, leave me alone." "Your neighbor, Mary said that trash is not picked up. Is this a problem for you? What do you think should be done?)

Building trust is a process which starts from zero. Therefore in the beginning, rejection and suspicion are part of canvassing. One of Alinsky's most quoted story is how he infiltrated into one of Al Capone's mobs in Chicago. (At this point yet he worked as a young criminologist, not as a community organizer.) Through long weeks he hung around the headquarters of the mobsters, the Lexington Hotel in Chicago, and he was always dismissed by them. Then one night at the neighboring table, one of the professional assassins of Capone, Big Ed said: "Hey, you guys, did I ever tell you about the time I picked up that redhead in Detroit ?" The others moaned in chorus. "Oh, no... Do we have to hear that one again?" Big Ed got disappointed when Alinsky poked him and said: "Mr. Stash. I’d love to hear that story." The gangster's face lit up. "You would, kid? Here, pull up a chair."

Through these initial contacts and talks we can draw a profile of the concerns, skills and visions of the people living in the neighborhood. And through these methods, we can form more personal relations with those who seem reliable and pursue group interests. Through longer, personal conversations we can identify the concrete, immediate and winnable issues, in which many people have a self-interest and which can help mobilize the neighborhood. And we can identify those people who can lead on issues and become leaders. And we can determine the forces and resources which keep a community together, and which we can build on to organize the first neighborhood assembly.

(Source: Sanford D. Horwitt: Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky - His Life and Legacy. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1989; Playboy Interview: Saul Alinsky - a candid conversation with the feisty radical organizer. Vol. 19. no. 3. - March, 1972; Saul D Alinsky: Rules for Radicals - A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. Random House, New York, 1971)

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