Nonprofits and Advocacy: Engaging Community and Government in an Era of Retrenchment

6. Advocacy in Hard Times: Nonprofit Organizations and the Representation of Marginalized Groups in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina and 9/11

What are the effects of national crises on nonprofit advocacy, particularly when it comes to organizations that represent marginalized and underrepresented groups in national politics? Following the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the American political landscape has been influenced by the convergence of a range of “national crises,” including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, continued threats of terrorist violence, the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina, and the mortgage and financial crises.1 While the convergence of these phenomena has changed American politics, this terrain continues to be shaped by perennial challenges, among them enduring racial, gender, and economic inequalities. This chapter analyzes the intersections between these persistent inequalities on the one hand and episodic crises on the other, examining their implications for nonprofit organizations’ advocacy on behalf of marginalized groups. Combining original quantitative and qualitative data, I argue that crises present advocacy organizations with a combination of constraints and opportunities when it comes to addressing the enduring issues affecting their constituents. In particular, comparing the responses of organizations to 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina reveals that each of these two calamitous events has had different repercussions for liberal and conservative advocacy groups. These differences can tell us a great deal about the political opportunities and policy windows for nonprofit advocacy on behalf of groups for whom times are “always hard.” Nonprofit Advocacy in (Pretty) Good Times Nonprofit organizations, interest groups, and advocacy organizations are crucial conduits for the articulation and representation of the legal, political, and policy interests of groups such as women, people of color, and low-income chapter six Advocacy in Hard Times Nonprofit Organizations and the Representation of Marginalized Groups in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina and 9/11 dara z. strolovitch 138 Organizational Politics, Strategy, and Tactics people, who have traditionally been underserved by the two major political parties and underrepresented within the electoral system (Bass et al., 2007; Berry and Arons, 2003; Boris, 1999; Boris and Krehely, 2002; Boris and Mosher-Williams, 1998; Costain, 2005; Dahl, 1967; Frymer, 1999; Heaney, 2004; Minkoff, 1994, 1995; Weldon, 2002, 2011). Organizations advocating on behalf of marginalized groups were once outnumbered, out-resourced, and out-influenced by organizations such as business and professional associations that spoke for more powerful and all-too-often anti-egalitarian interests (Schattschneider [1960] 1975, 35). By 2000, however, there were more than 700 organizations representing women, people of color, and lowincome people in national politics, encompassing more than 40 African American organizations, more than 30 Asian Pacific American organizations, and well over 100 women’s organizations (Strolovitch, 2007). These organizations continue to make up only a small portion of the broader interest group universe that counts more than 17,000 national organizations representing much wealthier and more powerful interests. Nonetheless, groups like the National Association for Advancement of Colored People, the National Organization for Women, the Center for Law and Social Policy, the National Council of La Raza, and the National Asian Pacific American Law Center have become a significant and visible presence in Washington politics, and many argue that these organizations are among the most important representatives of and advocates for marginalized groups in the United States. Although the increase in the number of organizations has helped usher in significant legal and policy gains for these and other marginalized groups, the extent to which their promise to equalize the representational playing field has been fulfilled remains the source of much debate. And while scholars continue to echo the long-standing concerns of scholars such as E. E. Schattschneider, who were concerned with biases within the broader pressure group system that favored wealthy and powerful interests, some also express concerns about the development of biases within organizations claiming to represent marginalized populations (Berry, 1999; Hamilton and Hamilton, 1992; Skocpol, 2003; Strolovitch, 2007). Observers allege, for example , that civil rights organizations focus mainly on “middle-class” issues, that feminism is a movement of and for affluent white women, and that economic justice groups marginalize low-income women and people of color (Hamilton and Hamilton, 1992). My 2007 book Affirmative Advocacy took these debates and allegations as its point of departure. In it, I explored how advocacy organizations decide Advocacy in Hard Times 139 which battles to prioritize in an era marked by subsiding de jure discrimination but often heightened de facto inequalities, both between their marginalized constituencies on the one hand and dominant racial, gender, and income...