Consensus Organizing

Building Communities of Mutual Self Interest

Michael P. Eichler

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781452236223
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Trabajo social

The first new form of community organizing since Saul Alinsky, this book connects the poor to the rest of society. Written in a logical, teachable, and pragmatic style, Consensus Organizing: Building Communities of Mutual Self Interest is a model of social change for the 21st century. Through real examples, author Mike Eichler illustrates how anyone can practice consensus organizing and help the poor, forgotten, and disempowered.

1

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

Conflict and Consensus

In this chapter, you will learn:

• There are many different community organizing approaches and methods.
• Saul Alinsky is the most famous community organizer of all time.
• Definitions of conflict organizing and consensus organizing.
• Your own personality shapes the method of community organizing you will like.

If you have any image at all of a community organizer, you probably picture a person (male, I bet) with an angry look, firing up a crowd of people to march on down somewhere to get somebody to take notice and start treating some group better. The organizer looks a little disheveled. The organizer talks fast. The organizer is pretty upset. If this were your image of a community organizer, I would equate it to the image of a therapist with a notepad gazing over a client stretched across a leather couch, saying with concerned reflection “hmmmm.” The therapist is pondering. The therapist is detached. The therapist is analytical. In other words, your image would be stereotypical. Therapists come in all shapes, sizes, sexes, and sexual orientations and use approaches that are not only varied and complex, but also are sometimes contradictory. Community organizing has the same mixes and matches. There are a variety of approaches. Community organizers come in a variety of packages and styles. They sometimes contradict one another. So you can already see, you might have a little learning to do. You do not want to look at community organizing in one narrow, stereotypical way.

Robert Fisher (1994), in his book Let the People Decide, takes you through the history of community organizing. He shows you in detail how economics, politics, and world events shape and influence different community organizing approaches. Many other writers have tried to categorize these approaches by model, type, and definition. Many of these writers are academics trying to fit people’s works into boxes and diagrams. In the real world of community organizing, nothing fits neatly into a box on a page. Many organizers think much more flexibly. They approach each day willing to do almost anything that might help a community. So let’s start from a different spot. Let’s look at why those who practice community organizing enter it, and try to see if you would fit into it. Later, we’ll examine some of the different methods and approaches.

As Fisher (1994) says, no matter what historical era you choose, there seem to be some of the same things that drive people to want to be community organizers or at least gain some community organizing skills. Try to imagine the hilarious blue-collar comedian, Jeff Foxworthy, taking his trademark routine “then you just might be a redneck,” but applying it instead to community organizing. If you aren’t familiar with Foxworthy, he sets up his jokes (available on his website), many with an activity or tendency followed by “then you just might be a redneck.” For example, “If you list ‘staring’ as one of your hobbies, you just might be a redneck” and “If you put ammo on your Christmas list, you just might be a redneck.” So let’s try it with the community organizer. “If you ever looked into our public school system and saw that it was unequal, writing off millions of low-income students, saying they can’t learn, then you just might be a community organizer.” “If you ever fumed over our two-tiered health system and saw poor and working-class people avoiding medical treatment because they can’t afford health insurance, then you just might be a community organizer.” “If you ever felt that it is unfair to have a federal minimum wage that keeps full-time workers and their families in poverty, then you just might be a community organizer.” In each case, you see something grossly unfair and want to work with those suffering these injustices. That desire makes you a prime candidate to become a community organizer. If you have a sense of outrage at the unfairness in our society, you are already halfway across the water, swimming toward the goals and aspirations of community organizers throughout history. You now just need to gain some skills and techniques and focus on an approach or approaches you are comfortable with.

If you have a desire to create change that leads to fairness and equity, you have many different choices and paths to get you there. Sure, some organizers really do get people angry at large rallies, but that is just one of the methods you can choose. Let’s look at four approaches among many. (Hey, now’s the time for that neat little chart with the bullet points.) Throughout the evolution of community organizing, people have tried to explain it in different ways. My attempt is simple. Don’t get lost in the terminology. Instead, try to imagine each approach and how you would do if you selected one or another.

FOUR APPROACHES TO COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

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Saul Alinsky and Conflict Organizing

The practice of community organizing is associated with one person more than any other: Saul Alinsky. A good parallel in the practice of therapy would be a person you may have heard of at one time or another: Sigmund Freud. Alinsky was born in Chicago in 1909. He was the son of immigrants, yet he managed to get through college studying archeology and criminology. His professional goal became the empowerment of everyday people. His work began to attract attention when he zeroed in on the famous Chicago neighborhood, Back of the Yards, and organized the Back of the Yards Council. This neighborhood acquired its unusual name because cows were sent by railroad from farms to be slaughtered and processed into meat at stockyards right in the middle of the community. Alinsky was interested in this particular Chicago neighborhood partly because it was the very same area that Upton Sinclair (1906) wrote about at the turn of the century in the book The Jungle. Most of the wretched conditions that Sinclair described still existed more than 50 years later. People felt trapped in either joblessness or in jobs that paid low wages with dangerous working conditions. Workers lost fingers and hands using unsafe equipment. They were fired and replaced by new immigrants. They lived in unheated buildings without indoor plumbing.

Alinsky came into the neighborhood as an outsider using one of his most important skills—listening. He listened to the complaints and frustrations of the people there. He saw a pattern that prevented change. Each person felt isolated and alone, that only he or she was stuck in these miserable circumstances. He knew he needed to be trusted by the residents. So he made a special effort to befriend the Catholic parish priests who could legitimize his organizing effort. The “father” could say it was not only right for the members to participate, but he could also prescribe or even require participation. Alinsky also painstakingly contacted other neighborhood institutions and organizations.

Alinsky distinguished between grassroots efforts and the efforts of various social service programs, which he felt were under the control of wealthy donors or unsympathetic government officials who would never choose the side of the oppressed when conflict occurred. He felt that social workers were do-gooders who were strong on rhetoric but nowhere around when things got hot. He knew that the residents were suffering from despair, apathy, and helplessness. He knew he had to confront these barriers or the neighborhood would remain powerless and continue to suffer.

He attacked feelings of “there is nothing we can do about it” head on. He first explained that residents needed power and that power comes in two different forms—money and people. Of course, the people had very little money but, on the other hand, there were certainly plenty of people. In this set of awful circumstances, he was able to point out that there was great potential for change that could come from collective action.

Alinsky used tactics he became famous for—boycotts, strikes, and pickets. He disrupted meetings. He brought community people to places they were uninvited and unwanted. He organized the “have-nots” against the “haves.” He would use anger as a motivator. He turned politicians against one another. He polarized situations as a strategy. He personalized his attacks. Instead of going after the bank, he went after the particular bank president, naming him and blaming him. He worried his targets by unification. After pressuring and pressuring his targets, concessions would begin to be granted. Rents were reduced. Municipal improvements were initiated. More equitable mortgages and bank loans were made. Fairer wages and benefits were paid. His successes made him famous and in demand. This style of organizing that puts pressure on personalized targets to create improvements is referred to as conflict organizing. It is still practiced today all across the country.

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Conflict Organizing—Using anger and blaming a selected, targeted individual by putting pressure on the target to create a concession and cause change

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Women Centered Organizing

Alinsky talked about power as something others had. Often, those in power did not treat the poor, women, or minorities fairly. He believed power should be removed from those who abused it and transferred to the oppressed. Feminists and women centered organizers, on the other hand, believe in a different principle: power sharing. They are committed to creating balanced power relationships through democratic practices of shared leadership, decision making, authority, and responsibility. Many women centered organizers believe that, without this approach, they would mirror more traditional, hierarchical institutions. They would become part of the problem instead of a part of a solution and a shining example. They believe in equality and inclusion. One Canadian-centered group, the Advisory Council on the Status of Women in Feminism: Our Basis for Unity, succinctly summarizes its view of power sharing:

Through the healthy practice of power sharing, we nurture an environment that is peaceful, empowering and respectful. We share power through inclusion, consensus building and skills development. Other practices include validating women’s experiences, anticipating challenge and conflict, including diverse voices, creating safe places, evaluating our work and sharing roles and responsibilities. Respect is at the root of successful power sharing, as is a genuine commitment to the principles, practices and processes of feminism. To foster healthy and equitable power relationships among staff, board members and volunteers we must demonstrate our commitment to feminist leadership rather than simply assume authority. (Advisory Council on the Status of Women: Newfoundland & Labrador, n.d.)

It would be fun to bring back Saul Alinsky and have him compare approaches with members of this advisory council. They have distinctly different ideas about power. Some observers, such as Kristina Smock (2004) in Democracy in Action, have commented on some of the trade-offs of what she calls the women centered model. She says there can be tension between process and product.

The emphasis on internal relationship building and inclusive decision making can hinder the achievement of tangible action oriented outcomes. Providing participants with the personal support while helping them to discover the connection between their own problems and public issues can be an extremely time consuming process, one that frequently slows down the organization’s ability to move toward broader action. Similarly, the insistence on including all voices and reaching genuine consensus can make it difficult for women centered organizations to move effectively from deliberation to action. (p. 253)

The women centered model emphasizes that relationships should not be built on self-interest but rather on understanding and responsibility. It puts a high priority on personal development as well as community development.

Community Building Approach

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Community Building—Forming collaborative partnerships among a neighborhood’s stakeholders to strengthen their internal capacity to solve their problems

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Community builders believe that the internal social and economic fabric of a neighborhood needs to be strengthened. They believe that the biggest challenge that people in neighborhoods face is the lack of capacity to address their own needs. Because many low-income communities are isolated and cut off by the traditional power structure, the rebuilding must come from within. Because people in these communities have been systematically isolated, they need to “learn to trust one other, establish roles, and improve from within.” This represents a new form of community organizing. Organizers are faced with the challenge of developing the residents’ assets and skills. They must not only harness and expand the skill base, but also then build collaborations throughout the community. These collaborations must be built among various stakeholders in the neighborhood. This approach sometimes tilts heavily toward staff. It includes some residents, but often those already in leadership positions, such as block club presidents, civic association chairpersons, and so on. It may shy away from other residents not affiliated with existing efforts. Also, the complexity of comprehensive, neighborhood-wide efforts may overwhelm the “average” citizen, let alone the nonnative, non-English speaker or someone with very little formal education. Organizers may have to overvalue those with degrees and expertise and existing positions of power and, by default, leave out others. There is also some concern that the community building approach requires multiple trade-offs and compromises to get everyone on the same page. Many problems are not challenged or addressed.

The community building approach has been supported heavily by regional and national philanthropies. They find comfort in the comprehensiveness, logic, and order of entire-community efforts. One community group steps forward and presents the philanthropy with an opportunity to play an investment or grant-making role that feels comfortable and appropriate. Some of these philanthropies might not have supported conflict organizing (too disruptive) or women centered organizing (too process oriented).

Consensus Organizing

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Consensus Organizing—Tying the self-interest of the community to the self-interest of others to achieve a common goal

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This has nothing but pluses, no shortcomings, and the guy connected with it is nothing short of a genius! Meanwhile, back on the planet earth, I will try my best to make this an objective introduction to a community organizing approach I happen to like. Consensus organizing requires you, the organizer, to do two parallel, simultaneous jobs. I can hear you now, “Hey, I already don’t like this one. It’s twice as much work!” Come on, where’s that sense of dedication and commitment?

Some community building efforts are heavily reliant on government funding. They can become dependent on this support for their continued existence. Saul Alinsky would call this “sleeping with the enemy” and feel that such efforts would be in serious jeopardy of being co-opted and never building power.

A consensus organizer brings together interests within a neighborhood in a way that is similar to the community builder approach, while at the same time bringing together the political, economic, and social power structure from outside the neighborhood. We see both the internal and external players as equal participants loaded with dedicated, honest, fair participants. After both groups are organized, articulate, and focused on their self-interest, you bring them together. This approach runs very contrary to the conflict organizing ideas of Saul Alinsky and his disciples, and has something in common with the other two approaches. Alinsky would never see the power structure as a potential ally. In his mind, elites were the cause of problems and never part of a solution. They were only valuable when they did what the community group demanded. On the other hand, power sharing is talked about in the other models. The major difference is that nobody else looks at the external forces affecting the community in quite the way a consensus organizer does.

The consensus organizer recognizes the value and power of mobilizing honest and dedicated people from both groups—the community and the power structure. Of course, there will also be prejudiced, self-serving, and arrogant individuals from both groups. The idea is to work around them.

Those who embrace consensus organizing see it as the most logical, natural, and sensible way to proceed. It resonates with how they think, choose their friends, and lead their lives. Others see it as a sellout, a public relations–driven, superficial effort that doesn’t begin to address the root causes of problems. There! I told you I’d be fair. Is the world composed of a variety of people who need to be skillfully brought together? Is it something you’d like to know more about?

I’ve always been fascinated by the personalities of community organizers and how their personalities might match some approaches better than others. I bet in your case, right here in Chapter 1, you feel you match up better to one more than the other three. In my experience, most of those who are attracted to Alinsky and the conflict approach have a drive to correct unfairness by putting the blame where it belongs. You know the personality, “I’m right, you’re wrong, and I’ll prove it!” They see women centered groups as not serious about taking action because they won’t take power away f...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Community Organizing: Conflict and Consensus
• 2. Evolution of Consensus Organizing
• 3. Issues Analysis
• 4. Program Design
• 5. Cultural Competency in Consensus Organizing
• 6. Consensus Organizing Strategies and Tactics
• 7. Developing External Relationships
• 8. Forming Partnerships
• 9. Building Personal Relationships
• 10. Building Institutional Relationships
• 11. Developing Young Organizers
• 12. Using Consensus Organizing in Other Professions
• 13. The Future of Consensus Organizing
• “Answers” to Reflection Questions
• Epilogue
• Index
• About the Author