Defending Community: The Struggle for Alternative Redevelopment in Cedar-Riverside

5. The Growth Coalition Falters [Includes Image Plates]

The Growth Coalition Falters CHAPTER 5 This power cannibalism of the Haves permits only temporary truces, and only when equally confronted by a common enemy Even then there are regular breaks in the ranks, as mdividual units attempt to exploit the general threat for their own special benefit. Here is the vulnerable belly of the status quo. -Saul D. Alinsky, Rules for RadIcals L ATE 1974 signaled the beginning of the end for the New Town in Town, Financial backers started pulling out, and City Hall began to review the Urban Renewal Plan. During one of the CREDF fundraising dinners, neighborhood activist Steve Parliament learned of the growing skepticism of the Minneapolis corporate elite when a member of that elite remarked that the "financial community in Minneapolis felt that CRA was a house of cards" and an organization to stay away from. The political opportunity structure, which had been so well organized in CRA's favor, was shifting. Through the second period the neighborhood movement's federated frontstage structure allowed the movement to practice a sophisticated "divide and conquer" strategy against the New Town growth machine. Saul Alinsky (1971) understood this strategy well, noting that elites are ultimately only self-interested and that any unity they show occurs only because they temporarily see unity as in their selfinterest . As soon as they perceive greater advantage in breaking out of the coalition, they will do so. This self-interest is structurally based. Claus Offe (1985) notes that, whereas labor exists in discrete individuals who must be organized to exert collective power, capital can be organized by individual capiCopyrighted Material 99 talists. Similarly, community can be obtained only through the collective organization of individual citizens, but capital can exist in an organized form in the hands of a single capitalist. In the case of a growth coalition, separate organized capitals are brought together, and the same problems that hinder community organizing-diversity of perspective, conflicting self-interests, and competing allegiancesalso hinder growth coalitions. The "relative autonomy" of the local state also creates problems for capital (ClaveIand Kleniewski, 1990; Markusen, 1978; Clark and Dear, 1984). Because the state is structurally independent from individual fractions of capital, its support for any individual capitalist policy is always tentative. Caught between the necessity of supporting topdown , capital-conscious urban redevelopment to ensure the city's fiscal survival and maintaining legitimacy in the eyes of residents, the local state can be a fickle growth-coalition partner. The divide-and-conquer strategy has an impact on the political opportunity structure by exploiting the structural independence of capital elites and the local state in the urban power structure, opening and destabilizing it. This strategy enhances the real structural divisions between capital and the state and between fractions of capital to weaken the power of the movement's target. In Cedar-Riverside the neighborhood movement's federated front-stage structure drove wedges in the growth coalition, attracted resources for the community , destabilized the political opportunity structure, and stopped the New Town. Consequently, political alignments destabilized, elites shifted position, and the barriers to the local state began to fall. The chaos in the political opportunity structure lasted through the end of the decade. In this chapter I focus on the two main problems of growth coalitions : organizing fractions of capital and overcoming the relative autonomy of the local state. I explore how the talents of a small neighborhood were able to take advantage of these problems to halt the march of the New Town. Cracks in the Growth Coalition External Changes In the 1970s four developments in the political opportunity structure , independent of the activism of West Bankers, reduced CRA's 100 Copyrighted Material Chapter 5 insularity from the neighborhood movement. The changes began in 1972 when Henry McKnight suddenly died. McKnight's unexpected death was a psychological, if not material, blow to the growth machine . His connections had helped to secure the initial financing for the New Town; his absence when new financial and political problems emerged made it more difficult for CRA to defend itself. "When he died, probably as much as anything else, Cedar-Riverside Associates lost the ability to weather the storm. They lost that contact with D.C. and their ability to circumvent local and regional level offices and just zoom to the head of the class" (William Betzler interview, 1978). A less sudden but equally important change was the collapse of the economy...