COMM-ORG Papers 2006

Community Organizing: Past, Present

And Future
Cheryl Honey
wecare@familynetwork.org

Contents
Introduction
Politics and Economics of The Social Service Industry
Factors Impacting Participatory Democracy
Conditions that Spark Community Organizing Movements
The Historical Context of Neighborhood Organizing Movements
New Organizing Approaches
Conclusion
References
About the Author

Introduction
There is no small coincidence that a group uniting for a common cause
achieved their dream of democracy in America and gained freedom and
independence from totalitarian rule by using community organizing tactics.
The American Revolution served as a template for community organizers like
Saul Alinsky to adapt strategies for their organizing initiatives. The irony is the
conditions that precipitated the creation of democracy are now the root causes
of community organizing efforts in America today as citizens’ struggle for
freedom and independence to restore social and economic justice, create
sustainable communities and live healthier and happier lives. Will history
repeat itself with another American Revolution?

Citizen initiatives are a process of self-determination, in which ordinary people

engage in activities to better their lives and their communities. (McKnight,
1995 p. 156). This paper explores the political and economic conditions that
have spawned community organizing initiatives over the past century. Due to
 the vast number of organizing efforts that span this period of our history for
good and just causes, the scope of this paper is narrowed down to three
community organizing initiatives that represent the past, present and future:
The Back of the Yards (Alinsky); Asset-Based Community Development
(ABCD); and the Family Support Network (FSN). Each of these organizing
efforts utilized different tactics and strategies to engage citizens to better their
lives. To enrich understanding of the history of community organizing and
future implications, this paper details the paradigm shifts and the ideological
underpinnings of past, present and future community organizing initiatives.

The techniques used by the well-known community organizer, Saul Alinsky,

forged a path for many organizers. John Mcknight, the co-founder of Asset-
Based Community Development, is one of Alinsky’s successors and is forging
a new path in the field of community organizing. As an activist and professor
at Northwestern University in Chicago, McKnight studied Alinsky’s organizing
practices and made a startling discovery. By shifting the focus from taking
back power, which was at the crux of Alinsky’s tactics, to focusing on the
strengths and assets that already exist, then people would realize their power
within. Herein lies the impetus for people to exercise their power from within to
create the changes they seek to better their lives and strengthen their
community. This notion has led to shift in community organizing paradigms
from taking back power, which indicates a lack of power that must be
compensated for by taking from a source outside of the self; to realizing the
existence of power within to affect change. McKnight and his colleague Jody
Kretzman (1994) confirmed their notion in a quantititative study they did in the
late 1980’s by collecting stories and publishing their findings in a guide for
community organizing called, Building Communities from the Inside Out .

At the same time ABCD was being unveiled in Chicago, I was a welfare
mother in Washington State who got fed up with the treatment and limited
resources of the social service system. As a way to create a support system in
my neighborhood and improve availability and accessibility of resources to
enable people to help themselves, I organized a group of neighbors into a
Family Support Network (FSN). The ideology of this loose knit group was that
people had the power to improve their quality of life when they functioned
within a system of support with people who shared common values. As the
size of the group grew, it increased individual and group capacity, as well as
the capacity of the whole community by being a valuable resource. I was
surprised when McKnight referenced the FSN for its capacity building
practices in the Guide to Capacity Building. (a.k.a. Blue Book) (McKnight and
Kretzman, 1996 p.23)

Politics and Economics of the Social Service Industry

In John McKnight’s (1995), book, The Careless Society: Community and it’s
Counterfeits, he indicates capitalists in this country have fostered a reliance on
professionals and institutions by creating the illusion of a system of “care” to
meet the “needs” of citizens as consumers to grow a service economy in
America. Mcknight believes communities have been invaded and colonized by
professionalized services which have disempowered citizens and interfered
with ways people can engage with one another. Because the gross national
product is the sum of the goods and services produced each year, many
policy experts have come to believe that our economy increasingly depends
on the “services” that are produced by institutions and “consumed” by the
people. (p. 162). He emphasizes this point by referencing “a 1984 study by the
Community Services Society of New York who found that approximately
$7,000 per capita of public and private money is specifically allocated to the
low- income population of that city. Thus, a family of four would be eligible on
a per capita basis for $28,000, which placed them in the moderate-income
category. However, only 37 percent of this money actually reached low-
income people in cash income. Nearly two-thirds is consumed by those who
service the poor.” (p. 164).

Rashi Glazer, Ph.D., a UC Berkeley business professor, agrees with

McKnight. Robert Roth (1998) recounts a conversation he had with Glazer in
his book, The Natural Law Party: A reason to Vote. Glazer doesn’t put too
much faith in the two party system because he claims the policies they
promote don’t work.

“They’re kind of phony solutions. Most money is spent on bandaging up

problems that already exist, rather than solving or preventing them. But worse
than that, many positions are anti-ecological – they have toxic by-products –
and I don’t mean just environmental, but also social, economic and political.
They create another problem, which then demands another solution, which
then creates another problem. So many products exist that are designed to
clean up other problems created by someone else. Health care is an obvious
example. So many health care products and services lead to other problems,
which then create a demand for new products and services. It’s a vicious cycle
that doesn’t end.”

Another point Glazer makes that Roth (1998) references is “Entire industries
are devoted to helping people overcome something that shouldn’t exist in the
first place. It’s an enormous waste of knowledge and intelligence.”

Overwhelmed by these social services, citizens have lost their sense of social
responsibility to care about their neighbors in their neighborhoods and this has
led to the fragmentation of communities, the collapse of families, schools
failing, violence spreading, and medical systems spiraling out of control.
Instead of more or better services, McKnight (1995) contends the basis for
resolving social problems is contained within the community of the local
citizens. This principle is the core of Asset-Based Community Development
and demonstrated by practices of the Family Support Network.
 Fewer citizens are engaging in participatory democracy activities because
they are too tired and too busy with their own lives to be aware of the political
economic conditions that are impacting their lives and communities. The irony
is the political economic conditions of our society is the reason why people are
simply too tired and too busy to get involved. (McKnight, 1995)

Factors Impacting Participatory Democracy

Local citizens engaging in the political and economic affairs of their
communities was what intrigued Alexis de Tocqueville, the French Count, on
his visit to the United States in 1831. He observed that groups of common
citizens who formed associations to solve their own problems. What
Tocqueville found so interesting was: 1) these groups had the power to decide
what was a problem; 2) they had the power to decide how they wanted to
solve the problem; and 3) they had the power to choose whether or not they
participated in the solution. From Tocqueville’s perspective, these citizen
associations were the foundation of American communities (McKnight, 1995 p.
117).

Alinsky organized people to take back their bargaining power to choose what
they wanted to improve in thier communities. This indicates that somewhere
along the line, the role of citizens in the democratic process was usurped
between the time of Tocqueville’s visit and the neighborhood organizing
movement that began in the late 1800’s.

An attitude about the citizen’s role in political democracy was prevailing

among the capitalists and social elite between Tocqueville and ALinsky..
Mattsen (1998) references social theorist Joseph Schumpeter who wrote in his
classic book, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942) that “politicians
and administrators – not regular citizens - should be central actors in a political
democracy.” Schumpeter believed the role of citizen was to choose from a
marketplace of political candidates during occasional elections. Many citizens
rebelled against these ideas and felt they were being coerced into accepting
this new form democracy that restricted them to a two party choice. Fifty years
later Peter Bachrach and Aryeh Botwinick (1992) remind us that, “Participation
cannot be delegated and it cannot be institutionalized. It can only be
personally undertaken – and enacted and reenacted.” It is disturbing to think
that Schumpeter’s notion is being realized in this new millennium. What is
even more disconcerting is after the 2000 election and the exclusion of third
party participation in debates, I believe democracy is due for a major overhaul.

Mike Thompson, a Harvard political science professor, feels the same way I
do. “The democratic system innovated by our founders no longer operates
effectively. The two party stronghold on our democracy – something not even
implied in the constitution – has dangerously weakened the separation of
powers. Almost all the people who now make up the legislative, executive, and
 judicial branches of out government are either Democrats or Republicans. If
they are on the same side of an issue, such as access to the election process,
then the separation of powers has broken down and no longer serves the
public interest. And our elected leaders can’t effectively represent the people.”
When conducting research Thompson found, “a member of Congress in the
late seventeen hundreds represented ten thousand and fifteen people. Today
that same office ‘represents’ six hundred thousand people.” (Roth, 1995
p.139).

Conditions that Spark Community Organizing

Movements
Social and economic injustices that directly impact the lives of families and
communities give rise to community organizing movements. The organizers,
residents, local conditions, and many other factors at the grassroots level
combine to forge diverse organizing experiences. But while neighborhood
based projects do have a significant origin, nature, and existence of their own
at the local level, they are also the products of national and even international
political and economic developments. To no small degree, the larger political-
economic context often determines the general tenor and success of local
efforts.

The national political economy affects community organizing in surprising

ways. Many incorrectly assume, for example, that radical organizing occurs
and thrives only during periods of national economic depression, or that
conservative neighborhood maintenance groups form and succeed only in
periods of national affluence. While such a theory appears accurate for the
1930s, a similar movement developed in the 1960s and 1970s during a period
of economic growth. The late 1970s and 1980s was a period of economic
decline, on the other hand, and yielded a conservative response.

Nevertheless, specific conditions at the national and local levels determine the
approaches different groups use to restore social and economic justice.
Usually external pressure on traditional communities and a breakdown of the
routines of daily life trigger citizens to engage in activities to bring about
changes to better their lives. Disturbances in the larger political economy
create the momentum in which the powerless move the mass political
insurgency.

Midgley, (1986) a social work academician, points out central to the rationale
of community participation is “a reaction against the centralization,
bureaucratization, rigidity, and remoteness of the state. The ideology of
community participation is sustained by the belief that the power of the state
has extended too far, diminishing the freedom of ordinary people and their
rights to control their own affairs.”
The Historical Context of Neighborhood Organizing
Movements
Thomas Jefferson recommended that wards be established where groups of
citizens could gather and practice democracy in their communities. (Mattson,
1998 p. ). Neighborhood organizing efforts in the past mobilized citizens in
neighborhood around their individual needs.

Robert Fisher (1994) describes the history of neighborhood organizing

movements in his book, Let the People Decide: Neighborhood Organizing in
America and describes how social developments are part of a total economic
and political system – a political economy - in which all strands of life, from the
national to the local level, intertwine. History is full of examples of how
government and corporate interests conspire to stimulate economic growth or
economic recovery through injustices that impact the every day lives of
ordinary citizens. Social inequities make way for organizing efforts in the
workplace and neighborhoods and lead to social uprisings to restore justice.
Fisher (1994) quotes Dowd’s (1974) historical recount of neighborhood
organizing.

“The first neighborhood organization movement must be seen as one trend in

the national liberation reform movement called progressivism. Progressivism
grew out of the industrial relations of the years 1870 to 1895, a period
characterized by fierce and unbridled competition among, as well as, between
capitalists, on the one hand, and workers and farmers, on the other, over who
would control and benefit from industrialization. The decade from 1895 to
1905 was a watershed in the transition from the industrial capitalism of 1870-
95 to the finance capitalism and liberal reforms of the generation that followed.
Around 1895 bankers like J. P. Morgan of Morgan Guaranty and Trust
purchased controlling interest in corporations as diverse as the newly formed
U.S. Steel and General Electric from industrial capitalists like Andrew
Carnegie and Thomas Edison. Control of key industries began to be
consolidated among an elite group of financiers. The period 1895-1905, for
example, saw the merger of some 300 separate firms each year into highly
centralized and powerful industrial conglomerates. As economic power
became more centralized, many corporate leaders concluded that the social
order, too, should be stabilized by engineering democracy through private and
public social engineering." (Dowd, 1974)

Neighborhood organizing, community organizing, community building and

community development are all aspects of social movements. In the early
twentieth century, social democratic movements that arose in the U.S. were in
response to the excesses of industrial capitalism. Saul Alinsky paved the way
in this era neighborhood organizing. The locus of organizing was the industrial
factory. By organizing unions around class issues and provided the working-
 class a vision for the future. They targeted employers, the owners of
production companies, and leveraged changes in public policies. Alinsky
mobilized workers through his neighborhood organizing method of sending in
an organizer (a.k.a. catalyst) who taught citizens the skills to initiate action on
their own behalf, then left to organize in another neighborhood.

Alinsky believed people organize solely for their own economic self-interests.
Similarly, neighborhood improvement associations are rooted in maintaining
property values, and liberal social reform of social services. Such material
incentives are important, but they are not the glue that keeps neighborhood
organizing efforts together. Victories are crucial; people seeing themselves
and their power differently in their activities. In order to sustain long-range
objectives, neighborhood organizing must be built around issues of personal
development and an ideology that articulates a sense of purpose extending
beyond individual advantage. It must be committed to developing knowledge,
dignity, and self-confidence of community residents. And these people must
see themselves as part of a larger cause. A focus on unity instructs that
oppressed people must build relationships with other oppressed people. In
doing so efforts affirm variety and diversity while working “to synthesize and
build unity that transcends diversity.” (Fisher, 1994 p. 228)

Alinsky’s style of organizing falls into the category of neighborhood organizing.

Solidarity movements and factions in neighborhoods and in factories are
organized around a cause and demands. This approach trains citizens as
radical activists and organizers on how to leverage power for their self-
interests. Alinsky organized the Back of the Yards project during the
depression for worker’s rights and improvement of living conditions in “the
Jungle” in Chicago.

New Organizing Approaches

As issues arose over democratic participation, personal liberties, civil rights
and quality of life, a new insurgence of grassroots associations and organizing
approaches began in the 1950s. It wasn’t until the 1980s that community
based efforts began addressing issues impacting whole communities,
constituency or identity oriented groups, and focused on self-help strategies.

The social movements of the 1980’s have a vision of participatory democracy.

They reject authoritarianism: in the government, leadership, party,
organization and relationships (Amin, 1986). Class becomes part of - not the
identify of the group (Brecher and Costello, 1990). The organizational form is
smaller, looser and taps local knowledge and resources, to respond to
problems rapidly and creatively, and to maintain the flexibility needed in
changing circumstances (McKnight and Kretzman, 1984).
Another aspect of the more recent social movements is their community
building aspect. The term community building in this context refers to the
creating and strengthening of social bonds among group members.
Community building approaches are based in self-help and empowerment
principles and the most effective efforts go beyond building community to
targeting the public sector. Most community-based organizing seeks
independence from the state rather than state power. They rely on a unitary
conception of democracy within the community and de-emphasizes
adversarial democracy, which challenges national, state and local politics and
presupposes conflicting of interests. Community building is a natural focus of
new social movement efforts, reflecting the anti-statist, decentralization trends
of the postindustrial political economy.

Mary Weil, author of “Women, Community, and Organizing,” suggests

consciousness raising and praxis give people the opportunity to “reflect on, re-
experience, identify, and analyze the social stereotypes and environmental
forces that have impeded their development” and help build both individual
and collective strength. To make the personal political, which means being
sensitive to the ways that “systemic factors result in problematic personal
conditions” and recognizing that how people choose to live etheir daily lives is
political as well. Community organizing emphasizes and works for structural
change – to eliminate racism, sexism, homophobia, classism and other forms
of oppression (Fisher, 1994). A vision of noncapitalist transformation has to be
articulated in a broad ideology that addresses the causes of poverty and
powerlessness, as well be attentive to such American ideals as equality, self-
help, local self-reliance, participatory democracy, group solidarity, cultural
pluralism, and grassroots insurgency (p. 229).

Asset-Based Community Development is a community development approach

and is based on a paradigm of organizing different from Alinsky’s. ABCD is
broad in scope, solution-based and community driven. The ideology behind
ABCD is communities can drive their own development process themselves
by identifying and mobilizing existing (but often unrecognized) assets, thereby
responding to and creating local economic opportunity. Such unrealized
resources include not only personal attributes and skills, but also the
relationships among people that fuel local associations and informal networks.
Mobilizing such social assets through training and asset mapping, activate
more formal institutional resources such as government, formal community-
based organizations, and private enterprise. In this way, the community
development process is sustained and scaled up, while continuing to
recognize local associations as the driving force – the vehicles through which
all the community’s assets can be identified and then connected to one
another in ways that multiply their power and effectiveness.

The principles of the Family Support Network are rooted in community

building. and share the philosophy of ABCD in that individuals and their
 relationships are assets. The ideology behind the FSN is rooted in people
helping people and empowerment where individuals take the initiative to help
themselves and others to get their needs met and improve their quality of life.
The methodology is based on social support, self-organizing and emergence
theories. FSN provides people with a common purpose “To Save Our
Children’s Future” and empowers individuals to create their own systems of
support and grow social capital by providing easy access to resources, skill-
building and recreational opportunities. The capacity of the group is expanded
through association ties to other FSN groups that form in neighborhood,
institution, business or broad-based community settings. Formal systems are
an integral part of the FSN methodology.

Conclusion
All three community organizing approaches, Alinsky, ABCD and FSN, provide
a framework to engage citizens in activities that empower people to help
themselves. Unlike Alinsky’s confrontational techniques to take power from
those in authority, ABCD and the FSN approaches view power as an
outgrowth of the organizing effort, rather than something they “need” or “lack.”

The dramatic changes in the political, economic, and institutional context over
the past two decades has impacted community organizing practices.
Communities are struggling for survival and stretching their assets to
unsustainable levels. According to Robinson (1995) there is an emergence of
aspirations towards a new social order in which community is based on “face-
to-face association in caring neighborhoods which retain individual liberty to
act, open access to knowledge, and global interconnections” (p. 22) that
sustain specialized small scale enterprise.

The organizing ideology for our times must combine new demands for
autonomy and identify with older ones for social justice, production for human
needs rather than profit, and a spirit of connectedness and solidarity rather
than competition.

The basis for such an ideology can be found in the themes of ABCD and FSN.
Feminist theory instructs the need to build relationships, make connections,
and accept responsibility – connecting the public and private, challenging
patriarchal and hierarchical forms of domination, and recognizing the
importance of solidarity across differences of class, ethnicity, race, religion,
and sexual orientation.

Day to day organizing, if it is to move beyond the received wisdom of

traditional values and cultures, must be informed by this sort of challenging
politics and feel the tensions of the intellectual discourse of our era. Individual
freedom cannot be achieved without sustaining and nurturing connections to
the greater whole, be it humanity, nature or the planet. Robert Fisher (1994)
believes local organizing efforts must include not only a critique of global
corporate capitalism but a demand for a responsible public, from the
grassroots to the state apparatus. (p. 232) The Family Support Network is an
innovative social architecture that manifests a more responsible and
responsive public that increases social capital by growing social networks and
strengthening relationships that improve quality of life of community members.
The FSN methodology instigates a paradigm shift in service delivery systems
by creating a resource pool of trained volunteers who self-organize into an
integrated system of support that formal agencies tap to increase their
capacity to empower clients toward self-sufficiency. By engaging citizens in
community service in this manner, formal service delivery is augmented with
an informal system of care that is self-sustaining.

“Ironically, global capitalism destroys community at the same time it forces

people back into it as their primary source of defense. Such structural
contradictions mobilize opposition and lead, in the short run, to social disorder,
spontaneous rebellion, and grassroots organizing around a wide array of
issues and concerns. The task for community organizing is to tie people’s
understanding of their grievances to an analysis that expands as well as
addresses the problems affecting their lives and communities. The challenges
that lie ahead are immense when taking the problems we face to the global
scale. A consciously ideological, grassroots leadership committed to opposing
the privatization of life and to building larger organizational forms is essential.”
(Fisher, 1994 p. 232)

ABCD has created the gateway through which new initiatives are emerging.
The FSN is a mechanism that creates a new social order and orients people to
becoming an integral part of an informal system of care. Alinsky's approach
will be useful in leveraging systemic changes in service delivery approaches
and cooperation from formal institutions. These broad scale initiatives will
assuredly be met with resistance as consumption of social services declines.
Confusing as this may seem to those who feel entitled, institutions will slowly
give over the duties and communities will regain the right to take care of their
own. We must start now to train people on how to care for themselves and
one another. The Family Support Network is one of many new structures
being designed to make this America’s new reality and put democracy back
into the hands of the people. Jacob Needham (2002) points out in his book,
The American Soul, Rediscovering the Wisdom of the Founders, “The hope of
the democracy we know is that it allows – and, to a certain extent, calls us all
toward – the life of conscience, of respect for one’s neighbor, that is rooted in
the teachings of wisdom about the actual and potential selfhood of humanity
(p. 19).

At the core of all initiatives no matter how altruistic they seem, Saul Alinsky left
behind these words of wisdom, “The more power the neighborhood
organization secures, the better it serves the interest of its members. It is self-
 interest rather than exalted ideals that motivate people to act." (Fisher, 1994 p.
54).

References
Amin, Samir. (1986), “The Social Movements in the Periphery,” Transforming
the Revolution.

Brecher, J. and Costello, T. (1990). Building Bridges: The Emerging

Grassroots Coalition of Labor and Community. Monthly Review Press

Dowd, D. (1974). The Twisted Dream: Capitalist Development in the United

States. Cambridge-Wintrop Publishers.

Fisher, Robert. (1994). Let the People Decide: Neighborhood Organizing in

America, Updated ed. New York. McMillan Publishing

Foster, Megan. (2000), New & Evolving Ideas: Situating Asset-Based

Community Development in the International Development Context, Coady
International Institute, St. Francis Xavier University.

Kretzman, J. & McKnight, J. (1993). Building communities from the inside out.
Chicago . IL: ACTA Publications.

Mattsen, K. (1998). Creating a Democratic Public: The Struggle for Urban

Participatory Democracy During the Progressive Era. University Park, PA:
Pennsylvania State University Press.

McKnight, J. and Kretzman, J. (1996), Guide to Capacity Building, Chicago. IL:

ACTA Publications.

McKnight, J. (1995). The Careless Society: Community and it’s Counterfeits.

NY. BasicBooks.

McKnight, J. and Kretzman, J. (1984) Community Organizing in the 80’s:

Toward a Post-Alinsky Agenda, Social Policy, Winter, 14:17

Midgley, James. (1986). Community Participation, Social Development and

the State. London , Methuen.

Needleman, J. (2002). The American Soul: Rediscovering the Wisdom of the

Founders, New York : Tarcher/Putnam.

Robinson, M. (1995). “Towards a New Paradigm of Community Development.”

Community Development Journal, 30:1, pp.21-30.
 Roth, Robert. (1998). The Natural Law Party: A Reason to Vote. New York,
Martin Press.

Wallis, Allan, (1998). Social Capital and Community Building. (Building

Healthier Communities: Ten Years of Learning) (part 2), National Civic
Review, Winter, v87 i4 p317(2)

Weil, M. Women, Community and Organizing, excerpt from Fisher, R. (1994),

Let the People Decide, Neighborhood Organizing in America.

About the Author

Cheryl Honey, (cheryl@communityweaving.com) Certified Prevention
Specialist and President, Excel Strategies, Inc. She founded the Family
Support Network, International (FSNI), in 1993 and has been a volunteer with
the organization since it's inception. Community Weaving practices emerged
out of her grassroots experience growing the FSN across the country. She
received recognition from the Asset-Based Community Development Institute
and the Institute for Civil Society for her innovative approach to building
individual and community capacity. Cheryl graduated from Antioch University-
Seattle in Transformative Community Building and Human Services. She is a
Daily Points of Light Honoree; the recipient of the Giraffe Award; and
Ambassador for Peace and Excellence in Leadership Awards from the
International and Interreligious Federation for World Peace. She trains
Community Weavers around the world who grow Family Support Networks at
all levels of community. Cheryl is a keynote speaker, lecturer and writer. She
is currently working on her new book: Saving Our Children's Future.

[this is a draft, some of it may be wrong]

Power or Programs? Two Paths to Community Development(*)

Randy Stoecker

rstoecker@wisc.edu

March 2001

Keynote Address Delivered to the International Association for Community

Development Conference, Rotorua, New Zealand, 2001
 ABSTRACT

There are two basic approaches to community development. The power

approach emphasizes poor communities organizing themselves and using
confrontational strategies to demand the removal of barriers and biases so
they can receive the same opportunities as more affluent communities. The
programs approach emphasizes poor communities cooperating with resource
providers such as government or corporations to develop programs focused
on helping individuals in poor communities. These two approaches are rooted
in two different theories of society. The power approach sees society as
divided between haves and have nots, requiring the have nots to organize
their people power to counter the greater political economic power of the
haves . The programs approach emphasizes the common interests of all
people. Among the former British settler colonies--Canada, the United States,
Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand--the United States stands out as having
a much stronger history of power-based community development, called
community organizing. In contrast, Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, and
Canada have historically had much stronger government and much more of a
programs approach to community development. But the present and future
holds questions. Are the two approaches both necessary for successful
community development? Are they necessary in the same ways across
nations? Have the Australian, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and Canadian
governments come to look more like the United States government-leaner and
meaner? If so, does that mean people across those nations will need to shift
to more of a power-based community development model?

INTRODUCTION

Kia ora.

I feel deeply humbled to be invited here to Aotearoa/New Zealand, and

especially to this space, which I am still only beginning to understand the
significance of. I have learned much during the last few days--just enough to
realize how little I know.

So what I'd like to offer today is what I think I know based on my experience
with social action groups in the United States, what I suspect based on my
more recent experience with Australia and Canada, and what I wonder based
on my very recent experience in Aotearoa/New Zealand. My focus, then is the
former British settler colonies--those colonies designed to populate far away
places with European settlers.1 In the context of these four nations--Australia,
Canada, Aotearoa/Aotearoa/New Zealand, and the United States--I want to
discuss two paths to community development.
And perhaps it is because of where I come from that I want to talk today about
two paths to community development. These two paths are much more
clearly separated in the United States than in the rest of the former British
empire, but as Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand have all gone
through their version of government self-destruction, the circumstances that
led to the separation in the United States are increasingly apparent for you
also. At the same time, the United States has always been different.
Consequently, parts of what I say may seem irrelevant, or disconnected form
your experience. Because I come from the place that is different, please
understand that I do not wish anything I say to be taken as truth. Only as
perspective.

What are these two paths? In the United States we call them community
development and community organizing. Community development, quite
differently from how most of you use the word, is defined as nonprofit
organizations called community development corporations -- CDCs -- doing
physical development of impoverished communities. CDCs are supposed to
be "community-based," having some connection with the residents who live
there. They are also expected to do "comprehensive development," creating
jobs, housing, safety and other changes (though most emphasize housing).
And they are supposed to accomplish all this within the existing political
economic system (Stoecker, 1997). This is the programs approach.

Community organizing, the second path, works in local settings to empower

individuals, build relationships and organizations, and create action for social
change. It is often confrontational, involving protest and even disruption
(Beckwith & Lopez, 1997, Bobo, Kendall & Max, 1991, Kahn, 1991; Alinsky,
1969; 1971). Community organizers have historically focused on building
localized social movements in places as small as a single neighborhood.
Consequently, the bulk of community organizing occurs "backstage"
(Goffman, 1959), building relationships and networks in the quasi-private
setting of the neighborhood community (Stall and Stoecker, 1998) that can
create a larger social movement. This is the power approach.

Community organizing has a much longer history than community

development, dating from at least the early 20th century (Stall and Stoecker,
1998), and some might even say the revolutionary war. The most well-known
influence was Saul Alinsky (1969; 1971) who, in the 1930s, created a
community organizing model in Chicago's Back of the Yards neighborhood
that was rowdy, bawdy, and confrontational (Finks, 1984). The Civil Rights
Movement is the other crucial source of community organizing, though its
influence on community organizing practice has been as profound as Alinsky's
but has been historically neglected. The accepted founding event of the
movement, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was coordinated through local
African American networks and organizations and created a model that would
be used in locality-based actions throughout the south (Morris, 1984). Out of
these efforts grew the Welfare Rights Movement (Piven and Cloward, 1979)
and eventually the famous Association of Community Organizations for
Reform Now (ACORN) (Delgado, 1986; Russell, 2000).

But in the 1980s, community development ascended onto the stage, with
growth mushrooming from the hundreds into the thousands. But then
increasingly vocal critics of the CDC model pointed out how CDCs often failed
at projects that left their host neighborhoods in as bad or worse shape than
when they started; folded under funding shortages that allow elites to both
prevent real redevelopment and blame CDCs for failure; or disrupted
neighborhood empowerment by purporting to speak on behalf of a community
who they barely know (and who barely knows them) (Stoecker, 1994; 1997).
These critics led a call to bring back community organizing.

Today, community organizing is experiencing a resurgence in the United

States, with an explosion of small efforts and the growth of better-publicized
efforts by the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) (Tresser, 1999), by ACORN
(1999) and the New Party (1997) in their Living Wage efforts, and by many
other groups and networks (COMM-ORG, 2001) including the rapidly
expanding National Organizers Alliance (2001) which is supporting and
connecting independent and network organizers across North America.

Now, historically, there seems to be much less separation between community

organizing and community development in Australia, Canada, and it appears
Aotearoa/New Zealand (which I am only beginning to know). There also
seems to be much less historical separation between government and the
community sector than in the United States. Why?

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT ACROSS THE SETTLER COLONIES

In order to understand U.S. exceptionalism, we need to remember our

different histories.

Most importantly, the United States, in contrast to all the other British settler
colonies, was borne of war against the Empire. It was a country formed in
opposition to government, taxes and rules. And we have remained that way,
so much so that a terms has been coined for us, "normative anti-statism"
(Joppke, 1992). While the rest of the industralized world created national
health care, social housing, and a managed economy, we kept finding ways to
prevent government involvement in anything but prison-construction. With
such a weakened federal government, an anti-government culture, and so
many hungry, sick, and homeless people, we needed a different "solution,"
inadequate as it might be. And, in fact, we came up with two.

The first solution supported the "government-do-more" philosophy to an

extent. This was the community organizing approach. Through protest,
confrontation, and other similar tactics people brought themselves together to
demand that government enforce rights, redress wrongs, and provide for
those who were historically left out. The two most famous periods of
community organizing in U.S. history were during the 1930s--which produced
the famous Saul Alinsky--and the 1960s--which saw the rise of the African
American Civil Rights Movement.

The second solution, which really came of age during the 1980s, supported
the "government-do-less" philosophy, though perhaps unwittingly. This was
the community development approach. Through finding their own financing
and their own contractors, poor communities were supposed to build their own
affordable housing, create their own jobs, and develop their own community
networks. It's important to understand, however, while this plays into the
hands of the right wing, it is not a right-wing approach. Indeed, even the
community organizing approach, while focusing on getting government to do
more, treats government as only ever a potential and temporary ally.

Now contrast this to the histories of the other former British settler colonies.
And this is not to deny the important differences between Australia,
Aotearoa/New Zealand, and Canada, but to show their similarities relative to
the United States. Still technically considered constitutional monarchies,
separation from the British empire is gradual and peaceful. And all have a
history, up until at least the mid-1980s, of strong government with heavy
involvement in providing social goods. Government housing, nationalized
utilities and transportation, national health care, were common to all. And in
contrast to the United States, which created a Bill of Rights in 1791 as one of
its first orders of business when it was founded, Canada only got their Charter
of Rights and Freedoms in 1982, Aotearoa/New Zealand just in 1990, and
Australia as far as I know is still waiting. It has taken 200 years or more for
your distrust of government to drop to original U.S. levels.

For Aotearoa/New Zealand, Canada, and Australia, the historical strength of

government and, relatively speaking, people's trust in government, is in stark
contrast to the United States and has had important consequences for the
practice of community development.

First, community development is as often practiced through government rather

than against it. Indeed, in many cases the major agents in community
development are on the government payroll (see Resource Renewal Institute,
2000). In the United States, the overwhelming degree of community
development and community organizing occur through private non-profit non-
governmental organizations.2 In addition, there is a highly developed
infrastructure of philanthropic foundations that also provide much of the
funding for these efforts.
 Second, there is much less separation between community organizing,
community development, and social work in Canada, Aotearoa/New Zealand,
and Australia compared to the United States. Though things are beginning to
change, U.S. social work since WWII has devolved into an individual treatment
model. But in the other three nations community development commonly
refers to all three activities: individual, community, and physical development.
Witness this statement from the Aotearoa/New Zealand Community Advisory
Service of Internal Affairs (n.d.), still being used:

"Community development is
Concerned with change and growth within communities, with giving people more power
over the changes that are taking place around them, the policies which affect them and
the services they use. Our ultimate concern is to help increase the well being of
communities and takes place predominately within those communities that have been
most disadvantaged or discriminated against.
We choose to use community development methodologies as an approach to work with
communities because these increase opportunities for participation, enable the transfer of
skills between people, develop self reliance, build organisational capacity and networks
of community groups, ensures local ownership of projects and decisions, utilises local
resources to solve local problems and, in the end effectively increases the amount of
social capital available within a community.
The communities, and groups within communities, most in need of this capacity building
are those which suffer the most disadvantage and discrimination."
In fact, an important article by Canadian authors Boothroyd and Davis (1993) was one of
the earliest attempts to develop some distinctions in the field they referred to as CED--
community economic development. They were the first that I know of, outside of the
U.S. to make fine-grained distinctions between emphasizing the community,
emphasizing the economic, and emphasizing development. The fact that they had to
make the distinction shows how conflated the emphases were.

Now 20 years ago, the two paths I would have written about would be the
governmental versus nongovernmental path to community development. And,
by the way, just to be clear, I would not be arguing the U.S. model is better.
Indeed, in terms of your quality of life, the health of your cities, the provision of
public goods such as health care, your distaste for all weapons of mass
destruction, and a variety of other measures, you have been enviably
advanced compared to the United States. But it's not 20 years ago. It's 20
years later. The choices are no longer between governmental and non-
governmental community development. In each of our four nations we have
witnessed dramatic governmental downsizing and increasing disenchantment
with government. Indeed, Aotearoa/New Zealand provides the most dramatic
example of this trend when, in 1984, a Labour government began selling off
public industries, ending farm subsidies, and dramatically reducing its payroll,
It was a move equally revered and despised. The architect of the program,
Roger Douglas, has become the darling of the Alberta and Ontario
governments in Canada (Clancy, 1996), which has also gone through a
sudden and dramatic dismantling of government. In Australia the plan is
called economic rationalism (Whitwell, 1998), but it has the same basic
philosophy and consequences.

We are witnessing what I regrettably call Americanization. You're becoming

more like us and that's a scary thing. Now there are signs, particularly in
Aotearoa/New Zealand with its switch to proportional representation and some
welfare state restoration (Burton, 1999), of attempts to reverse
Americanization. But as the global economy begins to lose some of its steam,
the question is whether you can return to the days of the cradle to grave
welfare state. But to the extent that you cannot, you will have to develop a
nongovernmental sector for the funding and practice of community
development. Indeed, that is already happening in all three nations as
communities attempt to meet needs no longer served by government and
attempt to protect themselves from vulnerabilities introduced by the
dismantling of government. The question is whether these efforts are
happening consciously or haphazardly, which means potentially a lot of
wasted effort, a lot of duplication, and a lot of stumbling if the efforts are not
conscious.

It doesn't have to be that way. Aotearoa/New Zealand, Australia, and Canada

are in the unique position of being able to learn from the mistakes and
perhaps the occasional success of the U.S. in building a non-governmental
community development infrastructure. And the models you come up with can
inform practice in the U.S. which is too often encumbered by historical, or
elite-driven models that may be doing more harm than good.

But where to start? Well, perhaps it is useful to explore, for a moment, the
distinction so prominent in the U.S. between community organizing and
community development--power and programs. Because to the extent that
you are faced with the situation of a government more distant from the people
(only 75% of the population voted in the last Aotearoa/New Zealand national
election--a historical low for Aotearoa/New Zealand but still remarkably high by
U.S. standards--and only 63% showed up at the last Canadian election.) and
larger corporations exerting more control over citizens' lives with fewer
mechanisms of accountability, building power may be as important as building
programs. So let's spend some more time with each of these models.

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

The power approach--community organizing is often confused with a generic

social movement activism model, but it is importantly different. First,
community organizers have historically focused on building a localized social
movement in places as small as a single neighborhood. This is quite different
from the social movement perspective adopted by many who see broad scale
national-level or even global-level change as the starting point rather than the
ending point. This is the confusion that is often evident when people discuss
the Civil Rights Movement. That "movement" had only one national action--the
March on Washington. Much more important to the outcomes of the
movement were the locally-organized events--Selma, Montgomery, and
others--that took on national significance. Many of these momentous events
only became national in impact because of the reaction of the local power
structure. The Montgomery Bus Boycott, for example, began with relatively
minor demands made upon the bus company for more dignified treatment of
Black bus riders. It was only when the authorities' only response was to
attempt to destroy the organizing that the case ended up with the Supreme
Court outlawing segregation on intra-state buses (*).

Community organizing is the "backstage" (Goffman, 1959) work needed to

build a public social movement, in contrast to social movements, which focus
on public large-scale action. It is the process of building a constituency that
can create a larger social movement, and generally has as its first goal
building an enduring community organization. Community Organizing is
interesting to note in this regard that most community organizers carefully
distinguish themselves from "activists." Organizers, in contrast to activists,
most often see themselves not as leaders but as helping to build indigenous
community leadership. Organizers also develop issues based on what
community members see as important, rather than picking an issue
themselves and then trying to recruit people to join based on that issue.

In many other respects, however, community organizing uses social

movement forms of action. Demonstrations, protests, street theatre, and even
disruptions are popular tactics. Many community organizing groups practice
strict independence from both government and political parties, as they never
know when they may have to target them for some policy change.

The programs approach--community development is in stark contrast to

community organizing. Community development corporations, or CDCs, while
not for profit, must operate in cooperation with for profit actors--banks, real
estate, insurance, contractors. And in contrast to building a community-based
organization, community development is about building expert-based
organizations that can manage the highly technical aspects of housing
construction and management, and job and business development.

This CDC model is very popular with elites, especially government and
foundations. The U.S. federal government has set aside special funds for
CDCs in Empowerment Zones and other federal housing programs. The Ford
Foundation created a monster program to promote CDC-based
comprehensive community initiatives (Smock, 1997). Foundations, United
Ways, and other elite-connected organizations have been particularly
entranced with a version of this model called "asset-based community
development" promoted by Kretzmann and McKnight (1993), which they've
interpreted as a "pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps" poverty reduction
strategy.

Steve Callahan et al. (1999) argue for combing what they call project-based
and power-based community development, something they call "rowing the
boat with two oars." For them, project-based community development is
focused on delivering services such as "transportation, childcare, social
services, housing, jobs, retail services, and micro financing to low-income
communities." The organization boards attempt to include local residents, and
the staff often have technical expertise in housing, real estate, and business
development. On the other hand, these organizations are constantly in danger
of becoming disconnected from local interests, and while they try to get
resident representation on their boards, they tend to not be very successful at
it. In addition, their small size and high skill requirements prevent many of
these organizations from producing to scale. They also tend to be politically
weak, as their "consensus" approach to change can maintain existing power
relationships, which can constrain possibilities for change over time."
Consequently, they are often forced to do projects on terms set by public and
corporate officials.

Power-based community development, on the other hand, is an important

complement. Its strengths almost exactly fit the weaknesses of project-based
community development. It emphasizes developing the power of low-income
people, and holding officials accountable. It's insistence of the necessity and
ability of a group to engage in polarizing and militant tactics is what provides
some of this power. The weaknesses of the power-based community
development model also almost exactly fit the strengths of the project-based
model. For one, the methods of this approach can sometimes "obscure
progress toward concrete goals." And when these organizations do not use
confrontation strategically they can lose some of their influence. In addition,
the emphasis on building an inclusive and democratic organization and lack of
strong technical expertise can sometimes limit the impact of an organizing
victory.

The challenge is that these models are rooted in fundamentally different

theories of how society works, which sociologists refer to as functionalist and
conflict models. The functionalist model argues that society tends toward
natural equilibrium and its division of labor develops through an almost natural
matching of individual talents and societal needs. For functionalists, healthy
societies maintain some basic degree of equilibrium and place all of their
members into the roles for which they are fit. The implication (though few
today admit it) is that the poor and the oppressed are supposed to be poor
and oppressed. Of course, those who don't belong there (i.e., those who are
willing to work hard) are provided new roles. This theory also assumes that
people have common interests even when they have different positions in
society. Healthy, persistent societies are in a constant state of gradual
equilibrium-seeking improvement. Thus, a group organizing to force change is
actually unhealthy, as it can throw off equilibrium, and cooperation to produce
gradual change is a better alternative (Eitzen and Baca Zinn, 2000). In this
model, poor people only need opportunity, not power, and cooperation
between the haves and the have-nots is the best means to provide
opportunity. But because the model does not recognize structural barriers to
equality, it can only provide opportunities determined by existing power
holders.

Conflict theory sees no natural tendency toward anything but conflict over
scarce resources. In this model society develops through struggle between
groups. To the extent that stability is achieved, it's not because society finds
equilibrium but because one group dominates the other groups. Conflict theory
sees society as divided, particularly between corporations and workers, men
and women, and whites and people of color. The instability inherent in such
divided societies prevents elites from achieving absolute domination and
provides opportunities for those on the bottom to create change through
organizing for collective action and conflict.

The CDC model, rooted in the functionalist ideas of common interest and
cooperation between rich and poor, can only work if functionalist theory is
correct. In other words, there can be no barriers to poor communities
rebuilding themselves. The problem is that, while individuals can lift
themselves up and attain greatness, not all poor people can lift themselves up
simultaneously because there are not enough better spaces available in
society--not enough good jobs, not enough good housing. This problem is
multiplied when the focus is trying to lift up poor communities, which can only
occur if the people in those communities are simultaneously lifted up. If there's
no space for all those individuals in the economy, there's no chance for that
community. The simultaneous improvement of poor people everywhere
requires a drastic redistribution of wealth, violating the fundamental
assumptions of functionalist theory, which argues that trying to create an
artificial equality would actually upset equilibrium.

So what happens in the United States community development model is that

people's need for a transformed economy providing a wealth of good jobs
becomes replaced with training programs for people to compete for an
extremely limited good job pool. People's need for affordable housing that is
controlled by its occupants becomes replaced by a tradeoff between
expensive home ownership and affordable rental housing. People's need for
high quality health, daycare, and other services becomes translated into
sporadic, overcrowded, and inefficient low quality stop-gap programs. Not only
can a model emphasizing cooperation and denying class conflict not work to
end poverty and oppression, it's not even supposed to work.
 The community organizing model is much better suited for attacking the
structural barriers that prevent poor communities from lifting themselves up. In
a capitalist society, equal competitors make deals because each either has
something to offer or something to take away. But when CDCs attempt to
make deals with these power holders, they have nothing with which to
bargain. They are in the powerless position of begging--for lower loan rates,
reduced construction costs, more open hiring practices, etc. CDCs have little
to offer as inducement for power-holders to say yes, and little to withhold if
they say no. The community organizing model, however, substitutes the lack
of money resources with people resources. The bargaining chip poor
communities have is their cooperation. If they can collectively withhold their
cooperation or, even more powerfully, can disrupt the activities of power
holders, they have something to bargain with (Piven and Cloward 1979).

The community organizing model and its conflict theory underpinnings also
has limits, however. When community organizations wrest concessions from
corporations or government they often discover that those wins are only as
good as the community's ability to implement them. When the Cedar-Riverside
neighborhood beat back a government-developer coalition out to displace the
neighborhood with massive high-rises, they were faced with the prospect of
their existing housing being condemned unless they found resources to fix it
up (Stoecker, 1994). When the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative won city
approval of their neighborhood redevelopment plan, they had to find funding
and eventually even do the development themselves (Medoff and Sklar,
1994). ACORN had to create a community development arm when it began
winning housing through squatting and other tactics (Russell, 2000; ACORN,
1997).

Community organizing is necessary to get the power. Community

development is necessary to keep it. So what do we do?

WHAT DO WE DO?

In deciding what to do, the question you might consider is whether your
historical combination of community organizing and development fits your
present circumstances. I wouldn't even pretend to propose an answer, but I
will offer some ways that you might ask the question.

Choosing
What are the indications that you should choose, or that you can choose? Since the
1960s, we have been learning about the role of militancy and confrontation cross
nationally. The basic finding is that the more access a challenging group has to
government, and the stronger the ability of government to implement rather than just pass
legislation, the less need for militant confrontation (Kitschelt, 1986; Kriesi, 1996;
Meyer,1993; Meyer and Staggenborg, 1996). It is no surprise, in Aotearoa/New Zealand,
that the most consistently confrontational action comes from Maori struggles for
autonomy and self-sufficiency. As Claudia Orange quotes Northern Maori Group Te
Kawarike leader Shane Jones as saying "the real issue is sovereignty over our resources."
Trying to remove historically oppressive and legislated supported conditions that are
institutionalized in land ownership and long-standing power differences will not, at least
initially, be achieved through cooperation. The progressive dismantling of Waitangi Day
through social action is dramatic testimony to the power of organized protest. Now, to
what extent does the potential of proportional representation afford greater access, and
thus require less militancy, than in the past? To what extent does the disruption of
traditional European Waitangi Day practices provide opportunities to create a new form
of multi-cultural national celebration, which some argue, I understand, the Treaty of
Waitangi was originally designed for?

So stopping bad things and gaining access to decision-making are two of the
most important reasons to choose community organizing over community
development.

Starting new things is one of the most important reasons to choose community
development. Challenging groups that have achieved access, may consider
whether the more cooperative community develompent model is appropriate.
Gaining official and substantial representation means, for better or worse,
becoming part of the system. In addition, winning on a policy challenge often
places a community organizing group in the difficult position of figuring out
how to implement that win. To an extent, this involves a group transitioning
from outsider to insider status. Implementing a win, or maintaining a victory,
requires building organizational stability and expertise over the long haul, and
cementing relationships with power holders.

Another thing to consider in choosing is the cultural context. There is some

antipathy outside of the U.S. to conflict-based organizing. Some Canadians
are opposed to the model both on the grounds that it seems to be conflict for
conflict's sake, and that it is in fact a conservative approach to just getting a
piece of the pie rather than changing how the pie is made (Roussopoulos,
1982; Muller, 1990). And when Melbourne erupted in protest last September
during the World Economic Forum meetings, the West Australian Premier
Richard Court, Victorian Premier Steve Bracks, and Australian Prime Minister
John Howard all called the protests "un-Australian" (Cahill, n.d.; Dwyer, 2001;
Rule et al., 2000). The previous year, when similar protests erupted in
Seattle, no one called the protests un-American (though Seattle elites did
complain they were un-Seattle). Additionally, with governments that are more
open to dialogue from the beginning--which the stronger welfare states of
Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand seem to be--protest and
confrontation is less needed to gain access.

Culture may also include community culture. How is conflict viewed within the
community? Can conflict be integrated without disrupting other cultural beliefs
 or creating divisions within the community? Are there existing organizations or
leaders who would support or oppose conflict-based organizing?3

Now, it is often the case that choosing one or the other models is difficult,
impractical, or not strategic. when that is the case, it's imperative to consider
combining them.

Combining
The African American Civil Rights movement in the United States has seen many of its
victories whither away, such as affirmative action, voting rights protection, integration.
Neighborhood organizations have also experienced problems moving from a successful
community organizing phase to a community development phase. Because of the
incompatibilities of the theories on which they are based, many community organizing
groups make the transition to development gagging and retching. Some of them destroy
themselves in the process (Stoecker, 1995).

Of course, the fights between practitioners of the two models often prevent
collaboration, especially when each sees its position as "right" and the other
as "wrong" and Callahan et al's boat can sometimes get rowed in circles. And
as much as everyone in the United States says "it's not the '60s anymore", we
continue to act like it is. The conflict between the community organizing folks
and the community development folks is so much like the conflict between the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee which eventually led to the split between African-
American Civil Rights activists and Black Power activists. It is so much like the
split between the radical and mainstream branches of the women's
movement. It is so much like the split between the militant and mainstream
branches of the environmental movement. It is so much like the split between
the groups engaging in conflict against the power structure and those
cooperating with it on any contemporary issue today, whether it is AIDS,
poverty, education, or community empowerment.

Like for those other movements, if handled strategically this split has some
advantages. Those 1960s movement splits produced a tremendous body of
literature, some of which focused on social movement structure. These
analysts, when taking a big picture view of the action, found many movements
composed of groups confronting the target and groups attempting to work
cooperatively with it. The advantage of such a model, they discovered, is that
the conflict groups were needed to create access to power holders. Conflict
groups, if they are good, have the bargaining chip of being able to create
enough social instability to force the target to the table. But they have a
difficult time actually negotiating, because of their militancy. Moderate groups
are much more successful in negotiations, but achieve very little without the
threat of social disturbance from more militant groups (Gerlach and Hine,
1970).
This model of multiple, complementary organizations may work well in
situations where there are lots of resources and lots of potential members.
But in smaller communities, it is impractical. Even these communities,
however, can have some of the advantages of this model through using front
organizations. Perhaps the best example of this "front" organization structure
was in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood in Minneapolis Minnesota in the
United States. This neighborhood, threatened with total destruction from a
developer-state coalition that wanted to replace their homes with high-rises,
waged a very sophisticated battle. They created a cafe they used as a
meeting place. They created a Project Area Committee that had official
government status. They created a tenants union as the developer had
bought up all their existing housing. They created an environmental defense
fund to raise money for legal battles. They created a community development
corporation to create alternative redevelopment plans. These organizations
were all active in the struggle at the same time, and they all took on a different
piece of the problem. They eventually drove the developer from their
neighborhood, took over all their housing, and turned the neighborhood
housing into community-owned cooperatives (Stoecker, 1994). But there were
not enough people to separately staff the organizations, so everybody got
involved in everything.

There are other possible multiple organization combinations. One is to have a

multi-local community organizing group that can partner with local community
development organizations, which seems to be increasingly common in the
United States. The Sacramento Valley Organizing Community (SVOC), an
organization of nearly 30 predominantly Latino Catholic and African-American
Protestant churches across a three-county area in Northern California, is part
of the Industrial Areas Foundation community organizing network founded by
Saul Alinsky. In one instance SVOC brought 1,800 members to a meeting with
area health system officials, successfully demanding 200 jobs. To implement
the win, SVOC partnered with the Private Industry Council (PIC), the county
welfare department, and a community college to do job training and
preparation (Callahan et al., 1999). The famous Communities Organized for
Public Service (COPS) in San Antonio practiced a similar model, and ended
up directing a large proportion of San Antonio's CDBG budget over a number
of year to COPS-defined project. But COPS refused to do any of the
development themselves to preserve their organizing focus (Cortes, 1995;
Warren, 1995). Perhaps the most famous case is the NorthWest Bronx
Community and Clergy Coalition. The NWBCCC, with a 25-year history,
organizes with ten neighborhoods and approximately twenty local religious
communities in the Northwest Bronx area of New York City and has spawned
a number of CDCs. Because NWBCCC is an affiliate of groups, different sub-
coalitions can work on issues they have in common. They consciously put
organizing first, understanding the technical constraints placed on
development. Consequently, they came up with the idea of "Neighborhood
Improvement Plans ... as opposed to fitting into existing programs, leaders
 were asked to think about what they wanted to see in the area and then we
would try to figure out how to get there." (Buckley, n.d.). Two of the CDCs
formed through NWBCCC--Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation and Mount
Hope Housing Company--are highly capitalized, multi-local CDCs with
hundreds of employees and thousands of housing units. The NWBCCC's
housing committee, or neighborhood groups, determine projects and then
negotiate with one of the CDCs about how to implement it (Dailey, 2000).

Another is to have a multi-local community development corporation that can

partner with local community organizing groups, which I argued (1997) was
preferable since CDCs, to be successful, needed technically-skilled (and thus
expensive) staff and enough capitalization to do development in higher risk
situations. Larger CDCs would be more likely to have those qualities. But
because those characteristics would also increase the separation of the CDC
from the community, small neighborhood-based community organizing groups
were necessary to maintain community control of development. I have had
great difficulty finding examples of this model. This "Stoecker model" has yet
to make me famous, however. :-)

Innovating
Oddly enough, in this time when Canada, Australia, and Aotearoa/New Zealand seem to
have become more U.S. like, the innovations in the United States seem to look more like
you. There are an increasing number of attempts to create single programs that integrate
a mild non-conflict form of community organizing, bricks and mortar community
development, and individual treatment forms of social work. The four most popular
innovations are community building, consensus organizing, women-centered organizing,
and CDC-based organizing.

Community building is defined as "projects which seek to build new

relationships among members in a community and develop change out of the
connections these relationships provide for solving member-defined
problems." (Hess 1999). Linked to Kretzmann and McKnight's (1993) asset-
based community development model, and to communitarianism, the
emphasis in community building is creating and restoring relationships
between community residents. The focus is internal, finding and building the
community's own "assets" or "social capital" rather than confronting or
negotiating with external power and resource holders (Smock, 1997).

Consensus organizing includes relationship-building but also focuses on

moving people from welfare to work, improving school achievement,
promoting inner-city reinvestment, and developing housing and businesses,
among other things. This model specifically opposes the "us vs. them" model
of community organizing (Eichler 1998). The purpose of consensus
organizing, consistent with functionalist theory, is to build cooperative
relationships between community leaders and business and government to
improve poor communities (Consensus Organizing Institute, 2000).
The women-centered organizing model emphasizes relationship building that
is not rooted in self-interest but in an understanding of mutual responsibility.
And while it does see a structural division in society that holds women back, it
also emphasizes that power is infinitely expandable rather than zero-sum, thus
reducing the need for conflict. Like the community building model, women-
centered organizing emphasizes small group development and has more of an
internal problem-solving focus. The goal is as much the development of
individuals as it is the development of communities (Stoecker, and Stall,
1998).

CDC-based organizing is the most intriguing of all. While the other models
have for the most part eliminated confrontational community organizing from
their practice, CDC-based organizing is trying to preserve it. Thus, they are
trying to bring a conflict-based model of organizing into a functional-based
model of development. It is very interesting. The largest and most well-known
effort to help CDCs do community organizing is the $1.5 million Ricanne
Hadrian Initiative for Community Organizing (RHICO), sponsored through the
Massachusetts Association of CDCs and the Neighborhood Development
Support Collaborative. The program supports and trains CDCs throughout
Massachusetts to do community organizing (Winkelman, 1998, 1998b). A
similar project to promote community organizing through CDCs was the
Toledo Community Organizing Training and Technical Assistance Program
sponsored through the Toledo Community Foundation. Over a two year
period, ACORN provided training and technical assistance to three CDCs,
though one dropped out due to a lack of fit. The Organized Neighbors Yielding
Excellence (ONYX) CDC adopted a combined organizing and development
group model, where leadership and authority over the organizing effort
remained vested in the CDC board of directors, though they gave tacit
approval to developing an informal community organizing leadership structure.
Conversely, the Lagrange Development Corporation established a relatively
autonomous community organizing group, adopting a written code of
principles to prevent the CDC from interfering in the organizing effort even
while it paid the organizer's salary. The Lagrange Village Council, the
relatively autonomous community organizing group, practices a more
traditional Alinsky-style community organizing model, using actions and
pressure tactics to close problem businesses in the community, improve trash
collection, and manage a long drawn-out campaign against a predatory
property speculator. ONYX has practiced a much more subdued approach
consistent with the community development model, and with fewer
subsequent victories.

What are the outcomes of this combined model? CDCs in the RHICO initiative
have seen are more community involvement in CDC decision-making, less
funder-driven project development, and more effective CDC advocacy efforts.
(Winkelman, 1998). This also appears to be the case with the Lagrange
Development Corporation and Lagrange Village Council in Toledo, which has
gotten a number of problem businesses to shape up or leave, can turn out
dozens of people for a demonstration, and has hundreds attend its annual
meetings. There are also important problems. The first problem is the potential
restriction on militancy. One of the RHICO CDCs lost government funding
when they moved to organizing. However, this CDC continued down the
organizing path, weathering the cut and actually freeing itself from restrictive
funding (Winkelman, 1998). Other groups are less able to make such bold
moves. In Toledo, ONYX's organizing effort has been hindered by the fear of
funding loss, as the organization has been threatened with government
funding reductions, and they eventually dropped their community organizing
effort.

CONCLUSION

If I have done my job I am leaving you with more questions than answers.
What I beseech of you inside and outside of government is to take on the task
that government used to be so good at--thinking ahead. One of the most
important infrastructures which has existed in the U.S for over half a century
is the popular education infrastructure, most embodied in the Highlander
Research and Education Center, which was so instrumental in the United
States union and Civil Rights movements. For consciously dealing with the
tensions and potentials of community organizing and community development
takes some reflection, planning, and infrastructure building. One of the most
encouraging signs in Australia, Canada, and Aotearoa/New Zealand is the
new and growing popular education infrastructure than can further those
community-based planning, research, and education efforts. Here in
Aotearoa/New Zealand I have learned about the Kotare Trust in Auckland. In
Canada there is the Institutes in Management and Community Development.
In Australia there is the Centre for Popular Education at the University of
Technology in Sydney, among others. Those are a starting place for
beginning to sort out these questions further.

These are some beginning places to sort out these issues where people can
gather to study and reflect and begin to act on their own growing
understandings of the power and programs approaches. I look forward to
learning of your progress. Thank you.

REFERENCES

ACORN. 1997. Capital & Communities: A Report to the Annie E. Casey

Foundation on ACORN's Work to Revitalize Low and Moderate Income
Communities. http://www.acorn.org/ACORNarchives/studies/c-and-c/capital-
and-communities.html

Alinsky, Saul. 1969. Reveille for Radicals. New York: Vintage

Alinsky, Saul. 1971. Rules for Radicals. New York: Vintage

Beckwith Dave, with Cristina Lopez. 1997. "Community Organizing: People

Power from the Grassroots." COMM-ORG Working Papers Series, 1997
Working Papers. http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers.htm

Bobo, K., Kendall, J. & Max, S. (l991). Organizing for social change: A manual
for activists in the l990s. Washington, DC: Seven Locks Press.

Boothroyd, Peter and H. Craig Davis. 1993. Community Economic

Development: Three Approaches. Journal of Planning Education and
Research, 12:230-240.

Buckley, Jim. n.d. statement,

http://www.nwbccc.org/History/Stories/Buckley.html

Burton, Bob. 1999. New Zealand makes a cautious Left turn. Asia Times
Online. December 14. http://http://www.atimes.com/oceania/AL14Ah01.html

Cahill, Damien. n.d. The Anti-WEF Protests and the Media. Znet InterActive.
http://zena.secureforum.com/interactive/content/display_item.cfm?itemID=97

Callahan, Steve, Neil Mayer, Kris Palmer, and Larry Ferlazzo. 1999. Rowing
the Boat With Two Oars. paper presented on COMM-ORG: The On-Line
Conference on Community Organizing and Development. http://comm-
org.wisc.edu/papers.htm.

Clancy, Peter. 1996. The Aotearoa/New Zealand Experiment: A Canadian

Perspective. Electronic Journal of Radical Organisation Theory. Volume 2,
Number 1.
http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/Research/ejrot/Vol2_1/Articles/Clancy.asp

COMM-ORG: The On-Line Conference on Community Organizing and

Development. 2001. CO Groups and Networks. http://comm-
org.wisc.edu/orgs.htm

Consensus Organizing Institute. 2000. http://www.consensusorganizing.com

Cortes, Ernesto. 1995. Remarks as panelist, Special Session on "The Legacy

of Saul Alinsky" at the American Sociological Association Annual meetings.

Dailey, Mary. 2000. message posted on COMM-ORG: The On-Line

Conference on Community Organizing and Development.
http://coserver.sa.utoledo.edu/pipermail/colist/2000-December/001212.html
Delgado, Gary. 1986. Organizing the Movement. Philadelphia, Temple
University Press, 1986.

Dwyer, Cath. 2001. s11 Protestors Block Entry to WEF. Sydney Alternative
Media Centre, http://www.samcentre.org/display_stories/1-90000/2101-
2400/display_stories_2170.html

Eichler, Michael. 1998. Organizing's Past, Present, and Future. Shelterforce

Online. http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/101/eichler.html

Eitzen, Stanley, and Maxine Baca Zinn. 2000. In Conflict and Order:
Understanding Society, 9e. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Finks, P. David. 1984. The radical vision of Saul Alinsky. New York: Paulist
Press.

Gerlach, Luther P., and Virginia H. Hine. 1970. People, Power, Change:
Movements of Social Transformation. Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill.

Goffman, E.(1959).The presentation of self in everyday life . GardenCity, NY:

Anchor.

Hess, Doug. 1999. Community Organizing, Building and Developing: Their

Relationship to Comprehensive Community Initiatives. Paper presented on
COMM-ORG: The On-Line Conference on Community Organizing and
Development. http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers.htm

Joppke C. 1992. Explaining Cross-National Variations of 2 Antinuclear

Movements - A Political-Process Perspective Sociology-The Journal of The
British Sociological Association 26: (2) 311-331.

Kahn, S. (1991). Organizing: a guide for grassroots leaders . Silver Springs:

MD. NASW Press.

Kitschelt, Herbert P. 1986. "Political Opportunity Structures and Political

Protest: Anti-nuclear Movements in Four Democracies. British Journal of
Political Science, 1986, 16, 57-85.

Kriesi, Hanspeter. 1996. The Organizational Structure of New Social

Movements in a Political Context. Pp. 152-184 in Doug McAdam, John D.
McCarthy, and Mayer N. Zald (eds) Comparative Perspectives on Social
Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural
Framings. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Meyer, D. S. 1993. Protest Cycles and Political Process: American Peace
Movements in the Nuclear Age. Political Research Quarterly 46: (3) 451-479.

Meyer D. S., and Staggenborg S. 1996. Movements, countermovements, and

the structure of political opportunity. American Journal of Sociology 101: (6)
1628-1660.

Kretzmann, John P. and John L. McKnight. 1993. Building Communities From

the Inside Out. Evanston, IL: Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research
Neighborhood Innovations Network, Northwestern University.

Leavitt, Jacqueline. 1997. Public Housing Tenants Confront Deregulation.

Planners Network Online. http://www.plannersnetwork.org/126/leavitt.htm

Medoff, Peter, and Holly Sklar. 1994. Streets of hope : the fall and rise of an
urban neighborhood. Boston: South End Press.

Morris, Aldon. l984. The origins of the civil rights movement: Black
communities organizing for change. New York: Free Press.

Muller, Jacob (1990) "Management of urban neighborhoods through Alinsky-

style organizing: redevelopment and local area planning in a Vancouver
neighborhood", in Ng, Roxana, Gillian Walker and Jacob Muller (eds.),
Community Organization and the Canadian State, Toronto: Garamond, pp.
203-212.

National Organizers Alliance. 2001. http://www.noacentral.org/

New Party. 1997. Living Wage and Campaign Finance Reform Initiatives
http://www.newparty.org/reforms.html

Osterhammel, Juergen. 1997. Colonialism a Theoretical Overview. Marcus

weiner publications Princeton, NJ

Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard Cloward. 1979. Poor people's movements:
Why they succeed, how they fail. New York: Vintage.

Reitzes, Donald C. and Dietrich C. Reitzes. 1987. The Alinsky legacy: Alive
and kicking. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Resource Renewal Institute. 2000. Case Study: New Zealand.

http://www.rri.org/envatlas/oceania/new-zealand/nz-index.html

Robinson. 1999. New Zealand. http://www.civicus.org/pages/newz.html

Roussopoulos, Dmitri (1982) "Neighbourhood councils", in Roussopoulos,
Dmitri (ed.) , The City and Radical Social Change, Montreal: Black Rose
Books, pp. 207-219.

Rubin, Herb. 2000. Renewing hope within neighborhoods of despair: the

community-based development model. Albany: State University of New York
Press.

Rule, Andrew, Claire Miller, and Paul Robinson. 2000. Battle of Melbourne.
The Age. September 12. http://www.theage.com.au/news/20000912/A59747-
2000Sep11.html

Russell, Dan. 2000. Roots Of A Social Justice Movement (1970-75).

http://www.acorn.org/history-content.html

Smith, Ken. 2000. message posted on COMM-ORG: The On-Line Conference

on Community Organizing and Development. http://comm-
org.wisc.edu/pipermail/colist/2000-December/001213.html.

Smock, Kristina, 1997. Comprehensive Community Initiatives: A New

Generation of Urban Revitalization Strategies. Paper presented on COMM-
ORG: The On-Line Conference on Community Organizing and Development.
http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers.htm.

Stall, S. and Stoecker, R. (1998). Community organizing or organizing

community? Gender and the crafts of empowerment. Gender and Society, 12,
729-756.

Stasiulis, Davia, and Niaa Yuval Davis. 1995 Introduction, in Stasiulis and
Yuval-Davis (eds). Unsettling Settler Society. London: Sage.

Stoecker, Randy. 1997. "The Community Development Corporation Model of

Urban Redevelopment: A Critique and anAlternative." Journal of Urban Affairs
19:1-23.

Stoecker, Randy. 1995. "Community Organizing and Community Development

in Cedar-Riverside and East Toledo: A Comparative Study." Journal of
Community Practice, 2:1-23.

Stoecker, Randy. 1995b. "Community, Movement, Organization: The Problem

of Identity Convergence in Collective Action." The Sociological Quarterly
36:111-130

Stoecker, Randy. 1994. Defending Community: The Struggle for Alternative

Redevelopment in Cedar-Riverside. Temple University Press.
Tresser, Thomas. 1999. The Work of the Industrial Areas Foundation--Building
Strong Citizens Organizations for Power --Action --Justice.
http://my.voyager.net/ttresser/iaf1.htm

Warren, Mark Russell. 1995. Social Capital and Community Empowerment:

Religion and Political Organization in the Texas Industrial Areas Foundation.
unpublished PhD dissertation, Harvard University.

Wessel, Paul. 2000. message posted on COMM-ORG: The On-Line

Conference on Community Organizing and Development. http://comm-
org.wisc.edu/pipermail/colist/2000-December/001212.html

Whitwell, Gregory. 1998. What is Economic Rationalism? Australia

Broadcasting Corporation.
http://www.abc.net.au/money/currency/features/feat11.htm

Winkelman, Lee. 1998. Organizing Renaissance: Twin Cities CDC Leads

Exploration of Organizing by Massachusetts CDCs. Shelterforce.
September/October. http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/sf101.html

Winkelman, Lee. 1998b. Organizing: An Investment That Pays.

NeighborWorks Journal. Volume 16, #2, Winter.
http://www.nw.org/resources/pub/nwjournal/1998/vol16no2/

NOTES

*This paper is part of a larger project studying the relationship between community organizing
and community development, supported by a grant from the University of Toledo Urban Affairs
Center. The author also gratefully acknowledges travel support from the Foy D. and Phyllis
Penn Kohler Fund and the governments of New Zealand, Western Australia, and Victoria
(Australia) during the course of this project. Many thanks to Tony Rea, Larry Stillman, Linda
Briskman, and Anna Vakil for information, wisdom, and insights during this project.

1
Settler colonies are established to replace the native population with the migrating
population. See Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis, 1995; Osterhammel, 1997.

2
There is debate over the size and extent of Aotearoa/New Zealand's nonprofit sector, with
Leavitt (1997) arguing it is quite undeveloped especially in the area of housing, and Robinson
(1999) arguing it is quite extensive.

3
Attempts to address these questions in the U.S. are increasing organized around two
issues. First, it is important to assess what exists in the neighborhood already. If there is an
organizing group and a CDC, it is probably counterproductive for the CDC to also do
organizing. Instead, they should find ways to partner with the organizing group. If there is a
CDC but no organizing group in the neighborhood, it is important to assess the CDC's
readiness and capacity to do community organizing. How knowledgeable is the executive
director about organizing in general and different organizing models? Is there anyone else
highly skilled in organizing on staff? Is there an organizer in place and, if so, what do they
know about organizing in general and which organizing model do they prefer? Who is or
would be responsible for supervising the organizer? How are leaders (board members)
identified/recruited? Are leaders elected or appointed (elected is better for organizing)? What
do leaders know about organizing in general and different organizing models? How do
organization leaders and director respond to a series of organizing vs. development dilemmas
(such as doing an action against a bank that also gives loans to the CDC projects)? What
procedures are in place for replacing staff and leadership without losing internal organizing
culture? Does the CDC have a broad mission statement that could easily include community
organizing? In general, the more skill, knowledge, and support for community organizing, the
more successfully a CDC will be able to develop its organizing capacity. Second, it is
important to assess what exists beyond the neighborhood. If the neighborhood has neither a
CDC nor an organizing group, are there high-capacity CDCs or culti-local organizing networks
working in the area? If there are both, what are their histories of working cooperatively across
the organizing-development divide? If there is a neighborhood CDC, but it is not structured to
support organizing, what is its history of working cooperatively with other organizations? Also,
what is its level of power? Numerous neighborhoods have small CDCs which do little or
nothing, and would be better replaced with a combination of community organizing and high-
capacity community development.

Community Development and Community

Organizing:
Apples and Oranges? Chicken and Egg? (1)

Randy Stoecker

rstoecker@wisc.edu

February 2001

INTRODUCTION

Since the 1960s, as the presence and activity of community development

corporations, or CDCs, in poor neighborhoods has grown, so has the debate
surrounding them. Recently, community development analysts and
practitioners have been trying to combine community development with the
more politicized community organizing model.

This paper begins by defining and describing these two approaches. Next, it
explores the extent to which they are complementary or contradictory--apples
and oranges. Finally, it reviews ways of combining them, exploring their
chicken-egg relationships.

Community development, in this paper, is defined as nonprofit organizations--

CDCs--doing physical development of impoverished communities. CDCs are
supposed to be "community-based," having some connection with the
residents who live there. They are also expected to do "comprehensive
development," creating jobs, housing, safety and other changes (though most
emphasize housing). Finally, they are supposed to accomplish all this within
the existing political economic system (Stoecker, 1997).

Critics of the CDC model, however, point out how CDCs often fail at projects
that left their host neighborhoods in as bad or worse shape than when they
started; fold under funding shortages that allow elites to both prevent real
redevelopment and blame CDCs for failure; or disrupt neighborhood
empowerment by purporting to speak on behalf of a community who they
barely know (and who barely knows them) (Stoecker, 1994; 1997). These
critics have led a call to bring back community organizing.

Community organizing works in local settings to empower individuals, build

relationships and organizations, and create action for social change (Beckwith
& Lopez, 1997, Bobo, Kendall & Max, 1991, Kahn, 1991; Alinsky, 1969; 1971).
Community organizers have historically focused on building localized social
movements in places as small as a single neighborhood. Consequently, the
bulk of community organizing occurs "backstage" (Goffman, 1959), building
relationships and networks in the quasi-private setting of the neighborhood
community (Stall and Stoecker, 1998) that can create a larger social
movement.

Community organizing has a much longer history than community

development, including the early 20th century settlement house movement
and other women-centered efforts (Stall and Stoecker, 1998), the Civil Rights
Movement (Morris, 1984), and others. The most well-known influence was
Saul Alinsky (1969; 1971) who, in the 1930s, created a community organizing
model in Chicago's Back of the Yards neighborhood that was rowdy, bawdy,
and confrontational (Finks, 1984). The Civil Rights Movement is the other
crucial source of community organizing, though its influence on community
organizing practice has been as profound as Alinsky's but has been
historically neglected. The accepted founding event of the movement, the
Montgomery Bus Boycott, was coordinated through local African American
networks and organizations and created a model that would be used in
locality-based actions throughout the south (Morris, 1984). Out of these efforts
grew the Welfare Rights Movement (Piven and Cloward, 1979) and eventually
the famous Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now
(ACORN) (Delgado, 1986; Russell, 2000).

Today, community organizing is experiencing a resurgence, with an explosion

of small efforts and the growth of better-publicized efforts by the Industrial
Areas Foundation (IAF) (Tresser, 1999), by ACORN (1999) and the New Party
(1997) in their Living Wage efforts, and by many other groups and networks
(COMM-ORG, 2001) including the rapidly expanding National Organizers
Alliance (2001) which is supporting and connecting independent and network
organizers across North America.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT--COMMUNITY ORGANIZING: APPLES AND

ORANGES?

Can these two models--one that works within the system and the other that
tries to change it--be combined? Or are they the proverbial apples and
oranges? Steve Callahan et al. (1999) argue for combining project-based
community development--which delivers social, economic, and housing
services to poor communities--and power-based community development--
which employs polarizing and militant tactics to develop the power of low-
income people and hold officials accountable.

The challenge is that these models are rooted in fundamentally different

theories of how society works, which sociologists refer to as functionalist and
conflict models. The functionalist model argues that society tends toward
natural equilibrium and its division of labor develops through an almost natural
matching of individual talents and societal needs. For functionalists, healthy
societies maintain some basic degree of equilibrium and place all of their
members into the roles for which they are fit. The implication (though few
today admit it) is that the poor and the oppressed are supposed to be poor
and oppressed. Of course, those who don't belong there (i.e., those who are
willing to work hard) are provided new roles. This theory also assumes that
people have common interests even when they have different positions in
society. Healthy, persistent societies are in a constant state of gradual
equilibrium-seeking improvement. Thus, a group organizing to force change is
actually unhealthy, as it can throw off equilibrium, and cooperation to produce
gradual change is a better alternative (Eitzen and Baca Zinn, 2000). In this
model, poor people only need opportunity, not power, and cooperation
between the haves and the have-nots is the best means to provide
opportunity. But because the model does not recognize structural barriers to
equality, it can only provide opportunities determined by existing power
holders.

Conflict theory sees no natural tendency toward anything but conflict over
scarce resources. In this model society develops through struggle between
groups. To the extent that stability is achieved, it's not because society finds
equilibrium but because one group dominates the other groups. Conflict theory
sees society as divided, particularly between corporations and workers, men
and women, and whites and people of color. The instability inherent in such
divided societies prevents elites from achieving absolute domination and
provides opportunities for those on the bottom to create change through
organizing for collective action and conflict.
The CDC model, rooted in the functionalist tenets of common interest and
cooperation, can only work if functionalist theory is correct. In other words,
there can be no barriers to poor communities rebuilding themselves. The
problem is that, while individuals can lift themselves up and attain greatness,
not all poor people can lift themselves up simultaneously because there are
not enough better spaces available in society--not enough good jobs, not
enough good housing. This problem is multiplied when the focus is trying to lift
up poor communities, which can only occur if the people in those communities
are simultaneously lifted up. If there's no space for all those individuals in the
economy, there's no chance for that community. The simultaneous
improvement of poor people everywhere requires a drastic redistribution of
wealth, violating the fundamental tenets of functionalist theory, which argues
that trying to create an artificial equality would actually upset equilibrium.

So what happens in the community development model is that people's need

for a transformed economy providing a wealth of good jobs becomes replaced
with training programs for people to compete for an extremely limited good job
pool. People's need for affordable housing that is controlled by its occupants
becomes replaced by a tradeoff between expensive home ownership and
affordable rental housing. People's need for high quality health, daycare, and
other services becomes translated into sporadic, overcrowded, and inefficient
low quality stop-gap programs. Not only can a model emphasizing cooperation
and denying class conflict not work to end poverty and oppression, it's not
even supposed to work.

The community organizing model is much better suited for attacking the
structural barriers that prevent poor communities from lifting themselves up. In
a capitalist society, equal competitors make deals because each either has
something to offer or something to take away. But when CDCs attempt to
make deals with these power holders, they have nothing with which to
bargain. They are in the powerless position of begging--for lower loan rates,
reduced construction costs, more open hiring practices, etc. CDCs have little
to offer as inducement for power-holders to say yes, and little to withhold if
they say no. The community organizing model, however, substitutes the lack
of money resources with people resources. The bargaining chip poor
communities have is their cooperation. If they can collectively withhold their
cooperation or, even more powerfully, can disrupt the activities of power
holders, they have something to bargain with (Piven and Cloward 1979).

The community organizing model and its conflict theory underpinnings also
has limits. When community organizations wrest concessions from
corporations or government they often discover that those wins are only as
good as the community's ability to implement them. When the Cedar-Riverside
neighborhood beat back a government-developer coalition out to displace the
neighborhood with massive high-rises, they were faced with the prospect of
their existing housing being condemned unless they found resources to fix it
up (Stoecker, 1994). When the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative won city
approval of their neighborhood redevelopment plan, they had to find funding
and eventually even do the development themselves (Medoff and Sklar,
1994). ACORN had to create a community development arm when it began
winning housing through squatting and other tactics (Russell, 2000; ACORN,
1997). Because of the incompatibilities of the theories on which they are
based, many community organizing groups make the transition to
development gagging and retching. Some of them destroy themselves in the
process (Stoecker, 1995).

Community organizing is necessary to get the power. Community

development is necessary to keep it. So what do we do?

COMBINING ORGANIZING AND DEVELOPMENT: CHICKEN AND EGG?

Regardless of how hard it is to combine community organizing and community

development, we must figure out how. This is the chicken and egg problem.
Which is more important? Which is more powerful? Which comes first? Can
you move from development to organizing and actually build power? Can you
move from organizing to development without disrupting organizing?

There are two basic strategies. One is to combine organizing and

development in a single organization. The other is to separate them into allied
organizations.

1. Organizing in Development

The initial efforts to combine organizing and development came as effective

organizing groups were forced into doing their own development. Because of
the shift in funding during the 1980s from development to organizing, staff and
directors of organizing groups found themselves forced into becoming
developers. But many really wanted to be organizers and kept looking for
ways to bring organizing back (Rubin, 2000).

Given the funding constraints, however, traditional organizing that threatened

funders' power was not to be and it is no mistake that community building,
consensus organizing, and women-centered organizing are in the spotlight
today. The avoidance of confrontation, the lack of focus on structural change,
and the absence of conflict in these models makes them well-suited to CDCs.

Community building is defined as "projects which seek to build new

relationships among members in a community and develop change out of the
connections these relationships provide for solving member-defined
problems." (Hess 1999). Linked to Kretzmann and McKnight's (1993) asset-
based community development model, and to communitarianism, the
emphasis in community building is creating and restoring relationships
between community residents. The focus is internal, finding and building the
community's own "assets" or "social capital" rather than confronting or
negotiating with external power and resource holders (Smock, 1997).

Consensus organizing includes relationship-building but also focuses on

moving people from welfare to work, improving school achievement,
promoting inner-city reinvestment, and developing housing and businesses,
among other things. This model specifically opposes the "us vs. them" model
of community organizing (Eichler 1998). The purpose of consensus
organizing, consistent with functionalist theory, is to build cooperative
relationships between community leaders and business and government to
improve poor communities (Consensus Organizing Institute, 2000).

The women-centered organizing model emphasizes relationship building that

is not rooted in self-interest but in an understanding of mutual responsibility.
And while it does see a structural division in society that holds women back, it
also emphasizes that power is infinitely expandable rather than zero-sum, thus
reducing the need for conflict. Like the community building model, women-
centered organizing emphasizes small group development and has more of an
internal problem-solving focus. The goal is as much the development of
individuals as it is the development of communities (Stoecker, and Stall,
1998).

Some CDCs are now able to break free of these limited community organizing
models through new funding sources. The largest and most well-known effort
to help CDCs do community organizing is the $1.5 million Ricanne Hadrian
Initiative for Community Organizing (RHICO), sponsored through the
Massachusetts Association of CDCs and the Neighborhood Development
Support Collaborative. The program supports and trains CDCs throughout
Massachusetts to do community organizing (Winkelman, 1998, 1998b).

A similar project to promote community organizing through CDCs was the

Toledo Community Organizing Training and Technical Assistance Program
sponsored through the Toledo Community Foundation. Over a two year
period, ACORN provided training and technical assistance to three CDCs,
though one dropped out due to a lack of fit. The Organized Neighbors Yielding
Excellence (ONYX) CDC adopted a combined organizing and development
group model, where leadership and authority over the organizing effort
remained vested in the CDC board of directors, though they gave tacit
approval to developing an informal community organizing leadership structure.
Conversely, the Lagrange Development Corporation established a relatively
autonomous community organizing group, adopting a written code of
principles to prevent the CDC from interfering in the organizing effort even
while it paid the organizer's salary. The Lagrange Village Council, the
relatively autonomous community organizing group, practices a more
traditional Alinsky-style community organizing model, using actions and
pressure tactics to close problem businesses in the community, improve trash
collection, and manage a long drawn-out campaign against a predatory
property speculator. ONYX has practiced a much more subdued approach
consistent with the community development model, and with fewer
subsequent victories.

What are the outcomes of this combined model? CDCs in the RHICO initiative
have seen are more community involvement in CDC decision-making, less
funder-driven project development, and more effective CDC advocacy efforts.
(Winkelman, 1998). This also appears to be the case with the Lagrange
Development Corporation and Lagrange Village Council in Toledo, which has
gotten a number of problem businesses to shape up or leave, can turn out
dozens of people for a demonstration, and has hundreds attend its annual
meetings.

There are also important problems. The first problem is the potential restriction
on militancy. One of the RHICO CDCs lost government funding when they
moved to organizing. However, this CDC continued down the organizing path,
weathering the cut and actually freeing itself from restrictive funding
(Winkelman, 1998). Other groups are less able to make such bold moves. In
Toledo, ONYX's organizing effort has been hindered by the fear of funding
loss, and the organization has been threatened with government funding
reductions.

A second related problem is the internal conflict that the combination can
produce. The East Toledo Community Organization (ETCO), an Alinsky style
community organization in Toledo, Ohio, turned to development to support its
staff during the 1980s when funding shifted from organizing to development.
ETCO began conducting home energy audits, providing advice on how to
reduce energy costs. They took on city contracts to board up vacant houses.
They got a grant to start a jobs bank. And the organization imploded as
infighting between organizing proponents and development proponents broke
into open warfare (Stoecker, 1995; 1995b). The Dudley Street Neighborhood
Initiative in Boston began by reclaiming a city park from drug dealers, closing
area garbage transfer sites, curbing illegal dumping. They also developed a
plan to build new housing in their community, fighting off a government
redevelopment plan that would have wiped them off the map. They won
government and foundation support for their plan, and found a developer who
would do the project. But they had problems finding a reliable development
partner and ended up doing the development themselves. The time
consuming technical and financially risky aspects of managing housing
construction badly distracted the organization. (Medoff and Sklar, 1994).

2. Organizing and Development

In this model, organizing and development are separated into different
organizations. In a 1997 article I argued that the ideal type model was a small
locality-based community organizing group partnering with a high-capacity
multi-local CDC. The reason was that CDCs, to be successful, needed
technically-skilled (and thus expensive) staff and enough capitalization to do
development in higher risk situations. Larger CDCs would be more likely to
have those qualities. But because those characteristics would also increase
the separation of the CDC from the community, small neighborhood-based
community organizing groups were necessary to maintain community control
of development. I have had great difficulty finding examples of this model.

The Cedar-Riverside neighborhood redevelopment movement is the source of

my model, as they consciously kept their organizing and development
activities separate, gaining a combination of political power and
redevelopment resources that I have not seen matched since. There were
very concerned (and it was from them that my own thinking developed) about
the compromised politics of CDCs that might prevent them from truly following
the neighborhood's direction and abiding by their demands. At one point the
neighborhood's community organizing group brought in a private developer to
build housing when its own CDC was behaving too insensitively (Stoecker,
1994).

In contrast to my model of a highly-capitalized CDC partnering with local

community organizing groups, more common are cases of large community
organizing networks partnering with small development and service
organizations. The Toledo Community Organizing Training and Technical
Assistance Program discussed above has expanded to a partnership between
the two local participating CDCs and an independent ACORN organizing effort
now in the city. The Sacramento Valley Organizing Community (SVOC), an
organization of nearly 30 predominantly Latino Catholic and African-American
Protestant churches across a three-county area in Northern California, is part
of the Industrial Areas Foundation community organizing network founded by
Saul Alinsky. In one instance SVOC brought 1,800 members to a meeting with
area health system officials, successfully demanding 200 jobs. To implement
the win, SVOC partnered with the Private Industry Council (PIC), the county
welfare department, and a community college to do job training and
preparation (Callahan et al., 1999). The famous Communities Organized for
Public Service (COPS) in San Antonio practiced a similar model, and ended
up directing a large proportion of San Antonio's CDBG budget over a number
of year to COPS-defined project. But COPS refused to do any of the
development themselves to preserve their organizing focus (Cortes, 1995;
Warren, 1995).

Perhaps the most famous case is the NorthWest Bronx Community and
Clergy Coalition. The NWBCCC, with a 25-year history, organizes with ten
neighborhoods and approximately twenty local religious communities in the
Northwest Bronx area of New York City and has spawned a number of CDCs.
Because NWBCCC is an affiliate of groups, different sub-coalitions can work
on issues they have in common. They consciously put organizing first,
understanding the technical constraints placed on development.
Consequently, they came up with the idea of "Neighborhood Improvement
Plans ... as opposed to fitting into existing programs, leaders were asked to
think about what they wanted to see in the area and then we would try to
figure out how to get there." (Buckley, n.d.). Two of the CDCs formed through
NWBCCC--Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation and Mount Hope Housing
Company--are highly capitalized, multi-local CDCs with hundreds of
employees and thousands of housing units. The NWBCCC's housing
committee, or neighborhood groups, determine projects and then negotiate
with one of the CDCs about how to implement it (Dailey, 2000).

The problem with this multi-organizational model is not its theoretical

desirability but its practicality. In many poor communities, even with the
resurgence of community organizing, we are more likely to find a
neighborhood CDC than an organizing group. Corvallis Neighborhood
Housing Services, in Corvallis Oregon, is looking for community organizing
groups to partner with so they can "direct development to organized
neighborhoods instead of building a project and then organizing around it." But
the neighborhoods in Corvallis, with rare exception, are not organized (Smith,
2000). It makes no sense to tell CDC staff with a knowledgeable commitment
to community organizing that they shouldn't do it just because they don't fit the
ideal model.

There are also risks in separating organizing and development into

independent organizations. When separate organizations forget their
complementarity, they can compete rather than cooperate. In a single
neighborhood, the infighting that can occur within a CDC trying to do both
organizing and development can also occur between a neighborhood-based
CDC and a neighborhood-based organizing group.

So how do we decide whether to implement the organizing in development or

the organizing and development model? Based on lessons from RHICO
(Winkleman, 2001) and the Toledo Community Organizing Training and
Technical Assistance Program, here are some guidelines.

First, it is important to assess what exists in the neighborhood already. If there

is an organizing group and a CDC, it is probably counterproductive for the
CDC to also do organizing. Instead, they should find ways to partner with the
organizing group. If there is a CDC but no organizing group in the
neighborhood, it is important to assess the CDC's readiness and capacity to
do community organizing. How knowledgeable is the executive director about
organizing in general and different organizing models? Is there anyone else
highly skilled in organizing on staff? Is there an organizer in place and, if so,
what do they know about organizing in general and which organizing model do
they prefer? Who is or would be responsible for supervising the organizer?
How are leaders (board members) identified/recruited? Are leaders elected or
appointed (elected is better for organizing)? What do leaders know about
organizing in general and different organizing models? How do organization
leaders and director respond to a series of organizing vs. development
dilemmas (such as doing an action against a bank that also gives loans to the
CDC projects)? What procedures are in place for replacing staff and
leadership without losing internal organizing culture? Does the CDC have a
broad mission statement that could easily include community organizing? In
general, the more skill, knowledge, and support for community organizing, the
more successfully a CDC will be able to develop its organizing capacity.

Second, it is important to assess what exists beyond the neighborhood. If the

neighborhood has neither a CDC nor an organizing group, are there high-
capacity CDCs or culti-local organizing networks working in the area? If there
are both, what are their histories of working cooperatively across the
organizing-development divide? If there is a neighborhood CDC, but it is not
structured to support organizing, what is its history of working cooperatively
with other organizations? Also, what is its level of power? Numerous
neighborhoods have small CDCs which do little or nothing, and would be
better replaced with a combination of community organizing and high-capacity
community development.

It is clear there is no single correct way to combine organizing and

development. It is also clear that the two models, contradictory as they are,
are inseparable. So we must continue the search for ways of combining them
where organizing will not be compromised and development will not be limited.

REFERENCES

ACORN. 1997. Capital & Communities: A Report to the Annie E. Casey

Foundation on ACORN's Work to Revitalize Low and Moderate Income
Communities. http://www.acorn.org/ACORNarchives/studies/c-and-c/capital-
and-communities.html

Alinsky, Saul. 1969. Reveille for Radicals. New York: Vintage

Alinsky, Saul. 1971. Rules for Radicals. New York: Vintage

Beckwith Dave, with Cristina Lopez. 1997. "Community Organizing: People

Power from the Grassroots." COMM-ORG Working Papers Series, 1997
Working Papers. http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers.htm

Bobo, K., Kendall, J. & Max, S. (l991). Organizing for social change: A manual
for activists in the l990s. Washington, DC: Seven Locks Press.
Buckley, Jim. n.d. statement,
http://www.nwbccc.org/History/Stories/Buckley.html)

Callahan, Steve, Neil Mayer, Kris Palmer, and Larry Ferlazzo. 1999. Rowing
the Boat With Two Oars. paper presented on COMM-ORG: The On-Line
Conference on Community Organizing and Development. http://comm-
org.wisc.edu/papers.htm.

COMM-ORG: The On-Line Conference on Community Organizing and

Development. 2001. CO Groups and Networks. http://comm-
org.wisc.edu/orgs.htm

Consensus Organizing Institute. 2000. http://www.consensusorganizing.com

Cortes, Ernesto. 1995. Remarks as panelist, Special Session on "The Legacy

of Saul Alinsky" at the American Sociological Association Annual meetings.

Dailey, Mary. 2000. message posted on COMM-ORG: The On-Line

Conference on Community Organizing and Development.
http://coserver.sa.utoledo.edu/pipermail/colist/2000-December/001212.html

Delgado, Gary. 1986. Organizing the Movement. Philadelphia, Temple

University Press, 1986.

Eichler, Michael. 1998. Organizing's Past, Present, and Future. Shelterforce

Online. http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/101/eichler.html

Eitzen, Stanley, and Maxine Baca Zinn. 2000. In Conflict and Order:
Understanding Society, 9e. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.

Finks, P. David. 1984. The radical vision of Saul Alinsky. New York: Paulist
Press.

Goffman, E.(1959).The presentation of self in everyday life. GardenCity, NY:

Anchor.

Hess, Doug. 1999. Community Organizing, Building and Developing: Their

Relationship to Comprehensive Community Initiatives. Paper presented on
COMM-ORG: The On-Line Conference on Community Organizing and
Development. http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers.htm.

Kahn, S. (1991). Organizing: a guide for grassroots leaders. Silver Springs:

MD. NASW Press.
 COMMUNITY ORGANIZING OR ORGANIZING
COMMUNITY?
GENDER AND THE CRAFTS OF EMPOWERMENT
Susan Stall
Department of Sociology
Northeastern Illinois University
5500 N. St. Louis Ave.
Chicago, IL 60625
773-794-2997
s-stall1@neiu.edu

Randy Stoecker
Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work
University of Toledo
Toledo, OH 43606
419-530-4975
rstoeck@pop3.utoledo.edu

Co-Authors

This paper is adapted from presentations at the annual meetings of the Midwest
Sociological Society, and the American Sociological Association, and COMM-ORG: The
On-Line Conference on Community Organizing and Development.

ABSTRACT

This paper looks at two strains of urban community organizing, distinguished by

philosophy and often by gender, and influenced by the historical division of American
society into public and private spheres. We compare the well-known Alinsky model,
which focuses on communities organizing for power, and what we call the women-
centered model, which focuses on organizing relationships to build community. These
models are rooted in somewhat distinct traditions and vary along several dimensions,
including conceptions of human nature and conflict, power and politics, leadership, and
the organizing process. We conclude by examining the implications of each model in the
current socioeconomic context and the potential for their integration.

INTRODUCTION
 Despite a rich and proud heritage of female organizers and movement
leaders, the field of community organization, in both its teaching models
and its major exponents, has been a male-dominated preserve, where, even
though values are expressed in terms of participatory democracy, much of
the focus within the dominant practice methods has been nonsupportive or
antithetical to feminism. Strategies have largely been based on "macho-
power" models, manipulativeness, and zero- sum gamesmanship (Weil
l986, 192).

The WOMAN in woman organizer is important....It stands for a growing

awareness of different tactics and techniques, and maybe even a growing
awareness of unique goals (Education Center for Community Organizing
[ECCO] 1989, 15).

Behind every successful social movement is a community, or a network of communities.

The community behind the movement provides many things. It sustains the movement
during the hard times, when the movement itself is in abeyance (Taylor, 1989). It
provides for the social reproduction needs of movement participants, providing things as
basic as childcare so parents can participate in movement events (Stoecker, 1992). It
provides a free space (Evans and Boyte, 1986) where members can practice
"prefigurative politics" (Breines, 1989), attempting to create on a small scale the type of
world they are struggling for.

These communities do not just happen. They must be organized. Someone has to build
strong enough relationships between people so they can support each other through long
and sometimes dangerous social change struggles. Or, if the community already exists,
someone has to help transform it to support political action. Sometimes that requires
reorganizing the community (Alinsky, 1971) by identifying individuals who can move
the community to action.

This process of building a mobilizable community is called "community organizing." It

involves "the craft" of building an enduring network of people, who identify with
common ideals, and who can engage in social action on the basis of those ideals. In
practice, it is much more than micromobilization or framing strategy (Snow et al., 1986.).
Community organizing can in fact refer to the entire process of organizing relationships,
identifying issues, mobilizing around those issues, and maintaining an enduring
organization. The distinction between community organizing and social movement is that
community organizing is localized, often "pre-political" action, while social movements
are multi-local. Consider, for a moment that we speak of the Civil Rights "Movement," or
even the "sit-in movement," but not the "Montgomery Bus Boycott movement" (whose
community was organized long before Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat).

The distinction is subtle but important. One of the most common definitions of social
movement, by Charles Tilly (1984) says that a social movement is a "sustained series of
actions between power holders and persons successfully claiming to speak on behalf of a
constituency lacking formal representation, in the course of which those persons make
publicly visible demands for changes in the distribution of exercise of power, and back
those with public demonstrations of support." A general definition of community
organizing, on the other hand, says that "community organizing is the process of building
power that includes people with a problem in defining their community, defining the
problems that they wish to address, the solutions they wish to pursue, and the methods
they will use to accomplish their solutions. The organization will identify the people and
structures that need to be part of these solutions, and, by persuasion or confrontation,
negotiate with them to accomplish the goals of the community. In the process,
organizations will build a democratically controlled community institution - the
organization - that can take on further problems and embody the will and power of that
community over time." (Beckwith, Stoecker, and McNeely, 1997) In general, Community
organizing is the work that occurs in local settings to empower individuals, build
relationships, and create action for social change (Bobo et al, 1991; Kahn, 1991,
Beckwith and Lopez, 1997).

Both of these definitions emphasize the action part of making change. Both talk about
moving people to put pressure on authorities to make that change. But in community
organizing the focus is on the community, while in social movements the focus is on the
movement. These are different levels of action. Community organization is the process
that builds a constituency that can go on to create a movement, and it occurs at a level
between the micro-mobilization of individuals (Snow et al, 1986) and the "political
process" of the broader social system (McAdam, 1982). It is the formation of local
movement centers like the Montgomery Improvement Association, which helped lead the
famed Montgomery Bus Boycott (Morris, 1984) and ultimately provided the impetus for
a national Civil Rights Movement.

The community is more than just the informal backstage relationships between
movement members (Buechler, 1990; 1993), or the foundation for social movement
action. The community relationships which sustain movement activists may, in fact,
include many people who are not involved in the movement at all (Stoecker, 1995). In
community organizing, the focus is on broadening the convergence between the social
movement and the community. This is also why community organizing occurs much
more as local phenomena--since it has historically focused on building a "localized social
movement" in places as small as a single neighborhood (Stoecker, 1993). Viewing social
movements as the outcome of community organizing processes can stand social
movement analysis on its head, showing how "leaders are often mobilized by the masses
they will eventually come to lead" (Robnett l996,1664).

Community organizing has scantly been studied by scholars until very recently (see
COMM-ORG, 1997) and even then not by social movement scholars. The Montgomery
Bus Boycott is the most cited example--and it has rarely, until quite recently, been
covered as community organizing (Payne,1989; Robnett 1996). Rather, social movement
concepts such as micromobilization and frame analysis have been used to dissect
community organizing, fragmenting it. The community organizing done by the famous
Saul Alinsky is barely mentioned in the social movements literature, and when it is, there
are only weak connections to broader social movement theories (Reitzes and Reitzes,
1987; 1987b). As a consequence, we know very little about whether the concepts and
theories developed to study large scale social movements apply to community organizing
or whether we need new concepts altogether (Stoecker, 1993).

Added to the neglect within the social movements literature of community organizing is
our lack of understanding of the role that gender structures and identities play in social
movements. Gender as a variable in social movements has only recently received much
attention (Bookman and Morgen l988; Barnett l993, 1995; Caldwell 1994; McAdam
1989; Stoecker, 1992; Robnett l996; Thompson l994; Tracy l994; Wekerle l996; West
and Blumberg l990). Yet, the organizational structure and practices of social movement
organizations and actors are not gender neutral. Due to the social consequences of sex-
category membership--the differential allocation of power and resources-- "doing gender
is unavoidable"(West and Zimmerman l987, 126). Gender, as a social product of
everyday actions and interactional work, is also produced and reproduced through social
movement activities. Within social movements, doing gender legitimates differences and
inequities in the sexual division of labor and creates and sustains the differential
evaluation of leadership and organizing activities. Gender also effects problem
identification and tactical choices (Brandwein l987, 122). The male-dominated world of
sports and the military provide images and metaphors for building teamwork, and for
igniting competition and antagonism against opponents "to win" a particular movement
campaign (Acker, l990). The rhythm and timing of social movement work often does not
take into account the rhythms of life of caring work outside of organizing meetings and
campaigns (Stoecker, 1992). Or when it does, the result is that women's movement
involvement is restricted. In the New York Tenants movement, women were restricted to
the most grass-roots organizing activities, while men did the negotiating (Lawson and
Barton, 1980). In the 1960s Freedom Summer campaign, organizers worried about the
consequences of white women recruits developing relationships with Black men in the
South (McAdam, 1986).

As a consequence, the community organizing work that women do in social movements

is also neglected. Payne (1989), Barnett (1993, 1995) and Robnett (l996) have challenged
accounts of the civil rights movement that neglect the central contributions of women
activists. Barnett (l993, 165) challenges research on modern social movement leadership
that presents "the erroneous image that `all of the women are white, all of the Blacks are
men'" She argues against the narrow definition of social movement leadership that
elevates the movement spokesperson, while neglecting the "leaders", often women, who
serve as grassroots organizers. Robnett (l996) analyzes how the "gendered organization"
of the civil rights movement defined the social location of African-American women in
the movement, creating a particular substructure of leadership.

It is possible that community organizing is neglected for the same reason that women's
work in social movements has been neglected. Women's work and community organizing
are both, to an extent, invisible labor. What people see is the flashy demonstration, not
knowing the many hours of preparation building relationships and providing for
participants' basic needs that made the demonstration possible. Indeed, community
organizing is the part of social movements that occurs closest to the grassroots and is in
fact more often done by women (Robnett, 1996; Lawson and Barton, 1980). Even when
men, such as Saul Alinsky, do it, it receives short shrift. And social movement analysis,
with some exception (Taylor, 1989; Taylor and Rupp, 1993; Taylor and Whittier, 1992;
Robnett, 1996; Stoecker, 1992) has scarcely developed concepts which would even allow
us to see this grassroots labor, far less understand it.

What are some of the gender dimensions that would help us understand community
organizing and its relationship to movement building? Our analysis begins with the
historical division of American culture into public and private spheres that split the
"public work done mostly by men in the formal economy and government from the
"private" work done mostly by women in the community and home (Tilly and Scott,
1978). These spheres have always influenced each other (through routes such as the
economic impact of women's unpaid domestic labor or the impact of economic policy
changes on family quality of life), but have historically been organized around different
logics with different cultures and, we argue, have produced two distinct models of
community organizing. These two community organizing modeld--one developed by
Saul Alinsky and the other developed by a wide variety or women--in fact begin from
opposite ends of the public-private split. The Alinsky model begins with "community
organizing"--the public sphere battles between the haves and have-nots. The women-
centered model begins with "organizing community"--building relationships and
empowering individuals through those relationships.

The Alinsky model, which we name after its most famous practitioner, is based in a
conception of separate public and private spheres. Community organizing was not a job
for family types, a position he reinforced by his own marital conflicts, by his demands on
his trainees, and by his own poverty. In fact, if anything, the main role of the private
sphere was to support the organizer's public sphere work. In his Rules for Radicals,
Alinsky (1971) remarked:

The marriage record of organizers is with rare exception disastrous.

Further, the tension, the hours, the home situation, and the opportunities,
do not argue for fidelity. Also, with rare exception, I have not known
really competent organizers who were concerned about celibacy. Here and
there are wives and husbands or those in love relationships who
understand and are committed to the work, and are real sources of strength
to the organizer (p. 65).

His attitude toward which issues were important also illustrates his emphasis on the
public sphere. While problems began in the private sphere, it was important to move the
community to understand how those problems were connected to larger issues outside of
the community. Thus, problems could not be solved within the community but by the
community being represented better in the public sphere (Reitzes and Reitzes, 1987,
pp.27-28). This is not to say that Alinsky avoided a focus on private sphere issues. His
first successful organizing attempt, in Back of the Yards, produced a well-baby clinic, a
credit union, and a hot lunch program (Finks, 1984, p. 21). But these programs were
accomplished through public sphere strategizing, not private relationships. In establishing
and maintaining the hot lunch program, Alinsky pushed the BYNC to understand its
relationship to the national hot lunch program and "In order to fight for their own Hot
Lunch project they would have to fight for every Hot Lunch project in every part of the
United States." (Alinsky, 1969, p. 168).

The women-centered model, though it has a long history, has only recently received
much attention as some feminist researchers and organizers began arguing for a theory of
organizing that is feminist or "women-centered" (Ackelsberg l988; Barnett l995; ECCO
1989; Gutierrez and Lewis 1992; Haywoode l991; Weil l986; West and Blumberg l990).
For the women-centered model, while organizing efforts are rooted in private sphere
issues or relationships, the organizing process problematizes the split between public and
private, since its "activities which do not fall smoothly into either category" (Tiano, l984,
p. 21). Women's emotional attachments to their families affect their everyday community
commitments and their priorities about what are appropriate targets for local social
change efforts (Colfer and Colfer, 1978; Genovese, 1980; Stoneall, 1981). But women-
centered organizing extends "the boundaries of the household to include the
neighborhood" and, as its efforts move ever further out, ultimately "dissolve[s] the
boundaries between public and private life, between household and civil society"
(Haywoode, l991, p. 175). Organizing to secure tenant rights, local daycares, and youth
programs "define a sphere which is public, yet closer to home" (Haywoode, l991, p. 175)
and demonstrates the importance of the interconnections between the spheres
(Ackelsberg, l988; Petchesky, l979). Women-centered organizing utilizes "feminist"
values, practices, and goals. Within this type of organizing there is an emphasis on
community building, collectivism, caring, mutual respect, and self-transformation
(Barnett l995). As we will discuss, women-centered organizing is defined as much by the
historical placement of women in the home and neighborhood as the Alinsky model is
defined by the historical placement of men in public governing and commerce.

In this paper, then, we address two neglected issues in one question: How do gender
structures and identities play out in community organizing? It would be nice if we could
just say that community organizing is the backstage women's work of movement
building. But the most famous of the community organizers, Saul Alinsky, was a man,
and one who was particularly fond of his masculine style of community organizing (see
below).

This paper attempts to understand the not-quite-social-movement world of community

organizing. We draw on U.S. examples across five decades utilizing secondary sources
and our own community-based research to compare the Alinsky model and the women-
centered model--which we see as two of the most important strands of community
organizing in the United States. Our purpose is not to systematically test theories or
evaluate the models. Rather, using a heuristic approach, we want to begin exploring the
possible dimensions across which these two organizing models can be compared. Some
authors have examined and critiqued the Alinsky style of organizing (Lancourt 1979;
Sherrard and Murray 1965; Stein 1986), and a few authors have argued that there is a
distinct way of women's organizing (ECCO l989; Haywoode l991; Oppenheim l991;
Weil l986), but no one has compared these two approaches.
These "models" are ideal type constructs and, we suspect, do not occur as mutually
exclusive in the real world. Indeed, many Alinsky organizations have been reluctant to
engage in public conflict (Lancourt l979; Bailey 1972), and Alinsky followers such as
Fred Ross, Cesar Chavez, and Ed Chambers increasingly emphasized private sphere
issues and family and community relationship building (Reitzes and Reitzes l987a;
Industrial Areas Foundation l978). We also focus on the more traditional Alinsky-style
organizing rather than recent adaptations by groups like the IAF. Likewise, the women-
centered model has to-date not been portrayed as a model and thus its practitioners, many
of whom are trained in Alinsky-style organizing, are very diverse. Instead, our purpose is
to show two strains of influence on community organizing.

We first examine the historical roots and some basic traits of each tradition. Next, we
explore some key differences between the two approaches. We then discuss the
implications of each model and the potential for integrating them.

BACKGROUND OF THE ORGANIZING MODELS

The Alinsky Model

The very term "community organizing" is inextricably linked with the late Saul Alinsky,
whose community organizing career began in the late 1930s. As part of his field research
job as a graduate student in criminology at the University of Chicago he was to develop a
juvenile delinquency program in Chicago's "Back of the Yards," neighborhood
downwind of the Chicago Stockyards--a foul-smelling and crime-ridden slum of poor
Poles, Lithuanians, and Slovaks. When Alinsky arrived, the Congress of Industrial
Organizations was organizing the stockyard workers living there. Expanding the CIO
model beyond workplace issues, Alinsky organized the Back of the Yards Neighborhood
Council (BYNC) from local neighborhood groups, ethnic clubs, union locals, bowling
leagues, and an American Legion Post. The success of BYNC in getting expanded city
services and political power started Alinsky off on a long career of organizing poor urban
communities around the country (Finks 1984; Reitzes and Reitzes 1987a).

Alinsky's targets shot at him, threw him in jail, and linked him to Communists, organized
crime, and other "undesirables." He saw how the "haves" blatantly took from the "have
nots" and unashamedly manipulated the consciousness of the "have a little, want mores."
Alinsky had little patience for the version of community organizing practiced by social
workers, saying "they organize to get rid of four-legged rats and stop there; we organize
to get rid of four-legged rats so we can get on to removing two-legged rats" (Alinsky
1971, 68).

Alinsky often argued that a career as a community organizer had to come before all else,
including family, and to enforce this he would keep his trainees up all hours of the night
at meetings and discussions (Reitzes and Reitzes, 1987, p. 10). Though he did not
publicly discourage women from engaging in the work (Alinsky, 1971), he was skeptical
of women doing his kind of community organizing, fearing they were too delicate (Finks,
1984).1 Heather Booth, who went on to help found the Midwest Academy and Citizen
Action, quit the Community Action Program of Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation
(IAF), believing that women received inadequate training from IAF and the IAF wasn't
sensitive to women's issues.

Alinsky's approach has influenced an entire generation of organizers who adapted his
principles, but retained a core of practices and assumptions we will explore later. The
practice of the Alinsky model has built powerful organizations and produced visible
victories across the country: Back of the Yards and TWO in Chicago, SECO in
Baltimore, FIGHT in Rochester, MACO in Detroit, ACORN in Little Rock, ETCO in
Toledo, and COPS in San Antonio, among others. These organizations have in some
cases saved entire communities from destruction and produced influential leaders who
have gone on to change the face of the public sphere.

The Women-Centered Model

Unlike the Alinsky model, the women-centered model of community organizing cannot
be attributed to a single person or movement. Indeed, a wide diversity of women have
mobilized around many different issues using many different methods. We are most
interested in those mobilizations which fit the community organizing definition of being
locale-based.

This model can be traced back to African-American women's efforts to sustain home and
community under slavery. Bell hooks (l990; also see Davis l981) notes the historic
importance for African-Americans of "homeplace" as a site to recognize and resist
domination. Hooks argues,

Historically, African-American people believed that the construction of a

homeplace, however fragile and tenuous (the slave hut, the wooden
shack), had a radical political dimension...it was about the construction of
a safe place where black people could affrim one another and by so doing
heal many of the wouunds inflicted by racist domination" (l990 42).

Later, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, African-American women
involved in the Black Women's Clubs organized day-care centers, orphanages, and
nursing homes. Others, such as Ida B. Wells, organized campaigns around such issues as
lynching and rape (Duster 1970; Giddings l984; Gutierrez and Lewis l992).

Also important in understanding the historical roots of current women-centered

organizing efforts are Anglo women's "municipal housekeeping" activities of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. "Then public spirited women, in attempting to
overcome disapproval of their public role...explain[ed] that they were only protecting
their homes and families by extending their activities from the home into the public
arena. Women claimed the right to be guardians of the neighborhood, just as they were
acknowledged to be guardians of the family"(Haywoode l991, l80). Since then, women
have created numerous voluntary and benevolent associations to campaign for concrete
reforms in local neighborhoods and broader reforms in municipal services, education,
labor, housing, health care, and childrens' rights (Berg 1978; Haywoode l991; Tax 1980).

Perhaps the most famous of these activities were the settlement houses, founded
primarily by college-educated white middle-class women who believed they should live
in the neighborhood wherethey worked (Bryan and Davis l990, 5). The most well-known
settlement house organizer was Jane Addams, who with Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull
House on Chicago's west side in 1889. Their goal was to improve the social networks,
social services, and community life in poverty-stricken immigrant slums. They succeeded
in developing parks, playgrounds, expanded community services, and neighborhood
plans. They were also involved in social reform movements promoting labor legislation
for women and children, care of delinquents, and women's suffrage. But community
organizers often saw them as engaging in charity work rather than adversarial social
action (Brandwein l981, l987; Finks 1984, 96-7), and clinical social workers saw them as
violating the detached casework method that emphasized individual treatment over social
reform and community development (Drew l983; Lee l937; Specht and Courtney l994).

The women-centered model also carries a history of success different from the Alinsky
model. The activism of women in the early settlement movement, the civil rights
movement, and the consciousness-raising groups of the radical branch of the 1970s
women's movement allowed women to challenge both private and public arrangements in
ways that would forever effect their relationships, housework, parenting practices, and
career paths. The consequent changes in women's health care and women's knowledge of
their own bodies, in cultural practices around dating and relationships, and the
relationship between work and family are still reverberating through society. That these
successes have not been better documented owes to the fact that struggles focused on the
private sphere have been neither defined nor valued as important. Today, women of
color, low-income, and working class women create and sustain numerous protest efforts
and organizations to alter living conditions or policies that threaten their families and
communities (Bookman and Morgen l988; Feldman and Stall, 1994; Garland l988; Gilkes
l988; Gutierrez and Lewis l992; Hamilton l991; Haywoode l991; Leavitt 1993; McCourt
l977; Rabrenovic l995). These include, but are not limited to tenant organizing (Lawson
and Barton l990), low income housing (Breitbart and Pader l995; Feldman and Stall,
1994), welfare rights (Naples l991), and environmental issues (Pardo l990).

COMPARING THE MODELS

Human Nature and Conflict

The Alinsky model and the women-centered model begin from different starting points--
the rough and tumble world of aggressive public sphere confrontation; and the
cooperative nurturant world of private sphere personal and community development.
Consequently, they have very different views of what human nature is and its role in
human conflict.
Among all the tenets of the Alinsky model, the assumption of self-interest has the
strongest continuing influence (Beckwith n.d.) and is strongly influenced by the centrality
of the public shpere in the Alinsky model.. Modern society, from Alinsky's perspective, is
created out of compromise between self-interested individuals operating in the public
sphere. Thus, organizing people requires appealing to their self-interest. People become
involved because they think there is something in it for themselves (Alinsky 1969, 94-98;
1971, 53-9). Alinsky's emphasis on self-interest was connected to his wariness of
ideology. From his perspective, organizing people around abstract ideology leads to
boredom at best and ideological disputes at worst. Alinsky also feared ideology becoming
dogma and was adamant that building a pragmatic organization should come before
promoting any ideology. He did hope that, as the community became organized, the
process would bring out "innate altruism" and "affective commitment." But even that
level of commitment was based on building victories through conflict with targets
(Lancourt 1979, 51; Reitzes and Reitzes 1987a, 56; 1987b). Alinsky relates the story of
one organizer's effort to start a "people's organization" and how he used self-interest to
achieve the desired result:

Mr. David was a businessman who...had avoided participation in any kind

of social-betterment program or community group....His whole manner let
me know that in his opinion I was just another `do-gooder' and as soon as I
finished my song and dance he would give me a dollar or two and wish me
well. I suddenly shifted from my talk on the children and began to point
out indirectly the implications of his joining our organization....I could
almost hear Mr. David thinking..."And where could I get better business
relations than at this meeting." Then David turned to me and said "I'll be at
that meeting tonight." Immediately after I left David I went across the
street to Roger, who is in the same business, and I talked to him the same
way. Roger had a doubled-barreled incentive for coming. First there was
David's purpose and secondly Roger wanted to make sure that David
would not take away any part of his business (Alinsky 1969, 95-97).

Since Alinsky saw society as a compromise between competing self-interested

individuals, conflict was inevitable, and a pluralist polity was the means by which
compromise was reached. Since poor people are at an initial disadvantage in that polity,
the organizer's job is to prepare citizens to engage in the level of public conflict necessary
for them to be included in the compromise process (Reitzes and Reitzes 1987a). Alinsky
contended that the only way to overcome the inertia that exists in most communities
(Reitzes and Reitzes 1987a, 70) was to "rub raw the resentments of the people in the
community" (Alinsky 1971, 116). In order to engage in the level of battle necessary to
win, "the rank and file and the smaller leaders of the organizations must be whipped up to
a fighting pitch" (Alinsky 1969, 151). Alinsky would engage small-scale conflicts within
communities against unscrupulous merchants, realtors, and even entrenched community
organizations, to build victories and a sense of power (Reitzes and Reitzes 1987a, 54, 65),
treating even the relatively private sphere of the neighborhood as a public sphere arena.
Alinsky's involvement in 1960s Rochester with FIGHT, pressing for Kodak to support an
affirmative hiring and jobs program, is illustrative. FIGHT began with a drawn-out
negotiation process, and then Alinsky escalated to confrontational rhetoric and pickets.
When Kodak reneged on a signed agreement, Alinsky and FIGHT organized a proxy
campaign for Kodak's annual meeting. Forty members of FIGHT and Friends of FIGHT
attended the meeting, demanded that Kodak reinstate its original agreement by 2 pm, and
then walked out to 800 supporters in the street. They came back at 2 pm and were told
Kodak would not reverse its position. The FIGHT leadership came out and told the
crowd: "Racial War has been declared on black communities by Kodak. If it's war they
want, war they'll get." Threats of a major demonstration in July and further escalation of
the conflict produced a behind the scenes agreement at the eleventh hour (Finks 1984,
213-221).

Unlike the Alinsky model, women-centered organizing involvement does not emanate
from self-interest but from an ethic of care maintained by relationships built on years of
local volunteer work in the expanded private sphere, particularly community associations
(Stall, 1991). Rather than a morality of individual rights, women learn a morality of
responsibility that is connected to relationships and is based on the "universality of the
need for compassion and care" (Gilligan l977: 509). Women-centered organizers grasp
the meaning of justice not as a compromise between self-interested individuals, but as a
practical reciprocity in the network of relationships that make up the community
(Ackelsberg l988; Haywoode 1991; Stall, 1991). Leavitt (l993) describes how concern
for their children's welfare led a group of African-American women in Los Angeles in
the late l980s to focus on rehabbing the existing tot lots in their public housing
development. In Nickerson Gardens, as in public housing across the country, women
make up the overwhelming majority of grassroots organizers. The campaign of this all-
women tot-lot committee ignited them to testify at housing authority hearings, conduct a
community survey, and eventually secure funds and participate in the design and the
construction of two play areas in their low-income community. They did not manipulate
self-interest but instead built a cooperative consensus.

Within the women-centered model, the maintenance and development of social

cohesion--personal connections with others that provide a safe environment for people to
develop, change and grow--is more immediately important than conflict to gain
institutional power (Kaplan l982). For women, community relationships include the
social fabric created through routine activities related to the private sphere, such as
childcare, housekeeping, and shopping (DeVault l991), as well as through social
arrangements they make to protect, enhance, and preserve the cultural experience of
community members (Bernard l981, Stoneall l983). Historically, women have relied on
community networks to feed, clothe, and shelter their families (Sacks 1988a, 21; also see
Hill Collins l990). Particularly for women, communal structures can serve as "free
spaces" offering arenas outside of the family where women can develop a "growing sense
that they [have] the right to work -- first in behalf of others, then in behalf of themselves"
(Evans and Boyte l981, 61; l986).

Women residents of the Wentworth Gardens Chicago public housing development in

Chicago, in 1968, created and now continue to manage their own laundromat which
provides both on-site laundry facilities and a community space that serves as a primary
recruitment ground for community activists. The ongoing volunteer work of women
residents over four decades has assured the laundromat's continued success, and has
helped numerous women develop skills and self-confidence to further develop the
community through the opening of an on-site grocery store and obtaining other
improvements to their housing. A Resident Service Committee, made up of laundromat
volunteers, meets monthly to resolve problems and allocate laundromat profits to annual
community festivals, scholarship funds, and other activities.

Power and Politics

Both models have seemingly inconsistent understandings of power and politics. These
inconsistencies are rooted partly in the ways each thinks about human nature, but are also
particularly affected by how they deal with the public-private split. The Alinsky model
sees power as zero-sum, but the polity as pluralist. The women-centered model sees
power as infinitely expanding, but the polity as structurally biased. Understanding both
the differences between the models, and their seeming inconsistencies, requires looking
at how each deals with the public-private split.

For the Alinsky model, power and politics both occur in the public sphere. When power
is zero-sum, the only way to get more is to take it from someone else. Alinsky was
adamant that real power could not be given, but only taken. He watched how obsessed
elites were with power, even taking it from each other when they could and thus making
the very structure of power zero-sum. Thus, the method for a poor community to gain
power was through public sphere action--by picking a single elite target, isolating it from
other elites, personalizing it, and polarizing it (Alinsky 1971).2 The 1960s Woodlawn
Organization (TWO) was one of Alinsky's most famous organizing projects in an African
American neighborhood on Chicago's south side. When TWO was shut out of urban
renewal planning for their neighborhood, they commissioned their own plan, and
threatened to occupy Lake Shore Drive during rush hour unless their plan held sway. Not
only did they get agreement on a number of their plan proposals, they also controlled a
new committee to approve all future plans for their neighborhood, shifting control of
urban planning from city hall to the neighborhood (Finks, l984, 153; Reitzes and Reitzes,
1987)).

In women-centered organizing, power begins in the private sphere of relationships, and

thus is not conceptualized as zero-sum, but as limitless and collective. "Co-active power"
is based on human interdependence and the development of all within the group or the
community through collaboration (Follet l940; see also Hartsock l974). "[I]t belongs to a
group and remains in existence only so long as the group keeps together" (Arendt l969,
44). The goal of a women-centered organizing process is empowerment (ECCO l989).
Empowerment is a developmental process that includes building skills through repetitive
cycles of action and reflection which evoke new skills and understandings, which in turn
provoke new and more effective actions (Keiffer l984). Empowerment includes the
development of a more positive self-concept and self-confidence; a more critical world
view; and the cultivation of individual and collective skills and resources for social and
political action (Rappaport l986; Van Den Bergh and Cooper l986; Weil l986). In the
case of the Cedar Riverside Project Area Committee, an organization dedicated to
planning resident-controlled redevelopment of a counter-culture Minneapolis
neighborhood, tensions developed in the 1980s between those who emphasized building
power as an outcome and empowering residents as a process. One woman organizer
compares her approach to that of the lead organizer:

I disagree with Tim, but he's a very empowering person. Tim is more
Alinsky. For me, the process, not the outcome, is the most important....
The empowerment of individuals is why I became involved.... I was a
single mother looking for income, and was hired as a block worker for the
dispute resolution board, and gained a real sense of empowerment.

Power, for this organizer, is gained not through winning a public sphere battle, but by
bringing residents together to resolve disputes and build relationships within their own
community.

When we shift the focus from more abstract notions of power to more concrete practices
of politics, both models are forced to work in the public sphere. But the public sphere-
private sphere split still influences how each relates to politics.

The Alinsky model sees itself as already in the public sphere, and as a consequence
already part of the political system. The problem was not gaining access--the rules of
politics already granted access. Rather, the problem was effectively organizing to make
the most of that access. Alinsky believed that poor people could form their own interest
group and access the polity just like any other interest group. They may have to make
more of a fuss to be recognized initially, but once recognized, their interests would be
represented just like anyone else's. Community organizing, for Alinsky, was bringing
people together to practice democracy. Consequently, Alinsky did not see a need for
dramatic structural adjustments. The system was, in fact, so good that it would protect
and support the have-nots in organizing against those elites who had been taking unfair
advantage (Alinsky l969; Lancourt l979, 31-35; Reitzes and Reitzes 1987, 17-18).
Alinsky organizations support government even while attacking office holders (Bailey
1972, 136). When the IAF-trained Ernesto Cortez returned to San Antonio to help found
Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) in 1973, he began with the traditional
strategy of escalating from negotiations to protests to achieve better city services for
Latino communities. Soon after their initial successes, COPS turned to voter
mobilization, eventually resulting in a slim win to change San Antonio's council from at-
large to district representation. From there they were able to control half of the council's
seats, bringing over half of the city's federal Community Development Block Grant funds
to COPS projects from 1974-1981. Eventually COPS found that its political lobbying and
voter mobilization tactics outpaced the effectiveness of confrontation and protest (Reitzes
and Reitzes 1987a, 121-123). Heather Booth's Citizen Action project has taken this
pluralist organizing approach to its logical extreme, focusing her energies entirely on
voter mobilization in cities and states around the country (Reitzes and Reitzes l987a,
153).
The women-centered model, however, approaches politics from an experience and
consciousness of the exclusionary qualities of the public-private sphere split, which
becomes embedded in a matrix of domination along structural axes of gender, race, and
social class and hides the signficance of women's work in local settings. This matrix has
historically excluded women from public sphere politics, and restricted them through the
sexual division of labor to social reproduction activities centered in the home (Cockburn
l977; Kaplan l982, 545). Increasingly, women have politicized the private sphere as a
means to combat exclusion from the public agenda (Kaplan l982). Thus, women have
organized around issues that flow from their distinct histories, every day experiences, and
perspectives (Ackelsberg 1988; Bookman and Morgen l988; ECCO 1989; Haywoode
l991; Stall, 1991; West and Blumberg l990; Wilson l977). Women-centered organizing
"dissolve[s] the boundaries between public and private life, between household and civil
society" and extends "the boundaries of the household to include the neighborhood"
(Haywoode l991, 175). Organizing to secure local daycares, youth programs, tenant
rights and a clean environment "define a sphere which is public, yet closer to home"
(Haywoode l991, 175) and demonstrates the importance of the interconnections between
the spheres (Ackelsberg l988; Petchesky l979). Cynthia Hamilton (l99l), a community
organizer in South Central Los Angeles, described a primarily women-directed
organizing campaign to stop the solid waste incinerator planned for their community in
the late l980s. These low income women, primarily African-American, with no prior
political experience, were motivated by the health threat to their homes and children.
They built a loose, but effective organization, the Concerned Citizens of South Central
Los Angeles, and were gradually joined by white, middle-class, and professional women
from across the city. The activists began to recognize their shared gender oppression as
they confronted the sarcasm and contempt of male political officials and industry
representatives--who dismissed their human concerns as "irrational, uninformed, and
disruptive" (44)--and restrictions on their organizing created by their family's needs.
Eventually they forced incinerator industry representatives to compromise and helped
their families accept a new division of labor in the home to accommodate activists'
increased public political participation.3

Leadership Development

Leadership is another characteristic of these models that shows the influence of the
public-private split. The Alinsky model maintains and explicit between public sphere
leaders, called "organizers," and private sphere community leaders who occupy decision-
making positions in formal community organizations. For the women centered model,
leadership begins in the private sphere, but leadership becomes a form of boundary
spanning across public and private spheres.

For Alinsky, the organizer is a professional consultant from outside the community
whose job is to get people to adopt a delegitimizing frame (Ferree and Miller 1985;
Gamson et al. 1982;) that breaks the power structure's hold over them (Bailey 1972, 46-
7). Advocates of the Alinsky approach contend that organizing is a very complex task
requiring professional-level training and experience (Bailey 1972, 137; Reitzes and
Reitzes 1987a, 53). In many cases organizers must "disorganize" or reorganize the
community since so many communities are organized for apathy (Alinsky 1971, 116;
Bailey 1972, 50). The Alinsky model also maintains a strict role separation between
outside organizers and the indigenous leaders that organizers are responsible for locating
and supporting (Lancourt 1979; Reitzes and Reitzes 1987b). New leaders have to be
developed, often outside of the community's institutionally-appointed leadership
structure. The focus is not on those individuals, however, but on building a strong
organization and getting material concessions from elites. Organizers have influence, but
only through their relationships with indigenous leaders (Lancourt 1979). It may appear
curious that Alinsky did not emphasize building indigenous organizers, especially since
the lack of indigenous organizing expertise often led to organizational decline after the
pros left (Lancourt 1979).4 Tom Gaudette, an Alinsky-trained organizer who helped build
the Organization for a Better Austin (OBA) in Chicago, explicitly discouraged his
organizers from living in the neighborhood, arguing they had to be able to view the
community dispassionately in order to be effective at their job (Bailey 1972, 80). But
when viewed through the lens of the public-private split, it is clear that the organizers are
leaders who remain in the public sphere, always separate from the expanded private
sphere of community. Because the organizers remain in the public sphere, they become
the link that pulls private sphere leaders, and their communities, in to public action.

There is less separation between organizers and leaders in the women-centered model, as
women-centered organizers, rather than being outsiders, are more often rooted in local
networks. they are closely linked to those with whom they work and organize and act as
mentors or facilitators of the empowerment process.5 Private sphere issues seem
paramount with these organizers. They find they need to deal with women's sense of
powerlessness and low self-esteem (Miller l986)--before they can effectively involve
them in sustained organizing efforts. Mentoring others as they learn the organizing
process is premised on the belief that all have the capacity to be leaders /organizers.
Rather than focusing on or elevating individual leaders, women-centered organizers seek
to model and develop "group centered" leadership (Payne l989) that "embraces the
participation of many as opposed to creating competition over the elevation of only a
few" (ECCO l989, 16). Instead of moving people and directing events, this is a
conception of leadership as teaching (Payne l989).6 Analyses of women-centered
organizing and leadership development efforts also underline the importance of
"centerwomen," or "bridge leaders," who use existing local networks to develop social
groups and activities that create a sense of familial/community consciousness, connecting
people with similar concerns and heightening awareness of shared issues (Sacks l988b;
Robnett, 1996). These leaders can transform social networks into a political force, and
demonstrate how the particular skills that women learn in their families and communities
(e.g., interpersonal skills, planning and coordination, conflict mediation) can be translated
into effective public sphere leadership. Robnett (l996) provides evidence that, "The
activities of African-American women in the civil rights movement provided the bridges
necessary to cross boundaries between the personal lives of potential constituents and
adherents and the political life of civil rights movement organizations" (1664). Thus,
ironically, gender as a "construct of exclusion...helped to develop a strong grassroots tier
of leadership…women who served as "bridge leaders" who were central to the
"development of identity, collective consciousness, and solidarity within the civil rights
movement" (Robnett l996, 1667). Although bridge leaders were not exclusively women,
this "intermediate layer" of leadership was the only one available to women at that time
(Robnett l996). Mrs. Amey, now seventy years old, has been a key activist and a
centerperson in nearly all of the Wentworth Gardens organizing efforts discussed earlier
since the mid-l950s. A woman resident's description of Mrs. Hallie Amey provides some
insight into the importance of her leadership role:

She's [Mrs. Amey's] the type of person who can bring a lot of good ideas
to the community....And she's always there to help. And she's always here;
she's always doing things. And she's always pulling you, she's pushing
you, and she's calling you, "We've got to do this!" She makes sure you
don't forget what you have to do. Early in the morning she's on the phone,
"Mrs. Harris, what time you coming out?'' That was to say, "you gonna do
it without me having to ask, or you giving me an excuse (Stall, interview,
1991)?

The Organizing Process

Finally, these two models adopt organizing processes that reflect the influence of, and
their conceptualization of, the public-private split. The Alinsky model emphasizes farge
formal public organizations to manage large visible public events. The women-centered
model emphasizes the development of informal small groups that take on less visible
issues, in the private sphere, in less visible ways.

Within the Alinsky model the organizing process centers on identifying and confronting
public issues to be addressed in the public sphere. Door knocking is the initial strategy for
identifying issues. Those issues then become the means of recruitment to the organizing
effort. The organization bills itself as the best, if not only, means of resolving those
issues. The "mass meeting" is the means for framing issues and celebrating gains.
Important to the process of building up to the mass meeting are cumulative victories--
beginning with an easily winnable issue, and using the energy generated by that win to
build to bigger and bigger issues. The public activities of the mass march, the public
rally, the explicit confrontation, the celebrated win, are all part of building a strong
organization that can publicly represent the community's interests. The annual public
convention is the culmination of the Alinsky organizing process. The first annual
convention of the East Toledo Community Organization in 1979 was preceded by flyers
emphasizing the neglect of the east side of Toledo by city government, broken promises
from officials, the victories of initial organizing, and the unity developing in the
community. ETCO mailed packets across East Toledo that produced 500 registrants for
the meeting. At the meeting itself the 500-1000 people gathered passed 13 resolutions
covering dangerous rail crossings, park maintenance, utility complaints, service
shortages, truck traffic, and many other issues (Stoecker, 1995).

In the Alinsky model, the organizer isn't there just to win a few issues, but to build an
enduring organization that can continue to claim power and resources for the
community--to represent the community in a public sphere pluralist polity. The organizer
shouldn't start from scratch but from the community's pre-existing organizational base of
churches, service organizations, clubs, etc. In many cases, the community organizations
created also spawn community-based services such as credit unions, daycare, etc. This is
not a process to be taken lightly or with few resources. Alinsky often insisted that, before
he would work with a community, they had to raise $150,000 to cover three years of
expenses (Lancourt 1979). When Ed Chambers took over the Industrial Areas Foundation
from Alinsky, he required $160,000 just to cover startup costs for a serious organizing
project (Industrial Areas Foundation 1978). For Alinsky, the organization itself was part
of the tactical repertoire of community organizing. Dave Beckwith, an Alinsky-style
organizer with the Center for Community Change, also argues for the centrality of the
organization.

If an organization doesn't grow, it will die...People naturally fade in and

out of involvement as their own life's rhythms dictate--people move, kids
take on baseball for the spring, they get involved with Lamaze classes,
whatever. If there are not new people coming in, the shrinkage can be
fatal. New issues and continuous outreach are the only protection against
this natural process. (Beckwith n.d., 13)

The presence, and partial restriction, of women in the private sphere leads the women-
centered organizing model to emphasize a very different organizing process formed
around creating an ideal private-sphere-like setting rather than a large public sphere
organization. The process begins by creating a safe and nurturing space where women
can identify and discuss issues effecting the private sphere (Gutierrez, l990). This model
uses the small group to establish trust, and build "informality, respect, [and] tolerance of
spontaneity" (Hamilton l991, 44). The civil rights organizer, Ella Baker, was dubious
about the long-term value of mass meetings, lobbying and demonstrations. Instead, she
advocated organizing people in small groups so that they could understand their potential
power and how best to use it, which had a powerful influence on the Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee (Britton l968; Payne l989).7 Small groups create an atmosphere
that affirms each participant's contribution, provides the time for individuals to share, and
makes it possible for participants to listen carefully to each other (Stall, 1993). Gutierrez
and Lewis (l992 126) affirm that, "The small group provides the ideal environment for
exploring the social and political aspects of `personal' problems and for developing
strategies for work toward social change". Moreover, smaller group settings create and
sustain the relationship building and sense of significance and solidarity so integral to
community.8 Women in Organizing (WIO), a 1990s urban-based project, organized
twelve low income, African-American teenage mothers to gain self-sufficiency and
political empowerment. One of the organizing staff described the effort of this "Young
Moms Program":

Our work is about connecting women with each other, about transforming
their experience in terms of working with mixed groups of people of
different races, about building the confidence of individual women and
building the strengths of groups....All of our work is really about
 leadership development of women, of learning more of how consciousness
develops, of how we can collectively change the world.

While WIO did help these women to organize an advocacy meeting with public officials,
the meeting was preceded by nearly five months of training sessions that addressed less
traditional issues such as personal growth and advocacy in the family, as well as more
traditional organizing issues (Stall, 1993).

Because there is less focus on immediate public sphere action in the women-centered
model, a continuing organization is not as central in initial organizing. In place of the
focus on organization building are "modest struggles" ----"small, fragmented, and
sometimes contradictory efforts by people to change their lives" (Krauss l983, 54). These
short-lived collective actions (e.g., planting a community garden, opening a daycare,
organizing a public meeting) are often begun by loosely organized groups. The
organizing efforts of the African-American women in South Central Los Angeles,
described earlier, functioned for a year and a half without any formal leadership structure.
Their model depended on a rotating chair, stymying the media's hunger for a
"spokesperson" (Hamilton, l991, p. 44; see also Ferguson, l984). If empowerment is "a
process aimed at consolidating, maintaining, or changing the nature and distribution of
power in a particular cultural context" (Bookman and Morgen l988, 4), modest struggles
are a significant factor in this process. Engagement in modest resistance allows women to
immediately alter their community and gain a sense of control over their lives. Attention
to these struggles is necessary in order to understand the more elusive process of
resistance that takes place beneath the surface and outside of what have conventionally
been defined as community organizing, social protest, or social movements (Feldman and
Stall, 1994). Women can achieve significant change in their neighborhoods by building
on the domestic sphere and its organization, rather than separating it from their public
activities (Clark l994).. Research on New York City co-op apartment tenants in the
1980s, found that the tenant leaders were almost always women, the majority were
African-American and were long-time residents of their building and their community
(Leavitt and Saegert l990; Clark l994). These women organizers/leaders applied skills
they had learned and used to sustain their own families to the larger sphere of the
building. They often met around kitchen tables and they made building-wide decisions
with the same ethic of personal care that they applied to friends and family. Many of the
tenant meetings included food made by different women residents who equated sharing
their dish with the recognition of their role. The style and success of organizing was
rooted in aspects of the social life within buildings and on a gender-based response to
home and community. They discusses rent payment and eviction issues in terms of the
situations of each tenant involved, and searched for alternatives that supported residents'
overall lives as well as ensured that good decisions were made for the building as a whole
(Clark l994:943).

CONCLUSION: SEPARATE MODELS, LINKED ISSUES

We see the differences in these two models as at least partly the result of the historical
split of family and community life into public and private spheres as U.S. industrial
capitalism destroyed Colonial-era community-based enterprise and forced men to work
outside of the home and away from the community (Tilly and Scott 1978). The
competitive, aggressive, distrustful, confrontational culture of the public sphere contrasts
starkly with the nurturant, connected, relationship-building and care-taking ideal of the
private sphere. Clearly the emphasis on conflict, opposition, separation, and winning in
the Alinsky model reflects public sphere culture. And just as clearly the emphasis on
nurturance, connectedness, and relationship-building in the women-centered model
reflects private sphere culture (Cott l977). The fact that for nearly four decades the
Alinsky model was the preserve of male organizers, and training in the Alinsky model
was controlled by men for even longer, while the women-centered model developed in
settings closer to the domestic sphere often among groups of women, reflects and has
influenced the development of these differences (Stall, 1991; ECCO 1989).

In the disinvestment and deindustrialization that has come with global capitalism, each
model is as weak by itself as a nuclear family with a full-time male breadwinner and a
full-time female homemaker. As corporations either disinvested wholesale from their
host communities or downsized their local workforce, they forced women into wage-
earning positions to make up for male wage losses, leading to pressures on men to take
on more private sphere tasks. In poor communities that disinvestment left devastation--
neighborhoods without businesses, services, or safety. Indeed, many urban
neighborhoods of the 1980s and 1990s were no longer communities at all, but only
collections of medium and high density housing with few sustainable social relationships.
In this kind of a setting, gender-segregated organizing models can work no better than
gender-segregated family members. Imagine trying to employ the Alinsky model
organizing young moms who are socially isolated and exhausted from the daily grind of
trying to make ends meet. The masculine confrontational style of the Alinsky model, that
must assume prior community bonds so it can move immediately into public sphere
action, may be disabling for certain grass-roots organizing efforts, "particularly in
domains where women are a necessary constituency" (Lawson and Barton l990, 49). The
de-emphasis on relationship building in the Alinsky model will mean that, where
neighborhoods are less and less communities, and the people in them are less and less
empowered, the community can engage the battle but not sustain it. Large organizations
may in fact inhibit empowerment because they are not "likely to offer the kind of
nurturing of individual growth that smaller ones can provide, and may be especially off-
putting to members of low-income communities, where the predominant style of relating
to individuals is still prebureaucratic" (Payne 1989, 894). Consequently, internal power
struggles will threaten many Alinsky-style organizations in these settings.

At the same time, the problems that poor communities face today cannot be solved at the
private sphere or local levels. The women-centered model, consequently, is also weak by
itself. First is the risk that postponing public sphere confrontation with a white patriarchal
capitalist elite will maintain the vulnerability of at-risk communities, because white
patriarchal capitalists don't play fair. While women-centered organizers are concentrating
on personal empowerment--a process which cannot be rushed--the bulldozers could be
coming. One criticism of consciousness-raising in the women's movement is that it
doesn't translate into action very effectively (Cassell l989, 55; Ferree and Hess 1985, 64-
67; Freeman, 1975). Indeed, those risks appeared very pronounced in the Young Moms
program described above. When the program was threatened with a staff lay-off,
organized resistance was difficult to mobilize. But they also appeared in the Wentworth
Gardens case where the maintaining a community-run on-site grocery store became
difficult as warehouses refused to deliver to what they saw as a `dangerous'
neighborhood. And they appeared in Cedar-Riverside as a community clinic saw its
funding cut and had to reduce services. Both communities had shifted away from
confrontational, Alinsky-style tactics to meet these issues and were consequently unable
to establish effective campaigns against these threats. The creation, nurturance, and
maintenance of community in the face of forces which threaten to destroy it--through
neglect, disinvestment, or disdain--is an act of resistance. It is a blow against the power
structure just to survive (Hill Collins l991; hooks l990). But the women-centered model
may not work when outside forces consciously attempt to destroy the community through
any means available. There is also a danger that this model may degenerate into a social
service program, reducing participants to clients. This tendency is what the settlement
house movement, and the subsequent "social work" version of community organizing,
has been criticized for.9

Today, global capitalism also creates a new set of challenges for community organizing
that requires drawing on both models. With footloose capital that can make broad-
reaching decisions, and can hop around at the slightest sign of resistance from a local
community, community organizing must build even stronger relationships and
interpersonal ties at the local level, and mobilize those communities for even more
forceful public sphere actions. You can't do an action at your local bank, because your
local bank is owned by a corporation hundreds of miles or more away. Organizing to
counteract and control global corporations requires at least national and probably
international coalitions. At the same time, you must organize locally or there will not be a
strong enough base on which to build anything larger. Building relationships that are
rooted in strong local bases, that can then be linked together, requires both models. Julian
Rappaport (1981) describes the "paradox of empowerment" as the need to organize
simultaneously at the personal and structural levels. True communities (with strong
networks, culture, mutual support systems, etc.) under siege from identifiable sources
need to engage in confrontational campaigns to defend themselves, and will probably
benefit most from emphasizing the Alinsky model. Communities that really are not
communities--that lack the networks, culture, support systems and other qualities--require
first the foundation that the women-centered model can provide to prevent self-
destructive oligarchies. But in both cases the other model cannot be neglected. The
tension created by the Alinsky model challenges the strongest community bonds and
requires compensating strategies of relationship building and personal empowerment.
And as much as a strong community provides the foundation for a strong defense, when a
threat presents itself, the community has to be able to respond effectively. This
integration of the two models also must be done very carefully. You can't just add
together an Alinsky organizing process with a women-centered leadership model, for
example. Rather, integration needs to occur across each principle so that the models are
combined. Ella Baker's comments that "real organizing" is working in small groups with
people so that they can discover their competencies, and then "parlaying those into larger
groups" (Britton l968, 67) is an example of bringing together the organizing process
components of the Alinsky and women-centered models.

Careful attention to history also shows there are times when one model will be more
viable than the other. Robert Fisher (1984) showed a see-sawing between more militant
and more community-building periods of community organizing which seem to
correspond to progressive and reactionary periods in history. The transformation of
Alinsky-style community organizing efforts in the Reagan 1980s into community
development efforts, and the "discovery" of women-centered organizing during that same
period, may also support the contention that the two types of organizing may be more
effective under different conditions. Reactionary periods such as the 1980s force social
movements into "abeyance" (Taylor 1989) where the maintenance of community bonds
and the provision of emotional support become paramount, since public sphere action
seems ineffectual. In these periods, the women-centered model sustains the possibility for
future public sphere action. Certainly, in the wake of the deindustrialization and
devastation of inner city communities there is a tremendous need to rebuild communities
of place. Mary Pardo (1990, 6) notes that "The issues traditionally addressed by women--
health, housing, sanitation, and the urban environment--have moved to center stage as
capitalist urbanization progresses." Community organizing today faces special
challenges, as the targets are no longer visible and local. As we move into the next
century, if women-centered organizing succeeds in rebuilding community bonds, aspects
of the Alinsky model may again become applicable. Some social workers are trying to
resurrect the profession’s community organizing roots (Specht and Courtney, 1994) and
are calling for a return to the empowerment model ala Piven and Cloward (1979). And
the realization that global economic processes continually threaten local communities
may provide for a new round of social movement activity.

NOTES
1
Alinsky, along with Fred Ross, were instrumental in organizing
"educationals" in California that used a popular education process to
support the organizing process. These educationals produced the first
woman organizer hired by Alinsky, and the first organizing effort
targeting women specifically (Finks, 1984:68-71).

2
This is not to say that Alinsky avoided a focus on private sphere
issues. His first successful organizing attempt, in Back of the Yards,
produced a well-baby clinic, a credit union, and a hot lunch program
(Finks 1984, 21). But these programs were accomplished through public
sphere strategizing, not private relationships. In establishing and
maintaining the hot lunch program, Alinsky pushed the organization to
understand its relationship to the national hot lunch program and "In
order to fight for their own Hot Lunch project they would have to fight
for every Hot Lunch project in every part of the United States"
(Alinsky 1969, 168).

3
In Bullard's (1993) study of nine cases of grassroots community groups
fighting proposed toxic industrial sites, incinerators, or hazardous
waste landfills, seven of these communities were organized by women.
These women improved "the environments of day to day life" by utilizing
family, ethnic, and community networks, creating a sense of community
commitment and connection (Wekerle l996, 141).

4
Sometimes, indigenous organizers did develop. Fred Ross's work in the
Southwest, for example, produced an indigenous organizer by the name of
Cesar Chavez (Reitzes and Reitzes 1987a).

5
Fish (l986) distinguishes the Hull House mentoring model from the
traditional mentor model based on an unequal distribution of power
between an older gatekeeper or instructor and an apprentice. The mentor
model at Hull House, rather than a dyad, included a larger support
system characterized by a network of egalitarian relationships and
shared visibility that provided both public and private supports for
the women involved.

6
The Civil Rights leader, Ella Jo Baker, throughout her life modeled
group-centered leadership, stating that, "Strong people don't need
strong leaders," (Cantarow and O'Malley l980, 53). At one point Ms.
Baker shared, "I have always thought what is needed is the development
of people who are interested not in being leaders as much as in
developing leadership among other people (Baker l973, 352).

7
A quote from Payne (l989, 892-893) about Ella Baker's views shows the
distinct position of the women-centered model on how the organizing is
done, versus the immediate, visible outcome.

How many people show up for a rally may matter less than
how much the people who organize the rally learn from doing
so. If the attempt to organize the rally taught them
anything about the mechanics of organizing, if the mere act
of trying caused them to grow in self-confidence, if the
organizers developed stronger bonds among themselves from
striving together, then the rally may have been a success
even if no one showed up for it. As she said, "You're
organizing people to be self-sufficient rather than to be
dependent upon the charismatic leader.

8
Tom Gaudette, in rebuilding the Alinsky-style Organization for a Better
Austin, started by creating small groups, but for the purpose of
targeting issues and building a larger organization (Bailey l972:66),
rather than to empower individuals as the women-centered model does.

9
To the extent that service provision can be organized through
indigenous leaders, or "centerwomen", and the goal of empowerment
sustained, this tendency can be countered. The Young Moms organizer
explains, "I think social service programs for the African American
community are really extended families that you are now getting paid to
be [part of]. So if you look at it like that, it's really not about the
numbers....It's about being there when the people need you." Gilkes
(l988) discusses how women social service workers who live and work in
Black communities are fashioning new organizational structures and
practices and transforming old ones--rebeling against the traditional
human service practices (e.g. impersonal, instrumental, bureaucratic)
and restructuring their organizational settings to make them "Black-
oriented" (56).

REFERENCES

Ackelsberg, Martha. 1988. Communities, resistance, and women's activism: Some

implications for a democratic policy. In Women and the politics of empowerment, edited
by Ann Bookman and Sandra Morgen. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Acker, Joan. 1990. Hierarchies, jobs, bodies: A theory of gendered organizations. Gender
& Society. 4:139-158.

Alinsky, Saul. 1969. Reveille for radicals. New York: Vintage Books.

________. 1971. Rules for radicals. New York: Vintage Books.

Arendt, Hannah. 1969. On violence. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World.

Bailey, Robert Jr. 1972. Radicals in urban politics: The Alinsky approach. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

Baker, E. 1973. Developing community leadership. In black women in white America,

edited by Gerda Lerner. New York: Vintage.

Barnett, Bernice McNair. l993. Invisible southern Black women leaders in the civil rights
movement: The triple constraints of gender, race, and class. Gender & Society 7:162-182.

________, 1995. Black women's collectivist movement organizations: Their struggles

duringthe "doldrums." In Feminist organizations: Harvest of the new women's movement,
edited by Myra Marx Ferree and Patricia Yancey Martin. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.

Beckwith, Dave (n.d.). Introduction to organizing. University of Toledo Urban Affairs

Center.

Beckwith, David with Cristina Lopez. l997. Community organizing: People power from
the grassroots. COMM-ORG: The On-Line Conference on Community Organizing and
Development. http://sasweb.utoledo.edu/comm-org/papers.htm

Berg, Barbara J. 1978. The remembered gate: Origins of American feminism: The
women and the city l800-1860. New York: Oxford University Press.

Berkowitz, Rabbi William, ed. 1975. Conversations with... New York: Block Publishers.

Bernard, Jessie. 1981. The female world. New York: Free Press.
Bobo, K., J. Kendall, and S. Max. l991. Organzing for social change: A manual for
activists in the l990s. Cabin John, MD: Seven Locks Press.

Bookman, Ann and Sandra Morgen. l988. Women and the politics of empowerment.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Brandwein, Ruth A. 1987. Women and community organization. In The woman client,
edited by Dianne S. Burden and Naomi Gottlieb. New York: Tavistock Publications.

________. Toward the feminization of community and organizational practice. 1981. In

Community organization for the l980s, edited by A. Lauffer and E. Newman. Special
Issue of Social Development Issues ,5 (2-3):180-193.

Breines, Wini. l989. Community and organization in the new left, l962-1968. New
Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Breitbart, M.M. and E.J. Pader. l995. Establishing ground: representing gender and race
in a mixed housing development. Gender, Place and Culture, Vol. 2, No. 1: 5-20.

Britton, John. l968. Interview with Ella Baker: June 19, l968. Moorland-Springarn
Collection, Howard University, 4.

Bryan, Mary Lunn McCree and Allen F. Davis, eds. 1990. 100 years at Hull-House.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Buechler, Steven M. l990. Women's movements in the United States: Woman suffrage,
equal rights, and beyond. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

________l993. Beyond resource mobilization? Emerging trends in social movement

theory. The Sociological Quarterly 34:217-236.

Bullard, Robert T. 1993. Confronting environmental racism: Voices from the grassroots.
Boston: South End Press.

Caldwell, Agnes. 1994. We are not afraid: The influence of social reproduction on
women's mobilization in Northeast Ireland. Paper presented at Annual Meetings of the
Midwest Sociological Society, St. Louis.

Cassell, Joan. 1989. A group called women: Sisterhood and symbolism in the feminist
movement. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Chodorow, Nancy. 1978. The reproduction of mothering. Berkeley: University of

California Press.

Cockburn, Cynthia. 1977. When women get involved in community action. In Women in
the community, edited by Marjorie Mayo. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Colfer, Carol J. and Michael L. Colfer. l978. Busher Bay: Lifeways in counterpoint.
Rural Sociology 43 (2):204-220.

Collins, Patricia Hill. l990. Black feminist thought: Knowledge, consciousness, and the
politics of empowerment. Boston: Unwin Hyman.

COMM-ORG: The On-Line Conference on Community Organizing and Development.

l997. http://sasweb.utoledo.edu/docs/comm-org/cohome.htm.

Cott, Nancy F. 1977. The bonds of womanhood: `Woman's sphere' in New England.
l780-1835. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Davis, Angela l981. Women, race and class. New York: Random House.

DeVault, Marjorie L. l991. Feeding the family: The social organization of caring as
gender work. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Drew, Patricia. l983. A longer view: The Mary E. Richard legacy. Baltimore: School of
Social Work, University of Maryland.

DuBois, Ellen Carol. l978. Feminism and suffrage: The emergence of an independent
women's movement in America, 1848-1869. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Duster, Alfreda. l970. The autobiography of Ida B. Wells. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

Education Center for Community Organizing (ECCO). l989. Women on the advance:
Highlights of a national conference on women and organizing. Stony Point, NY.

Evans, Sara M. and Harry C. Boyte. l986. Free spaces: The sources of democratic change
in America. New York: Harper and Row Publishers.

________. l981. Schools for action: Radical uses of social space. Democracy:55-65.

Ferguson, Kathy. l984. The feminist case against bureaucracy. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.

Ferree, Myra Marx, and Beth B. Hess. 1985. Controversy and coalition: The new feminist
movement. Boston: G. K. Hall and Company.

Ferree, Myra Marx, and Frederick Miller. 1985. Mobilization and meaning: Toward an
integration of social psychological and resource perspectives on social movements.
Sociological Inquiry 55:38-61.

Finks, P. David. 1984. The radical vision of Saul Alinsky. New York: Paulist Press.
Fisher, Robert. 1984. Let the people decide: Neighborhood organizing in America.
Boston: Twayne.

Flexner, Eleanor. l975. Century of struggle: The women's rights movement in the United
States. Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Follett, Mary Parker. l940. Dynamic administration. New York: Harper and Row.

Freeman, Jo. 1975. The politics of women’s liberation. New York: David McKay.

Gamson, William A., Bruce Fireman, and Steven Rytina. 1982. Encounters with unjust
authority. Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press.

Garland, Anne White. l988. Women activists: Challenging the abuse of power. New
York: The Feminist Press.

Genovese, Rosalie G. l980. A women's self-help network as a response to service needs

in the suburbs. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 3 Supplement S248-
S256.

Giddings, Paula. l984. Where and when I enter: The impact of Black women on race and
sex in America. New York: William Morrow and Company.

Gilkes, Cheryl Townsend. l988. Building in many places: Multiple commitments and
ideologies in black women's community work. In Women and the politics of
empowerment, edited by Ann Bookman and Sandra Morgen. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.

Gilligan, Carol. l977. In a different voice: Women's conceptions of self and morality.
Harvard Educational Review 47 (4):481-517.

Gutierrez, Lorraine M. l990. Working with women of color: An empowerment

perspective. Social Work 35:149-154.

Gutierrez, Lorraine M. and Edith A. Lewis. l992. A feminist perspective on organizing

with women of color. In Community organizing in a diverse society, edited by Felix G.
Rivera and John l. Erlich. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Hamilton, Cynthia. 1991. Women, home, and community. Women of Power (Spring):
42-45.

Hartsock, Nancy. 1974. Political change: Two perspectives on power. Quest: A Feminist
Quarterly 1(1):10-25.
Haywoode, Terry L. l991. Working class feminism: Creating a politics of community,
connection, and concern. Ph.D. dissertation, The City University of New York, New
York.

hooks, bell. l990. Yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics. Boston: South End Press.

Industrial Areas Foundation. l978. Organizing for family and congregation. Franklin
Square, NY: Industrial Areas Foundation.

Jonasdottir, Anna G. l988. On the concept of interest, women's interests, and the
limitations of interest theory. In The political interests of gender, edited by Kathleen B.
Jones and Anna G. Jonasdottir. London: Sage.

Kahn, Si. l991. Organizing: A guide for grassroots leaders. Silver Springs: MD: NASW
Press.

Kaplan, Temma. 1982. Female consciousness and collective action: The case of
Barcelona, 1910-1913. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7(3):545-566.

Kieffer, Charles H. 1984. Citizen empowerment: A developmental perspective. In Studies

in empowerment: Steps toward understanding action, edited by Julian Rappaport, C.
Swift, and R. Hess. New York: Haworth.

Krauss, Celene. l983. The elusive process of citizen activism. Social Policy (Fall):50-55.

Lancourt, Joan I. l979. Confront or concede: The Alinsky citizen-action organizations.

Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.

Lawson, Ronald and Stephen E. Barton. l990. In Women and social protest, edited by
Guida West and Rhoda Blumberg. New York: Oxford University Press.

Leavitt, Jacqueline. 1993. Women under fire: Public housing activism in Los Angeles.
Frontiers 13(2):109-130.

Leavitt, Jacqueline and Susan Saegert. l990. From abandonment to hope: Community-
households in Harlem. New York: Columbia University Press.

Lee, Porter R. l937. Social work as case and function and other papers. NewYork:
Columbia University Press.

McAdam, Doug. l982. Political process and the development of Black insurgency.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

________. l986. Recruitment to high risk activism: The case of freedom summer.
American Journal of Sociology 92:64-90.
________. 1989. Gender differences as the causes and consequences of activism. Paper
presented at Annual Meetings, American Sociological Association.

McCourt, Kathleen. l977. Working class women and grassroots politics. Bloomington:
Indiana University Press.

Miller, Jean Baker. 1986. Toward a new psychology of women. Boston, MA: Beacon
Press.

Morris, Aldon. l984. The origins of the civil rights movement: Black communities
organizing for change. New York: Free Press.

Oppenheim, Lisa. l991. Women's ways of organizing. Labor Research Review 18:45-59.

Pardo, Mary.1990. Mexican American women grassroots community activists: "Mothers

of East Los Angeles." Frontiers 11 (1):1-7.

Payne, Charles. l989. Ella Baker and models of social change. Signs: Journal of Women
in Culture and Society 14 (4):885-899.

Petchesky, Rosalind Pollack. l979. Dissolving the hyphen: A report on Marxist-feminist

groups 1-5. In Capitalist patriarchy and the case for socialist feminism, edited by Zillah
Eisenstein. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard Cloward. 1979. Poor people's movements: Why they
succeed, how they fail. New York: Vintage.

Rabrenovic, Gordana. l995. Woman and collective action in urban neighborhoods. In

Gender in urban research, edited by Judith A. Garber and Robyne S. Turner. Thousands
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.

Rappaport, Julian. 1981. In praise of a paradox: A social policy of empowerment over

prevention. American Journal of Community Psychology 9 (1):1-26.

_________. 1986. Terms of empowerment/exemplars of prevention: Toward a theory for

community psychology. Paper presented at Annual Meetings, American Psychological
Association, Washington, DC.

Reitzes, Donald C. and Dietrich C. Reitzes. 1987a. The Alinsky legacy: Alive and
kicking. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

_________. 1987b. Alinsky in the 1980s: Two contemporary community organiza tions.
The Sociological Quarterly 27:265-284.
Robnett, Belinda. l996. African-American women in the civil rights movement, l954-
l965: gender, leadership, and micromobilization. American Journal of Sociology.101 ,
NO. 6 (May): 1661-93.

Sacks, Karen Brodkin. l988a. Caring by the hour. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.

________. l988b. Gender and grassroots leadership. In Women and the politics of
empowerment, edited by Ann Bookman and Sandra Morgen. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press.

Sherrard, Thomas D., and Richard C. Murray. 1965. The Church and neighborhood
community organization. Social Work 10:3-14.

Snow, David A., E. Burke Rochford, Jr., Steven K. Worden, and Robert D. Benford.
l986. Frame alignment processes, micromobilization, and movement participation.
American Sociological Review 51:464-481.

Specht, Harry and Mark E. Courtney. l994. Unfaithful angels: How social work has
abandoned its mission. New York: The Free Press.

Stein, Arlene. 1986. Between organization and movement: ACORN and the Alinsky
model of community organizing. Berkeley Journal of Sociology 31:93-115.

Stoneall, Linda. l981. Cognitive mapping: Gender differences in the perception of

community. Sociological Quarterly 51 (2):121-128.

________. 1983. Bringing women into community studies: A rural midwestern case
study. Journal of the Community Development Society 14 (1).

Tax, Meredith. l980. The rising of the women: Feminist solidarity and class conflicts,
1880-1917. New York: Monthly Review Press.

Taylor, Verta. l989. Social movement continuity: The women's movement in abeyance.
American Sociological Review 54:761-775.

Taylor, Verta and Nancy Whittier. l992. Collective identity in social movement
communities: Lesbian feminist mobilization. In Frontiers in social movement theory,
edited by Aldon D. Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller. New Haven: Yale University
Press.

Taylor, Verta and Leila Rupp. l993. Women's culture and lesbian feminist activism: A
reconsideration of cultural feminism. SIGNS: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.
19:32-61.

Tiano, Susan. l984. The public-private dichotomy: Theoretical perspectives on women in

development. Social Science Journal 21 (4): 11-28.
Tilly, Charles. l984. Social movements and national politics. In Statemaking and social
movements: Essays in history and theory, edited by Charles Bright and Susan Harding.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Tilly, Louise A., and Joan W. Scott. 1978. Women, Work, and Family. New York:
Hold,Rinehart, and Winston.

Tracy, Elizabeth. 1994. Discourse, ideology, and ecofeminism. Paper presented at Annual
Meetings, Midwest Sociological Association, St. Louis.

Van Den Bergh, Nan and Lynn B. Cooper,edits. l986. Feminist visions for social work.
Silver Springs, MD: National Association of Social Workers.

Wekerle, Gerda R. l996. Reframing urban sustainablity: Women's movement organizing

and the local state. In Local places in the age of the global city. edited by Roger Keil,
Gerda R. Wekerle, David V.J.Bell. Montreal: Black Rose Press.

Weil, Marie. l986. Women, community, and organizing. In Feminist visions forsocial
work, edited by Nan Van DenBergh and Lynn B. Cooper. Silver Springs, Maryland:
National Association of Social Workers.

West, Candace and Don H. Zimmerman. l987. Doing gender. Gender & Society. 1:125-
151.

West, Guida. l981. The national welfare rights movement: The social protest of poor
women. New York: Praeger.

West, Guida and Rhoda L. Blumberg. l990. Women and social protest. New York:
Oxford University Press.

Wilson, Elizabeth. l977. Women in the community. In Women in the community, edited
by Marjorie Mayo. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.

AUTHOR REFERENCES

Beckwith, Dave, Randy Stoecker, and Joe McNeely. 1997. The Soul of Organizing.

Feldman, Roberta M. and Susan Stall. (1994). The Politics of Space Appropriation: A
Case Study of Women's Struggles for Homeplace in Chicago Public Housing. In Irwin
Altman and Arza Churchman(Eds.), Women and the Environment, Edits., Human
Behavior and Environment Series, Vol. 13. pp. 167-199. New York: Plenum Press.

Stall, Susan. (l993). Women in Organizing Project Evaluation. Prepared for Women
United for a Better City, unpublished.
________. (l991). ‘The women are just back of everything...:'Power and Politics
Revisited in Small Town America. (dissertation), Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.

Stoecker, Randy. (1995a). Community Organizing and Community-Based

Redevelopment in Cedar-Riverside and East Toledo: A Comparative Study. Journal of
Community Practice, 2, (3), 1-23.

_______. 1995b. "Community, Movement, Organization: The Problem of Identity

Convergence in Collective Action." The Sociological Quarterly 36:111-130.

_______. (1994). Defending Community: The Struggle for Alternative Redevelopment in

Cedar-Riverside. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

_______. (1993). The Federated Front-Stage Structure and Localized Social Movements:
A Case Study of the Cedar-Riverside Neighborhood Movement. Social Science Quarterly
74, 169-184.

_______. (1992). Who Takes Out the Garbage? Social Reproduction and Social
Movement Research. In Gale Miller and James A. Holstein (Eds.), Perspectives on Social
Problems (pp. 239-264). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

_______. (1991). Community Organizing and Community Development: The Life and
Times of the East Toledo Community Organization, unpublished manuscript.

e-mail: dbeckwith@needmorfund.org

Contents
The Four Strategies

What is Community Organizing?

The Principles of Community Organizing

The Ten Rules of Community Organizing

Defining an Action Strategy

THE FOUR STRATEGIES

There are four fundamental strategies available to neighborhood groups to
address community problems: community organizing, advocacy, service
delivery or development. There is no right or wrong strategy - each
organization has to choose among them constantly. Each group should
specialize - the skills needed to do a good job in one are seldom those
needed for another. Sometimes, groups use a combination of strategies. What
is important here is that you know what you're doing - that the method
matches the strategy you've chosen and they both match the mission the
group has adopted. This article will focus on defining and developing the ideas
behind community organizing.

Community organizing is characterized by the mobilizing of volunteers. Staff

roles are limited to helping volunteers become effective, to guiding the
learning of leaders through the process, and to helping create the mechanism
for the group to advocate on their own behalf. Community organizing almost
always includes confrontation of some sort. The people who want something
get themselves together to ask for it, often the people who could give them
what they want get jumpy. Community organizing strategies include meeting
with corporate or government decision makers to hold them accountable for
their actions, designing programs for others (not the group) to implement that
meet the needs of the community, and aggressive group action to block
negative developments or behaviors (highway construction that leads to
neighborhood destruction, etc.).

Advocacy and Service Delivery are both characterized by doing FOR

people. Often professionals like lawyers or social workers will attack a problem
on behalf of those perceived as unable to speak for themselves. Job referral
services, social work, training for job readiness, homeownership counseling,
business plan preparation training - these are methods which fit into the
Advocacy or Service Delivery strategy.

Development is a strategy that gets the group directly into the business of
delivering a physical product. Generally, groups select a development strategy
because the normal course of events is not meeting the areas needs. The
profit motive either does not bring private developers into the area - they can't
make enough money - or it brings them in to do the wrong thing - they are
converting moderate cost rental units into yuppie condos. Development could
mean housing or commercial or even industrial development. Development
methods require, like the other two strategies, particular skills. Many groups
have struggled to achieve good results in housing development with staff
whose training, experience and interests are in community organizing, causing
pain and suffering for the group and the staff. This is unfair. If we understand
the distinction between the strategies, we can see the different resources
needed for the methods that fit within them.

Back to contents

WHAT IS COMMUNITY ORGANIZING?

Community organizing is the process of building power through
involving a constituency in identifying problems they share and the
solutions to those problems that they desire; identifying the people and
structures that can make those solutions possible; enlisting those
targets in the effort through negotiation and using confrontation and
pressure when needed; and building an institution that is democratically
controlled by that constituency that can develop the capacity to take on
further problems and that embodies the will and the power of that
constituency.

Heather Booth, founder of the Midwest Academy and legendary community

organizer, expressed the fundamentals in this formula:

OOO = Organizers Organize Organizations.

Community organizing is NOT a technique for problem solving. Those who

would use simple confrontation or mass meetings to meet their own selfish
need for power, and skip the step of democratic involvement and control in the
selecting of issues, the crafting of demands or the negotiating of the victory
are called demagogues. Their organizations are a hollow sham, without the
empowering aspect that humanizes and ennobles the effort.

Community organizing is not merely a process that is good for its own sake.
Unless the organization wins concrete, measurable benefits for those who
participate, it will not last long. The groups that content themselves with
holding endless meetings and plod along involving everyone in discussions
that never lead to action or to victory are doomed to shrink into nothing.
People want to see results. That's why they get involved. There is a theory
(isn't there always?) that says that folks join up if two things are true. First,
they must see a potential for either benefit or harm to themselves if the group
succeeds or fails. Second, they must see that their personal involvement has
an impact on the whole effort. This makes sense to me. Winning is critical, but
if the group's going to win whether I get involved or not - if my personal
involvement is not critical - then I can stay home and watch TV.

Community organizing is not just a neighborhood thing, not just a minority

thing, not just a 60's thing. Many - especially those uncomfortable with a
particular community organizing effort because it's confronting them at the
time - seek to 'label' organizing as somehow out of date or out of place. The
fact is that the method, the strategy the science of community organizing has
been applied all over the world in situations as disparate as Solidarity in
Poland, Welfare Rights in the US and 'communidades del base' in Brazil. The
simple principles of community organizing are being applied right now in the
barrios of San Antonio and in the ghettoes of Baltimore. They are winning
victories and building power. We can too.

Back to contents
The Principles of Community Organizing
What are these simple principles? What is the essence of the science of
power, applied through the art of community organizing?

FIRST, people are motivated by their self interest. This is important to

motivating involvement from the community that's being organized. It's also
key to developing effective strategies to pressure the opposition into giving up
what the community wants. Many people are uncomfortable with self interest.
They'd rather focus on values, on selfless giving, or on mutual aid as the
highest virtue. All these may be true, and we might hope that human beings
could somehow be changed into angels. Human nature fails the angel test
every time, though.

Effective community organizing can develop a broader sense of self interest -

this is where hope comes in to the picture. How can we broaden the sense of
self interest? Through a process of building up the horizons of the people we
are organizing. It seems to me that people are taught everyday in countless
little ways that the system is not going to change, no matter what they do. We
learn to stand in line and fold our hands on our desks in school. We see
politicians betray promises daily, with very little regard for the faith that voters
place in them before the election. We see the rich get richer, the powerful
escape the consequences of wrongdoing. In all these ways, we learn that
nothing we do will change the way things are. Out of simple self preservation,
we begin to lower our horizons, to shrink into a world we define by our ability
to have an impact.

Think about the last time you were in a meeting, and the room was too hot or
too cold. You may have looked around for a door to open, a window to crack,
or even a thermostat. I'll bet, if you found none of these, you stopped being
bothered by the room, though. What if you were right next to the thermostat,
but it was locked? Wouldn't the heat bother you more, and if you knew where
the key was, or who could turn down the heat, wouldn't the temptation to DO
SOMETHING become almost irresistible? In the same way, our view of our
own self interest gets shrunk down to the arena in which we believe we can
have an impact. Community organizing seeks to teach people, through
experience, that they can be effective in a larger and larger sphere - their own
block, their own neighborhood, their city, their state, and so on. In the process,
we redefine our idea of self - who else is 'us' - and thus, of self interest.

SECOND, community organizing is a dynamic process, that requires

constant attention and effort. It is impossible to use community organizing to
get to a certain point and stop, or to build a community organization up and
then stop reaching out for new folks and taking on new issues. The process of
development that we described above - broadening peoples' view of their own
self interest - is mirrored in the political arena.

We see this dynamic aspect in the initial stage of building a group. At first,
some people will want to take on big issues, and some will identify more
achievable goals. The organizer will push for a winnable project so that the
group can get stronger slowly. The formula for building a new organization is:

FWFWFLFH

This stands for Fight, Win, Fight, Win, Fight, Lose, Fight Harder. Any group
that can pick its issues - and this is sometimes impossible - needs to take this
process seriously.

What's necessary in these early stages to grow a strong group? Although

simpler, lower risk issues could be addressed quickly and behind the scenes,
it is especially important that they be handled the same way the big ones
would. For example, even if you know that the city will put up a stop sign upon
request, you should still hold a press conference on the street corner and a
march to city hall to demand it, then negotiate with the traffic engineer over
which tree it will be posted on. A musical mom I know tells her children that
'practice makes PERMANENT, GOOD practice makes perfect!' If people in the
early stages of a group learn that all it takes is a phone call to get things done,
they'll look to the same strategy next time. Community organizing is a process
of teaching people to work together, and how to be effective.

THIRD, it's important that, at an early stage of the development of any group,
they learn to deal with conflict and confrontation. Some people see this as
manipulation, as tricking people. Obviously, some groups and some
organizers are guilty of this. In the final analysis, though, groups must learn
confrontation and negotiation because they'll eventually have to use both.
Many of the problems that confront low income and minority communities can
be solved by coordination and determination, simply by focusing people of
good will on a commonly understood problem. But most of the fundamental
problems are deeply rooted in greed and power, and there are those who
benefit from the status quo. Slum landlords might make as much or more
providing decent, safe housing, but not many will see it that way. If we are to
build organizations that can have any serious impact at all, they will eventually
have to come up against a situation where there will be winners and losers.
The potential losers are not likely to lay down and roll over because of the
righteousness of our cause. If the group has never stood strong before, if they
have never made a demand before, if they've never faced a target that really
had to be forced into complying, they're more likely to back down when the
going gets tough. If confrontation is not one of the tools in our toolbox, then
we're likely to ignore problems that require toughness to be addressed.
FOURTH, in selecting an issue to work on, every group has to take into
account the fundamental definition of an issue. A neighborhood, a minority
group, a group of workers or people who share any common complaint can be
a community that wants to get organized. Typically, there is a tangled web of
problems - complaints, irritations, bad situations, oppressions, difficulties,
injustices, crises, messes. An issue is a problem that the community can be
organized around. I learned a formula to describe this distinction from Stan
Holt, Director of People Acting through Community Effort, in Providence, RI in
1971, when he gave me and another raw recruit our 6 hours of basic training
before he sent us out door to door. He used the initials I S R on the
chalkboard in the dingy little office at Broad and Public (I thought it was a
pretty apt address for a community group - and I'm NOT making it up!).
Immediate, specific and realizable. (I never could spell that last one) An
organizer 'cuts' an issue - interprets or massages perceptions or manipulates
situations until they fit these criteria as closely as possible. The thought
process was to become automatic after a dozen years.

Immediate, he said, in terms of either the benefit folks would get from victory
or, preferably, the harm they would suffer from inaction. 'The bulldozers are
coming and you'll be out on the street tomorrow' is far better than 'would you
like to be part of a community planning process'.

Specific refers to both the problem and its solution. Vacant buildings are a
problem. That building that we want torn down by the end of the month is an
issue.

Realizable (it's easier to spell winnable, but it's not the way I learned, what
can I do?) is the toughest of all. It's easy to describe the extreme, the global
problem beyond the reach of a Block Club or a neighborhood organization.
That's not a good issue, especially not in the early stages. Most effective
community organizations can point to victories that any sane person would
say were far beyond their reach, though. Who would have thought that a
handful of neighborhood folks concerned about their children would get the
government to buy their homes and relocate their families, putting Love Canal
into the language as a symbol of environmental disaster in the process. Who
would have said that East Toledo could get agreement and construction on a
$10 million dollar road project that would open up employment possibilities for
their neighborhood, and only five years from concept to construction? It
remains true, though, that calculating the odds on winning is an important first
step.

The key to this aspect of 'cutting an issue' is calculation. The organizer -

volunteer or staff - has to look with a cold, hard balancing of accounts at all the
factors on our side and their side of the issue, and determine whether it's
worth starting out on. Some factors to consider include: who is effected by the
problem, and can I get to them? How much does the problem hurt them, and
how hard are they likely to fight? Are they able to escape easily, or is standing
and fighting their only option? What resources are we likely to need and can
we get them? On the other side, who benefited from the problem the way
things are, and how much? Could they easily give us what we want, or would
it cost them, and how much? Who else is peripherally hurt - or helped - by the
way things are? How would the solution we seek change this equation? Could
we go after something that would help us just as much, but get us more
friends? In the end, all we can do is step out. The more we've tried to peer
ahead, the less likely we are to stumble.

Back to contents

THE TEN RULES OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

1. Nobody's going to come to the meeting unless they've got a reason to
come to the meeting.

2. Nobody's going to come to a meeting unless they know about it.

3. If an organization doesn't grow, it will die.

4. Anyone can be a leader.

5. The most important victory is the group itself.

6. Sometimes winning is losing.

7. Sometimes winning is winning.

8. If you're not fighting for what you want, you don't want enough.

9. Celebrate!

10. Have fun!

The first rule: Nobody's going to come to the meeting unless they've got
a reason to come to the meeting. Like many of my ten 'rules', this seems
self-evident. All of them, however, represent lessons that I have learned over
twenty years of making the same mistakes, taking the same basics for
granted, and paying the price over and over again, until the lesson is finally
learned. I have observed this rule being broken by groups all across the
country, groups with experience, groups with talented staff and leaders, who
know better, or should. Giving folks a REASON to attend means two things.
First, interpreting the issue as related to them. This means developing a 'line'
or a 'rap' that sells the issue simply and personally. Even if the issue has been
 thought through, if the story can't be told simply and quickly in an exciting way,
the people are less likely to respond. The organizer has to be able to answer
the question 'what's in it for me?' We must GIVE people the reason - this
should have been thought through in the planning stage, but in the actual
implementation of a campaign, there must be considerable attention to how
it's going to be communicated. For example, if the issue is the need for better
equipment at the local park, there should be more than one approach, going
beyond the obvious. Kids who might use the park will be attracted because the
new equipment might be fun. How to sell the issue to their parents? What
about neighbors who don't have kids? People who live too far away to benefit
directly? A planning group usually grapples with this problem when they're
putting together the flyer and the phone call 'rap' sheet - or they should. In this
case, a phone rap might look like this:

Call Sheet - Parks Meeting - call in results to : Joe Schmoe, 123-4567 by Wednesday at 7
pm.

"Hi, my name is __________________, and I'm calling for the MidRiver

Neighborhood Organization. Do you have children in school?"

IF YES: We're having a meeting about the playground tomorrow night over at
the school at 7:30. Have your children ever been injured on the broken
equipment? (LISTEN) Have they ever been cut or hurt on the asphalt?
(LISTEN) Would you like to have a safe, well equipped facility to send them to?
Well, this is what we're working for. We have the head of Parks for the City
coming, and we want to show him just how many people want action. Will you
be able to come to the meeting?

IF NO: Have you ever been bothered by the kids hanging out on the corners or
playing on the street? (LISTEN) Does it bother you that the parks on the other
side of the river have brand new equipment, and kids here in MidRiver have to
play in the glass and asphalt, on broken swings? Did you know they just spent
$28,000 to put grass in the park on River Road, and it's been 14 years since
they spent a dime on our park? We're having a meeting about the playground
tomorrow night over at the school at 7:30. We have the head of Parks for the
City coming, and we want to show him just how many people want action. Will
you be able to come to the meeting?

Names & Numbers-------------------- Yes -----------No -------------------------Ride

1.
2.
3.
4.
These two 'raps' seek to interpret the problem in terms of the self interest of
the person you're talking to, and thus to get their interest aroused enough to
come out.

The second aspect of a REASON to come to the meeting is what happens at

the meeting. If the people in the audience are there just to cover a chair, and
they are not asked to participate, or there's no chance to ask questions or tell
their story, they will find it easier and easier to drop out. The agenda for the
meeting should always include a time for individual stories to be told, to put a
human face on the problem. Mrs. Schultz should be lined up in advance to
come to the mike and tell about poor little Otto who went to the hospital for
stitches after he fell off the broken swing. The chair should ask if anybody else
has had kids hurt, and ask them to stand, or raise their hand, or even come to
the mike. The agenda should include parts for lots of people - not just one
chair who speaks and leads and asks the questions of the city folks or the
other targets, but plenty of folks trooping up to do their pre-assigned parts --
the more folks who have a part, the more are likely to come out. Even
spectators can get the feeling that, next time, they could have an important
part in the group, if there are obviously lots of parts being given out. A one-
person show, however, tends to stay that way.

The second rule is: Nobody's going to come unless they know about it.
This is another painfully obvious point. Time after time, though, I have helped
groups analyze their shrinking participation, and found that they've ignored
this rule. They publicize meetings through the newsletter. The newsletter is
distributed door to door by block captains. Half the blocks have no captains.
On the other half, the newsletters were delivered for distribution on Tuesday
night after 7, and the meeting was held on Thursday. Even where the
conscientious block captains actually went to every house on the block and
dropped one off on Wednesday afternoon when they got home from work,
about a third of the folks didn't go to the front porch until the next morning,
another third read the story about crime on the front page, but missed the
meeting notice, and another third thought it MUST be next Thursday they're
talking about. Many groups rely on a regular meeting night and a telephone
tree to get people out. Others just invite the ones who came to this meeting to
come back to the next one.

In fact, there is an almost unbreakable ratio - for every one hundred folks who
get a timely, well crafted written notice and a follow-up personal contact by
phone or in person, ten will come out. Late notices or wordy, unclear ones cut
further into the final count. No personal contact cuts even further. Organizing
is hard work, and there are few shortcuts worth taking. A group that doesn't
plant seeds with effective outreach should not be surprised when the harvest
is sparse.
The third rule is: if an organization doesn't grow, it will die. A good
outreach effort will bring out new recruits. These folks must be put to work.
Somebody has to recognize their effort in coming out, and talk to them,
welcome them, give them a chance to get into things. Could they do calls for
the next meeting? Would they like to help with posters for the fundraiser?
What did they think of the meeting? Each issue should bring in new folks, and
there should always be a next issue on the horizon, to get out and touch the
community with, to find yet newer folks to get involved with. People naturally
fade in and out of involvement as their own life's rhythms dictate - people
move, kids take on baseball for the Spring, they get involved with Lamaze
classes, whatever. If there are not new people coming in, the shrinkage can
be fatal. New issues and continuous outreach are the only protection against
this natural process.

Rule four: anyone can be a leader. I have had the privilege of working with a
wide variety of very talented community leaders in twenty years of community
organizing. I can safely and in all humility admit that not one new leader was
'developed' because of my foresight and careful cultivation and training of a
new recruit who showed clear promise. Almost without exception, the best
leaders have been people who rose to the occasion of a crisis. The priest who
spoke at all our news conferences got sick at the last minute. Who can take
his place? Mrs. H., you're the only one at home, and the thing starts in five
minutes - let me pick you up and brief you in the car. What do you mean, Mr.
President, you're not going to run for reelection? This organization is big, it's
new, and nobody else is ready! Mr. T., you have to run, or else we'll have
those guys from UpThere in charge of the group, and we can't have that, can
we? The only wisdom or craft I can claim in any of these scenes is an ability to
convince people to step into a tough situation and give it a try, coupled with a
shameless willingness to praise and support a person after their first shaky
performance. They did the rest. Anybody can be a leader. A good community
organization provides a lot of people with a lot of opportunities to practice, to
try it out, to learn by doing. A broad team of folks who can lead is built by
constantly bringing new people into leadership roles and supporting them in
learning from this experience.

Rule five. The most important victory is the group itself. This starts a
series of rules about winning. Winning is what organizing is about. Winning
without building is a hollow process, though. We need to celebrate the simple
fact of survival, given the odds most groups face. The way to ensure that a
group is built out of activity on issues is to create a structure that governs the
group and bring people who work on issues into the governance of the group.
In a mature organization this happens through elections, and the elections
should at least bring new people in, even if they are not contests where folks
vie for the votes to outdo their 'opponents'. A growing organization should pay
close attention to this as well, through steering committees or leadership
meetings where folks who are mostly involved in issues get brought into the
deliberations on priorities, strategies, structure and the 'business' of the group.
Even if they choose to say no, the opportunity to join in setting the course of
the group makes it more their own. A group that is governed by one set of
folks and involves a whole different set as beneficiaries or volunteers is never
going to be a real people's organization. No empowerment ever comes from
well meaning outsiders helping the helpless.

Rule six: Sometimes winning is losing. Remember in our initial discussion

of the process of organizing we talked about the FWFWFLFH method. A
group that never loses is probably just too naive or nearsighted to understand
what's happening. Part of the political literacy that community organizing ought
to impart is the ability to stare the facts in the face and understand that the
politician who just talked for twenty minutes didn't really mean that he supports
us - he really said he wasn't going to do what we want. Beyond this, we need
to be careful that we ask for something we really want. A community
organization that I worked with in Providence once undertook a two year
campaign to open up membership in the United Way to more minority and
non-traditional agencies. One result was that the group itself became a
member agency! We thought this was the ultimate victory! No more spaghetti
suppers, no more grant writing, no more scratching around for free paper for
the mimeo - easy street. When a big Federal grant came down for anti-crime
organizing, all other fundraising ground to a halt, everybody got a raise, the
group bought a van and moved into a nice office. The dark side soon
surfaced, though. The highly motivated but formerly low paid staff started to
get resistance from leadership when it came time to challenge the real power
brokers downtown - these folks are big in the United Way! We're going to be
cutting our own throats! Leaders started to bid for the job openings, which now
were much more lucrative - and those who didn't get hired felt that they had
been put down unfairly, and stopped volunteering - if their fellow leader was
now going to get to take home all that money, well he could make the phone
calls! The final straw was the fight over the van. Who gets to drive it home at
night -the new director of the anticrime project or the president - the fight was
vicious and bitter, and the staff that thought they'd signed on for a crusade left
in disgust, and the organization took a two year nosedive, leading to de-
funding by the United way and death. This group thought they wanted
respectability and acceptance, and were willing to pay any price to get them.
In the end, they lost their power and they lost their integrity, and finally they
lost their very existence.

Rule Seven - sometimes winning is winning. Most community

organizations take on little slices of the problems that confront their
community. The achievements seem insignificant, and the progress seems so
slow! A good organizer knows how to build a sense of power and
accomplishment, while not ignoring the problems that still remain to be solved.
Every group has a cynic, who says 'okay, we got a million for our loan
program. There's still vacant buildings out there we won't be able to fix!' This
can lead to discouragement. Nobody can fight day after day without some
hope, and acknowledging the victories along the way builds that hope. The
East Toledo Community Organization fought for three years to get a new road
built to open up the industrial potential of the area. There were plenty of
reasons to complain about what we didn't get - no job guarantees from new
industry, no required hiring of neighborhood folks on the road construction.
The victory was that we got a ten million dollar road built, though, and we
worked very hard to let the whole community - inside East Toledo and outside
- know that that's what we wanted, and that's what we got. This rule - know
when to stop and claim the win - leads very directly to the ninth, but that's not
coming until after the next one.

Rule Eight - If you're not FIGHTING for what you want, you don't want
enough. We've talked before about the purpose of community organizing -
building power. It's a lot like lifting weights. If you stay with the little baby
weights, you'll never get the strength to do really heavy work. Community
organizers know that it's possible to keep busy doing stuff and still get
nowhere. It's possible to define your goals by what's achievable, and look like
you're succeeding. The tragedy is that a group that never defines a difficult
goal will never achieve a meaningful accomplishment. This extends, in the
arena of power, to conflict, which we've talked about before. For now,
remember the rule and check up on your group to make sure SOMEBODY
thinks you're too strong, too forceful, too demanding, too abrasive. That
probably means you're getting close to where the real power is.

Rule Nine - celebrate! I once ordered a young organizer in a new group to

find some excuse and hold a victory party within a week or face firing! This
young woman could only see the tough part - the half empty glass. She was
starting to infect the neighborhood leadership with this negativity, and the
group was sinking fast. Much to her surprise and delight (it saved her job),
when she started talking to leaders, they came up with lots of reasons to
celebrate! They wrote a VICTORY flyer, organized a block party with a
cookout and games and awards, and turned the whole spirit of the group
around - now they were winners! Everybody wants to be with a winner!

Finally - rule number ten - have fun! I started organizing with an all business
attitude that looked at a meeting as being over when the gavel fell, and at the
hanging out and laughing and drinking coffee afterwards as a distraction and a
waste of time. I missed the community part of community organizing. These
people were building a community, and sharing their fears, their hopes and
their vision of the future over a beer at the club after the action was just as
important as the planning meeting. I learned that meals and birthdays and
Christmas parties and the summer picnic are organizing too. I learned that the
posters that got made in the office with pizza and pop by the gang of
volunteers we could scare up on a Friday night were far more important to the
organization than the same posters made separately in peoples' homes. I
learned that using humor to embarrass a public official brought a feeling of
power to our folks that straight, serious conversation about our rights and their
responsibilities could never come close to. I learned the power of FUN! and I
vowed to try to make organizing at least as much fun as TV.

Back to contents

DEFINING AN ACTION STRATEGY

Every group should plan. This is not to say that things don't change, and often
in ways that have not been anticipated. Real community organizing, though, is
an educational process of action and reflection that puts people into the power
game as players. Planning should be a participatory process, then. A
leadership group, with staff participation if there is an organizer on board,
should plan out the strategy and steps on an issue.

First, the issue is defined, the goals for the campaign set, and the target
selected. All these three factors are interrelated. As we discussed in the
section on choosing and cutting an issue, there needs to be careful calculation
involved, but finally the group needs to settle on their best guess as to just
how broadly to define the issue, and on what to go for and who to go after.

Generally, the best plan has one target, a person who could take action to
deliver what the group wants. This person needs to be within reach - a Toledo
group shouldn't build its whole plan around getting somebody in New York to
make a decision, but rather should find a local target that they can put
pressure on in a variety of ways. The more you know about the target, the
more you can develop pressure tactics.

In developing a plan, look to cover the 'what ifs.' There are usually three
possible outcomes to any plan. If you've invited the mayor to your meeting,
either he'll come or he won't come or he'll send somebody else to represent
him (a variation on #2, but we'll call it a third alternative). The planning group
needs to talk about what the groups' response will be in all three eventualities.
If the mayor comes, how will he be welcomed, where will he sit, how many
minutes will he be given, will we let him talk first or only in response to our
questions, will he stay for the next part of the meeting or should we ask him to
leave - all these questions need to be dealt with. If he doesn't come, when will
we know, and is there anything we could/should do to get him to change his
mind, like maybe an action at city hall or at the golf course? If they send a
representative, who will it be, and do we accept him/her or not? In the same
way, there are three possible responses from the mayor to our demands - yes,
no or mushy/maybe. If he says yes, can we pin him down to a specific and
enforceable commitment, and if he says yes right away, is there any follow-up
that we should ask for while he's in an agreeable mood? If we get an outright
no, do we have any recourse, or a fallback position? Can we get the mayor to
recommend that somebody else do something instead? Can we lay out our
next step, that will try to change his mind? Who will be chairing the meeting at
that point, and can we get some mileage out of a no, with booing and hissing
and so on, rather than just roll over and play dead? Finally, if the mayor says
maybe/mushy, can the chair characterize this as a no, to push the mayor to a
clearer yes statement? Can we pin the mayor down on the next step, so we
know when the maybe/mushy might be converted to a yes or no? In fact, the
planning group needs to talk about the fact that most maybe/mushy answers
really mean NO, and they can be prepared to reject this kind of answer. A
planning group could review peoples' experience with meetings and
agreements and talk about just what constitutes a yes or a no. It's especially
important to be prepared with your next step, so that a no or a maybe/mushy
doesn't end the meeting, but rather you can announce that we'll all be down at
council on Tuesday to protest this lack of cooperation, or we'll be calling for a
new state law requiring the city to do this, starting on Monday with a press
conference, or whatever...

In developing the plan, never make empty threats. Threats are very
valuable, but if once you are unable to make good on them, your credibility will
be weakened for a long, long time. I worked with a neighborhood organization
in the Black community in Providence, Rhode Island in the early '70's. They
were concerned about the lack of good jobs for young people. A group of
leaders had identified the beer distributor that was located in the heart of the
area as a particularly bad actor, with lots of minority beer drinkers but no
minority drivers, warehouse personnel or sales staff. We held a long series of
revival style planning sessions, invited the company to a public meeting that
they ignored and declared a boycott on Narragansett beer, statewide. I was
excited - this was my first organizing job, and already we're taking on the big
guys, big time. Unfortunately, boycotting Narragansett beer in Rhode Island is
like trying to boycott air. It's a great target, but we didn't have the troops to
carry it off. The first night, 30 of the 100 folks who signed up at the meeting to
come and picket showed up. We downsized our plan - less pickets, less stores
- and went out anyway. The next night, only ten arrived. We did one store. The
third night, only the picket leader and me were there.

We were demoralized. I went to my Director, a legendary organizer, trained in

Chicago. What's wrong with these people, why don't they want to fight? He
pointed out, in language clear and straightforward (that better be the last time,
or you're out) that I was looking in the wrong place for blame. As the
organizer, it was MY job to design a campaign that could work, so if it wasn't
working I should try to figure out why, and fix the plan, not blame the
people...He led me through an analysis that identified the weak points of the
plan. First, the group was made up largely of people who cared in general
terms about getting more and better jobs for minority neighborhood residents,
but very few actual job seekers, so the self interest was weak, and the
commitment level low. Second, the tactic of a boycott is a long term, people-
intense one, requiring a vast network of willing workers, and likely to succeed
when there are lots of alternate products that folks could use. Narragansett
was the cheapest brand, the locally produced brands, and held intense brand
loyalty - tough to take on. In the end, we developed a quick and dirty approach
to saving the campaign - and the reputation of the group. We did a week of
outreach with a flyer that said, "Need a job? Come to the Meeting!" We took
actual applications from people, explaining that we would turn them all over to
the company at a certain time and in a group. We sent a letter demanding that
the company meet us, in the street in front of their place, at noon on Friday.
We called al the original leaders, and all the job applicants, and got a hundred
folks there. The leaders presented a package of applications and a list of
demands: accept these applications and pledge to give everybody an equal
chance at all your job openings and we'll call off the boycott. Refuse at your
peril! Needless to say, the media loved it, the company bought it and the
organization declared a victory and got the heck out of the issue. A number of
folks actually got jobs, too, and my career was preserved, with a difficult
lesson learned.

Plan to build on the reaction from the other side. One of our most
successful campaigns grew from an almost disastrous failure, through taking
advantage of the reaction. Parents at the Southside Elementary were
concerned about cars speeding by the playground. They were interested in a
little activism, but not much. They asked our help in developing a petition for
speed limit signs, and I met with a committee and urged them to make an
appointment to deliver the petitions to the traffic engineer as a group. They
agreed, made the appointment, and got the petitions signed. I arrived at the
school at 3 pm on the appointed day, to find not five parents but only one - a
short, meek, VERY pregnant mother who was also very reluctant to go alone
to a big city office and talk to the official city traffic guy. As I had her in the car
already, she found herself at the door of the city office before she could
convince me to take her home and just mail the petitions. "While we're here,
we might as well keep the appointment." The traffic engineer, a young, brash
Italian-American, proceeded to treat Mrs. M like dirt. He made us wait, he
dismissed her concerns as unimportant, he didn't offer her a chair, he said the
petitions probably wouldn't make a difference, he generally disregarded and
disrespected the whole situation. In the car, on the way home, I agitated Mrs.
M mercilessly. "Did you hear the way he talked to you? The nerve of this guy,
who pays his salary, anyway! I'll bet he wouldn't treat a white person that way!
And you six months pregnant! doesn't he have any manners?" I urged her to
call the four other ladies who couldn't make it, and tell them the story. I asked
her to call the neighborhood leadership and tell them the story as well, and
ask for a few minutes on the agenda of the next area public meeting. By the
time she'd told the story a half dozen times, and those folks had told it a few
more, it came back to me as a physical attack, with racist slurs! The issue took
off like a rocket - it led to a public meeting with 75 parents and over 100
children, and a hit on the installation dinner of the traffic engineer as the Grand
Master of the Masons' lodge...but that's another story.

Finally, when a meeting is designed to get an agreement from a person, the

meeting should be structured to tie that agreement down, tight. Two tried
and true techniques for this are the written agreement and the report card.
Often, an official or a target can be asked to sign a written agreement that
embodies the demands. If they do, you know that their answer is really yes. If
they don't sign, they will usually get much more specific about what they DO
mean, and sometimes will sign a revised version so you know what they ARE
agreeing to. The other approach is to post a list of demands, with a check-off
spot marked YES and another for NO. This gives the chair a technique for
concentrating the target on a specific answer that goes beyond "I'll do my
best". The meeting can be focused around the list of demands very simply
with either of these methods.

Evaluating the success of your effort is a critical part of any organizing

campaign. Don't wait until the end to find out if you were effective. As you
carry out your strategy and tactics, assess and evaluate your efforts. One
approach is to have the group members answer the following three questions:

1. Is our strategy achieving the desired results--are we closer to the goal?

2. What's working, what isn't?

3. Are our tasks (actions) working--are they helping the group gain support?

An evaluation of the strategy and its results may lead a group to conclude that
the reason why they have not met their goal is that the strategy was not fully
developed. For example, the "target" of the group's efforts may not have had
the power to make the change the group sought, or perhaps the timing of the
campaign was not right; or a group may conclude that the strategy and tactics
used were correct but not sufficient in number or frequency.

If your assessment indicates that your strategy is not working, you may need
to revise your approach. Re-evaluating and changing tactics is completely
acceptable. The bottom line for assessing success is: Did your efforts create
the change you wanted? You will want to know what might the group do
differently next time. Knowing what worked can help in planning your next
organizing campaign.

This paper is presented as part of the H-Urban Seminar on the History of

Community Organizing and Community-Based Development. It is part of an
ongoing debate about Alinsky-style organizing, of which most of the papers
and discussion are available at http://h-net.msu.edu/~urban/comm-org/alinsky.
 For additional information on the Seminar, visit the WWW Home Page at
http://h-net2.msu.edu/~urban/comm-org or write to comm-org@uicvm.uic.edu.

The Square Pegs Find Their Groove:

Reshaping the Organizing Circle
by Francis Calpotura and Kim Fellner
Sure, we progressive organizers are a skeptical bunch, the better to laugh in
the face of near-impossible odds. But dig to the core, and most of us still
cradle two intertwined dreams:

• The equitable redistribution of wealth and power to assure each person the
necessities of healthful physical survival and the maximal realization of human
potential, in viable communities, on a planet safeguarded from degradation.
• A multi-cultural, communal space where our various identities can shine and
interact in an environment of equally shared power and mutual respect.

These are the ideals that truly separate us from the Right.

However, a debate is percolating in the progressive organizing community

about how these two ideals are realized through our organizing practice -- and
to what extent these goals are made explicit in our work.

This controversy is being mirrored in the funding community. Increasingly, the

already limited number of organizing funders are choosing to support mostly
congregation or faith-based organizing and the established organizing
networks which emerged from the community organizing practice pioneered
by Saul Alinsky. The language that tends to accompany these initiatives is that
of participatory democracy and community economic development. Lost in the
mix are the newer, more experimental organizing efforts, many of them based
in communities of color, the gay/lesbian and immigrant communities, where
issues of identity, diversity and the challenge of prevailing capitalist practice
are among the explicit primary goals.

It is, in part, a re-hash of an old polemic -- do fights for incremental changes

necessarily contain, or even lead to, a critique of prevailing social and
economic structures, or do they only re-divide the same pie in other ways?
Increasingly since the 1960s, we are also asking: Do organizations that
engage in these fights -- purportedly to alter relations of power between the
powerful and the dispossessed -- build more just and equitable internal
structures or do they merely replicate the patterns and culture of the larger
society?
An assumption of Alinsky-based organizing practice has been that if you build
powerful neighborhood organizations that wield that bigger slice of influence or
money in the offices of government or capital, then a fairer and more
ecumenical community will result.

Based on our understandings and experiences, we believe that, while this

approach can change the location of a highway or give parents a greater voice
on their local school board, it alone is insufficient to build a truly equitable,
multi-cultural larger society -- or even a progressive movement. It is like the
San Francisco neighborhood organization strong enough to win speed bumps
on the local thoroughfare, but unwilling to decisively oppose, much less work
for, the defeat of an anti-immigrant ballot initiative. Yet racism is surely as
crucial to the ultimate health of an urban community as traffic.

We would suggest that multi-cultural organizing -- embracing work that is

specifically anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobic, or has as its primary goal
the development of equitable, multi-cultural communities -- is a critical
organizing arena, requiring a more varied palette of approaches, practices and
techniques than have been customary in traditional community organizing. We
suspect that, while we constantly discuss these wedge issues as crucial to
address if we are to move beyond our current disarray as a movement and a
society, far more organizers and resources are deployed to fight city hall than
to fight racism.

Likewise, we believe that greater inclusion in the existing economic and

political structures of this country, while empowering, is inadequate to bring
about a democratic redistribution of resources. Democratic participation in the
service of capitalism is not enough to change prevailing economic priorities. If
we only buy into the existing economic system, without questioning its
underlying assumptions, we will be unable to move from the over-riding
criterion of financial gain and the survival of the fiscally fittest to a working
concept of the common good.

Our goal is to reshape the organizing circle. We see ourselves as part of a

community where traditional organizing to build powerful neighborhood
organizations on immediate, winnable issues, union and class-based
economic organizing, and the newer forms of organizing that explicitly address
identity conflicts, promote multi-culturalism and challenge existing cultural
frameworks, will all thrive.

And there is an additional leap that we, who identify ourselves as Left, need to
make. For too long, we have regarded organizing to build a broad class-based
movement for economic justice and identity organizing as competing, even
antithetical, goals; and at their respective worst, they have been. We believe
it+s time for these two streams to converge, and for a new synthesis to
emerge. The Right has already served warning that if we cannot fuse the two
pieces of our vision, they will forever play one off against the other -- and we
will achieve neither. That is our challenge, if we are to build the society to
which we aspire.

And therein lies this tale.

****

It seems to be fashionable these days, in certain liberal intellectual circles, to

view identity politics -- political action dictated by oppressions based on
immutable personal identities of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability,
etc. -- as the murderers of a powerful progressive movement. This position is
exemplified by Todd Gitlin's book, The Twilight of Common Dreams. In the
progressive organizing community, it is represented by Mike Miller's critique of
Beyond the Politics of Place , Gary Delgado's 1994 work on new directions in
community organizing.

Miller and Gitlin are struggling to protect legacies of our progressive past --
including the classic American democratic vision and the early civil rights
movement. Both trace the deep fault lines in the movement today to an
obsession with the differences that set us apart from each other, rather than
the adoption of broadly acceptable goals of economic equity and political
democracy.

As Gitlin laments, "What has become of the ideal of the Left...that federates
people of different races, genders, sexualities, or for that matter, religions and
classes? Why has this ideal been neglected or abandoned by so many of the
poor and minorities who should share the Left's ideal of equity? Why are so
many people attached to their marginality and why is so much of their
intellectual labor spent developing theories to justify it? Why insist on
difference with such rigidity, rancor, and blindess, to the exclusion of the
possibility of common knowledge and common dreams?"

Mike Miller brings a similar plaint into his defense of the community organizing
discipline developed by Saul Alinsky, which he implies is the only legitimate
practice worthy of the name.

The definition of Alinsky-based organizing championed by Miller includes:

"building units of permanent power, rooted in local communities, led by and
accountable to local people." Its goals tend to involve redistributing power
away from unaccountable institutions and towards the organization; with a
professional organizer who brings the organization into being, and nurtures
indigenous leadership from the organization's membership base.
Characteristics of this organizing practice have included a pragmatic focus on
issues that are "immediate, specific and winnable," and the dominance of
white male organizers, albeit ones of tremendous intellect and energy.
Delgado proposes that "the ground-breaking work, the innovation, the
experimentation, and the motivating livid anger that comes from the truly
oppressed is at the heart of the work in immigrants' rights organizations, gay
and lesbian organizations, disabled people's organizations and organizations
of people of color. It is these formations, compelled always to struggle with the
politics of difference, that will force the practitioners of traditional CO to move
'beyond the politics of place' to address the cultural dimensions of power in
their own organizations, as well as in society at large."

Miller, however, likes the place he's in, and doesn't want to move. He argues
that not only does Delgado malign Alinsky's legacy and misrepresent its
contemporary offshoots, but he also contends that current Alinsky-based, and
especially congregation-based organizing efforts, are changing sufficiently to
meet the needs of women and minorities, so as to make new forms
unnecessary.

Don't get us wrong. We are in debt to this legacy, which propelled many of us
to a justice vocation and drew us to practice community and/or union
organizing. From it, we learned to value the process whereby people come to
act collectively against injustice, through which the disenfranchised and
oppressed achieve voice and power. From among Alinsky's adherents, we
have frequently found our own mentors, and culled our own organizing
experiences.

Furthermore, we value the results these organizations have yielded and

admire (even lust after) the longevity and savvy at marshaling resources that
the organizing networks have achieved. In addition, many of us first try to fit
our feet to the Alinsky footprint and adopt many of the assumptions and
techniques that he, and his descendents, developed. We too want to nurture
organizations that can win voice and power for our communities.

However, the past 25 years have added new dimensions to our efforts -- and
refocused the lens through which we view the world. The labor movement, the
New Left and the organizing discipline that Saul Alinsky built, despite their
luster, also engendered many flaws of the larger society, notably the
dominance of white males in the power structures of their own organizations.
The dissonance between stated principle and practice stoked the demand by
activist women, people of color, and later gays and lesbians and the disabled,
that the movement itself live up to its rhetoric or, in some cases, rethink its
verities and structures.

Most of us have our own tales of conflict, chaos and ludicrous excess along
the mult-cult trail, but few of us who envision a successfully diverse society
would return to the old world order of progressive action -- the one that
preceded the emergence of identity-based power blocs demanding an
equitable share of leadership and resources. The reason is simple: We would
still be sidelined in the real decision-making structures of the organizations to
which we devote our energies, and our own experiences and priorities would
be relegated to a subsidiary position, if not entirely ignored.

This is not to say that traditional CO has not changed or absorbed some of the
lessons of identity struggles. Miller suggests that, "throughout its history,
broadly-based community organizing has dealt with inter-racial and ethnic
tension and conflict and has built multi-racial and ethnic organizations ....
Many of these organizations have people of color on their organizing staffs.
Many of them conduct bi- and tri-lingual meetings. A growing number of
people of color are now directors of organizing projects within networks.
Further, most of the white males in these organizations are seriously
addressing the gender and racial/ethnic imbalances in their respective
networks."

However, this is not really adequate for developing a multi-cultural community.

The critical difference is between the concept of inclusion and that of self-
determination. Some traditional community organizing has moved, in more
and less effective ways, to be inclusionary, bringing women and people of
color into their existing organizational structure and culture. But the women
and people of color who rise in the ranks of traditional community organizing
endeavors are those who buy into the traditional culture -- a policy and
practice of affirmative action, at best. That is far different from having the room
to redefine or transform organizational life.

Nor is Miller the only one who advocates that diversity play second fiddle to
pragmatism. As we were writing this, we received a mailing from a fledgling
national formation, suggesting that their organizational culture, "...should not
get so bogged down with diversity issues that we lose the focus on economic
democracy....The fundamental issue is reconciling the tension between 'going
smarter' and 'going broader.'" A peculiar formulation at best.

This question of reframing organizing culture is hard to capture. Traditional

Alinsky-based organizing practice does indeed have its own culture, which is
largely hierarchical, defined by a specific methodology, focused on issues that
can be won sooner rather than later and uncontroversial enough to be broadly
subscribed to within the target geographic area -- i.e. not so contentious that it
alienates key members or funders.

But these cultural indicators do not merely deter the "square pegs" from
feeling welcome in the organization or impede the development of diverse
leadership. They also exact a price in building what one young organizer we
know calls an "holistically progressive" societal vision.
It is an inevitable consequence of funding only congregation-based
organizing, for example, that the issues of gay/lesbian rights and reproductive
choice will be swept off the organizing agenda.

This is made explicit by Miller's discussion on ideology and the choice of

issues. He asks whether we would dismiss the approach of an IAF project
minister who "also thinks there is more power in being part of an inter-racial
alliance that includes organizations that are based in white ethnic communities
elsewhere in New York and which aren't 'progressive' in the sense that they
have (quoting Delgado) 'a perspective that views racism as a primary mode of
oppression in US society.' Anyone who tried to organize white ethnics in
Queens on that basis wouldn't get very far.

Miller notes that the minister "seems to prefer that he be in relationship with a
broadly-based organization than with one that has a 'progressive' way of
understanding racism.... Should the test include gay marriages? Or pro-
abortion? Or: fill in the blank. While you're filling in the blank you better think
about all the Latino and Black Baptists, Pentecostals and Catholics who agree
with Catholic ethnics on some of these issues."

But this is exactly the reason that the emergence of identity has surfaced new
directions in the progressive organizing arena -- and these are exactly the
issues that the Right has raised with such gusto to woo our own constituents.

There is no demand that organizers in a white ethnic neighborhood in Queens

lead with anti-racism or pro-abortion issues. Rather, there is an imperative that
other organizing occurs that does address these critical issues head on --
even if they do not lend themselves neatly to the traditional admonition that
the issues we select should be "immediate, specific and winnable," or mimic
the structures and techniques that have worked in different circumstances, or
even turn out large numbers of people on command.

Miller warns that, "Those organizations that speak out on what they think is
right, without regard to effectiveness, may be prophetic voices, but if that is all
they do they are sure to remain far away from where decisions are being
made."

Yet, if there is not a second organizing path, with a different culture, that takes
these risks, how are we to address the attitudes that can turn the most
dedicated union member or community safety activist into a vote for the latest
immigrant-bashing or tax-slashing initiative?

If we do not explore organizing that raises a direct challenge to unfettered

capitalism, how will we begin the task of refocusing our society on the
importance of collective good over private gain?
And how are we going to make the leaps that forge a proactive class-based
solidarity that transcends barriers of conflicting identities?

It is part of our work to incorporate the new realities of our society, to take the
lessons of identity struggles and forge the next step. In doing so, we need to
build on the wisdom that we have gleaned from existing organizing disciplines
and experiences -- and take some leaps into the unknown.

In our experience, for example, communities are often too fractured to engage
in meaningful collective activity before building a culture that embraces its
diverse members. This disarray has been compounded by the Right's
ideological influence in framing critical issues in ways that divide, rather than
unify, communities.

When parents of color fight queer activists over school curricula, or when
neighbors are pitted against each other over the siting of polluting industries in
their community, then the emergence of a powerful movement is stunted. A
few months ago, Black ministers refused to attend an action that started out at
the headquarters of a gay/lesbian organization -- even though they supported
the action itself -- ironically, part of an affirmative action campaign.

Recently, Labor Party Advocates, an effort to develop a progressive, labor-

based third party, struck reproductive choice off their platform so as not to
alienate some of their Latino supporters. This capitulation epitomizes the
"class struggle uber alles" approach to organizing, that discounts the
fundamental rights of part of the collective as a strategic expedient -- and in
the process disregards all the lessons we should have learned in the last 30
years. Even the Republican Party seems to have second thoughts about
antagonizing the majority of women voters. Yet the LPA leadership will
undoubtedly express dismay if we fail to embrace their efforts -- and blame
those bad identity politics for blinding us to our own class self-interest.

These examples from our own organizing world graphically challenge the
traditional assumption that broad-based organizing efforts that tackle
immediate, winnable issues will inevitably lead to a more equitable and
tolerant society -- or that progressive views on economics or class will yield
progressive views on gender, race or sexual orientation (or vice versa for that
matter).

Therefore, some of us are exploring an inverse proposition to prevailing

practice: Perhaps, if you forge a diverse and respectful community culture,
then creative and cohesive work to build organizations to redistribute power
will follow.

This approach asserts that the task of forging an equitable, respectful, multi-
cultural, shared, cohesive, progressive justice community out of many diverse
and competing identities is, in and of itself, an appropriate and necessary
organizing objective. As such, it demands the allocation of time, personnel and
financial resources; it cannot be relegated to the sidelines, as the casual by-
product of other, more tangible organizing goals. It also requires a different set
of techniques and sensibilities, including heightened emphasis on political
education that links economics with wedge issues, the celebration of diverse
identities and the forging of a new, shared culture that embraces the broadest
possible constituency for a progressive economic, social and environmental
agenda.

It will require experimentation, some of which will fail. But who is to say, in the
long run, that it will not contribute new strengths and dimensions to our
collective struggle for justice and equity?

Once upon a time, when we were young, almost all newspapers and major
printing jobs were typeset in hot metal by feisty, frequently radical craftsmen,
who were organized in the typographical unions and had won good pay for
their labor.

Then computers came into use -- "cold type" -- and younger workers with less
craft, frequently women, making low wages, were hired to sit at the terminals
and type in copy.

Because the wages and working conditions were low, the cold type workers
asked to join the typographers union. But the typographers refused to let them
in, because they were not viewed as craftspeople, only typists -- and lots of
them were women, to boot.

But cold type technology ruled. The machines and programs became more
sophisticated, and the computer typesetters became highly skilled in their own
right, perfecting their speed, adaptability and artistry. The hot metal shops
closed down; the men who had so carefully guarded their craft became as rare
as manatees.

And the world of computer typesetting, and the generation of women and men
who do that work, have remained largely unorganized.

There is nothing to be gained by defining a dynamic, dedicated, diverse and

innovative new wave of organizers as pretenders, except a shrinking corps of
purists. We want to honor our mentors and learn the craft as they have
practiced it. And we also want, and need, to make some new additions based
on our own life experiences, the conditions we encounter in our communities
and the changing times. Together, we can build a stronger progressive
movement that contends for power while reconstructing communal space. A
movement where square pegs can find their groove.
 The time has come for us to reshape our progressive organizing circle. In the
struggle for justice, there is work enough for all.

Francis Calpotura is the Co-Director of the Center for Third World Organizing (CTWO),
and Kim Fellner directs the National Organizers Alliance (NOA). You can write to us at:
CTWO, 1218 E. 21st Street, Oakland, CA 94606, or at NOA, 715 G Street, SE,
Washington, DC 20003.

Copyright (c) 1996 by Francis Calpotura and Kim Fellner, all rights reserved.
This work may be copied in whole or in part, with proper attribution, as long as
the copying is not-for-profit "fair use" for research, commentary, study, or
teaching. *No* part of the work may be used for profit without prior permission
of the authors. For other permissions, contact the authors.

This paper is presented as part of the Papers series for COMM-ORG: The On-line
Conference on Community Organizing and Development. Copyright is held by the author. To
cite, use: [author] [date] [title], paper presented on COMM-ORG: The On-Line Conference on
Community Organizing and Development. http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers.htm.

CONFLICT & COOPERATION

IN MACRO THEORY & PRACTICE
By Moshe ben Asher, Ph.D.

kharakim@jps.net

CONTENTS

Introduction

Cycle of Cooperation, Competition, Conflict, and Negotiation

Theoretical Underpinnings

Field of Social Action

Dialectic of Social Action

Ideology & Power in Organizational Life

Ideological Realities & Power Disparities
Essentials of Conflict Resolution

Notes

INTRODUCTION

It's a truism that we use negotiations to conclude conflicts in social life, albeit
unconditional surrender is the rare exception to the rule. Consider the gamut,
from marriages to wars.

The potential for successful negotiations to end conflicts is often thought, in

turn, to hinge entirely on bargaining over resources. Wars are seen to
conclude with the redrawing of national boundaries, marriages end with
property settlements.

But suggested here by example and theoretical explanation is the possibility

that conflict resolution between organizations may depend at least as much on
whether each organization's ideological reality of the other(s) in the conflict is
an accurate reflection of their resource disparity.

CYCLE OF COOPERATION, COMPETITION, CONFLICT, AND

NEGOTIATION

Imagine a relationship between a small, loose-knit organization of tenants and

a public housing authority, a relationship in which there is cooperation but not
equality. That is to say, the tenants understand their relative powerlessness
and rarely if ever approach the housing officials with requests for more than
what can be had for the asking. The relationship between tenant leaders and
housing authority officials is "friendly and cooperative," although with an
undercurrent of resentment on the tenants' side and arrogance on the housing
authority side.

Now imagine that the tenants' organization has an influx of new members and
several gifted leaders emerge, while simultaneously their housing conditions
worsen. Assume too that with new, improved leadership, the tenants'
organization becomes more disciplined. As the organization becomes more
powerful--its command of resources growing--there is a palpable tension
among the membership about the way tenants and their organization are
being treated by the housing authority.

A few members within the tenants' organization begin to agitate for radical
action. Conscious of their increased capacity, they press to have the
organization exercise its influence in ways that will materially improve their
housing. Countervailing this momentum is the inertia of most other tenants,
even members of the tenants' organization, based on their fear of
confrontation and retribution in the form of eviction by the housing authority.

The inertia is often rationalized, however, with popular ideas about why
grassroots community organizations engage, more or less, in cooperation and
conflict. It's commonly said that conflict is chosen by individual players as a
matter of personal style, psychological need, or political ideology--and
therefore should be avoided because it's not likely to serve the practical self-
interests of most people. Or, to the contrary, that the emergence of a particular
form of action is invariably the result of "bigger social forces"--and therefore
it's futile for common people to attempt to influence such matters.

While thoughtful arguments have been made for each of these ideas, macro
practitioners find it more useful to understand cooperation and conflict as the
outcomes of relationship dynamics occurring between organizations and
institutions in the organizational field of action. Thus they see the potential for
grassroots organizations to have significant influence through their campaigns
and actions.

Community organizers typically employ several methodologies to help

members of grassroots organizations overcome their resistance to
confrontation and conflict, simultaneously reducing the potential for destructive
outcomes. Not demonizing officials who may become organizational
opponents, but acknowledging that they represent adverse institutional
interests and that they are "human beings who deserve to be treated with
civility and respect," frequently has the effect of displacing inhibitions about
confrontation and conflict. Organizing "research actions," which afford the
opportunity to meet with decision-makers and "take their measure" before
confronting them with specific demands, reinforces the value of self-discipline
when engaged in conflict. And leadership training that focuses on overall
campaign development, including negotiations, helps to create a more
grounded perspective.

In the best of circumstances, the momentum based on confidence that

confrontation and conflict can be constructive offsets the inertia based on fear
that they will be destructive. The tension, then, that begins with the tenants'
increased capacity, leads to an active "competition." The tenants' organization
begins to marshal its resources--both material resources and the resources
that enable it to influence wider ideological realities (e.g., with other non-
member tenants, the media, and local politicians)--in order to influence
institutional decision-making. The goal ultimately is to win campaigns on
issues that will both relieve pressures and realize hopes, and that will build the
capacity of tenants' organization itself.

On the one hand, if initially the differential in resources between the tenants
and the housing authority allows the tenants to demonstrate sufficient power
to give the housing authority a stake in negotiations, the competition may lead
directly to resolution of issues and some shift in realities. (We will return to the
idea of shifting realities momentarily.)

On the other hand, if the resource and power differential is substantial and
there is no hope of getting the housing authority into good-faith negotiations,
the tendency will be to move toward conflict. That is, it will be necessary for
the tenants to demonstrate their organizational power--their ability to impose
costs on the housing authority--as a precondition to achieving negotiations.
The conflict isn't for its own sake but to create incentives for the other side to
negotiate in good faith, to reach an agreement that resolves the issue.

Cycle of Cooperation, Competition,

Conflict, and Negotiation

There is, then, a discernable cycle of cooperation, competition, conflict, and

negotiation in which these two organizations are engaged. These cyclical
stages, along with the shifts in realities that link them, are illustrated in the
diagram above. In the first instance of cooperation, we note that the shift in the
tenants' resources leads to competition when the "perceptual reality of [the]
more powerful [housing authority is] not congruent with [the] new resources of
the less powerful [tenants' organization]." The transition from competition to
conflict reflects a similar failure to appreciate new realities. And, lastly, the
transition from conflict to negotiation typically reflects a demonstration of
power that compels the acceptance of new realities.

THEORETICAL UNDERPINNINGS

Why do macro practitioners need theoretical understanding of this cycle of

conflict and cooperation? Theoretical understanding is useful for many
reasons. Foremost among them is that we advance our knowledge and skill as
organizers through praxis, by the interplay of practice and reflection--a
continuous give and take between what we do and our systematic thinking
about what we do. Theory for macro practice isn't for its own sake but to guide
action, especially in new and unexpected situations, when we have no prior
experience, preparation, or knowledge. Theory also enables us to better
analyze past and current events, and to make predictions about the future.
Theory allows us to derive practice roles, hypotheses (testable propositions),
and methodologies for achieving specific organizing objectives.

Field of Social Action

Every theory needs a central concept that encompasses the "universe" to be

explained, connecting all of its components. Because the idea of a field of
social action(1) reflects the main facets of organizing life, it's the centerpiece of
this theory. The theoretical definition of the action field includes individuals and
collectivities (groups, organizations, and institutions), their social processes,
structures, and objectives. The theory accounts for the dynamics of power and
ideology in the political economy, and, in doing so, its action-field definition
distills from psychology, sociology, and political-economics, the analytical and
methodological tools for macro practice.

The pivotal purpose of every organization in the action field of political

economy is survival. Organizations must gather resources over and above
their costs, to ensure continued life and growth. They seek resources to
secure their domain and to achieve autonomy and movement toward their
goals. And their field of action is animated by the cycle of cooperation,
competition, conflict, and negotiation over scarce resources.

The action field has two significant dimensions for which we need theoretical
explanations. These are: (1) relations of power--the building up and
expenditure of resources, with adjustments effected by cooperation,
competition, conflict, and negotiation; and (2) ideological realities--valued
expectations about social action, including shared understandings about
allied, neutral, and opposing players, their actions and the consequences that
flow from them.

Three paradigmatic social science theories are drawn together here to

describe the action field. The foundation is social learning theory,(2) because
all human activity is an extension of individual behavior. Learning theory
covers the main psychological factors that account for individual behavior:
environmental cues that are prior to action, cognition (thinking and knowing),
and rewarding and punishing consequences that follow action. To avoid
explaining sociological processes with psychological theory, and building
directly on the behavioral principles of social learning, we employ social
exchange theory.(3)

Exchange theory elaborates the sociology of collective action, especially the

acquisition of resources and power, and injustices in their distribution. While
both learning and exchange theories admit the importance of shared, valued
ideas that are linked to centers of power--usually called ideologies--they often
leave this realm unexplored, taking its effects as given but beyond their
purview. Theory for social construction of reality(4) makes it possible to connect
ideology with learning and exchange--and thus to propose a dialectic of social
action. (In the language of community organizing, rough approximations of
these theoretical categories are values, which are equivalent to ideological
realities, and self-interests, which are equivalent to learning and exchange
contingencies.)

The action-field strands of power and ideology are interwoven in a seamless

web. That is, our resources--mainly people and money--are valued not only for
their direct effects, but also for broader influence, both within our own
organizations and beyond. We use them to create shared ideologies (i.e.,
phenomenological realities) that define our allies and opponents, good and
evil, winning and losing.

As already noted, relationships between organizations and institutions in the

action field may be cooperative, competitive, conflicting, or in negotiation, and
they are invariably in transition from one stage to another. Contrary to the
popular view of the urban political economy as unorganized and chaotic,
through this theoretical lens the action field appears comparatively stable and
patterned. Much of the "coordination" is not by way of formal institutional
arrangements but through realignments that result from competition and
conflict. This activity appears as coordination only when we have an overview
of the entire field of action. Because the coordination occurs largely in
competition and conflict, it appears that most of the permanent cooperative
arrangements are symbolic, reflecting long-term resource and power
disparities.

Dialectic of Social Action

To understand social action, it's helpful to see that we commonly experience
events as good or bad because of ideologies that define their meanings. We
create the ideologies, in our shared history and language experience. Yet the
everyday behavior required to construct ideologies doesn't happen without
sufficiently attractive incentives, a variety of circumstances on which our
learning and exchange are contingent, and which in turn are themselves
invested with value by ideologies.

It goes round and round: not only are both contingencies and ideologies
operating, they are inseparable in social life, and explanations of
organizational action are incomplete without reference to their dialectical
relationship.

This explanation of social action, based on empirically grounded behavioral

and phenomenological theories, provides a foundation for explaining the cycle
of cooperation, competition, conflict, and negotiation. The cycle may be
understood theoretically, for purposes of macro practice, as a response to the
dialectical relationship between (1) behavioral contingencies of learning and
exchange, and (2) socially constructed ideological realities.
IDEOLOGY & POWER IN ORGANIZATIONAL LIFE

It is important when beginning to examine the cycle of cooperation,

competition, conflict, and negotiation not to confuse stability in the field of
organizational action with some notion of "balance." There may be some form
of "cooperation" between master and slave, between powerful institution and
weak grassroots organization, but such relationships do not reflect equality of
resources and power.

Ideological Realities & Power Disparities

Balance can usefully be said to exist only in the sense that each
organization's ideological definition of the other is an accurate reflection of
their resource and power disparity, and thus there is a tendency toward
stability in their relationship

Our example of grassroots conflict and cooperation shows that a gap grew up
between the housing authority's ideological definition of the tenants'
organization and the tenants' actual power.

To the extent that realities and resources (or power) between the parties were
no longer congruent, that is, that their socially constructed ideological
definitions of each other no longer fit their actual resource positions, an
imbalance or "tension" was created that tended toward competition. The
advent of this tension can be traced to resource shifts, planned or occurring
unexpectedly, such that relationships between the parties--the ways in which
they define each other--no longer correspond to actual resource and power
disparities.

Essentials of Conflict Resolution

Successful negotiations require a recognition that both parties must win, must
have some of their needs met, except in the case of "unconditional surrender,"
which is virtually unheard of in the world of community organization. But
successful negotiations also require a reduction of power disparity: it is the
building and demonstration of power that creates the essential incentive,
moving the parties toward negotiations.

This is true because the essence of negotiation is bargaining of resources

based on each side's perception of the other's resource leverage and ability to
control wider realities. Thus a major stumbling block to resolution of issues in
negotiation, particularly in instances of a first negotiation between the parties,
is the unwillingness or incapacity of the previously dominant party to
experience a shift in attitude about the previously subordinate party's capacity
to exercise power and impose costs.
 The key to conflict resolution--recognizing that all such resolution is
temporary--in many instances is a shift in realities. In effect, each side's
ideological definition of the other must be realigned to more accurately reflect
their actual resource and power positions.

When the conflict between the tenants and the housing authority has reached
a stage of resolution, the tenants' organization has certainly won concessions
on its issues, itself a shift in resources. But it has also achieved for itself and
its opponent a new ideological definition of itself as an organizational actor,
and it has established a new relationship based on that definition. No longer is
the tenant organization seen as powerless, even witless. Its leaders have
newly formed relationships of mutual respect with the leadership of the
housing authority. The housing authority's definition of them has changed, as
has their definition of themselves.

NOTES

1. Kurt Lewin, Field Theory in Social Science (Harper & Row, 1951).

2. Albert Bandura, Social Learning Theory (Prentice Hall, 1976).

3. Peter M. Blau, Exchange and Power in Social Life (John Wiley & Sons, 1964).

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (Anchor
4.
Books/Doubleday, 1967).

Three Alinskys?
by

Peter Szynka

peter.szynka@diakonie-oldenburger-land.de

Bremen / Germany

Contents
~ Introduction: Difficulties in Understanding Alinsky
~ A Bible Lesson with Saul Alinsky
~ Alinsky and Science
~ Alinsky and the American Way of Life
~ Conclusion
~ Notes
 ~ About the Author

Introduction: Difficulties in Understanding Alinsky1

At first, I would like to share some thoughts concerning the word tradition,
before I go on to present my findings on Alinsky. Tradition could be defined as
the passing on of knowledge and experience to others. Although Alinsky has
written and reported basic findings on Community Organizing, I would not like
to see him as a starting point of whatever tradition. This would deeply miss his
intentions. Much of what Alinsky has said or written on Community Organizing
was not new at his time. I do not want to say that Alinsky brought nothing new,
however. But I would like to claim that Alinsky can only be understood
adequately when one sees him as part of a chain within which something like
tradition was passed on.

One can say that Alinsky was rooted very strongly in the Chicago School of
Urban Sociology and that he learned a lot from his teachers. Furthermore, his
work was subject and is subject to the interpretations of his co-workers ,
colleagues, trainees and students, who brought in their own views and lost
others. This makes Alinsky part of a chain that we can define rather precisely.
The Alinsky tradition can in no way be understood without references to his
teachers and his trainees. Doing justice to the work of Saul D. Alinsky we
must regard his teachers and famous sociologists Robert E. Park and Ernest
W. Burgess. Also John L. Lewis, the famous labor union leader, has to be
mentioned. We also have to name Edward T. Chambers, one of Alinsky’s
trainees and the present director of the Industrial Areas Foundation.

Occasionally one has to protect the teachers from their readers and trainees.
This is not only true concerning Alinsky's German readers, but also his
American trainees. Last but not least we have to protect Alinsky's teachers
from Alinsky himself.

Further difficulties appear because many of the core concepts used by Alinsky
have other, more complicated meanings in the German language. Many of
these concepts are needed as scientific concepts, to help to clarify social
facts. However, the same concepts are sometimes taken and turned into
political concepts by people who want to fight for social change. For example,
this is true for his concepts of "community", "organization", "power", "conflict",
"self-interest" and "compromise". It also applies to the term used in the titles
of his major works: "radical".

Another difficulty consists in the structure of the material left by Alinsky. There
are scientific articles from his early period and his major works "Reveille for
Radicals" and "Rules for Radicals". Sometimes they seem to be written down
in a hurry and contain a lot of cryptic parts. There are a lot of lectures,
fragments, interviews, press reports, films and all sorts of legends.
 If one works precisely with the conceptual and structural difficulties and takes
note of the sources of Alinsky's ideas, one will come to fundamentally different
results than in older approaches to his work.

In the following section, I would like to present three pictures of Alinsky. These
pictures have two different functions. On the one hand they are analytic and
try to come closer to the truth of Alinsky’s person and work. However, the
presented pictures are also selected strategically. They are intended to irritate
and disturb the pictures people might have won during the reception of
Community Organizing in the 70s.

I will first introduce Alinsky to you as a student of the Talmud. This picture is
specially dedicated to German readers. In Germany it took a long time for
Community Workers to become independent from religious Community Work
during the 19th century. This led to the result that religious activities in the field
of Community Work are regarded with suspicion. On the other hand, in
Germany today, almost nothing is known about Judaism and its impact on
social work. Alinsky’s religious education prepared him very well as an
independent counselor of religious institutions.

You will then get to know Alinsky as scientist and science-critic. This section is
specially dedicated to readers who try to build community Organizing efforts
solely on the basis of religion or faith2. This is the case with some of his
successors in the USA3. Alinsky was heavily engaged in enlarging the
scientific base for his community organizing efforts. Sometimes it seems that
his approach should be a kind of socio-technique that would function under all
conditions. This surely did not come true. But it should be recognized that he
tried to enlarge, as we would say in Europe the knowledge-base of his
practice.

Finally I will show Alinsky advocating the American Way of Life. This is
especially dedicated to readers who tried to see Alinsky as some kind of
Marxist revolutionary leader. In contrast to this, he has to be seen as
somebody who finds orientation in the economic and moral writings of the 18th
century economist Adam Smith.

A Bible Lesson with Saul Alinsky

Saul David Alinsky grew up in a Jewish home. His parents were orthodox
Jews and belonged to those approximately 50.000 Russian Immigrants who
came to the US after the pogroms of 1881. At first they came to New York,
and then went to Chicago to escape the overcrowded immigrant
neighborhoods of New York. About his new home in Chicago, Alinsky later
said, that it was "a slum in a slum". His orthodox parents sent Saul David to
the Cheder, the Jewish elementary school. His progress in reading Hebrew
texts was rewarded and he was expected to finish the Yeshiva, the Jewish
Talmudic school. Due to his stubbornness and independence of mind, his
parents called him a "goyischen kop", which means a "non Jewish mind". His
father always feared that mobs from the Polish neighborhood could penetrate
into the Jewish neighborhood and instigate a pogrom in the style of the old
world he knew. The young Saul David participated in Jewish gangs which
engaged in many fights with Polish and other gangs.

After one of theses fights, his mother took him to a rabbi. Saul defended his
behavior with a Bible quotation: "an Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth: this
is the way things go in America". The rabbi liked the vivacious boy and he
patiently explained to him what it means "zu sejn a mensh" (to be a man). He
introduced to him the maxim of the great Rabbi Hillel "Where there are no
men, be you a man!" This saying of Rabbi Hillel will more than 50 years later
stand over his second major work "Rules for Radicals".

Again and again Alinsky told the story of Moses and the "Exodus from Egypt".
In Alinsky’s eyes, it was an example of brilliant organizing. The core of that
story is the scene where Moses negotiated with God, who planned to destroy
his people because of their dance before the golden calf.

"Moses did not try to communicate with God in terms of mercy or justice, when
God was angry and wanted to destroy the Jews; he moved in on a top value
and outmaneuvered God. (...)

A great Organizer, like Moses, never looses his cool (…)

He knew that the most important center of his attack would have been what he
judged to be God´s prime value. As Moses read it, God wanted to be No. 1.
(…)

Knowing this, Moses took off on his attack. (…)

He began to negotiate, saying "Look God, you're God. You're holding all the
cards. Whatever you want to do, you can do and nobody can stop you. But
you (…) can't scratch the deal you've got with these people – (…) the
Covenant – (…).

You're going to tell me that they broke their end of it (…).

But it isn't that easy. You are on the spot. The news of this deal has leaked out
all over the joint. The Egyptians, Philistines, Canaanites, everybody knows
about it.

But (…) you’re God. Go ahead and knock them off. What do you care if people
say, "There goes God. You can't believe anything he tells you. You can't make
 a deal with him. His word isn't even worth the stone it's written on'. But after
all, you're God and I suppose you can handle it."4

And he finished with the quotation from Exodus, 32: 7-14

“And the Lord was appeased from doing the evil which he had spoken against
his people.”

For our purpose it is only important that Alinsky neither invented this story nor
its interpretation. The story is told in the book of Exodus. Its interpretations are
more than 1800 years old and follow the ideas of the Chapter in the
Babylonian Talmud called Berachot 32. Moreover, this text occupies a central
position in Jewish thinking. Every Jewish child knows the story and its
problem. The manner in which Moses gets God off his oath of destruction is a
central part of the liturgy of the Reconciliation Day, the highest Jewish holiday.
In my opinion it is also a key to understand some of Alinsky's central concepts
of Community Organizing: conflict, negotiation, compromise and reconciliation.

Therefore, was Alinsky a religious man? His employee and successor Ed

Chambers claims that Alinsky was an atheist. I think he was an assimilated,
enlightened, modern Jew.

However, it was his knowledge of the Bible, resulting from his Jewish
education, that gave him the ability to cooperate effectively with religious
organizations like the Christian Churches. From the beginning of his career to
the end of his life, he remained connected to the Roman Catholic Church and
particularly to the archdiocese of Chicago. He even participated in the
education of parish priests. For a time no parish priest was let into a
community of Chicago unless he had completed an elementary course in
Community Organizing with Saul D. Alinsky.

Alinsky as Scientist
Alinsky’s work becomes primarily understandable in the context of the
sociological discussions at the Chicago School of Sociology of his time.
Although Alinsky strongly criticized science, science business and the
practical relevance of sociological knowledge, he did research on his own and
made some remarkable contributions to the discussions of his time. His own
scientific work is recognizably stamped by the Chicago School of Sociology.
His later practice may also be seen as an application of central concepts from
the Chicago School.

Alinsky studied criminology and sociology. He took part in projects of Ernest

W. Burgess and worked for Clifford R. Shaw, where he began to fight against
youth crime. He had practical experience as a participant observer and
interviewer in the mobster-groups around Al Capone. He also took part in
research of Ernest W. Burgess about the impact of dancing-halls on the moral
development of young people.

The Chicago-Area-Project, guided by Clifford R. Shaw, was a model and a

starting point for his own Back-Of-the-Yards Project. His early scientific work
deals with interview techniques and the evaluation of his Back-of-The-Yards
Project.

His later publications are more popular-scientific and written for a broader
public.

Throughout his life Alinsky gave lectures at universities and other places of
adult-education. Now, what are the important concepts, Alinsky took from the
Chicago School?

The Chicago School of Sociology is inseparably linked to William I. Thomas

and Florian Znaniecki. Their major sociological work is entitled: "The Polish
peasant in Europe and America". In this sparkling work the authors follow the
question of how immigrants manage their everyday-lives in the US. This topic
directly touches the history of Saul Alinsky’s family, immigrating from the east
European, Jewish “shtetl” into the modern American, industrial “city”. The
authors evaluated an enormous quantity of life-stories from Polish immigrants
in this work.

The work of Thomas and Znaniecki is a milestone in the development of the

sociology from a theoretical science towards an empirical science. At the core
of this development stands the systematic evaluations of life-histories.

They also developed a theory of primary groups, a theory of the "Definition-of-

the-Situation", and a dialectic-process of
“Organization/Disorganization/Reorganization” which remained basic for their
students.

Life-stories and the everyday experiences of the people stand also at the
beginning of Alinsky’s organizing efforts. Alinsky regarded communities as
primary groups. He related community organization/disorganization to
personal behavior. Furthermore, he discovered that the “Definitions-of-the-
Situation” upon which people act can be changed by communication and the
sharing of life-experience. This shared analysis of situations will be the basis
for his later power analysis.

Thomas’ and Znaniecki’s successors at the Chicago School were Ernest W.

Burgess and Robert Ezra Park. One of their trainees was Saul D. Alinsky. The
major work of Park and Burgess was called "The City" and is regarded as a
manifesto of the Chicago School of Urban Sociology.
"The City" contains nine chapters and an annotated bibliography of the urban
community.

Three chapters deal directly with questions of Community Organizing. One

deals with the interesting question of whether neighborhood work can have a
scientific base.

This chapter was the model for Alinsky's evaluation of his own Back-of-the-
Yards Project. This Evaluation was published in the famous American Journal
of Sociology and tried to show that Community Organizing could be planned
and conducted on a scientific base5. He also distinguishes his Community
Organizing practice from the approach of the settlement houses, which
followed the model of Jane Addams’ Hull House. Further, he distinguished
between self-organized neighborhood institutions and outside-organized
services, which he accused of being some kind of welfare colonialism. From
Park and Burgess he took over the concept of social forces and the distinction
between scientific and “good-will” approaches. Participant observation, open
interview techniques, and "nosing around" remained essential in his approach.
I quote:

“Who are the leaders?

Which interests of the neighborhood do they incorporate in themselves and

what is the technique by which they exercise control?

What is the social , i.e. what things must one do in the neighborhood in order
to escape being regarded with suspicion or looked upon as peculiar?

What does it regard as a matter of fact? What is news? What is the general
run of attention? What models does it imitate and are these within or without
the group?

What is there in clear consciousness, i.e. what are its avowed sentiments,
doctrines etc.?

What is the history of the neighborhood? What is there in sub consciousness

-- in forgotten or dimly remembered experiences- of this neighborhood which
determines its sentiments and attitudes?”

I did not take these questions from Alinsky's chapter on “Native Leadership”
and “Community Traditions and Organizations” in his book "Reveille for
Radicals"6, as readers would probably expect. I took it from the original
source, the sociological classic of his teachers Park and Burgess called “The
City” 7.
 Probably the best known contribution of the Chicago School to the world of
Sociology is Thomas’ theorem of the "Definition-of-the-Situation". In the
original version it is cited "If men define situations as real, they are real in their
consequences." It reflects the experience that people act upon their judgment
of the situation. They do this whether this definition is true or not.

With this background, Alinsky’s famous Rule No. 1 on power-tactics becomes

easily understandable. He says:

"Power is not only what you have, but also what your opponent thinks you
have."8

Although Alinsky was very deeply rooted in the Chicago School of Sociology,
he strongly criticized sociology.

He used to say

“The words academic and irrelevant are synonymous”.

In interviews Alinsky said that his work was not influenced by the Chicago
School of Sociology although this influence is conspicuous. He particularly
admired Robert E. Park. I think, therefore, that his polemics were not aimed at
the sociology of the Chicago School in general, but against special
developments and influences. His criticism can be understood as criticism of a
development which successively replaces qualitative social research by
quantitative, statistical research. The polemics aimed at a sort of sociology
that makes itself dependent on the market (as market research) and on the
state (as opinion research). His criticism aimed at a sociology that restricts the
empirical value of the single man or woman. He opposes a sociology that
cannot guarantee its relevance for an improved social and political practice, a
sociology that doesn't reflect the relevance of its results for social
development and social progress. His criticism coincides with that of Robert
Lynd9 or C. Wright Mills10 with whom he worked and corresponded about
these problems.

Alinsky and the American Way of Life

Reitzes and Reitzes11 wrote that only a brief examination of Alinsky’s work
shows that the American Founding Fathers were more important to him than
Karl Marx. This also applies to Thomas Paine, to Alexis de Tocqueville and
furthermore to the economist Adam Smith.

He permanently denied being a Marxist and there is no reason to quote

Alinsky together with Frantz Fanon or Brazilian guerilla leader Carlos
Marighela, as for instance the Dutch author Piet Reckman did 1971 in his
book about Social Action12. It was never Alinsky’s intention "to crush the
welfare islands of the world". He did not agree with groups - also existing at
that time in the USA - who hoped, that an "armed People's Army" would come
to "free the American people".

One can even say that Alinsky tried to counter the excesses of the student
movement in his second major work called "Rules for Radicals". In his later
years, he also seemed to switch over to the organization of the American
middle class and share-holders.13

On the question of property, Alinsky was on the side of the Founding

Fathers.14 But how then, can the community be protected against the bad
consequences of unjust distribution of property in society?

Alinsky probably found his answer in the work of the economist Adam Smith,
which defined self-interest as a basis and prerequisite for all human behavior
and made this finding the basis of his economic theory. Alinsky quotes Smith’s
famous and well known sentences from the book “Wealth of Nations”:

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we
expect our dinner, but from their regard of their own interest. We address
ourselves not to their humanity, but to their self-love, and never talk to them of
our own necessities but of their advantage.”15

According to Smith, the excesses of unbridled self-interest (egoism and lack of

interest) can only be controlled by moral rules, compassion, positive law and
competition.16

Alinsky himself does not criticize the unjust distribution of property, but he
criticizes a moral deficit:

"We know that one of the greatest obstacles in the way of strengthening out
the affairs of mankind is the confusion and inner conflicts raging within men. It
is the vast discrepancy between our morals and our practices. It is the human
dilemma, which constantly draws a shadow of guilt over many of man's
noblest endeavors. It gnaws at our vitals and drives us to irrationality ".17

How does Alinsky intend to close this "vast discrepancy" between morals and
practice? We still have to learn a little more from Adam Smith at this point. We
find the key not in Smith's most famous book "The Wealth of Nations" but in
his “Theory of Moral Sentiments”.18

As already said, according to Alinsky and Smith, in a world of people who

follow their self-interest and pursue their happiness, people’s morals become
very important. According to Smith and Alinsky, there are primarily two moral
feelings which fulfill this educational and stabilizing function.
In Smith’s “Theory of Moral Sentiments” these feelings always appear together
as counterparts. On the one hand, there is the positive feeling of “gratitude”
we feel towards others, who behave according to the necessities of the
common welfare. On the other hand we feel and express a negative feeling of
“moral disapproval” towards others who are going to damage the common
welfare by their behavior.

This feeling of "moral disapproval" appears in the original text of Smith as

"resentment". In the German translation it appears as "retribution feeling"19,
which in German language also contains an aggressive connotation.
Therefore I prefer to say "moral disapproval".

At this place it would fit that everyone ask him or herself in what manner he or
she expresses his or her feelings of "moral disapproval" in everyday-life.
According to Smith and Alinsky the adequate expression of “gratitude” and
“resentment” is of excellent value for the regulation of human matters.

Therefore, Alinsky says, that the first task of an Organizer is to

"rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent
hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must
search out controversy and issues, rather than to avoid them. (…) An
Organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent; provide a channel into
which people can angrily pour their frustrations. He must create a mechanism
that can drain them of the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous
situation for so a long time. Out of this mechanism, a new community
Organization arises".20

This essential finding of Alinsky can not be adequately understood without

Smith's “Theory of Moral Sentiments.”

However, if Alinsky counts on Smith in this central question, then what kind of
a "radical" is he?

Here the nearest comparison can be made with Thomas Paine, of which the
following saying stands as a motto at the beginning of Alinsky's "Reveille for
Radicals":

"Let them call me a rebel and welcome, I feel no concern from it; but I should
suffer the misery of devils, were I to make a whore of my soul...".

Alinsky radicalism is like that of Thomas Paine. It is a civil radicalism. Paine

aimed against the American dependence from England and against
aristocracy and totalitarianism. Alinsky aimed his radicalism against injustice,
a lack of democracy and against welfare colonialism. Alinsky was not a
 "radical" according to the extremist-resolutions in Germany. He was not
"radical" in the sense of Marxists, who aimed at changing the system.

His "Back-of -the-Yards Project" stepped forward from good-will and

compassion to the articulation of citizen-rights. This step was also a step from
the general call for the gratitude of the people to everybody’s right to
indignation.

In this sense Saul D. Alinsky was a radical moralist. He formulated a criticism

of the (moral) conditions (of the system) and not a criticism of the system
itself. He didn't create any alternative systems but he analyzed Adam Smith,
the mentor of a free economy, so precisely that he got his ally. According to
the famous Alinsky Power Rule No. 4, he “hit the system with his own book of
rules” or, as he used to say,

"Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules. You can kill them with this,
for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian Church can live
up to Christianity."21

Conclusion
I again emphasize that these pictures remain parts of an incomplete mosaic. It
is not the purpose of my paper to deny the necessity of studying his writings. I
only try to replace some given pictures, drawn in the seventies, which I think
are too simple. Much more might be said about Alinsky: For instance “Alinsky
as Biographer of the Union leader John L. Lewis” or on “Alinsky and the
Socratic Dialog”. This was not the place to do that. I would like to advocate the
necessity of further research. Especially Alinsky’s roots in Chicagoan
Sociology throw new light on the history and development of social planning,
ecological thinking and systemic intervention. A just recognition of his
contribution to applied sociology and social policy is still inspiring for social
scientists, social workers and political engaged people who want to
understand and solve social problems.

Notes
1
An earlier version of this paper was part of apresentation in German language
at the conference of the German Society for Social Work in Frankfurt/Main,
2001-12-01 (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sozialarbeit, Arbeitskreis „Soziale
Arbeit in und mit Gemeinwesen“). It was also part of a presentation in English
language at the conference of the Inter-University Consortium for International
Social Development (IUSCISD) in The Hague / Netherlands, 2002-09-27.
Because English is not my mother tongue, I have to thank Martin Asmuß,
Edewecht (Germany), Gisela Broers, Oldenburg (Germany) and Randy
Stoecker, Toledo (USA) for their help and remarks on the translation.
2
see "A saint man only gives birth to sacred cows ", Alinsky, Saul D., Reveille
for Radicals, 1946, p. XV
3
see for instance: Jacobsen, Dennis A., Doing Justice: Congregations and
Community Organizing, Minneapolis 2001
4
Alinsky, Saul D., Rules for Radicals, 1971, pp 89 ff
5
Alinsky, Saul D., (1941) Community Organization and Analysis. In: American
Journal of Sociology, May, 1941, pp. 797-808
6
Alinsky, Saul D., Reveille for Radicals, Chicago, 1946, pp. 87-111
7
Park, Robert E., Burgess, Ernest W., McKenzie, Roderick D., The City:
Suggestions for Investigations of Human Behavior in the Urban Environment,
Chicago 1925, p. 11, (quoted in reversed order)
8
Alinsky formulated “13 Rules of Power-Tactics” which should be easily
remembered and foster group discussions: 1. Power is not only what you have
but what your enemy thinks you have, 2. Never go outside the experience of
your people, 3. Wherever possible, go outside the experience of your enemy,
4. Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules, 5. Ridicule is the most
potent weapon, 6. A good tactic is what your people enjoy, 7. A tactic that
drags too long becomes a drag, 8. Keep the pressure on, 9. The threat is
usually more terrifying than the thing itself, 10 The major premise for tactics is
the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the
opposition, 11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break
through into its counterside, 12. The price of a successful attack is a
constructive alternative, 13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and
polarize it.
The Rule No. 4 will be discussed at the end of this paper. See: Alinsky, Saul
D.: Rules for Radicals, New York 1971, pp. 126 ff.
9
Lynd, Robert, Knowledge for What?, Princeton 1939
10
Mills, C. Wright, Sociological Imagination, New York 1959
11
Reitzes, Donald C. and Reitzes Dietrich C., The Alinsky Legacy: Alive and
Kicking, Greenwich 1987
12
Reckman, Piet, Soziale Aktion, Laetare, Freiburg, 1971 p. 11 and p 35ff.
 13
Alinsky, Saul David, Rules for Radicals, 1971, p. 184: “Organization for
Action will now and in the decade ahead center upon America´s white middle
class.”
14
See: Federalist Papers, Article 10, (Madison)
15
Smith, Adam, An Inquiry to the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,
1790, quoted in: Alinsky, Saul D., Rules for Radicals, New York 1971, p. 54
16
Recktenwald, Horst Claus, Freiheitliche Ordnung der Klassik, in: Smith,
Adam, Der Wohlstand der Nationen, Göttingen 1980, Appendix p. 820
17
Alinky, Saul D., Reveille for Radicals, 1946, pp. 39-40
18
Smith, Adam, The Theorie of Moral Sentiments, German Edition: Theorie
der ethischen Gefühle, Meiner, Hamburg 1994, pp. 60-69 , and pp 99-102
19
op.cit., p. 616
20
Alinsky, Saul D. , Rules for Radicals, 1971, p. 116 f.
21
Alinsky, Saul D. , Rules for Radicals, 1971, p. 128

About the Author

Peter Szynka was a Social Scientist and Social Worker, Community Organizer
in Duisburg-Bruckhausen during the 70's. At present he is a regional advisor,
responsible for the organizational development of services for homeless
people run by the Service Agency of the Protestant Church (DIAKONIE) in
North-West Germany. He was trained in Community Organizing by Ed Shurna
of Chicago, Don Elmer of San Francisco, and the IAF of Chicago. He is
currently chair of FOCO (Forum Community Organizing) in Germany.

© 2001 Moshe ben Asher

Community Engagement: Practical

Strategies for Empowerment or a
Wishful Narrative?
James Whelan
 james@thechangeagency.org

Contents
Abstract
Community action: vital to sustainability
Empowered communities, powerful women
Government initiated community engagement
Conflict: a competing or complementary narrative?
Reconciling the two narratives
References
About the Author

Abstract
Community action shapes the urban landscape of Australian cities and towns.
Our urban future will be determined through vigilant and resourceful action by
residents’ groups and environmentalists.

Vigorous community action is clearly an important element of planning

processes in Queensland’s South East region. This rapidly growing coastal
area and its hinterland struggle to reconcile population growth with the
maintenance and restoration of a mega-diverse natural environment.
Community groups in the region have responded to this challenge with
creative and tenacious strategies to conserve and restore habitat, minimise
waste and consumption, educate, entertain and protest. On the Gold Coast,
and in the rural village of Maleny on the Sunshine Coast, community action
has generated involvement, awareness and sustainable enterprises, and
averted some of the more destructive development tendencies and proposals.

Civic and conservation groups in these and other Australian cities and towns
participate actively in government-initiated community involvement activities,
but often find engagement and consultation processes have minimal impact
on planning decisions. As a result, residents with clear priorities for their urban
future rely on community action, organising and mobilisation to influence
decisions. Their experiences suggest local and state government authorities
are struggling with deliberative, inclusive and iterative decision-making
processes. Campaign anecdotes recounted here through an activist lens shed
light on decision-making processes for a sustainable urban future.

Community action: vital to sustainability

Community action is vital to sustainability. Without the active involvement of
community members in shaping towns and cities, development is unlikely to
follow a sustainable pattern. This conclusion has been consistently drawn in
sustainability blueprints since (at least) the 1989 World Commission on
Environment and Development’s Brundtland Report ‘Our Common Future’.
International and domestic sustainability plans including Agenda 21, the
consensus action plan that emerged from the 1992 World Earth Summit,
reinforce this conviction. Broad public participation in decision-making and
genuine partnership between community, government and industry are
prerequisites for the achievement of ecologically sustainable development
(ESD). The practical benefits of community involvement have become a
mantra at all levels of Australian government. Through active self-
determination, citizens mobilise resources including funds and volunteerism
that may not have been available otherwise, generate and share knowledge,
contribute to better decisions, create community, and generate solutions in
tune with community needs (Wates, 2000, pp.4-5). Public participation also
has the potential to accomplish a more equitable distribution of environmental
risk or even a decrease in risk for all (Schlosberg, 2002, p.13).

The ‘sustainable community’ narrative comprises a set of assumptions or

beliefs: (1) decisions are ideally made through equitable, deliberative and
inclusive processes that allow community members a range of options for
involvement; (2) these processes encourage and support social learning,
negotiation, and community building (a positive feedback loop); and (3) the
resulting decisions are ones that everyone can live with, and that steer the
community toward sustainability. A fourth thread is that subscription to the
narrative is universal and in the public interest. This narrative motivates
elected representatives and planners to actively involve stakeholders in
decision-making, and encourages community members to participate in civic
life.

Contemporary social life in Australia cities demonstrates both the potential

benefits of this narrative, and the consequences of over-writing the storyline of
environmental democracy with that of top-down, decide-announce-defend
governance arrangements.

Two Australian communities - a booming coastal city and a small rural

community - provide the backdrop for this discussion. Few Australian cities
illustrate the dilemmas of sustainable urban development better than the Gold
Coast. The sixth largest city in Australia is expecting to grow by one-third, to
700,000, in the next fifteen years. Having started its life as a holiday resort
village, the Gold Coast now extends along almost seventy kilometres of
coastline and is rapidly extending its tentacles into the coastal hinterland, one
of Australia’s fifteen biodiversity ‘hotspots’ (DEH 2005). The Gold Coast City
Council (GCCC) considers the city the most biodiverse in Australia. The
protection of the flora and fauna in the region clearly warrants urgent
 government and community action, as do the institutions that support
community involvement in the burgeoning city. This is equally true of the rural
village of Maleny on the Sunshine Coast hinterland. The village of roughly
1,700 is located on the Maleny Plateau, which has a dispersed population of
around 4,500. Maleny, other hinterland towns and villages, and the coastal
cities of the Sunshine Coast, are also experiencing rapid population growth
and consequent pressures on both the biophysical and social environments.

Empowered communities, powerful women

The good news is that community action is alive and kicking. The Gold Coast
City Council’s on-line community directory lists more than 2,000 non-profit
community groups, including fifteen environment groups. The diversity,
resourcefulness and tenacity of community action is revealed by looking
closely at one of these groups, the Gold Coast and Hinterland Environment
Council (Gecko). Six local environment groups founded the umbrella
organisation in 1989.

Gecko House, on the banks of Currumbin Creek, is a hive of voluntary activity.

As well as advocacy and community building work, Gecko has created three
non-profit businesses. Gecko Regen coordinates tree planting and
revegetation projects, including the rehabilitation of landfill sites. The business
employs thirty people to manage its nursery, field projects and training. Gecko
Recycle is modelled on the successful Reverse Garbage enterprises in
Brisbane and Sydney, and redirects resources from the waste stream. The
third enterprise, Gecko Ed, helps schools and other educational institutions
engage qualified environmental educators. Volunteers also provide a free
information service and website. Gecko is perhaps best known for community
events including the annual World Environment Day ‘Do’ and Clean Up
Australia Day on the Gold Coast. Both events provide opportunities for
thousands to participate in environmental learning and action and have been
recognised through awards and sponsorship. Gecko creates further
community involvement opportunities with regular information nights,
conferences, seminars, its monthly meeting of member groups, Walk With
Wildlife guided bushwalks and artGecko participatory cultural events.

For a small village, Maleny on the Sunshine Coast has a remarkably strong
community sector. An online directory (Sunweb, 2005) lists almost seventy
diverse community-based organisations in the town, from the Recorder Group
to the Nursing Mothers, Film Society, Landcare group and Hospital Auxiliary.
Jordan and Haydon (2003) interviewed members of almost 150 groups in the
village. The City of Caloundra, of which Maleny is a satellite settlement, boasts
at least twenty-three voluntary community-based environmental organisations
(CC 2001b). A striking feature of community life in Maleny is the proliferation
of cooperative ventures. More than twenty cooperatives have been
established since the 1970s. Their objectives include the coordination,
provision and support of: housing; whole foods; social and cultural activities;
education and learning; artistic and publishing enterprises; conservation and
waste minimisation; credit; finance; and business incubation. Maleny’s
cooperative sector, for which it has received international attention, has
contributed to the town’s spirit of cooperation and enterprise (Schwarz and
Schwarz, 1997) in a time when Australian rural communities have been in
decline. Cooperatives have created at least 130 jobs directly (Jordan, 2000,
2003) and hundreds indirectly. Maleny’s Local Energy Transfer System
(LETS) facilitates the exchange of bunya, a non-cash currency named after
the edible nut prized by the region’s traditional owners, in return for required
skills and labour. The system was the first of its kind in Australia and is now
replicated in at least 240 other communities nationally, and is being
implemented internationally (Douthwaite 1998). In researching Maleny, it is
impossible to ignore the narrative of an empowered community seeking to
determine its own sustainable destiny. This shone through in radio interviews
(ABC, 2/6/03) in which Maleny locals spoke of their community having a high
level of social capital and cohesion. They compared Maleny to a ‘tribe’ and an
intentional community, and suggested these attributes provide a degree of
resilience in a time of rapid change. For this reason, the unsuccessful
community campaign examined here is of particular interest.

Another feature of community action in Maleny, Gold Coast and other

Australian cities is the pivotal role played by women. Lois Levy and Sheila
Davis have been the public faces of GECKO for fifteen years. Lois’ profile on
Gecko’s website communicates her belief that “an educated community plays
a vital role in protecting and caring for nature”. As well as being a full-time
TAFE instructor and social worker, she received an Order of Australia medal
in 2001 for services for the environment. Sheila is widely recognised as a
tenacious battler and community builder. She juggles being Gecko’s
Campaign Coordinator with raising two children, as well as writing and
volunteering for several other community groups. Jill Jordan is arguably
Maleny’s best-known community activist. During the last thirty years, Jill
helped found and steer cooperatives in Maleny and around Australia. She
served as a Councillor for the rural Division of Caloundra City encompassing
Maleny in the early nineties. Jill, Sheila, Lois and the many, many women
involved in the community action described here are part of a bigger picture.
Women often drive grassroots campaigns both in Australia and internationally.
This is clear from Kathleen McPhillips’ edited collection (2002) of activists’
accounts of community toxics campaigns in Australia, Lois Gibbs’ leadership
against toxic waste dumping in Love Canal, USA, and the leadership of
women in the demand for justice in Bhopal, India, where Union Carbide
released poisonous chemicals in 1984 and opposition to nuclear power
stations in Europe (Shiva and Miles 1993, p.14).

Eisler (1987, p.189) attributes women’s dynamic contribution to community life

to socialisation processes that encourage men to “pursue their own ends,
 even at the expense of others” whereas women are socialised to “see
themselves primarily as responsible for the welfare of others, even at the
expense of their own well-being.” Milbrath (1989: p.54) concludes that,
“women have a much better chance of saving the world than men.” Gender
forms an additional element to the narrative: women occupy positions of
leadership in healthy communities on the path toward sustainability.

Government initiated community engagement

Local Government, as the form of government closest to the community, has a
better opportunity than state and national governments to engage, involve and
mobilise communities around sustainability objectives. This opportunity is
affirmed in Local Agenda 21, the international campaign endorsed at the Rio
Earth Summit in 1992 which, “promotes a participatory, long-term, strategic
planning process that helps municipalities identify local sustainability priorities
and implement long-term action plans.” In the ten years after Rio, 6,400 local
government authorities in 113 countries implemented LA21 initiatives including
the establishment of stakeholder groups to develop and implement local
sustainability plans (ICLEI, 2005). LA21 is embraced by the Local Government
Association of Australia, and by both the Gold Coast and Caloundra City
Councils.

This commitment to active community participation and to the sustainable

communities narrative permeates government discourse. Caloundra City
Council’s Corporate Plan (CC 2001a, p.6) set the 2006 objective to “be a City
and a community which has created its own destiny and which continues to
refine and redefine its future on a regular basis.” Elected representatives also
express this vision in both cities’ corporate and strategic plans and State of the
Environment reports. Caloundra’s Mayor, Don Aldous, has argued that to
meet the challenges of governing this rapidly growing and changing city,
“Council cannot do these things in isolation” and “needs the enthusiasm and
participation of its community” (Local Government Focus, 2004).

The Gold Coast City Council (GCCC) claims to take a consultative approach
to decisions about flood mitigation, catchment management, rates, beach and
harbour management, transport, tourism, crime and safety. The importance
attached to community involvement in decision-making is evident in the
Harbour Planning Study, one recent planning process, which GCCC refers to
as having reconciled “traditionally competing interests to construct a long-term
mechanism for area management” that integrates “broadly-based community,
environmental and business interests” (GCCC 2003). Conservationists were
active participants in this policy-setting exercise and the parallel Waterfuture
Strategy, which examined water quality and quantity options for the drought-
prone city. In developing the Waterfuture strategy, GCCC utilised a range of
community engagement strategies. Following initial research, Council
disseminated a discussion starter that outlined problems and possible
 solutions and held community information sessions, workshops and focus
groups. A newsletter and survey were distributed throughout the city,
generating 9,000 responses. To develop a strategy that will “create a feeling of
joint ownership” (GCCC 2005a), Council has identified and addressed
questions of community trust and confidence in Council”, to ensure the
strategy does not “ignore community opinion” as it could be “difficult to gain
trust.” (GCCC 2005b). This council is far from unique in experiencing some
distrust and criticism concerning provision for community involvement in
governance. Woolcock, Renton and Cavaye (2003) note these concerns are
widespread and substantial. Council also remains open to community opinion
year-round through its online consultation panel which provides regular
opportunities for community members to contribute to decisions through
surveys and focus groups.

And these opportunities are valued by community groups. In fact, the pursuit
of their vision for a sustainable region and their members’ wide range of
interests motivates Gecko to participate in up to a dozen advisory and
consultative committees with state and local government authorities at any
one time. Lois Levy would like to see the group even more involved in policy
making.

Conflict: a competing or complementary

narrative?
Despite these strong expressions of support for community involvement to
steer sustainability, both Maleny and the Gold Coast have generated
headlines nationally and internationally in recent times for sustained conflict
over development decisions. The high level of engagement suggested in local
government plans and strategies cited above, and described by community
activists interviewed for this chapter, has been a backdrop to urban planning
decisions characterised by rancorous conflict, litigation and allegations of
secrecy and corruption. In Maleny, this conflict has been triggered by the
construction of a supermarket beside picturesque Obi Obi Creek, which
crosses the village’s main street. On the Gold Coast, a controversy is raging
around a proposal to develop a terminal for cruise ships on The Spit, a strip of
dunes that separate the city’s harbour (the Broadwater) from the ocean. Both
developments are contrary to Local Area Plans that were developed through
extensive community consultation. These disputes communicate a contrasting
narrative that includes the following threads: (1) community action is an
essential safeguard against solely economic interests that are, by nature,
unsustainable; (2) government-initiated community engagement practices
have strictly limited capacity to counteract these economic interests, especially
when local government is overtly influenced by the development industry or
over-ridden by the Queensland Government; and (3) community action that
builds power to confront government and industry is an essential part of the
mix.

The suggestion that a large supermarket may be built in Maleny has been
brewing for years. And the town’s history of cooperative enterprises, and
buying locally has consistently generated opposition to the notion. Community
members participating in the development of the town’s Local Area Plan (from
1999 to 2001) ensured the planning scheme explicitly ruled out this possibility.
Naturally, locals were up in arms when a supermarket development in the
heart of the village was subsequently proposed. In 2002, community
spokesperson Michael Berry urged Caloundra City Council to “exercise its
duty of care” by protecting “the retail and social heart of this town” (Range
News 13/12/02). Berry noted, as visitors to the village do almost immediately,
that Maple Street embodies the community’s spirit. Conducting interviews with
locals at sidewalk cafés on Maple Street, I was continually interrupted by the
greeting and connections typical of a close-knit town. This spirit was
spectacularly demonstrated when the village’s existing independent
supermarket celebrated its centenary and almost 2,000 people turned out.

Even before Woolworths secured its site, community organising began in

earnest. People were galvanised by concerns about traffic generated by the
proposed supermarket’s 180 parking spaces, stormwater and trade waste
management, anticipated impacts on the town’s economy and character, the
loss of open space and impacts on a recognised platypus habitat. Maleny is
one of very few towns where these shy monotremes can be regularly
observed in the heart of the urban area. Another significant point of community
opposition to the proposal was the decision-making process. Community
members felt left out, and expressed their outrage through a long series of
community meetings, rallies and publications. As the development approval
processes gained momentum, so too did the community campaign. Council’s
failure to embed the wishes of the community into its 2004 Strategic Plan (the
local town planning scheme) resulted in the supermarket decision being taken
out of the community’s hands and becoming the responsibility of the State
Government. A petition asking for this decision to remain Council’s
responsibility was signed by 2,000 Maleny residents but failed to sway State
Government. The situation prompted Michael Berry to note, “We are locked
out of the process and Council has no duty to take heed of resident objections.
In other words, a developer living in Melbourne can decide to fundamentally
change the character of the Maleny township without ever having been here
and without the township having any say in that change” (Range News
13/12/02). In the ensuing conflict, Councillors, town planners and community
leaders pointed the finger at each other while Woolworths moved closer to
realising their intention. One Councillor suggested that community
representatives in the local area planning group were responsible for failing to
include the provisions of the plan in Council’s planning scheme. Jill Jordan is
quick to point out, however, that the voluntary committee members “gave up
their nights and Sundays for three years to do a great job on developing a
Plan that the community wanted and had “signed off” on, and they shouldn’t
be castigated for not doing what the Council Planning Department, whose
planners are being paid $80,000 per annum, should have done!”

Community action throughout 2004 and 2005 culminated in a series of well-

attended rallies and protest actions. There were also regular community-
initiated negotiations involving Woolworths, the construction company and
Council. In April 2004 the Deen Brothers, who came to fame for their part in
the midnight demolition of several heritage buildings in Brisbane, were hired to
clear forty large trees on the site. Heavy machinery rolled into town during the
night. The community’s condemnation was palpable with at least 200 people
attempting to stop work despite having no prior warning of this destructive
activity. With the support of local Aboriginal groups, approximately seventy
protestors occupied the site (Courier Mail 06/05/05) chanting, “We won't shop
there” and, “We shall overcome”. Around twenty of the protesters erected
tents and marked out the platypus burrows they believed would be destroyed.
Maleny local Daniel Jones climbed one of the remaining bunya pines, where
he stayed for 100 days. His supporters in the community (including local
businesses) provided warm meals and solidarity throughout the winter
months, further demonstrating the depth of community support for the protest.
In May 2004, Woolworths developer Cornerstone Properties offered to sell the
site to Council and the community for $1.89 million, considerably more than
the $600,000 paid nine months previously. A community petition with 5,300
signatures (more than the town’s entire population) contributed to an effort by
Council to acquire the land as a community asset. Despite extraordinary
fundraising efforts by the community and a part-commitment by Council, the
asking price was not achieved. This whole scenario was played out again in
July 2005 when an eleventh hour deal was brokered with the new Woolworths
developer, Uniton Pty Ltd. to purchase the site for $2million.By mortgaging
their homes and pledging donations, the small community raised $2 million
within 48 hours. The cheque which was presented was spurned by the
developer on the grounds that Woolworths would not agree to the deal. The
opportunity for a win-win conclusion to the conflict was lost, and construction
commenced. Even so, community opposition to the supermarket continues to
be expressed creatively and vociferously. In July 2005, Maleny residents laid
head to toe in a nearby park to spell out anti-Woolworths slogans. And in
August, Daniel Jones again entered the construction site. On this occasion, he
locked himself to heavy machinery dressed in a platypus suit.

It is difficult to imagine a Woolworths supermarket succeeding in Maleny.

Throughout the village, placards, stickers, t-shirts and banners that read “Don’t
shop there”, “Support small business”, “Spare Maleny from bad planning” and
“Keep Maleny’s character” urge shoppers to boycott the supermarket. On-line
activists around the country are being urged to register their opinions on the
www.WeWontShopThere.com website. The gate of the construction site has
been decorated with ribbons as a reminder of local opposition. And locals
speak with conviction about ensuring the business fails. Jill Jordan swears the
community will, “frustrate them at their own game” and, “teach them about
economics”. “At the beginning,” Jill says, “it was really just the radicals. As the
campaign’s gone on, it’s just grown and grown. As Woolworths have shown
themselves to be the bullies they are, it’s drawn more and more the
conservative community who are now contributing to the strategic options of
how we can make this thing fail.” Around the country, people sympathetic to
the community’s battle are abandoning shopping trolleys filled with non-
perishable items in Woolworths supermarkets as a statement of solidarity.

On the Gold Coast, a similar battle is raging. Community groups including

GECKO contributed to the Gold Coast Harbour Study which identified the Spit,
a peninsula of sand dunes and open space immediately to the north of the city
centre, as an important asset to be retained and enhanced. The Study
resolved, in particular, that there would be no further private or commercial
development on the Spit (GCCC 2003). Lois describes the consultative
processes that led to this policy as “exhausting”. GECKO submitted written
responses to Council’s monthly drafts and proposals, and eventually “carried
the vote”. Despite the policy, a terminal for large cruise ships and associated
on-land development is now on the drawing board. Community groups have
identified a range of concerns about this proposal including: loss of open
space, amenity and recreational access on land and water; pollution;
economic impacts; waste management; and impacts on marine habitat and
biodiversity.

As in Maleny, the dialogue between the community and its local government is
now in some ways irrelevant as the development decision is now to be made
by the Queensland State Government. The project has been declared a
significant project and is being championed by the Department of State
Development, which will act as both the proponent and assessor. The cruise
terminal will be exempt from the State Coastal Policy. Having decided the area
north of Sea World will be a port, the State Government is not obliged to
recognise the City Council’s planning guidelines. This top-down approach,
combined with secrecy surrounding a State Government study of liner
movements in the seaway, compounds Gecko’s lack of confidence in the
modes of consultation and engagement on offer. Lois, Sheila and other
community leaders declared the foreshadowed Environmental Impact
Statement a “rubber stamp for development” and called for more meaningful
dialogue. The conflict has been waged in the press with media releases
declaring, “The Premier and his Government have failed the accountability
and transparency test by refusing to provide the community with any
information” (Gecko, 4/7/05) and warning, “They're going to override our town
plan. If they do it once what's to stop them doing it again. It sets a precedent”
(Courier Mail 16/9/05).
A forgiving appraisal of these two scenarios might let government agencies off
the hook. After all, local government authorities cannot be held responsible for
the planning decisions and methods adopted by state agencies, and vice
versa. In some instances conservationists blame Queensland’s Integrated
Planning Act for State Government decisions which contradict prior community
consultation by local government. From a community perspective, however,
this justification is not convincing. Citizens who have actively contributed to
policy decisions at either level will naturally react with disappointment, if not
outrage, if jurisdiction is subsequently assumed by other agencies.

Having exhausted the usefulness of community delegations and submissions,

Gecko and their allies soon turned to alliance building and mobilisation. The
Save Our Spit (SOS) Alliance was formed to pursue the shared concerns of
more than twenty groups including conservationists, residents and ratepayers,
surfers, divers, recreational fishers and local businesses. In April and July
2005, the alliance held rallies in the Doug Jennings Park on the Spit, drawing
more than 2,000. During the rallies, picnics and public information nights, the
alliance collected 6,500 signatures on a petition which was carried on a
surfboard by a group of local surfers into a meeting of State Government
parliamentarians and ministers in July 2005.

These struggles have seriously tested the ‘sustainable community’ narrative.

Community members participating in consultative policy-setting exercises in
Maleny and the Gold Coast speak of being out-numbered by pro-development
interests, having their input ignored, receiving little or no support for their
participation while generous allowances are available to others, and of
‘burning out’ their voluntary delegates. Having been a councillor previously, Jill
Jordan observes, “local government is basically a numbers game. If you have
6-5 you’re home. If it’s 5-5 you have to woo the chairperson and you’re home
and hosed. And if you are down and you don’t manage that wooing, you’re
buggered.” She considers council’s community engagement activities are
“rigged” and that outcomes that might impede development are ignored.
Despite maintaining positive relationships with council planning officers and
working solidly to facilitate collaboration, Lois Levy says “the lines are drawn”
between Gecko and the Gold Coast City Council and that relations with the
development industry are worse. During the last five years Gecko has noted
with concern the termination of the environmental advisory committee and the
current Mayor’s “lack of interest in community engagement”. Their experience
is at odds with the State of the Environment Report (GCCC, 2001b, p.2),
where the Mayor acknowledges “the achievements of the many individuals
and community groups who have generously committed their own time to
sustain the environment which benefits all of us.” Community groups in both
cities consider secrecy is a regular feature of decision-making.

It is tempting to suggest a discontented minority fuels these disputes, and to

suggest that more effective or creative engagement processes can overcome
 the conflict by creating a deliberative space for all views to be heard and
integrated. But these explanations just don’t work. The observations and
interviews that inform this chapter suggest that in these and other
communities planning decisions are infrequently made through satisfactory
community engagement and consensus-based decision-making. The failure to
adhere to basic standards of transparency and inclusiveness is acute. During
the conflicts described here, a probity audit was conducted to investigate
Caloundra City Council’s decisions as developer and assessment authority for
a golf course and residential development in Maleny. Simultaneously, the Gold
Coast City Council was embroiled in a Crime and Misconduct Commission
(CMC) inquiry concerning allegations of misconduct and election bribery in the
2004 Council elections, when a secret developer-backed election campaign
fund was established to support a majority of ‘like-minded’ (pro-development)
councillors. The Inquiry will also pursue allegations that a subdivision of one of
the region’s last cane farms “ignored Council officers’ advice and state
government planning regulations” (The Australian 3/10/05). The Inquiry will
also pursue allegations of misconduct and election bribery in the 2004 Council
elections. Lois Levy is certain that, “It won’t matter what happens now with the
CMC. That Council is dead and buried. Nobody will ever believe them again.”

In terms of democratic legitimacy, voluntary community-based groups enjoy

broad and resilient foundations. Citizens trust and rely on community sector
groups more than government or industry, especially with respect to
environmental information (NSW EPA, 1994, 2004). Citizens are also highly
responsive to the rallying calls of conservation groups. Gecko’s rallies to
conserve the Spit attract growing numbers, and their membership is strong.
The Maleny protests were well attended and, when it looked like the
supermarket site could be bought from the developer, $2 million was raised
within forty-eight hours.

Reconciling the two narratives

It’s easy to draw the conclusion, from the experiences of community activists
in Maleny and the Gold Coast, that polite discussions about the future of
Australian cities and towns are unlikely to steer anybody toward sustainability.
Even though government, community and industry almost universally embrace
dialogue and deliberation and attempt creative mechanisms for this dialogue,
there are compelling reasons for conservationists to rely on mobilisation and
grassroots politics rather than community engagement. And their conservation
victories achieved outside the deliberative space are impressive. In the recent
past, community groups on the Gold Coast prevented construction of a
cableway through the Springbrook World Heritage Area and cabins in an
adjacent conservation area, attempted to prevent further development on the
city’s major flood-prone area, the Gurungumbah Floodplain, and successfully
opposed creation of the Eastern Tollway through koala habitat. At the same
time, they have seen prevailing decision-making approaches result in the
 incremental erosion of parkland and remnant vegetation: what Lois calls the
‘nibble syndrome’ and the wholesale destruction of areas of remnant
vegetation for housing development. Community action of an oppositional
nature prevented a cement batching plant being established in Maleny. It
seems unlikely that the spirit reflected in these campaigns will be diluted or
defused. Even as bulldozers cleared the Woolworths site, one Maleny local
predicted the campaign loss “will actually strengthen the idea of Maleny as
being an independent community which stands up for its rights and what it
believes in” (ABC, 12/7/05).

But there are long-term consequences of failing to provide satisfactory

mechanisms for deliberative planning, of forcing conservationists and other
community groups to choose between dialogic processes and oppositional
community action that may outstrip these short-term gains. Lester Milbrath
(1989) is in good company when he suggests the ‘dominator society’ is
incapable of sustainability and that social learning through approaches
involving partnership and collaboration is urgently required. Community
activists in Maleny and the Gold Coast know this. Despite years of “hard slog”
on committees where they are “hopelessly out-numbered by rednecks with no
idea about environmental planning”, Lois, Sheila and Gecko remain committed
to dialogue. Jill Jordan is similarly committed to fixing engagement practices,
rather than rejecting them. Drawing on her experience in cooperatives, Jill
advocates a local government system that would facilitate learning by electing
only half the Councillors at each election. (A similar practice to this currently
operates in New South Wales Councils.) This would reduce the disruption to
corporate memory and relationships. She and others in Maleny also imagine
Maleny being governed by a Hinterland Council more attuned to local needs.
Uninterrupted community-government-industry dialogue that is well facilitated,
maintains equitable representation and fairly supports participants is part of
the answer.

“Conflict can be magic,” Jill assured me, “but only when people are genuinely
willing to listen, and to change their position on the basis of what they’ve
heard.”

My sincere thanks to Jill Jordan, Lois Levy, Sheila Davis, Susie Duncan,
Katrina Shields, Jon Woodlands, Peter Oliver and Neil Lazarow for their
reflections and insights.

References
ABC Radio National (2/6/03) Life Matters, ‘Re-imagining Utopia 5: Alternative
Economics’, Downloaded 15/11/05 from
http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/lm/stories/s853654.htm
ABC Radio National (12/7/05) PM, ‘Police move in on Maleny platypus
protest’. Downloaded 15/11/05 from
http://www.abc.net.au/pm/indexes/2005/pm_20050712.htm

Caloundra City (2001a) Corporate Plan: Creating Our Future, Downloaded

15/11/05 from
http://www.caloundra.qld.gov.au/website/cityOnline/forms_publications/forms_
pubs_home.asp#corporate

Caloundra City (2001b) State of the Environment Report, Downloaded

15/11/05 from http://www.caloundra.qld.gov.au

Courier Mail (06/05/05) Protestors Closed Ranks at Woollies site, Downloaded

15/11/05 from http://www.malenyvoice.com/obiobi/media.htm

Courier Mail (16/09/05) Coast cruise terminal goes ahead. Downloaded

15/11/05 from http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,16616325-1248,00.html

Department of Environment and Heritage (2005) Australia’s 15 National

Biodiversity Hotspots Downloaded 15/11/05 from
http://www.deh.gov.au/biodiversity/hotspots/facts.html#3

Douthwaite, R. (1998) Strengthening Local Economies for Security in an

Unstable World. Downloaded 15/11/05 from
http://www.feasta.org/documents/shortcircuit/index.html?epilogue.html

Eisler, R. (1987) The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future, Harper
and Row, San Francisco.

GCCC (2003) Gold Coast Harbour Study Council Report No.22. Downloaded
15/11/05 from http://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/t_standard2.aspx?PID=3167

GCCC (2005a) Gold Coast Waterfuture Strategy 2006-2056. Downloaded

15/11 from http://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/t_gcw.asp?PID=3840

GCCC (2005b) Gold Coast Waterfuture Community Engagement Report.

Downloaded 15/11 from http://www.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/t_gcw.asp?
PID=3840

GECKO (4/7/05) Media Release Time for Terminal Accountability.

Downloaded 15/11/05 from
http://www.gecko.org.au/Media_Releases/mrTimeForTerminalAccountability0
40705.doc
Jordan, J. (2000) Focus on the Future: Workshop 2, Jill Jordan on Community
Building, Workshop at Rosneath Ecovillage, Downloaded 15/11/05 from
http://www.rosneath.com.au/resources/jordan-essay.html

Jordan, J. (2003) The co-operative movement in Maleny, Queensland. Case

Study No.11. Paper presented at Co-operative Federation of WA Inc
Conference.

Local Government Focus (2004) Engaging the Community in Tailored

Consultation, Downloaded 15/11/05 from http://www.loc-gov-
focus.aus.net/editions/2004/february/engcomm.shtml

ICLEI (2005) Local Governments for Sustainability, Downloaded 15/11/05

from http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=798

Jordan, J. and Haydon, S. (2003) Maleny Working Together, Commonwealth

Department of Family and Community Services.

McPhillips, K. (2002) Local Heroes: Australian crusades from the

environmental frontline, Pluto Press, Sydney.

Milbrath, L.W. (1989) Envisioning a sustainable society : learning our way out,
State University of New York Press, Albany, NY.

Miles, M. and Shiva, V. (1993) Ecofeminism, Spinifex, Melbourne.

New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority (1994) Who Cares

About the Environment? A Benchmark Survey of the Environmental
Knowledge, Skills, Attitudes and Behaviour of the People of New South
Wales.

New South Wales Environmental Protection Authority (2004) Who Cares

About the Environment in 2003?: A survey of NSW people's environmental
knowledge, attitudes and behaviours.

Range News (13/12/02) People power: Residents vow to fight development,

Downloaded 15/11/05 from
http://www.hinterlandgrapevine.com/RNStories03/ShoppingCent-
13.12.02.html

Schlosberg, D. (2002) Environmental justice and the new pluralism: the

challenge of difference for environmentalism, Oxford University Press,
London.
 Schwarz, W and Schwarz, D. (1997) Culture of Cooperation. Resurgence,
Issue 184, Downloaded 15/11/05 from http://www.resurgence.org/
resurgence/184/schwarz.htm

Sunshine Coast Daily (28/09/05) ‘Caloundra’s audit report stays shrouded in

mystery’ Downloaded 15/11/05 from
http://www.sunshinecoastdaily.com.au/storydisplay.cfm?
storyID=3654369&thesection=localnews&thesubsection=

Sunweb (2005) Groups and Organisations, Downloaded 15/11/05 from

http://sunweb.com.au/groups/contacts.html

Wates, N. (2000) The Community Planning Handbook: How People Can

Shape Their Citiies, Towns and Villages in any Part of the World, Earthscan
Publications, London.

Woolcock, G., Renton, D. & Cavaye, J. (2003) What Makes Communities

Tick? Local Government & Social Capital Action Research Project, Pilot Study
in Queensland, A Collaboration between the Local Government Association of
Queensland (LGAQ) and The ‘Boilerhouse’ Community Service & Research
Centre (CSRC), The University of Queensland.

World Commission on Environment and Development Report (1989) Our

Common Future: The Brundtland Report. Downloaded 15/11/05 from
http://www.are.admin.ch/are/en/nachhaltig/international_uno/unterseite02330/

About the Author

Dr James Whelan is Citizen Science Theme Leader with the Coastal CRC and
convenes the Environmental Advocacy course at Griffith University’s Faculty
of Environmental Science. He is Co-director of thechangeagency.org. Thanks
to Nelson, A. (ed) Steering Sustainability, Australian Housing and Urban
Research Centre. Publication expected 2006, for allowing COMM-ORG to
post this paper.

COMM-ORG Papers
Volume 13, 2007
http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers.htm

Six Reasons Not to Engage: Compromise,

Confrontation and the Commons
James Whelan
Co-Director
The Change Agency
Email: james@thechangeagency.org

Table of Contents

Abstract
Introduction
Community Engagement for Natural Resource Management
Grounds for Scepticism
1. Consensus and compromise
2. Conflict produces results
3. Community engagement: A wolf in sheep’s clothing
4. Some people are more equal than others
5. Community engagement takes energy
6. Community engagement rarely encompasses the full policy cycle
Conclusion
About the Author
References

Abstract

Environmental advocates have experienced a frustrating honeymoon with

deliberative governance during the past two decades. Across Australia,
environmentalists are turning from collaborative governance in favour of
community action and mobilisation. This strategic reorientation is evident in
national and international efforts to halt dangerous climate change, the
successful community-led campaign to control land clearing in Queensland
and in grassroots campaigns to halt the release of genetically engineered food
crops. It is also reflected in the obstacles to effective community engagement
in regional natural resource management planning exercises currently
occurring around Australia.

Introduction

Environmental policy processes are increasingly framed around claims of

environmental democracy. Plans, strategies and decisions are considered
legitimate and their prospects of successful implementation purportedly
enhanced by community engagement--the involvement of community
members in policy setting. This involvement takes the form of consultative
committees, public hearings, submissions and other community engagement
mechanisms. Recent research suggests that conservation groups appear to
consider community engagement an inadequate basis for conserving the
commons, and use strategies other than community engagement (in the forms
most commonly practised) because of six problems with community
engagement: (1) lack of true consensus and reciprocal compromise in multi-
stakeholder decision-making; (2) inability to recognise and deal with conflict;
(3) capture of the community engagement discourse by power elites in
government and industry; (4) some stakeholders being treated as more equal
than others; (5) inequity and inequality of access to community engagement
and decision-making processes; and (6) failure by government agencies to
involve stakeholders in all phases of an adaptive management cycle. These
explanations for non-engagement highlight opportunities for government,
industry and community to enhance collaborative environmental strategies.

Community Engagement for Natural Resource Management

The title of this paper echoes Hardin’s (1968) narrative that describes the
dilemma faced by herdsmen who graze their cattle on a shared public field.
Sustainable management of the available pasture relies upon restraint by
herdsmen not to stock too many cattle or exceed the field’s carrying capacity.
The tragedy in Hardin’s scenario is that human nature predicates that the
commons will not be equitably or sustainably shared, but contested, exploited
and depleted. This notion has more recently been interpreted in terms of
ecological footprint. Each member of the human population exerts a footprint
through consuming resources and generating waste. Citizens in the minority
world, including Australians, typically have ecological footprints that far exceed
the earth’s capacity and limit opportunities for citizens in the majority world to
meet their present and future needs.

Community engagement is commonly offered as one solution to this dilemma.

To gauge the ascendance of community engagement ideals in environmental
management practice and research, try a Google search for the words
partnership, collaboration and environment. Your search will yield more than
1.5 million results. Through community engagement and deliberative
governance, citizens can theoretically enhance their prospects of determining
how best to sustainably manage the commons. At a global level, this
conviction is evident in the pronouncements that emerged from the United
Nations Conferences on Sustainability and Development (or Earth Summits)
convened in 1992 and 2002. In closing the second Summit in Johannesburg,
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (Annan 2004) summarised delegates’
confidence that sustainability would be advanced through partnerships that
involved voluntary multi-stakeholder initiatives. The UN has subsequently built
a database that describes more than 300 such initiatives (Earth Summit 2002).
The Earth Summits have also promoted community engagement through
Agenda 21 and Local Agenda 21--which outline strategies for maximising
community involvement in sustainability initiatives--and National Councils for
Sustainable Development--which explicitly engage non-government entities in
policy development (Dovers 2003, p. 8). These institutional arrangements
provide for broad community involvement in decisions and actions that affect
them.
Confidence in community engagement as a panacea for just, democratic and
sustainable governance is underscored by the adoption of community
engagement policies and strategies by state government agencies during the
past decade (e.g. Queensland Government 2003, Carson and Gelber 2001,
Western Australian Government 2003) and by the many conferences on the
subject, including International Association for Public Participation annual
gatherings, ‘Beyond Declarations: Working Partnerships for Sustainability’
2005 National Conference and this joint UN–Queensland Government
conference.

Community engagement is a standard feature of Australian policies and

institutional arrangements for environmental governance and natural resource
management. The Australian Government is relying on community
engagement as an integral element of the National Action Plan for Water
Quality and Salinity (or NAP) and the Natural Heritage Trust (NHT). These two
national schemes are described as the “biggest action programs directed to
environmental, social and economic sustainability in Australia's history” and
are “based on partnerships between levels of community and Government,
working together” (Australian Government 2004). Together, the NAP and NHT
will provide in excess of $4 billion for sustainable land and water management
during this decade, channelling these funds through regional, multi-
stakeholder, ‘community-led’ organisations. This preferred funding model is
informed by more than twenty years’ experience in collaborative natural
resource management (Head 2004), including inter-sectoral forums,
taskforces, committees and the Decade of Landcare (the 1990s) when
environmental funding was directed through multi-stakeholder and community-
based organisations.

Research in this field tends to reify the merits of community engagement.

Environmental governance through decentralised, inclusive and dialogic
entities (rather than government agencies alone) is typically considered
dynamic, responsive to community needs and values, proactive and trust-
building (Henton et al. 2000; Wondolleck and Yaffee 2000). Moreover, this
approach is considered cost-effective (Head 2004), a sound basis for
identifying and resolving conflicts (Bellamy and MacDonald 2004), and an
effective response to historical failures in natural resource management such
as the Murray Darling Basin tragedy (Aslin and Brown 2002).

Grounds for Scepticism

To question the intrinsic and operational merits of community engagement in

this context is a heresy. My background in the community sector as an
environmental advocate and my more recent research experience examining
environmental governance arrangements that aim to realise the claimed
benefits of community engagement encourage me to question these
assumptions. There is ample evidence that some stakeholders consider
current community engagement practices adequate to conserve the
commons. There is also evidence that community-based organisations are
pursuing conservation objectives through mechanisms other than community
engagement, with positive biophysical (if not social) outcomes. Recent and
ongoing Australian case studies (Whelan 2002; Whelan and Oliver 2003,
2004a, 2004b; Whelan and Lyons 2004) suggest six reasons why
environmental advocates may choose to eschew community engagement in
favour of more effective conservation strategies.

1. Consensus and compromise

The herdsmen’s goal of maximising personal gain, like democracy, entails

reciprocal compromise. Intergenerational equity or the ability for future
generations to meet their needs is dependent upon intra-generational equity.
As soon as one of us grazes more than our fair share of cattle or overstocks
the commons, both forms of equity are out of reach.

Forms of deliberative governance such as multi-party committees, advisory

groups and the regional natural resource management entities established
under NAP/NHT arrangements provide part of the answer to this tension. They
create a structured environment within which divergent and, perhaps,
competing interests can be expressed and mediated: a space for negotiation
and deliberation. While these terms tend to be used interchangeably, Baccaro
(2002, p. 5) highlights the significant difference between negotiation--which
inevitably entails trade-offs such as partial environmental degradation--and
deliberation, which he defines as:

“exchanging reasons on the desirability or undesirability of various possible

collective choices. These reasons are backed by appeals to principles and/or
generalizable interests…The proposal that withstands criticism and wins the
contest of ideas becomes the collective choice of the group as a whole.”

This approach to environmental decision-making is extremely rare in practice.

It is much more readily observed that particular interest groups dominate
committees through numbers, political influence and tactical sophistication.
Decisions are more likely to be made through majority voting than consensus,
and chairs are rarely truly independent or especially skilled. Stakeholders are
not necessarily motivated by principles of guardianship and the promotion of
sustainability as suggested by Kingma and Beynon’s (2000) prescription for
‘effective’ natural resource management. On the contrary, the strong
representation of industry organisations on the boards of regional NRM
organisations suggests these groups’ decisions will also be influenced by
short-term economic imperatives. Finally, even when community engagement
actually ensures representation by a wide range of interests, there is an
observed tendency for multi-stakeholder groups to avoid conflict. Poncelet
(1998, p. 6) notes that facilitators may attempt to reconcile disparate views by
seeking common ground, steering away from practices and discourses that
depart from the goal of ‘dialogue’, constraining or evading debate and
avoiding disharmony. He considers dominant partnership models to be
distinctly non-adversarial and beyond dichotomies such as ‘good guys’ versus
‘bad guys’ and ‘winners’ versus ‘losers’. Yet the range of environmental values
and interests drawn together through community engagement clearly
encompass diametrically opposing positions.

These patterns in group behaviour mitigate against environmental

management decisions that provide the highest level of conservation. Majority
decisions and consensus through exhaustion or brinkmanship result in
decisions that may offer some level of environmental protection but fall well
short of the precautionary principle, which is both widely held and enshrined in
environmental legislation and policy. In every instance of compromise, the
biosphere upon which life depends loses out. The trade-off is an indirect ‘loss’
for human stakeholders, but has immediate impacts on the natural systems
they are managing. Relationships, trust, norms and other indicators of social
capital may be enhanced, but this is no surrogate or substitute for biophysical
sustainability.

2. Conflict produces results

A second rational reason for environmental advocates to look beyond

community engagement in the quest for sustainability is provided by evidence
that confrontational strategies have protected the environment.

Despite Princen’s (1994, p. ix) assertion that the action of non-government

organisations (NGOs) has been “absolutely essential to most international
environmental action”, there is considerably less attention paid by
sustainability researchers to the actions of environmental NGOs than those of
industry and government stakeholders. Australian civil society includes a
vibrant environment movement and a growing number of advocacy
organisations which seek to “influence the social and political decisions of an
institutional elite” and promote outcomes which “benefit a broader range of
society than just (their) own members” (Powell 1987 p. 297). In their history of
the Australian environment movement, Hutton and Connors (1998) depict an
evolving and divergent array of advocacy groups that have pursued
conservation objectives through research, community education, lobbying,
networking, electoral politics and direct action. An important trend they
observe is environmentalists’ reliance on advisory committees, boards,
submissions, “polite deputations”, well-researched lobbying and letter-writing
to achieve their goals. The “closure or inadequacy of these traditional
institutional processes” since the 1980s has radicalised conservationists and
convinced many to relocate their debates with government from private
meetings and parliamentary hearings to the “public space of civil society”
(Hutton and Connors 1998, p. 90).
This strategic (re)orientation in the environment movement is also shaped by
attitudes toward social institutions and environmental values. The discourse of
environmental modernisation which “views existing political, economic and
social institutions as the most appropriate structures for addressing issues of
environmental protection” (Hajer 1995, p. 25) is clearly reflected in
contemporary NGO tactics. These beliefs, combined with dependence on
government grants, convince environmentalists to participate actively in
government-initiated deliberative governance processes. The peak
environmental NGOs in each Australian state (the conservation councils) each
employ several staff members who do little else than comment on draft
policies, participate in committee meetings and prepare submissions. By
contrast, the ‘survival’ discourse described briefly by Hutton and Connors is
reflected in the direct action tactics of groups including Greenpeace, and the
‘Wilderness, No Compromise’ slogan of the Wilderness Society.

Three case studies, necessarily summarised here, illustrate the capacity of

community mobilisation to create “constructive confrontation with government
authorities” (Kingma and Beynon 2000, p. 66) which stands in sharp contrast
to community engagement. The first case study is the campaign by the
Queensland Conservation Council, the Wilderness Society, the Worldwide
Fund for Nature and the Australian Conservation Foundation to secure the
conservation of native vegetation on leasehold and freehold land in
Queensland. These organisations successfully pushed the Queensland
Government to adopt vegetation management legislation, effectively
conserving as much as twenty million hectares of remnant vegetation.
Interviews with activists central to this campaign (Whelan and Lyons 2004)
revealed their decision to reject deliberative governance mechanisms in favour
of community mobilisation. Until 2000, conservationists actively participated in
government committees, commissioned research, developed policy positions
and lobbied government-initiated committees for their adoption. Between 2000
and the campaign’s denouement in 2004, these environmental advocacy
groups redirected their energy to raising awareness in targeted constituencies
and mobilising concern through tactical electoral politics. This decision was
based on consensus in the sector that community engagement exercises
were, in one activist’s words, “time consuming, and in the service of legislation
that’s flawed, and cannot possibly deliver on your objectives…so why would
you put your effort into it?” (Whelan and Lyons 2004, p. 7).

A second case study that illustrates the potency of community action is

Greenpeace’s 1998 to 2004 campaign against the Stuart oil shale project in
Central Queensland. Southern Pacific Petroleum’s plans to extract oil from
shale (rock) drew criticism from a range of community and environment
groups. The proposed industrial process involved an open cut mine to extract
rock, which would then be crushed and heated to 500°C to extract oil.
Opponents of the project were concerned the project would involve mining
activity in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, discharge contaminated
water, increase Australia’s greenhouse emissions by up to 200 per cent
(Greenpeace 2004) and lead to ocean warming and coral bleaching.
Emissions from the plant were blamed for illness in the local community. The
Queensland and Australian governments unambiguously supported the
project. Government intervention to help facilitate the plant included excise
relief and research and development grants, as well as funds to offset the $11
million cost of a new wharf in Gladstone harbour (Wilson 2005). A Freedom of
Information search by Greenpeace revealed that the Commonwealth
Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources had offered an additional
subsidy of $36 million in 2002 if the project owner Southern Pacific Petroleum
took legal action against Greenpeace.

Despite this explicit government support for the project, community

engagement activities were initiated. And despite having cause to doubt the
sincerity of the government agencies that initiated these activities and their
autonomy to heed community concerns, civil society groups including
Greenpeace participated. Over 20,000 people wrote to the Queensland
Government opposing the development of shale oil. Twenty-seven
environment, tourism and fishing groups made a joint submission expressing
opposition to the project (Greenpeace, 2004). One hundred local residents
initiated legal action against the energy companies involved, seeking $12
million compensation for health impacts and diminished property values.
Greenpeace initiated or supported many of these actions, as well as making
presentations to senate inquiries and lodging a formal complaint to the
Australian Stock Exchange.

Activists did not, however, trust that the mechanisms of community

engagement or consultation would provide adequate opportunities for
influence. Throughout the six-year campaign, Greenpeace organised regular
direct action encounters with the oil shale plant operators and investors,
including blockading shipments of shale oil to refineries.

US investors withdrew funding in 2003 and Greenpeace no longer considered

the project viable (and wound down their campaign) by late 2004. The case
study highlights the difficult strategic decisions faced by environmental
advocates, and especially the importance of balancing the competing
demands of community engagement and community mobilisation. The
campaign included tactics associated with both approaches. Its ultimate
success is difficult to attribute to just one or the other.

The third community campaign that suggests community sector rejection of

community engagement as an adequate basis for environmental governance
is the international campaign against genetically engineered (GE) food and
crops. Current institutional arrangements to regulate the release of GE crops
in Australia provide several opportunities for community engagement. The
Office of the Gene Technology Regulator regularly invites submissions on
planned GE crop trials. The Food Standards Authority of Australia and New
Zealand actively seeks public comment on its decisions to approve the use of
GE ingredients in manufactured foods. The ministers of agriculture in most
Australian states convene advisory committees with community representation
to consider issues relating to GE crops and state and national wheat boards
include community (grower) representation. Finally, media outlets such as the
Sydney Morning Herald conduct community surveys through their websites to
assess and report on community attitudes toward genetically engineered food
and crops.

GE activists actively participate in these formal community engagement

opportunities and proactively initiate additional spaces for dialogue including
public seminars and parliamentary briefings. Recent interviews with GE
activists and campaign analysis suggest that few, if any, campaign victories
can be attributed causally to these activities. GE activists have turned to an
array of community action tactics that fall well outside the widely accepted
definition of community engagement. During 2004, anti-GE groups organised
regular mobilisation events including street theatre, hanging banners in
prominent locations and local supermarket demonstrations. One such action,
held at a supermarket in downtown Melbourne, involved over 70 non-aligned
activists who surveyed and persuaded shoppers, placed stickers on products
containing GE ingredients, pranced in chicken suits and created congestion at
checkouts by asking for an assurance that products were not contaminated
with GE ingredients. On other occasions, GE activists staged direct action
encounters at the corporate headquarters and feed mills of Australia’s leading
poultry companies to encourage the company to import non-GE soy meal for
chicken feed. National media interest was generated when Greenpeace’s GE
activists aboard the Rainbow Warrior blockaded Port Kembla harbour to block
the passage of the Rhein, a ship carrying 100,000 tonnes of genetically
engineered soy. In the same week, activists wrote “Stop GE imports” in ten
metre letters on the Rhein while it was docked in Brisbane and delivered
supplies of organic (non-GE) soy to a feed mill operated by Inghams,
Australia’s largest poultry company.

These activities, combined with overwhelming community opposition to

unlabelled GE food products, led Inghams and three other Australian poultry
companies to reject GE soy in early 2005. This decision represents the
achievement of an important GE campaign objective. Community,
environmental and public health organisations involved in the GE campaign
should interpret this breakthrough as evidence that community action is an
important priority to complement their participation in government-initiated
community engagement.

3. Community engagement: A wolf in sheep’s clothing

A third explanation for community sector reservation about community
engagement is that this discourse has been applied to decision-making
processes that fall well short of the democratic ideals appropriately associated
with community engagement. At times, expressions such as community
engagement, consultation, partnership and collaboration are used to describe
top-down, decide-announce-defend approaches to environmental
management. Community engagement activities are frequently conducted
after political support for specific outcomes has already been announced. The
expression ‘partnership’ is applied to governance arrangements that clearly
maintain or entrench power differentials between government agencies and
non government organisations.

The evolution of the Natural Heritage Trust, one of the nation’s most
significant exercises in community engagement and regionalisation, highlights
the potential for a mismatch between rhetoric, actions and consequences.
During the first five years of this environmental fund, recipients of government
support were selected by panels with strong community representation
(NNRMTF 1999, p. 30). The second phase of the scheme relies on regional
organisations to determine priority natural resource management
interventions. Although the scheme is consistently described by the state and
national funding agencies as ‘community-led’, the bilateral agreements
between these two levels of government make it clear that while significant
responsibility for NRM has been devolved to community-based organisations,
this is accompanied by only limited power. Under these arrangements,
government bodies retain the authority to endorse and fund regional plans.

Furthermore, the transition from the first phase of this scheme to the second
involved a lengthy hiatus during which community groups that had relied on
government funding languished. Many of these groups, including extensive
networks of ‘carers’ (landcare, bushcare and waterwatch groups), no longer
have the capacity to engage meaningfully in either decision making or on-
ground environmental projects. Government failure to genuinely share power
with regional NRM organisations, or to maintain funding for groups that
facilitate community engagement in environmental governance, suggests a
lack of “credible commitment” to sustainability that would entail a
“demonstrable agenda of appropriate and believable reforms within policy and
institutional systems” (Dovers 2003, p. 16).

The credibility of community engagement rhetoric is further undermined by the

observation that in some developing countries decentralised governance has,
in some instances, “entrenched the dominance of local elites, deepened
authoritarianism in governance, and even increased intolerance toward
minorities” (Lane et al. 2004).

4. Some people are more equal than others

In theory, professionally conducted community engagement activities provide
all stakeholders with adequate opportunities to present their preferences and
aspirations and for these to be carefully noted in decision making. An advisory
group, for instance, established to provide representative input on matters that
trigger community concern, should satisfy all parties’ desires to be heard. In
practice, this is rarely the case and additional or alternative opportunities for
influence are available to the more powerful stakeholders and those able to
mobilise capital, political influence or community action (Ewing 2003).

The opportunism and determination of interest groups was illustrated in the

shale oil and GE case studies discussed previously. It is also illustrated in the
decision-making processes that culminated in significant decisions about
transport planning in South East Queensland. In the mid 1990s, the
Queensland Government’s Integrated Regional Transport Plan for the region
was developed. The community engagement activities culminating in this plan
were touted as both extensive and effective. Every household in the region
received information about the draft plan, and community forums to solicit
community input were well attended. The plan committed the Queensland
Government to establish a ministerial advisory committee with representatives
for each of several ‘communities of interest’ identified through stakeholder
workshops. However, shortly after the committee’s inauguration, the trucking
industry, automobile insurance association and other powerful stakeholders
stopped attending meetings and exerted their policy influence through less
public channels. The consensus support for light rail and integrated transport
planning established by the remaining parties carried little influence with the
minister. Some of the most important transport decisions, such as the
Queensland Government’s considerable fuel subsidies and the construction of
freeways were not brought to the Committee for deliberation, let alone open to
public comment.

These and similar experiences of community engagement activities contribute

to community sector disillusionment and ‘consultation fatigue’. Some NGOs
have adopted policies to determine the conditions under which they will
participate in consultation or engagement activities. The Brisbane-based
Rivermouth Action Group (RAG 2005), for instance, insists on input to the
terms of reference for consultation, adequate time to consider relevant
information, access to independent legislative advice, sitting fees and
inclusion of a ‘do nothing’ option in all development considerations.

5. Community engagement takes energy

Active participation in community engagement activities requires time, stamina

and considerable personal and economic resources. Government agencies
and industry groups possess and commit these resources. Their
representatives on advisory committees and boards are typically well-paid
professionals whose expenses are reimbursed. Community and conservation
delegates, on the other hand, are generally volunteers and often meet their
own costs to participate — transport, meals, photocopying and costs incurred
in communicating with their constituents. Community engagement can be
seen as a process of attrition whereby those left standing exercise greatest
influence. These stakeholders will rarely represent conservation. The process
logically favours economic and resource-exploitative interests.

The decision by Greenpeace in the oil shale campaign to invest in both insider
(deliberative) and outsider (community action) processes is not generally
available to environmental NGOs. If the Queensland conservationists working
to legislate land clearing had actively participated in the dozens of consultative
committees established to implement the vegetation management legislation
adopted in 2000, they would have had no time or energy to educate and
mobilise the community. Instead, they rejected these processes as ‘time-
wasting’ and successfully pushed for replacement legislation that would both
ensure a higher level of conservation and reinstate the responsibility of
Government agencies rather than rely on consensus politics in each region
(Whelan and Lyons 2004).

6. Community engagement rarely encompasses the full policy cycle

The sixth and final reason to question the adequacy of prevailing community
engagement exercises is that policy processes, in the environmental domain
at least, tend to more actively engage community groups and concerns at the
plan making stage, and relatively less frequently at the plan implementation
and plan evaluation stages of the policy cycle.

Increasingly, many environmental management agencies have embraced the

principles and practices of adaptive management. Lee (1993, p. 9)
differentiates between adaptive management and traditional government-
controlled environmental management approaches by acknowledging that
uncertainty is inevitable and that:

“Adaptive management takes that uncertainty seriously, treating human

interventions in natural systems as experimental process. Its practitioners take
special care with information. First, they are explicit about what they expect,
so that they can design methods and apparatus to make measurements.
Second, they collect and analyze information so that expectations can be
compared with actuality. Finally, they transform comparison into learning —
they correct errors, improve their imperfect understanding, and change action
and plans. Linking science and human purpose, adaptive management serves
as a compass for us to use in searching for a sustainable future.”

The anticipated benefits of adaptive management include institutional and

social learning (Henton et al. 2001, p. 9) and the potential for community
members to reconsider both policy problems or goals and their social
construction (Dovers 2003, p. 12). Studies of institutional arrangements for
environmental governance, including a “three-decade review of policy and
institutional development for Australian resource and environment
management, undertaken by a large, multidisciplinary team” (Dovers and Wild
River 2003) highlight the importance of organisational persistence and
longevity in maximising these forms of learning. The researchers concluded
that persistence allows “sufficient time for policy and institutional ‘experiments’
to be run and lessons accrued”. Similar conclusions are drawn by Wondolleck
and Yaffee (2001) in their studies of enduring collaborative environmental
organisations and Lane et al. (2004) who note that the broad array of social
and ecological issues, and the time lag between implementation and
measurable change, means we cannot be certain of outcomes: ‘the jury is still
out’.

Social learning and other benefits of adaptive management rely on community

engagement throughout the entire policy cycle: plan making, implementation
and evaluation. This is infrequently the case.

Conclusion

The environmental management stakes are high and extend to the ecosphere
upon which human society depends. It is generally agreed that centralised
forms of governance have failed to deliver outcomes that could be described
as sustainable and that communities expect to be meaningfully involved in
making decisions that affect them. Natural resource management and
community engagement researchers point to a range of additional benefits of
deliberative environmental governance.

The obstacles to whole-hearted community sector participation in government

initiated community engagement activities identified here should not be
interpreted as either comprehensive or insurmountable. Community
engagement should not be dismissed simply because it has not been done
well. Left unchecked, these explanations for non-engagement can maintain
and even compound contemporary institutions’ inability to conserve the
commons. Stakeholders may refrain from entering into or continuing debates
and withhold their views and opinions (Poncelet 1998, p. 6) that could offer the
hope of sustainable futures. By pursuing alternative strategies to communicate
their environmental priorities and preferences, non-engaged stakeholders may
undermine the social and institutional learning crucial to long-term
sustainability.

About the Author

James Whelan is co-director of The Change Agency (

http://www.thechangeagency.org ). His PhD developed strategies for activist
education and training, which have been applied by hundreds of social and
environmental justice groups in the Australia-Pacific region. James has two
decades activist experience with groups including the Queensland
Conservation Council, the Wilderness Society, Amnesty International and
Greenpeace, campaigning on air pollution and sustainable transport, toxic
pollution, tropical rainforest conservation, human and civil rights, genetic
engineering and wilderness conservation, and six years as a social movement
researcher and lecturer with Griffith University. He has published widely in
both academic and community sector literature.

This paper is presented with permission of the International Conference on

Engaging Communities.

References

Annan K 2004, In the age of interdependence, global citizenship is a crucial

pillar of progress, viewed 28 March 2005,
http://www.un.org/unfip/2004Website/index.htm.

Aslin H J & Brown V A 2002, Terms of engagement: a toolkit for community

engagement for the Murray-Darling Basin, Bureau of Rural Sciences,
Canberra.

Australian Government 2004, Overview of the Australian Government's

Natural Resource Management Initiatives: Protecting, Conserving, Repairing,
viewed 28 March 2005, http://www.nrm.gov.au/publications/nrm-overview/.

Baccaro L 2002, Civil society meets the State: A Model of associational

democracy, Discussion Paper Series No. 138, International Institute for
Labour Studies, ILS, Geneva.

Bellamy J & McDonald G 2004, ‘Through multi-scaled lenses: A systems

approach to evaluating natural resource management policy and planning’,
CSIRO/CIRM Symposium on Regional Natural Resource management
Planning: The challenges of evaluation as seen through different lenses,
Brisbane, 15 October.

Carson L & Gelber K 2001, Ideas for Community Consultation A discussion on

principles and procedures for making consultation work, Report prepared for
the NSW Department of Urban Affairs and Planning.

Dovers S 2003, ‘Scaling governance and institutions for sustainability’,

Academic Forum, Network of Regional Government for Sustainable
Development (nrg4SD), Regional Governance for Sustainability, Fremantle,
Western Australia, 17-19 September.
Dovers S & Wild River S (eds) 2003, Managing Australia’s Environment,
Federation Press, Sydney.

Earth Summit 2002, viewed 28 March 2005,

http://www.earthsummit2002.org/.

Ewing S 2003, ‘Catchment Management Arrangements’, in eds S Dovers & S

Wild River, Managing Australia's Environment, The Federation Press, Sydney,
pp. 394-412.

Greenpeace 2004, Shale oil plant shut down after Greenpeace campaign,
viewed 28 March 2005,
http://www.greenpeace.org.au/features/features_details.html?
site_id=45&news_id=1522.

Hajer M A 1997, The Politics of Environmental Discourse: Ecological

Modernization and the Policy Process, Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Hardin G 1968, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science, vol. 162, pp. 1243-8.

Head B 2004, ‘Regional NRM planning arrangements: Evaluating through the

State lens’, CSIRO/CIRM Symposium on Regional Natural Resource
management Planning: The challenges of evaluation as seen through different
lenses, Brisbane, 15 October.

Henton D, Nguyen C, Bramson R, Bernstein S, Gochnour N, Hoopes J,

Lambie J, Snyder K & Thomas R 2001, Empowering Regions: Strategies and
Tools for Community Decision Making, Monograph 2, Alliance for Regional
Stewardship, California.

Hutton D & Connors L 1999, A History of the Australian Environment

Movement. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

Kingma O & Beynon N 2000, ‘It Can't Work Without People: Conceptual
frameworks for analysing effective relationships between players in natural
resource management’, Prepared by Capital Ag for Land and Water Australia.

Lane M, McDonald G & Morrison T H 2004, ‘Decentralisation and

Environmental Management in Australia: A Comment on the Prescriptions of
the Wentworth Group’, Australian Geographical Studies, vol. 42, no. 1, pp.
103-15.

Lee K 1993, The Compass and the Gyroscope: Integrating Science and
Politics for the Environment, Island Press, Washington DC.
NNRMTF 1999, Managing Natural Resources in Rural Australia for a
Sustainable Future prepared for the National Natural Resource Management
Task Force.

Poncelet E C 1998, ‘A kiss here and a kiss there: Conflict and Non-
confrontation in a Multi-stakeholder Environmental Partnership in Belgium’,
‘Crossing Boundaries’, The Seventh Annual Conference of the International
Association for the Study of Common Property, Vancouver, British Columbia,
Canada, June 10-14.

Powell W 1987, Non-profit Organisations and Policy Advocacy in The Non-

profit Sector, Yale University Press, New Haven.

Princen T 1994, Environmental NGOs in World Politics: Linking the Local and
the Global, Routledge, New York.

Rivermouth Action Group 2005, Acceptable Principles for Peak Group

Consultations, viewed 28 March 2005, http://www.rag.org.au/rag/consult.htm.

Queensland Government 2003, Engaging Queenslanders: Get Involved.

Improving Community Engagement Across the Queensland Public Sector.

Western Australian Government 2003, Community Involvement Policy, viewed

30 April 2005, http://www.citizenscape.wa.gov.au.

Whelan J 2002, ‘Smogbusters in Queensland’, in ed. K Phillips, Local Heroes:

Australian crusades from the environmental frontline, Pluto Press, Sydney, pp.
20-40.

Whelan J & Oliver P 2004 (forthcoming), ‘Regional Community-Based

Planning: the Challenge of Collaborative Environmental Governance’,
Conference Proceedings, Tenth Annual International Sustainable
Development Conference, in Australasian Journal of Environmental
Management.

Whelan J & Lyons K 2004, ‘Rethinking deliberative governance: dissecting the

Queensland landclearing campaign’, Conference Proceedings, Ecopolitics VX,
viewed 28 March 2005, http://www.gse.mq.edu.au/Ecopolitics/.

Whelan J & Oliver P 2003, ‘Insiders and Outsiders: Participatory decision-

making and environmental advocacy’, International RiverSymposium
Conference Proceedings, viewed 28 March 2005,
http://www.riverfestival.com.au/2003/content/papers2003Index.htm.

Wilson N 2005, ‘Shale Oil Plan Abandoned’, The Australian, 4 March.

Wondolleck J M & Yaffee S L 2000, Making Collaboration Work, Island Press,
Washington DC.

Wondolleck J M & Yaffee S L 2001, Sustaining the Success of Collaborative

Partnerships: Revisiting the Building Bridges Cases, Michigan, School of
Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan.