Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the Bronx

Chapter Six. What These Tools Can Build

Chapter Six What These Tools Can Build Developing Capacities for Policy Making Social change organizations (SCOs) with similar missions pursue divergent political strategies, even when these organizations face a similar political context and resource constraints, partly because their respective tool kits help to develop different strengths and capacities among leaders and organizers. In the present study, more specifically, the Alinskyite tool kit helped the Bronx chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Northwest Bronx Clergy and Community Coalition (NWBCCC) to build large bases of leaders with relatively interchangeable roles, and these leadership bases held the capacity to most influence policy making when proposed policies were about to be adopted or rejected. The Freirean tool kit helped Sistas and Brothas United (SBU) and Mothers on the Move (MOM) to build somewhat narrower, but much deeper, bases of leaders with campaign- and specializationspeci fic roles, and these leadership bases possessed the ability to most influence policy-making by crafting new policies or making sure existing ones were well implemented. (By “deeper” leadership bases I mean that the leaders had received in-depth and multifaceted leadership training, and so organizers could call upon these members to perform complex and difficult tasks.) Developing Capacities for Policy Making 137 The Alinskyite SCOs emphasized recruitment and organizational identity so that they could firmly stand for or against policy proposals and politicians; these SCOs’ painstakingly constructed bases were then large enough to compel politicians to understand that the (usually electoral) support of these members was needed and contingent upon approval of the desired policy or program. Because leaders understood the importance of standing together, having a clear political stance, and echoing the SCOs’ official positions, SCOs strategically tapped into their large membership bases to intimidate politicians. The Freirean SCOs’ tool kits facilitated issue analysis, on-the-ground data collection, varying and wide skill sets among different members, and sustained attention. Because leaders were so well versed in the city’s political structures and in power and policy analyses, they could tell if the programs touted by politicians were in fact halfhearted attempts to appease constituencies. These SCO leaders strategically dove into the nitty-gritty details of policy making. They worked to reconfigure the proposals to be presented at the policy-making table, or to make sure that policies were meaningfully implemented. The traditional policy-making cycle follows four steps: (1) problems (such as poorly performing schools in the Bronx, in this case) are presented ; (2) policies are crafted and proposed in response; (3) these policy proposals are then accepted or rejected; and if accepted, these policies are (4) modified, implemented, and monitored.1 While the traditional policymaking cycle is rarely so orderly in real life, it remains a helpful heuristic because it helps to highlight the SCOs’ respective strengths and weaknesses.2 The Alinskyite SCOs excelled in helping their constituents to accept or reject existing policy proposals, so they were most likely to intervene in the penultimate stage of the traditional policy-making cycle. The Freirean SCOs were more likely to act throughout the entire policymaking cycle. They sometimes even helped the public to understand and frame the problem in the first place, but they were especially adept at interventions in the second and last stages, helping constituents to craft and propose policies, and to modify and monitor policies as they were actually implemented. Ultimately, while the Alinskyite SCOs responded to proposals forwarded by mainstream policymakers, the Freirean tool kit helped SCOs to work toward substantively different policies and inch toward transformative social change. The following table adds upon the previous one (table 8; see chapter 5) to include the strengths and capacities utilized in each case study SCO’s signature campaign(s). 138 Chapter Six Enabling the Clincher The Alinskyite SCOs were best at coordinating protests, rallies, and accountability sessions. Accountability sessions are large assemblies where members rally for specific programs or policy proposals and hold politicians “accountable”via a series of yes-or-no questions, usually on what politicians will or will not support. According to Saul Alinsky, power tends to form around the pillars of money and people.3 The Alinskyite tool kit, with its emphasis on recruitment , focuses quite a bit on the quantitative aspect of these two pillars— that is, to fight the money-rich powers that be, low-income folks need to amass people power...