Banded Together: Economic Democratization in the Brass Valley

4. Organizing

4. Organizing Behind dramatic actions like the Seymour buyout lay something the Naugatuck Valley Project called “organizing.” The project clearly meant by that something more than simply forming an organization and recruiting members . Organizing meant taking disconnected individuals and groups and connecting them in ways that allows them to act in concert. But how could that be done? In the Alinsky Mold Notwithstanding its exceptional focus on plant closings, many aspects of the NVP’s strategy were standard community organizing techniques worked out over the course of many decades and taught by Saul Alinsky’s Industrial Areas Foundation and other organizing centers. They involved finding and developingleaders ,teachingorganizingskills,establishingnewrelationships,strengthening community institutions, as well as building the organization itself.1 Saul Alinsky’s followersoftenrepeat hisremarkthatyou domore organizing with your ears than with your mouth, and it was standard IAF procedure for Ken Galdston to start his work with dozens and dozens of interviews. Such interviewingfamiliarizestheorganizerwithmultipleaspectsofthecommunity that are likely to prove resources or barriers, it identifies key issues and concerns around which people are likely to be mobilized, and it lets many people in the community get to know the organizer and form their own opinion of theorganization’scharacterandpurposeindependentofmediaandotherthird parties. Above all, it identifies people whose experience, roles, personality, and concerns mark them as potential leaders for the organization. Once potential leaders are identified, a good deal of effort typically goes into their development and training. Some of this occurs in formal training sessions, like Janet Saglio’s presentation on employee ownership and Ken Galdston’s training sessions on the early warning signs of plant closings. At least as important are the leadership training and support that go on in the course of action. As Galdston put it, “From the start, the point was not that I was going to call up the President of this corporation, but you were going to do it and if you hadn’t done it before, we were going to walk through how you were going to do it. I think it’s that sort of opportunity for people to grow and stretch that keeps people coming.” Peter Rosazza recalls, “Ken would say, we should call this man. And he’d go through it with me. We’d role-play.”2 As part of their strategy for leadership development, Galdston and other NVP staffers almost invariably held meetings before and after any activity. Rosazza recalls that when a group was going to meet with officials of a company , “We always would have a preparatory meeting with Ken Galdston and talk about strategies for how we were going to present things, what we wanted to accomplish at the meeting. And then we would go into the meeting, and afterwards you would have a debriefing on how things went and what we would do for follow-up.”3 Another feature of organizing consists in building relationships. Some of these are between institutions: for example, the relationship among the original sponsoring organizations of the NVP. Some are within institutions: for example, the linking of bishops, archdiocese staff, local priests, and activist parishioners that went on within the Catholic Church. Some are relationships with the organizer: Galdston’s developing personal relationships with various individuals undoubtedly contributed to their willingness to work on the project. Some are relationships among individuals and local leaders: the cooperation among local union, church, small business, and political leaders in trying to save the Torrington branch of the University of Connecticut or General Time Controls laid much of the groundwork for subsequent cooperation , including cooperation in establishing the NVP itself. People and communities have large arrays of problems and concerns; crucial to effective organizing is selecting from them specific issues to organize around. Experience has taught organizers to seek issues that matter enough to some people that they are willing to act, that will not divide those the organization is trying to bring together, that provide visible targets on which pressure can be brought to bear, that allow something significant to be won, and that embody the goals, methods, and philosophy of the organization in a way that inspires others to join or emulate. The threatened closings of GTC, the University of Connecticut–Torrington branch, and the Seymour brass 50 c h a pt er 4 mill all met these criteria. And they emerged and were tested in community meetings and one-on-one interviews. Many organizing efforts flounder in a sea of...