[Springboard] [Dialogue] Alinsky & Freire and ICA's approach

Thu Jan 13 13:41:06 CST 2011

Hi, Martin, a few things to add on . . . the early "story" lodged in my mind is that, whereas, on the south side of Chicago, there was some sense of structure and identity as a community and so mobilizing to get the attention and support of the political structures was an effective approach.  On the west side, with the rapid change in population as former east european residents fled to the suburbs and were rapidly replaced by African Americans moving up from the southern states, there was no sense of structure and identity, so what the Institute called "Comprehensive Community Reformulation" was the need.
1.  AARP, American Association of Retired Persons, hired John Oyler for a couple of projects over several years.  They had invested heavily in training their field staff in community organizing techniques (choose an issue, rally and mobilize people around the issue and put pressure on political leadership / public agencies to respond).  They were finding that that approach did not work for every situation.  John developed with them a training tool, grounded in ToP and based in ICA's earlier approaches to community development.  I think they talked of the one as community organizing and the other as community building.  In that instance, community building referred more to developing the capacity of people to do their own development on an ongoing basis.  He may still have access to those manuals and tools.
2.  John also worked for a number of years in partnership with the Jacobs Family Foundation (now, I think, the Jacobs Center for Non Profit Development) and as part of that, I worked with Raul Jorquera and John in a multi-year review and update of ICA's earlier community development curriculum and approaches which eventually resulted in ICA's Neighborhood Academy program.  In the early work with human development projects around the world, ICA put an emphasis on Economic, Social and Human development.  We even had educational sections in the early consults on these dimensions of local development.  While 5th City had an Economic Guild, an Education Guild, a Style Guild, a Symbol Guild and a Political Guild, during the consults for the first 8 of the 24, the political dimension was not emphasized (part, I think, due to the "facilitative" character of ICA's work, part also due to the necessity and assumption of working with the blessing of political
 leadership.
Anyway, one tool that was created out of those initial projects was called the Nine Programs Chart which sort of summarized and refined the primary areas of work that kept coming up out of the consults and strategic planning we did with those initial communities.  Jacobs Foundation wanted us to take a broader view of the field (among other things, they brought in a couple of people from the Near East Foundation to share their work with PRA in community development -- these were connected with ICA MENA in Cairo as I recall.  Theresa Lingafelter went to Boston to do a review of the Dudley Street Initiative which, for a time in the 90's was seen as a significant model for Neighborhood work.  One of their initiating efforts had to do with mobilizing the community to stop the illegal dumping of refuse including rotten meat in their neighborhood.
As a part of the research for this neighborhood academy, we redid the 9 programs chart into fifteen, to be more inclusive and also more relevant to work in the US.  See attached.  In that model, there is a column on Political Development which includes the community's abiliity to organize and bring pressure on government and political leaders to meet their needs called "Community Voice".

Jim Wiegel

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--- On Thu, 1/13/11, Janet Sanders <janetasanders at hotmail.com> wrote:

From: Janet Sanders <janetasanders at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Springboard] [Dialogue]  Alinsky & Freire and ICA's approach
To: m.george.walters at gmail.com, dialogue at wedgeblade.net, "Springboard Dialogue" <springboard at wedgeblade.net>
Date: Thursday, January 13, 2011, 9:24 AM

In the early 90's some of the movement folks in Omaha, Nebraska joined with the parish movement component of Alinsky's work.  Rev Don and Marlene Johnson were quite involved at the time.  When I visited my brother in the Omaha area I got updates from the Johnson's.  It was influential for several years.  Jan

Janet A. Sanders

From: m.george.walters at verizon.net
To: dialogue at wedgeblade.net; springboard at wedgeblade.net
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 08:31:02 -0500
Subject: Re: [Springboard] [Dialogue] Alinsky & Freire and ICA's approach

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Disestablishment posture and tactics on the part of many, not just Alinsky, was seminal input to our thinking that derived the Trans-establishment posture. Establishment, Disestablishment and Trans-establishment postures and tactics are always options in any given ethical context. No right/wrong or good/bad can be assigned to any of the three. I believe in an ethical context, when analyzing a situation, they are points of identity. When determining action, they are elements of choice.

George

M. George Walters

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From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Martin Gilbraith (ICA:UK)
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2011 08:22
To: Colleague Dialogue; Springboard Dialogue
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Springboard] Alinsky & Freire and ICA's approach

Hi all, thanks for all your responses so far, its all very intersting to me,
Martin

On 12/01/2011 22:35, Len Hockley wrote: 
There is also a great story (true or not) about Alinsky and King meeting in O'Hare airport just before the housing march.  

It seems King was carrying on about how his movement was so "grassroots and unstructured" and Alinsky comes back and says "The only movement without structure is cow shit."

Len

On 1/12/2011 11:13 AM, Bill Schlesinger wrote: 
The primary difference between our approach and Alinsky’s (who did not lecture in any early Academy I remember in the 60’s) was methodological, not an establishment/disestablishment orientation.  Alinsky’s approach depended on a responsive establishment that would not simply shoot organizers.  It relied – as did Ghandi’s and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s approaches – on the moral values perceived by the establishment system.  ‘Rub raw the sores of discontent’ was intended to energize marginalized communities to a level of dissatisfaction with the ‘status quo’ that would then provide the emotional strength to make specific demands of the ruling elite, and to expose contradictions of normative value within the ruling elite in order to create open dissension and a change of practice in that elite.  That was a basic strategy of the Civil Rights movement.

Our approach – ‘locality development’ in social service literature – was more focused on organizing available resources within the marginalized community (‘Every local community can feed itself’) and creating a partnership with identified elements in the wider society.  The intent was to develop an approach that did not rely on a specific response from the governing elite (‘OK, OK, we’ll put a stop sign on the corner’).

Bill Schlesinger
Project Vida
3607 Rivera Avenue
El Paso, TX 79905
(915) 533-7057 x 207
(915) 533-7158 FAX
pvida at whc.net
www.projectvidaelpaso.org

From: dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:dialogue-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf Of Len Hockley
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2011 11:43 AM
To: Colleague Dialogue
Cc: Springboard Dialogue
Subject: Re: [Dialogue] [Springboard] Alinsky & Freire and ICA's approach

For what it is worth, it has been noted that Alinski was a lecturer a one of the early Academys.  Also, he did early work in Detroit where we had his people come and talk with us.  As I remember it he was a bit too disestablishment for the likes of us.

I looked up the IAF in Portland (OR) within the last 15yrs were they were still active in parishes.
Len

On 1/11/2011 8:28 AM, R Williams wrote: 

Martin,

There are those who will be able to address your questions much more directly than I, but here's one strand you might pursue.  If you Google "Industrial Areas Foundation" (IAF) and go to the Wikipedia page you will find reference to Ernesto Cortes, Jr. as the Alinski protege who took Alinsky's approach from the 1940s and in San Antonio, TX made it a congregation-based process.

Ernesto (Ernie) Cortes went to RS-1 in the late 60s or early 70s and at one time was a part of the San Antonio cadre.  When I was in the Houston house I remember him from various meetings in San Antonio.  If you could find a way to get in touch with him you might get some answers to your question as far as Alinsky is concerned.  I expect what he may be able to share with you ways in which EI/RS-1, etc. influenced his work in deciding to be congregation-based as well as that of IAF in general.

As for Freire, his book Education for Critical Consciousness must have had an influence in our development of imaginal education, not just the course but the process used in our whole educational approach, although we referred more to Kenneth Boulding and The Image.  His later book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, although I believe not published at the time, is consistent with, but in some ways clearer than, his earlier book.

Randy

--- On Tue, 1/11/11, Martin Gilbraith (ICA:UK) <martin at ica-uk.org.uk> wrote:

From: Martin Gilbraith (ICA:UK) <martin at ica-uk.org.uk>
Subject: [Springboard] Alinsky & Freire and ICA's approach
To: Dialogue at wedgeblade.net, "Springboard Dialogue" <springboard at wedgeblade.net>
Date: Tuesday, January 11, 2011, 9:46 AM

Hi everyone, I am hoping that colleagues with longer memories might be able to help me with some history please...

The 'big idea' of the UK's new coalition government is Big Society - variously, applauded as empowering the people, and/or derided as a cynical cover for devastating public spending cuts - see http://www.ncvo-vol.org.uk/policy-campaigns-research/big-society/big-society

A major initiative within this agenda is a forthcoming Government-funded programme to train and support a cadre of 5,000 Community Organisers, explicitly based on the principles of Saul Alinsky and Paulo Friere - see http://www.urbanforum.org.uk/briefings/community-organisers-briefing

I beleive that Friere was an influence on the early development of EI/ICA's methods and approach, and I understand that Alinsky was developing Community Organising in Chicago around the same time as EI/ICA was in Fifth City.  

What I would really like to learn more about is to what extent and how did Friere and/or Alinsky influence the develpment of EI/ICA and our methods and approach; and to what extent and how might our methods and approach have influenced the development of Community Organising?

My partner Derek put this same question, more or less, to George Packard several years ago when he was here in the UK just after Derek had taken a course in Faith-based Community Organising through his local Unitarian church - but I don't much remember what he said, and I'd love to have any more specific recollections and (better still) any documents that might be relevant.

I am hoping this might inform how we seek to position ICA:UK in relation to this emerging new agenda, and that I might draft an article (for ICA:UK Network News if not also elsewhere) based on what I receive.

many thanks for any recollections or insights you can offer, best wishes,
Martin

-- 

Martin Gilbraith <martin at ica-uk.org.uk>
connect with me at http://uk.linkedin.com/in/martingilbraith 
Chief Executive, ICA:UK
registered charity #1090745 & company limited by guarantee #3970365
registered in England & Wales, at 41 Old Birley Street, Manchester M15 5RF
tel/fax: 0845 450 0305 or 0161 232 8444 - www.ica-uk.org.uk
The Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) - a global network of autonomous not-for-profit organisations in 30 countries
"concerned with  the  human  factor  in  world development" 
IAF Certified Professional Facilitator & Chair
The International Association of Facilitators – www.iaf-world.org
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Martin Gilbraith <martin at ica-uk.org.uk>
connect with me at http://uk.linkedin.com/in/martingilbraith 
Chief Executive, ICA:UK
registered charity #1090745 & company limited by guarantee #3970365
registered in England & Wales, at 41 Old Birley Street, Manchester M15 5RF
tel/fax: 0845 450 0305 or 0161 232 8444 - www.ica-uk.org.uk
The Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA) - a global network of autonomous not-for-profit organisations in 30 countries
"concerned with  the  human  factor  in  world development"
IAF Certified Professional Facilitator & Chair
The International Association of Facilitators – www.iaf-world.org
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