Community Organizing: People Power from the Grassroots
By Dave Beckwith, with Cristina Lopez
Center for Community Change
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Contents
The Four Strategies
What is Community Organizing?
The Principles of Community Organizing
The Ten Rules of Community Organizing
Defining an Action Strategy
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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