We Make Change: Community Organizers Talk About What They Do--and Why

Introduction

xvii Introduction Seedbed of a New Movement Harry C. Boyte Co-Director, Center for Democracy and Citizenship We Make Change is unique in a growing body of analytic and historical literature about community organizing that now includes several works by leading community organizers themselves. We Make Change profiles a diverse group of organizers , their perspectives, their experiences, their hopes, and their fears. What come through vividly are the gritty up and down experiences of organizing, as well as its relational and political qualities. These are people on the front lines of citizen action across the country, in a time when conventional wisdom holds that American citizens are simply apathetic and disengaged. We Make Change shows that organizing can be immensely rewarding, if also frustrating, difficult, exasperating —and hard work. It can also awaken new citizen energies and a broader sense of hopefulness about change. We see interest in organizing among the several thousand students and young adults that we work with each year at the Center for Democracy and Citizenship in high schools and colleges around the country through our youth civic initiative called Public Achievement. More and more young people want to know about the sort of practical, progressive, and democratic organizing work that is illuminated here. For the most part, they also have to date learned little about such work, what it is, and how to connect with it through formal education . This collection holds potential for wide use in courses on organizing, urban affairs, and contemporary politics, as well as in the organizing field itself. It also may help to inspire a new generation of young people who take up organizing as career and as life work. The diversity of approaches and philosophies present in We Make Change illustrates broad and growing networks of organizations and efforts, some in this collection and others not, but all part of a fledgling new citizen movement that I believe can be called “democratic” and “populist.” The new populist movement gathers power for ordinary people to break up unjust concentrations of wealth and power; it advances community and egalitarian values; and it has a strong emphasis on civic learning and development of people’s imaginations, skills, and public identities. Such networks range from left-leaning groups like the National xviii   We Make Change Organizers Alliance and ACORN, to the networks of what are called “broadbased citizen organizations” such as the Industrial Areas Foundation, PICO, DART, and the Gamaliel Foundation, which shun “ideology” but have a philosophically democratic politics, and are more reflective about democratic and religious values than the raw pragmatism of Saul Alinsky in the 1970s, the tradition that many of them claim. The larger movement also includes many new forms of organizing among young adults, new community-based approaches to organizing on the environment like those developed by the National Wildlife Federation , a new emerging community arts movement, and other strands. All these reflect values such as equality, community, democracy, concern for the poor, and diversity. What unites organizers across networks and philosophies is what can be called the project of deepening democracy. All these organizers seek to develop the organized power of ordinary, uncredentialled citizens, especially in poor, working class, and minority communities. We Make Change does a splendid job of showing through stories and diverse voices how the development of citizens ’ power requires creating a counterbalance to the power of corporations and wealthy elites. Readers should keep in mind two challenges that community organizers face as they do their work: technocracy and culture. In the first case citizens are disempowered in an information age not only by organized corporate or money power but also by organized “knowledge power.” Decision making in most institutions is highly technocratic, or expert centered. Today, whether in the classroom or in the doctor’s office, in the nightly news shows we watch or the public hearings we attend, many norms and practices marginalize and silence people without credentials, degrees, and specialized language. Knowledge power is more subtle and elusive than corporate power, but it is no less pervasive. People without credentials and recognized expertise are not often credited with having much to say. Progressive politics and large activist groups can sometimes reflect invisible, technocratic forms of power that are widespread in the larger society, especially if they are based too much on mobilization technologies like the “door-to-door canvass” and the Internet. In mobilizing approaches, in contrast to organizing, the issues are predetermined by experts, and ordinary citizens are slotted into...