[Dialogue] Fw: [Ailist] Re: Ai and Community Organizing

[Sunny Walker]

Along the lines of what next -- I've had some very similar thoughts since
Tuesday evening. And ICA here in Denver, when there was no full-time staff
for many years (still isn't) lost our edge in the community to an Alinsky
organization that is now well funded and respected. But they do NOT have
tools for collaboration (as is finally becoming clear here). Nor for deep
discussions and bridge building.
Sunny

----- Original Message -----
From: "Terri McNichol" <tmcnichol at renassociates.com>
To: <ailist at lists.business.utah.edu>
Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 3:34 AM
Subject: [Ailist] Re: Ai and Community Organizing


> Colleagues,
>
> My feeling yesterday of the enormous work that needs to be
> done in our country is confirmed by the post below from
> Professor Stoecker, moderator of the community organizer
> listserv. I hope you will take a moment to read it.
>
> Best,
> Terri McNichol
> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
> This is a COMM-ORG "colist" message.
> All replies to this message come to COMM-ORG only.
> <><><><><><><><><><><><><><>
>
> Hi COMM-ORG,
>
> Your maybe-less-humble-than-angry-and-scared-moderator here.
> It's the day after, and I have been trying my best to just go
> about my work and pretend that there was no election
> yesterday.  But no one will let me. All day I have been
> receiving messages either bemoaning the election of
> George Bush or trying to find "bright spots" in this miserable
> aftermath.  Eventually, I decided I had to either stop
> checking my e-mail or let it rip.  Guess what I chose?
>
> I promise you, however, that this is about community
> organizing.  Because it fundamentally is.  It seems my
> reaction to this election is different from most of my
> friends' and colleagues'.  I am not that bothered by
> the re-election of George Bush, even if it was probably mostly
> the result of out and out disenfranchisment engineered through
> the State of Ohio Secretary of State's Office in collaboration
> with the Ohio Republican party.  No, John Kerry, Mr.
> I-oppose-abortion-but-support-choice,
> I-will-give-you-tax-cuts-too,
> I-don't-want-national-health-care-either,
> I-like-guns-as-much-as-the-next-guy, etc. etc. was hardly a
> choice worth cheering for.  And I am almost relieved I don't
> have to live down the embarassment I felt after I voted for
> Clinton the first time and vowed to never compromise my
> principles again except that my wife, the love of
> my life, said she would refuse to talk to me if I didn't vote
> for Kerry.
>
> What bothers me most about this election is not that Kerry
> lost but that hatred won.  Eleven states--even one of the blue
> ones--voted to outlaw gays (might as well call it that) by
> overwhelming margins.  Why isn't that the big headline?  And
> especially why isn't that what we are talking about?  Because
> that is where we failed. And as much as I would love to blame
> the Republican right for promoting hatred, it is much more
> a failure of community organizing and community education.
> Elections happen only every few years, and we organize for
> them for a few months every few years, at most.  But the
> issues that drive campaigns go round the clock, and hatred is
> one of the deepest issues we face.
>
> What went wrong that community organizers can win an increase
> in the minimum wage in Florida but they can't stop a gay ban
> in Oregon?  Or Ohio, Or Michigan, or the eight other states
> where it passed?  Because if our organizing was effective
> enough to have stopped the gay bans in those states, we
> wouldn't have had to settle for a compromise candidate
> to begin with.  So we need to understand this.
>
> What I will say next is meant to provoke, to start a
> discussion.  Because if we are going to stop things from
> getting even worse, we need to begin now, rethinking not just
> our political organizing strategy but our community organizing
> strategy.
>
> Let's start with homophobia, one of the primary driving issues
> of this election.  It brought out the right in droves, and
> wiped out whatever gains had been made by the massive voter
> registration drives led by community organizers and groups
> like MoveOn.Org.  You and I both know that many of the people
> that community organizers and democratic organizers brought
> out to vote were the same people who voted for gay
> bans.  Here in Ohio, for example, at least 49% of the voters
> went for Kerry (for all we know it was 51%), but only 38%
> opposed the gay ban. No wonder we needed a compromise candidate.
>
> We all know that gay rights is one of those wedge issues in
> community organizing.  And it points to one of the most severe
> weaknesses in our community organizing models.  For
> faith-based organizers, the power of religious ideology
> prevents even bringing the subject up except in a very few
> progressive congregations.  And even for neighborhood-based
> Alinsky-style organizers, the subject can split a community
> organization faster than you can say 'failure.'  Every good
> organizer knows you focus on the issues that everyone agrees
> on and that is how you build an organization.  So organizers
> avoid the tough polarizing issues.  And yet, those are the
> very issues that need to be confronted if we are going to be
> able to run truly progressive candidates who will not have
> to pretend to be conservatives (or actually are
> conservatives). Community organizers, who are working on the
> ground in those communities, are the only people in the
> position to do the work. Only when community organizers are
> able to build organizations on the basis of not just narrow
> self-interest, but broad human rights principles, will we
> stand a chance of turning the right wing tide.  Not until.  As
> an example, one of the frightening findings of the exit polls
> from this latest election disaster is the strong proportion of
> Latino/a voters who chose Bush on the basis of conservative
> cultural values.
>
> Accomplishing this requires a new model of organizing that
> combines issue work with community-based education.  It
> requires broaching those issues of reproductive rights, gay
> rights, women's rights, animal rights, and others that may
> directly challenge the cultural values of the people
> with whom we work. There are models out there--the Highlander
> popular education process, learning circles, and other
> community education strategies that respect community culture
> at the same time that they challenge it--that we may be able
> to integrate with self-interest community organizing.  We may
> be able to find ways to partially insulate community education
> from on-the-ground organizing.
>
> Ah, but you say, issues like gay rights are middle-class
> issues, irrelevant to the poor and working class communities
> that community organizers work in. And yet it is the taught
> hatred of gays that causes the unemployed factory worker to
> vote against his class interest and choose Bush.  Middle-class
> issues become poor and working class issues when the right
> uses them to mobilize the poor and working classes.  So
> *we* have to make them poor and working class issues too.
>
> Us academics have a role to play in this.  Our work with
> organizers, finding good accessible information to build
> community education processes, can provide the support
> necessary and save the organizer's time.  We can also put
> ourselves on the firing line in community settings so the
> organizer doesn't have to.  But us academics have to
> learn and practice a different form of pedagogy in those
> settings, because community folks won't pretend the deference
> that our students normally will.  Here is where organizers and
> academics need to work together.
>
> So we have our work cut out for us--to build a progressive
> culture from the ground-up, establish a community-based
> respect for human rights, and help everyone understand the
> connections between the concrete issues and the abstract ones.
>  Or four years from now we will all be moaning about the
> election of someone maybe even worse than Bush.
>
> Randy Stoecker
> moderator/editor, COMM-ORG
> randy.stoecker at utoledo.edu
> Terri McNichol
> Ren Associates
> 707 Alexander Road, Bldg. 2 Suite 208
> Princeton NJ 08540
> Telephone +1.609.371.5354
> www.renassociates.com
> t.mcnichol.1 at alumni.nyu.edu
>
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