CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE & "RESISTANCE" -A Symposium: On Organizing The Poor

...The fight for basic survival makes him realistically skeptical about rhetoric and promises, however appealing they may seem in various ways...

...quite the contrary, he yearns for the opportunity...

...Actually you do more organizing with your ears than with your tongue.3 The professional approach to organizing demands a heavy investment of time and personnel in the process of listening to grievances...

...4)certain labor unions, working independently or in conjunction with other groups...

...They feel oppressed and frustrated, but can usually express these feelings only in behalf of other groups—Negroes, farm workers, welfare recipients...

...The first assumption is that the stranger is motivated in the usual way: he is probably a policeman, a bill collector, a researcher, a dope peddler, a welfare investigator, a salesman, or a reporter...

...How much of a given community must be involved before it is possible to say that the "community" has achieved representation...

...Yet the psychology of the ghetto itself militates against a too ambitious and large-scale perspective in community organizing...

...66 ON ORGANIZING THE POOR are numerous indeed...

...THE NEW LEFTISTS thus make ambivalent organizers, because they suspect that successful organizations develop bureaucracies of their own and tend to join the "Establishment...

...indeed, the daily struggle for survival leaves little room for any other concern...

...Civil rights groups are uncertain and uneasy in their new roles as urban organizers, seeking with limited success to move from the task of organizing in the rural or small-town South to the immensely complex arena of the sprawling big-city ghettos of the North...

...1 Incipient forms of community unionism have already appeared in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Newark...

...it was to be constructed around a nucleus of union members living in the Watts area...

...As local participation and leadership increase, the organizer's function again recedes into passivity and finally into withdrawal...

...THOUGH MANY OF THE YOUNG and idealistic radicals of this generation may be convinced that "participatory democracy" is a revolutionary concept of their own making, a re-reading of Saul Alinsky's Reveille for Radicals will remind us that the essential idea has been around for at least a quarter of a century...

...Despite the obvious emotional strength of "black nationalism," a proposal by SNCC for incorporation of the Watts area into a separate city has never aroused broad support...

...cit., p. 56...

...The New Leftists, many of them Anglo-Saxon youngsters from middle-class family backgrounds, bring with them an uncompromising rejection of the prevailing value system but often very little in the form of a definable program...

...TWO has subsequently sought and obtained government contracts to administer training programs and so forth...

...The "Establishment," a vast complex of institutions, includes most labor unions, college administrations, governmental programs, corporations, and the military services—all of which establish rules designed to protect their institutional interests and to exploit those who are outside their framework...

...indeed, they resulted in the creation of labor organizations which, in the view of some New Leftists, have become part of the "Establishment...

...Is a community organization genuinely independent and indigenous when a major part of its funding comes from outside the community, whether from a foundation, a church group, or government...

...HE POOR SHOULD BE FREE from the tyranny of the bureaucrats and the dogmatic militants alike...

...5 Young radical organizers are more likely to enter the community with preconceived idealistic notions, usually commendable in themselves but often unrelated to the realities of organizing in a slum ghetto...

...At times, this becomes analogous to a civil libertarianism that defends only the rights of left-wingers...

...A combination of Watts area residents, union representatives, and UCLA staff promoted the organization early in 1965...

...Can uneducated and unsophisticated people administer a mass organization so as to avoid the omnipresent traps set by politicians, bureaucrats, and other members of the "Establishment...

...The objection of Watts residents is directly to the point: "How can a poor community like this finance a city government of its own...

...THE SOURCES of the current movement for community organizing are diverse...

...4 If any organization really represents only a small minority, in a direct sense, the possibilities of misrepresentation 2 "The Professional Radical: Conversations with Saul Alinsky" (Part I), Harper's, June 1965, p. 45...

...A participation of 5 per cent in any community, he then said, "is a tremendous democratic phenomenon...

...It is precisely this kind of person, in fact, who is most likely to gravitate to leadership positions in any new organization, because he is the one most sophisticated about the available opportunities for advancement and most motivated to pursue them...

...Their rights as individual human beings, with a diversity of values and personalities, should take precedence over the administrative demands of the bureaucracy and the emotional or ideological needs of the community organizers...

...They strongly disapprove of popular opinion and mass rule in the prevailing forms...

...When strangers come into the community, spouting unfamiliar philosophies and claiming to be altruistic in motivation, they will be eyed with extra suspicion...

...The problem of finances similarly complicates the task of an organizer...

...The experience of WLCAC reflects both the potentialities and the limitations inherent in community organizing...

...5 "Conversations" (Part II), op...

...their revolution is essentially a personal one, manifested most clearly in the material self-denial which they not only accept but exalt...

...The unpleasant truth is that many of the potential "indigenous" organizers seek mainly to smooth their own path to what the radicals might define as middle-class status...

...The history of Negro political activity is also instructive...

...THESE DILEMMAS are particularly acute for the idealistic and youthful radical organizer...

...Though Alinsky has publicly set down a general rule (perhaps not to be taken literally) that the organizations he promotes should become self-supporting after three years, he found it necessary to abandon the rule in the case of The Woodlawn Organization in Chicago, which is considered to be his outstanding achievement...

...The organizer must not impose his own preconceptions upon the community...

...and after all, don't they have the right to choose that option, however irritating it may be to both conservative suburbanites and leftist militants...

...to many a ghetto resident, all life is a "hustle," and everyone has his own "bag...

...No one can be sure that sometime in the future The Woodlawn Organization in Chicago will not go the way of the Back of the Yards movement, or that the striking farm workers in Delano, California, will not concentrate on bettering their own economic and social status instead of focusing on the development of a new society...

...He has no objections to being "corrupted" by money...

...69 PAUL BULLOCK New Left organizers, added to the diversity of interests within the community, makes it difficult for them to develop concrete affirmative programs in ways that can be related to the exercise of power...

...Ghetto life breeds a deep cynicism about human motivation...

...65 PAUL BULLOCK self is ambivalent because it is at least partly within the "Establishment...

...THE EXPERIENCE OF ORGANIZING the Watts Labor Community Action Committee, in Los Angeles, is revealing...

...nevertheless, the principle they advocate is a twoedged sword...

...Each one, in fact, fits easily within, even as it slightly modifies, the framework of American capitalism...

...3)New Left organizations, predominantly white...

...What the New Left appears to espouse is "participatory democracy" for certain defined groups which either share its values or engage its sympathy...

...Organizers of such groups fall roughly into four categories: (1) Minsky and his staff of professionals, through the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation...

...It is difficult to run an organization on a strictly volunteer basis and without a reliable source of funding...

...Presumably the organizer has fulfilled his function: a community organization has been built...

...The committee's activities, highly meritorious in most respects, have therefore been well within the conventional framework of public policy, and its role has been primarily that of a program administrator and not an abrasive critic of institutions...

...It's like putting kids into a lion's cage . . . The problem with those kids is that they always want the third act—the resolution, the big drama...

...Socially conscious unions such as the UAW and the Packinghouse Workers, and some staff members of the AFL—CIO's Industrial Union Department, are actively promoting the formation of "community unions...

...Obviously neither Minsky nor any other organizer will adhere closely to a quantitative standard, but the point is simply that no organization directly represents more than a relatively small minority of the community...

...Meanwhile, we should keep striving for the less ambitious victories of the moment...

...The resulting program, later renewed and expanded and still in operation, has received praise even from such respectable sources as the Los Angeles Times, usually not known as a friend of organized labor...

...Some of the young radicals, especially those who have had experience in attempting to organize urban ghettos, are aware of these realities...

...may be involved...

...Because most of these young organizers are intellectuals, their belief in participatory democracy coexists uneasily with an elitist strain...

...Alinsky himself raised the question of organizational representativeness in Reveille for Radicals, and his answer further emphasizes the complexity of the issue...

...Hence they must rely upon volunteers or seek outside funding...

...Most ghetto residents do not trust the "revolutionary" any more than do the more affluent members of society...

...Essentially, he is interested in only one thing— escaping from poverty...

...Once having acquired this knowledge, he must evaluate it in terms of how best to build an organization out of the raw material already present in the community...

...The outsider, of course, can usefully provide technical knowledge and political support, but he must remain sensitive to the delicacy of his relationship with the community...

...Attitudes and interests vary sharply from one person to another, in low-income Negro areas as well as in the less alienated parts of the city...

...Jack Conway and Woodrow Ginsburg of the IUD have suggested that a community union "could merge traditional trade union functions with modern communitycenter functions...

...They should be manipulated neither to serve capitalism nor to destroy it...

...and in turn this judgment becomes the basis for trying to channel their actions...

...68 ON ORGANIZING THE POOR From his own viewpoint, of course, the New Leftist is wholly correct: none of these measures fundamentally alters the prevailing social system...

...They are inclined, however, to develop a new set of clichés and stereotypes ("middle class," "Establishment," "participatory democracy") which can only obscure the complexity of the issues involved in organizing poor communities and may even reduce the effectiveness of those intent upon building viable organizations...

...Yet the effort to organize previously unorganized (and supposedly unorganizable) communities has substantial merit in and of itself—even if it achieves only limited goals within the framework of a considerably less-than-perfect society...

...6 Others may be so blinded by their internal emotional conflicts that they respond more to their own needs than to the interests of the community...

...The opponents of the system, therefore, are confounded by the fact that if the Establishment produces results satisfactory to the residents, it merely increases its strength in the community...

...Needless to say, their ascetic philosophy is not shared by the poor...

...the people who are most verbal about "problems" are by that very fact unrepresentative of a community which is not oriented to frank discussion in the presence of outsiders...

...They're the characters who rode West in Steinbeck's trucks, in The Grapes of Wrath...

...The young radicals would answer that the more affluent communities are already organized, and they would merely extend that power to the poor...

...The reason, in part, is that the diversity of interests and personalities is reflected more readily on the "positive" than on the "negative" side...

...It is easier to organize in Woodlawn, where there appeared to be a common enemy in the University of Chicago, than in Watts, where the enemy is more amorphous and harder to define...

...Wycliffe Mutsune for research assistance in the preparation of this article...

...Their "revolutionary" experience is no longer vicarious, and there is no danger, as there always is in community organizing, that the genuinely deprived will reject their radical values...

...Minsky is a professional, coldly realistic in his approach to tactics, fascinated by power, temperamentally suited to the public role of "trouble-maker," contemptuous of amateurish do-gooders...

...4 Reveille for Radicals...

...The complex task of the outsider who wishes to help build an effective community organization is to assure, as much as possible, that the leaders coincidentally serve the broader interests of their community in the process of advancing their much narrower and more personal aims This requires a certain Alinskylike toughness, combined with a genuine commitment to both the desirability and the feasibility, of creating a community-based organi7ation...

...They want to skip the first act, the second act, the tediousness, the listening...

...Yet such results can be obtained, as a rule, only by working within the "system," even though some sort of direct action (demonstrations, boycotts, etc...

...ERRATUM On p. 15, second column, third line from the top, there is a Printer's Error: instead of the running number 7. a capital A was accidentally printed...

...One may hope (Continued on page 76) 70 ON ORGANIZING THE POOR (Continued from page 70) that "the poor don't want to be middleclass," but clearly a great many of them will settle for a secure job and a comfortable house in the suburbs...

...Poor communities may sometimes lack the economic base to support organizations of their own, with paid staff...

...Perhaps, in the course of their rise to higher ecenomic levels, their own cultural and personal values will permeate the larger society and generate changes for the better...

...In revolting against the college bureaucracies, they assert their own feelings and values...

...For the moment, it may be enough to assure that they have some freedom of choice, and that they are not simply the victims of manipulation...

...The young New Leftists are valuable in their willingness to unsettle the more comfortable bureaucrats and to challenge the pretenses of the traditional "leaders," including many of the liberals...

...Poor people are not immune from 67 PAUL BULLOCK the selfishness and careerism which pervade our society...

...How is it possible to guarantee that the organization's executive board is responsive primarily to the needs of the total community and not merely to its own individual or collective interests...

...2) civil rights organizations, predominantly Negro...

...For example, a community union could bring tenants together to bargain collectively with slumlords...

...The world is divided between the "takers" and the "taken," and one purpose of living is to stay in the former and out of the latter category...

...Despite the status of Negroes as the most exploited group within the economy, and theoretically a likely target for Communist appeals, the Communist party has had remarkably little success in enlisting recruits or sympathizers from the Negro community...

...The unions have a cadre of experienced organizers, but again the techniques of organizing in a factory are only partially applicable to a wider community, and organized labor itThe author is grateful to Mr...

...Alinsky is impatient with his younger and more impulsive contemporaries in the field of community organization: It requires a certain degree of sophistication in terms of tactics to organize a community, and some of the younger civilrights leaders don't have it...

...Certainly, they cannot be satisfied when the result of their efforts is reflected only in a greater enlistment of Americans into the detested middle class...

...the communities differ only in the extent to which those ambitions can be realized...

...And if no results are forthcoming, the organization will probably die...

...Furthermore, the quasi-anarchism of the 6 Quoted in "The New Radicals," Time, April 28, 1967, p. 27...

...Alinsky has noted the importance of having an identifiable enemy (such as Bull Connor in Alabama and urban renewal in Chicago's Woodlawn area) as a stimulus to organization...

...Furthermore, communities are rarely homogeneous, even though they may be segregated...

...7 Paul Goodman, "Berkeley in February," DISSENT, Spring 1965, p. 162...

...In 1967, almost every urban area where racial and cultural minorities are concentrated contains at least one organization which purports to represent the needs of the traditionally unrepresented poor...

...Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945, p. 201...

...Yet when paid staff positions are created, the internal competition among candidates may become bitter and intense...

...But as the work proceeded, one factor soon became evident: in an area like Watts, active union members are an "elite...

...3 "A Professional Radical Moves in on Rochester: Conversations with Saul Minsky" (Part II), Harper's, July 1965, p. 56...

...He moves from passive listening to active work with that material, using his experience and organizational sophistication to draw residents into the process of organizing together...

...his role is initially passive, focused on an objective ascertainment of the feelings, institutions, and indigenous leadership in the area...

...The common thread that binds the groups together philosophically is a belief in democracy and in the capacity of relatively uneducated people to represent their own interests effectively...

...Nevertheless, it would be difficult to sustain the argument that the unions have not been of tangible benefit to groups which were previously unrepresented within the industrial structure...

...Without necessarily abandoning this suspicion completely, the ghetto resident may next assume that the newcomer is a "patsy" who is exploitable as a source of occasional or frequent loans, influence with probation officers, training allowances, and so forth...

...Most have tasted the presumed joys and advantages of middle-class life and now consciously reject them...

...The paradox faced by Community organizers, however, is that the achievement of their goal—a functioning and independent organization—seems to require at least a measure of conscious manipulation of motivations and attitudes...

...THE ISSUES with which a community organization will concern itself normally fall into the practical, short-run, bread-andbutter category which some New Leftists would condemn as "reformist," "compromise," "half-measures," "liberal palliatives": school lunches, tutorial projects, crossing guards, urban renewal, community improvement, training programs, employment, and so on...

...No wonder, then, that the youngsters welcome Paul Goodman's description of American education as "mere exploitation...

...Tom Hayden, who has organized in Newark, describes his aims as "rent control, play streets, apartment repairs, higher welfare payments, jobs...

...The initial listening process implies a conscious or accidental selection of informants...

...Perhaps their group identity will be sufficiently preserved that they remain at least partly resistant to the temptations of conventional middle-class living...

...Thus, the sit-down strikes of the 1930's failed to usher in a brand-new social system...

...As persons with steady work, cars, property of their own, and insurance policies, their attitudes and motives often diverged from those of the self-ordained ministers, ambitious local "politicians," and the operators with various personal gimmicks who were mixed in among the poor people attracted to the meetings...

...Alinsky, however, does not glorify or romanticize the poor: "Too often I've seen the have-nots turn into haves and become just as crummy as the haves they used to envy...

...The history of this movement in the intervening period is sobering and instructive: the Back of the Yards community is today a bastion of conformity and segregation...

...Any community organizer confronts the dilemma that the people of the area expect visible results within the reasonably near future, or they will see little point in supporting the organization...

...The critics of capitalism may or may not take comfort from the fact that social revolutions often occur at the "wrong" place and the "wrong" time, for the "wrong" reasons...

...See also Reveille for Radicals, passim...

...They also fail to recognize that the basic ambitions of the poor and the rich are similar...

...He is not at all concerned about a mass redistribution of income, long-run social revolution, or any other concern of the young radical...

...Alinsky's work, first published in 1945, is replete with detailed descriptions of the varied ways by which a People's Organization can be built, offering as its most concrete example the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council, organized in Chicago in 1939...

...The organizational experience and leadership potential of union members would presumably offer a strong base for organizing...

...This implies a freedom of choice, a freedom from manipulation...

...But how does one define a "community organization" in practical terms...

...1 "Extension of Collective Bargaining to New Fields," Proceedings of the 19th Annual Winter Meeting, Industrial Relations Research Association, December 28-29, 1966, p. 308...

...This is partly true...

...apparently people will organize more quickly to repel the threats or defeat the plans of others than to advance their own spontaneous ideas and proposals...

...Nothing can be judged certain or predictable in this process...

...Some of the fruit ranchers in California steam around in Cadillacs and treat the Mexican-American field hands like vermin...

...Yet the best a community organizer can usually expect is to help move the residents from the traditional stance of apathy and preoccupation with personal survival to a concern with those issues which, with good planning and some luck, can be resolved with tangible benefit to the entire community...

...Only after a long period of time, and after the newcomer has been tested in many ways and found reliable, will the basis emerge for a genuine rapport and trust Above all else, the ghetto resident is pragmatic...

...When substantial federal funding for a summer-time youth program in Watts became available in midyear, WLCAC was selected to administer it...

...Alinsky is explicit on the point that organizers always talk and act in terms of interests and experience of those being organized...

...if they achieve power on the campus, they achieve it presumably to advance their own ideals...

...Know who those bastards are...

...The ghetto resident, in the poorest and most alienated category, is the product of a cruel environment, and this hardly increases his patience and forbearance...

...Their "revolutionary" experience is mainly a vicarious one, seen through the eyes of the actually exploited...

...Led by a dynamic and aggressive UAW shop steward, a long-time resident of Watts, the organization achieved some public recognition and community status in 1966, when it was active in an apparently successful drive to secure a new county hospital in the area...

...A judgment must be made as to the motivations of people in the community and of "leaders" whose decisions may influence the success of organizing...

...They identify themselves with those who share neither power nor affluence within American society, but often find themselves in the anomalous position of belonging by background to the "exploiting" rather than the "exploited" class...