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 community organizing industry

Dislike: In the U.S., as a result of the professionalization of community organizing, a lot of operative decisions are made by the staff of the non-profit community organization. Therefore, a big part of action-related decisions are delivered in the staff meeting, and for the sake of dynamic action or because of the routine, the planning and implementation processes are not inclusive enough towards members. Together with this, it is fair enough that the community organizer does not want to become an external facilitator. But to what extent should they intervene? Can they take up tasks in organizing an action or an event? Or does the independence of the membership overwrite the potential benefit of such a contribution?

Alinsky formulated the vital core of community organizing in his sentence: "Never do for others what they can do for themselves." Instead, you should have ears and the heart to understand where the other person's self-interest lies (what is the goal that is personally important for them and which would make them take action), where this self-interest intersects with the self-interest of the others, and then you can start to agitate. A community organizer is to create a platform so that at least some community members start to develop trust towards one another, and start to believe that taking action is worth it (the community organizer arouses self-interest), and start to involve others and motivate them to make the decision-maker accountable. These initiating members may become community leaders.

The practice of professionalized community organizations seems to contradict to the Alinsky principle: the community organizer delivers a lot of tasks which the membership could deliver if there was a more inclusive strategy. In the professionalized community organizations, naturally, the primary goal is to involve more and more people affected by the issue through participating in negotiations with the decision-makers, giving media interviews, and sitting in thematic committees; and to some extent, members also have a say in the decision-making process through the listening tours and at the annual membership assemblies. However, this does not mean at all that all action-related tasks are carried out by the membership, or there were no strategic decisions made without the approval of the membership on tactics or media communication, on statements or press releases. While based on the Alinsky principle, it may seem that in the ideal world of community organizing, the community organizer is not there to take up part of the action-related tasks, or it may seem as if the community should only set such goals and actions which members can deliver without having the community organizer help them out with some of the tasks.

However, community organizations in fact work along the Alinsky principle because the "Never do what others can do for themselves" does not necessarily mean that community organizers should remain external facilitators, and let community members implement the action by themselves. But it certainly should mean that, through participation, more and more people should have an opportunity to get involved in social action. Apart from this, if the organization has a professionalized, paid staff, and its operation becomes dependent on grants, this always raises the concern that the decision-making and strategic processes become a routine and this routine becomes institutionalized due to the lack of any regular community revision of organizational structure. This is true even if the membership vested the staff with the responsibility to support chapters by taking over operative tasks, knowing that this will weaken any opportunities for direct democracy and consensus-based decision-making.

The dilemma of intervention

Aside from the advantages and disadvantages of the operation of the institutionalized civil society, compliance with the Alinsky principle raises further concerns: in a nutshell, the dilemma of intervention. When group work starts, it becomes one of the first concerns for a community organizer to decide to what extent they should contribute with their own knowledge to the group talk. Where is the border line between adding new viewpoints to the group ethos and between pushing the setting of goals which members do not have enough skills, knowledge or experience to realize, and therefore it would weaken rather than strengthen members? Where is the point at which the unbalanced power relations tilt in favor of the experienced community organizer (of possibly better social status) against committed members who may have less experience in organizing?

Let's take an example. When talking to homeless people about possible solutions for the housing crisis, some of the very first answers coming up are the utilization of vacant flats and property: barracks standing vacant since the transition of the '90s should be renovated, vacant public housing should be used, opportunities should be given for people with housing problems to refurbish the flat in exchange for housing. These answers would undoubtedly result in an immediate remedy in people's lives and for the city, but still raise a lot of concerns: turning barracks into flats would bring about segregated neighborhoods, and would contribute to the expulsion of the poor from the inner city, the majority of the vacant buildings are in bad shape, and people moving into these neighborhoods could in the long run (without other supplementary measures) contribute to the exclusion of the poor. In addition to this, these solutions would not necessarily serve a systemic change even if they could become good pilot projects. Systemic changes are the extended and integrated public housing system, the housing benefit increase. And as temporary solutions, the housing poor and the homeless need more shelters for victims of domestic violence and more temporary family shelters to give the family a chance to stay together, well-operating social services and well-functioning debt management at a district level. Bread and work. And of course, it is also true that by renovating vacant flats, the decision-makers may easily pretend that they took care for the housing of the people.

This situation raises several questions for the community organizer. Let's stick to the group talk example above: to what extent can the community organizer shape the strategic direction set by the group or to what extent can they direct the way of thinking of members towards something totally new? Second of all, to what extent should the organizer take part in the implementation of the action-related tasks for the sake of the victory and group cohesion in case the group does not possess all the knowledge needed for the realization of the action? And, most of all, how can the community organizer balance out power inequalities between them and the group without taking over too much of the leading role and dismantling the status of the community leader, but still finding a way to be able to share their ideas with the group?

Let's start with the first dilemma. During community organizing those people who don't have a say in the decision-making process organize for a more equal redistribution of power and resources by democratic means. The ultimate aim is the long-term and systemic change, whereas the tactic to involve people is to build on the issues they determine for themselves, which can first be smaller, local goals. Community organizing is therefore a joint learning process. The responsibility of the outsider community organizer is to enrich the perspective of the community with new aspects, while he or she expands his or her own perspective through understanding how members of the community define their problems and what they think is possible to shape their own future. Joint learning can help weighing the pros and cons: inviting people affected by the issue (experts by experience) or "anointed" experts, elaborating questions together before the talk, discussing presentations or films in the issue, organizing internal trainings to activate the experience and knowledge of community members. In order to achieve long-term social change and a more equal redistribution of resources and the building of bridges between social classes, it should not be the aim of the community organizer to deactivate his or her own knowledge, and to deprive the community of his or her own ideas and viewpoints instead of enriching group strategy (provided he or she has ideas addressing systemic change on the issue), but he or she must integrate any smaller goals into the strategy which are set by the people affected even if they address particular issues.

The second, very frequent dilemma for a community organizer is to what extent he or she should participate in the operative tasks, in the implementation of the action: what he or she should take over (or whether he or she should take over anything at all) so that the action and the message become stronger (as a result of his or her experience and skills acquired during years of organizing demonstrations and dealing with the media). In the case of his or her active involvement, it is unavoidable that there will be people in the group who cannot properly follow what is going on and the group will not necessarily be able to reproduce the event on their own. The community organizer, however, is in charge of maintaining the energy level of the group: for this, he or she needs to provide an effective and dynamic framework for the group action and for the sake of victory, she needs to contribute to achieve the goals, and to bring tons of inspiration and perspective to the group.

The goal naturally would be that the community organization becomes self-sufficient. Therefore, we need to shape those processes which make it possible that every member can take part with some smaller or bigger tasks in group activities and to make leadership development an organic part of group life (internal training, tasks for new members, etc.). However, the principle that we should never do what others can do for themselves is not equal to facilitating from the background. Due to the myriad of tasks, the challenges of organizing actions, and the disappointment in politics, it would be difficult to maintain the energy level of the group, to strengthen its integrity, to achieve its first victories and a growing membership if the community organizer sticks to the role of an external facilitator and does not take part in the delivery of action-related tasks.

This of course raises important power dilemmas which leads us to our third question: how to deal with power inequalities. The community organizer is usually an outsider, not the member of the community (the group of people affected by the issue), he or she knows and understands the theory and practice of community organizing, and, in case he or she managed to gain the trust of the community, this outsider position can help him or her identify those members who enjoys the trust of the community and are democratic and inclusive. They are potential community leaders who can bring people together, help the community formulate the most immediate issues and mobilize for the sake of social change - with the help of the community organizer. The community organizer enters the life of the community, strengthens group cohesion, helps build the democratic decision-making processes and a democratic communication culture, helps the group find new solutions and brings in new viewpoints. And, because the community organizer is an outsider, he or she is a messenger to the other world, from which members of the community can draw on for new knowledge and values.

After trust has been built between the organizer and the community, however, it can happen that the organizer has a bigger say or represents a greater authority when making decisions than the members or community leaders (e.g., in case of vacant buildings, when saying that the vacant building issue should not explicitly be included in the policy recommendations because it can be misleading and contra-productive in the long run). It would be naive to think that inherent inequalities in the cooperation of an organizer and a community can be solved only by consensus-based decision-making and democratic communication mechanisms. We have to be conscious of these power inequalities originated in our social status, gender, ethnicity, and we have to find out newer and newer mechanisms in order to even these out as much as possible, and transform into something nourishing instead of something oppressive. The task of the community organizer is therefore to activate the knowledge of the community about their society: to formulate questions which bring forward new viewpoints based on the experience of the members and which, therefore, the community organizer does not have access to (e.g., in case of vacant buildings: why is this topic so self-evident when talking about housing problems with people affected by the issue? why don't people come up with the idea of subsidized housing instead? how can this issue inspire people with housing problems to get involved? what policy recommendations can be made? is the renovation of a dilapidated flat with the participation of skilled or unskilled realistic? what help would the new resident need to be able to finance their new housing? etc.)

The "checks and balances" are significant in community organizing, too. A community organizer needs to fulfill a lot of roles in a group which has just been established (he or she needs to take care of group dynamics and communication, creating the group ethos (system of principles and attitudes)), where roles have not yet been solidified, where principles are still not compact, or there may be oppression among members, where the internal communication culture has not yet been established. For me, therefore, it seems more effective and fruitful when two or three community organizers work in one group, supporting and controlling one another, making it more fluid to bring in new energy and new viewpoints, and making the above mentioned power dilemmas more controllable.

The "Never do what others can do for themselves" principle therefore does not necessarily mean that community organizers should facilitate from the background, but it wants to say that everybody should take up tasks and roles according to their skills, including the community organizer after considering the above mentioned dilemmas, so that everybody becomes responsible for victories or failures.

The way how professionalized non-profit community organizations operate justifies this task-sharing direction. In their case, however, it is a disadvantage that the efficiency of how these tasks are shared between chapters and the staff (namely, which set of tasks and responsibilities are delegated to the staff and decided at a staff meeting) is usually not questioned and revised on a regular basis by the community and there is no regular confirmation of the organizational structure by a community decision.

Read it in Hungarian.
An extended version of the article was published in a Hungarian community development periodical, Parola (2012/4).

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.

Read it in Hungarian.

American homeless folks in action – a close-up of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless

At the end of the lobby day in Springfield, April 2012

In April 2012, I spent three weeks with the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless (CCH) as part of a professional development program. CCH organizes and advocates to prevent and end homelessness in Illinois, USA.

The coalition was established in 1980 by service providers and charities. The organization since then has pushed for several legislative proposals, making an impact on policy-making around housing and homelessness. To put significant pressure on the decision-makers, CCH, in cooperation with shelters, mobilizes homeless people, and builds the base of their allies. Proposals for legislative changes and ordinances, put forward by CCH, are thus justified in a way by participating homeless people, or, if you like, the organization looks for legal solutions for the demands formulated by homeless people.

The main recipe for the elimination and the prevention of homelessness is just the same in Chicago as in Budapest: folks need sufficient affordable housing. For this reason, CCH, in cooperation with other civil society organizations, reviewed Chicago’s budget and identified potential funding streams to dedicate for affordable housing. From a variety of funding sources, the so-called tax increment financing (TIF) proved to be the best proposal. TIF is a public financing method that utilizes increased tax income for subsidizing community improvement projects. Infrastructural investments result in an increase in the value of the real estate in the neighborhood, which generates additional revenues for the city government. Based on the directives of TIF, this revenue increase should be spent on redevelopment or infrastructure projects, e.g., affordable housing. CCH research showed that the city spends only four percent of its annual TIF fund on affordable housing, whereas wealthy corporations snatch the subsidies and use it to rehabilitate their offices in the downtown area. This contradicts the original purposes of TIF as this funding stream should be spent on the rehabilitation of underdeveloped neighborhoods.

Based on the results of the CCH research, the Sweet Home Chicago campaign began in 2009. A coalition of 11 organizations was formed and demanded that 20 percent of the TIF funds (almost $100 million) be allocated to affordable housing. The coalition also revealed the profits of the corporations which benefit from the TIF, and their chief officers’ high salaries. The campaign resulted in an ordinance which the city council enacted in 2011: developers of vacant multi-unit rental housing (which can be vacant due to foreclosures) can apply for TIF funds for 30 to 50 percent of the purchase/rehabilitation costs. To meet these requirements, developers must rent 30 to 50 percent of units to low-income households (in 2011, annual income of no more than $37,700 for a family of four – in comparison, in 2011, the poverty guideline was a total yearly income of $22,350 for a family of four). As a result of this, gentrification can be slowed down for a while, i.e., housing can remain affordable for low-income people in neighborhoods where infrastructural development results in an increase in the value of the real estate.

CCH also campaigns against state budget cuts to housing programs and to services for homeless people. CCH, as a member of the Responsible Budget Coalition of 270 organizations, managed to prevent cuts on emergency shelters and transitional housing. At the Illinois General Assembly, more than 100 homeless people demonstrated against the planned 52 per cent budget cut. The General Assembly, however, is planning a 52 per cent budget cut again this year (2012), so a couple of weeks earlier the group protested again in Springfield, in the capital of Illinois.

The organization, furthermore, provides homeless and unaccompanied youth with legal aid, advocates for the decriminalization of prostitutes, promotes the re-entry of ex-felons, supports policies and programs supporting homeless youth, and pushes for the increase in living wage and job creation. In 2010, the Put Illinois to Work campaign resulted in more than 27,300 jobs by using federal stimulus funds. When CCH recognized that the State of Illinois does not have a concrete program on how to use major part of the $300 million, the organization submitted a plan for a subsidized employment program of homeless people. The plan was finally accepted by the governor, and the employment program was implemented by a professional company.

Homeless people take an active part in the operation of CCH. Formerly homeless people, former felons or survivors of prostitution sit on the board or planning committees, or are employed as staff members. CCH, in cooperation with shelters, mobilizes homeless people, who participate in their demonstrations. In cooperation with social workers (but not necessarily with their participation) community organizers hold regular programs in shelters and recruit supporters for their campaigns. The organization regularly holds a writing workshop (Horizons Creative Writing Outreach) where participants discuss pieces of literature or write their own pieces. In the framework of the Speakers Bureau, homeless folks tell people their stories, and thus support with their own experiences what is on the agenda of the organization. Members of the Speakers Bureau visit schools, universities, religious and civic groups, and builds the outer base of allies. As a result of the speakers, seven chapters have been established in different universities and colleges in support of homeless people.

Read it in Hungarian.