ORGANIZING AT THE GRASS ROOTS

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...Almost no group has successfully raised the issue of socialism...

...they, like Walzer, see community and labor organizations as small collectivities asking only their "due" from the system...

...This is quite unlike a court case brought by a single tenant...

...It seems significant to us that neither organizers nor members view the staff as playing ministerial or advocacy roles...

...Yet, as Walzer points out, their immediate demands can often be met by state concessions of small collective entitlements...

...In contrast to early Alinsky organizers, most current staff members do not expect that their roles will "wither away" with time...

...Our lack of connection to earlier protest movements and our first-hand experience with several organizations have led us to evaluate the groups' successes and failures in achieving their own goals...

...The picket lines brought publicity to the group's cause, embarrassed the landlord, and won the attention of the housing inspector...

...A new sidewalk, lower utility rates, a cleaner river, or a new union contract represent collective gains not won by any one person...

...The weaknesses of the grass-roots strategy are painfully clear...

...The two sides— employer and worker—remain in obvious conflict...

...Next, members demanded that the inspector tour the buildings with them...

...The pace, excitement, and aggressive tone of direct actions contrasts sharply with the drawnout, dry process of litigation...

...mands...

...Some groups also have successfully trained members for staff positions...

...Evaluating new grass-roots organizations from within and on their own terms brings to light their real accomplishments...

...A successful drive results in a permanent forum for conflict...

...Its small victories pose no immediate threat to corporate power, not to speak of capitalism as a whole...

...It results in part from the belief that class struggle occurs in many places and forms (community as well as workplace), and in part from the failure of single-issue campaigns to build lasting organizations...

...rather, members see themselves in that way...

...Objectively, the people they organize have relatively little power...

...One group, angered at the code violations in the buildings of a particular landlord, mobilized neighbors and tenants to picket in front of the buildings and at the landlord's house in the suburbs...

...It also encourages people to see individual problems in social terms...

...First, we want to distinguish unions from the consumer-based organizations that are more frequently associated with the grass-roots movement...

...As young people recently trained as organizers by "old New Leftists," we have a somewhat different view of the nature and potential of the current organizing...

...Many feel differently about themselves...

...This process is known in organizing circles as "empowerment...

...Certainly, the groups do not achieve anything approaching mass mobilization...

...For instance, the decision to build multi-issue organizations is a political one...

...a union is a form of institutionalized power...

...Organizing the poor as a separate group allowed working-class Americans to view their own welfare as distinct from that of the poor, and to see the gains made by poor people as coming out of their own pockets...

...We want to explain, from the organizers' perspective, what the actual mobilization process means to staff and to members...

...But it is not generally true that organizers "use" members as representatives of the working class...

...Still, organizers do seem to be permanent fixtures of the new organizations...

...Between us we have worked in a variety of community, labor and tenants' organizations...

...They are mobilizing and empowering people who were previously unorganized...

...Further, the mediating role of the state in a union drive is both clearly defined and limited by law...

...From inside the organizations, we saw clearly the extent of mobilization that does occur and the significant changes in self-perception that people experience as a result of winning small, reformist victories...

...While legal or advocacy skills are needed in some cases, these alone are usually not sufficient to win concessions...

...What they gain from overcoming self-doubts about their right to make political demands can perhaps be dispersed as organizations approach the limits of their real power...

...Its potential remains largely unknown and unrealized...

...In coming together with others over a common concern, individuals see more clearly that certain hardships are not unique to them or due to some failure on their part, but are social in their origins and solutions...

...2) giving people a sense of their own power...

...In choosing and carefully planning a campaign, its potential for involving members is often more important to organizers than how easily it can be won...

...That working-class people begin to share a sense of their collective power is a necessary, though far from sufficient, condition for more radical social change...

...direct-action organizing: (1) winning real, immediate improvements in people's lives...

...I didn't think I could do anything...

...The grass-roots organizing of the 1970s is an ambitious and at least partially successful effort to bring working-class women and men into the political arena as organized, self-conscious actors...

...Yet, grass-roots organizing is still more than (and distinct from) parish-tending...

...In addition, organizers hope that they will be able to achieve the radical political education of at least some members, using lessons learned in local struggles to raise socialism as an issue...

...The organizations that provide structure and direction to this "movement" are indeed somewhat precarious, often staff-dominated, and highly dependent on immediate victories...

...Although majority organizing seems unable in practice to incorporate the underclass in its predominantly local forms, it is not simply a "retreat...

...Members feel they have won the gains by working together and challenging the power structure...

...If the organizations can continue to build effective local bases, they may present a much more significant power constellation in the future...

...They do well if they can count 5 to 10 percent of a given community as members (unions again excepted...

...While this analysis is inaccurate in some ways (chiefly regarding the role of the state), it has nonetheless shaped the work of current organizers...

...I was scared to open my mouth when I first came into the [community organization]," one woman said...

...She later became fund-raising chair, vice-chair of the organization, and a vocal critic of local government policy and corporate profiteering...

...The organizations use both tactics, but nearly all of them focus on organizing for direct action...

...They used his presence to convince people who lived near the deteriorating buildings to join the tour...

...The organizations' very success at empowerment, however, raises other problems...

...In some unions, for example, collective bargaining sessions include large groups of workers rather than just a union official and lawyer...

...Unlike community-organizing, unionorganizing directly exposes the different interests of workers and employers...

...In order to win immediate victories, the organizations are both dependent on and committed to mobilizing their working-class members...

...Wages, the organization of production, and other work-related issues are the essence of a union drive...

...Further, they approach a more conscious class identification with each other than they have had before...

...Further, the broader constituency to which the groups appeal seems to identify with the workingclass activists...

...When the landlord was finally brought to court for the violations, neighbors and tenants were there to testify and support each other...

...3) beginning to alter the existing unequal relations of power...

...As Michael Walzer points out, the structure of the American welfare state pushes them toward traditional interestgroup roles...

...They deliberately choose issues that require mobilization...

...The issue won the support of the inspector and was brought to court directly as a result of neighborhood mobilization...

...Empowerment, both individual and collective, fundamentally differentiates direct-action organizing from "advocacy" or "welfare politics...

...Even when groups are forced into negotiating roles, they refuse to send in an individual representative...

...The commitment to empowerment shapes the strategy and practice of organizing...

...They recognize that their middleclass backgrounds have provided them with skills, experience, and a confidence in their ability to act politically not generally characteristic of the working-class members...

...nor do they see members as 411 "clients...

...In the coming years, grass-roots organizing may provide a solid basis for a broader movement for social change in America...

...For the most part the groups are not trying to force an expansion of the welfare state...

...In the current political conditions, the groups seem unable to escape falling into some advocacy roles...

...BESIDES MOBILIZATION, the achievement most visible to us after working in several grass-roots organizations is that members are changed in positive ways as a result of their participation in the groups...

...Although their original intent was to attack corporations, their lack of power, combined with the structure of the welfare state, pushes them into interest-group roles...

...Here we focus primarily on community groups organized around consumption-related demands...

...THE GOALS of grass-roots, or direct-action, organizing are derived from a thoughtful criticism of 1960s organizing and an economic and political analysis specific to the 1970s...

...Both democratic control of organizations and direct action as a pressure tactic are emphasized because they give members leadership skills, as well as confidence in their abilities to make changes in their lives...

...Seeing people like themselves 412 confront landlords and officials gives even the unmobilized more of a sense of their own potential power than when professionals act as intermediaries or advocates...

...Ralph Nader notwithstanding, the organizers and leaders could achieve little without the vocal support and pressure of a mobilized base...

...Even when from the outside these gains look, as Walzer says, like "any other welfare benefit," they appear quite different to local workers and community residents who have spent months fighting for them...

...The hearing itself, instead of involving only two individuals, became a confrontation between the entire neighborhood and the landlord...

...In community-organizing this is less true, for the target of protest is often confused...

...Welfare bureaucrats are both familiar and comfortable with interest-group deThis article is based on work done collectively by us and by Adair Dammann, Sarah Royce, and Stephanie Van Dyke...

...Our thinking reflects our combined experience...

...Neither the image of minister nor that of lawyer fits these organizers...

...Three explicit goals form the basis of current •Harry Boyte, "The Populist Challenge," Socialist Revolution, March-April 1977, p. 52...

...The leaders who are currently being trained and gaining experience are part of a constituency that has never been organized in America: women, service workers, low-paid production workers, whitecollar workers...

...Much organizing work remains to be done...

...Similarly, when an official requests a meeting with one or two representatives of a community group, the organization insists that he or she meet with all its members at once...

...In our experience, the current organizing visibly gives some working-class people a sense of their own power...

...However crude the class analysis that attempts to unite "most Americans, black and white, poor and middle income, women and Men, against the centers of power and privilege,"* it is at least an aggressive strategy designed to overcome traditional divisions within the working class...

...Similarly, the organizers' choice of constituency reflects their desire to avoid the exclusive focus on students and poor people, which contributed to the isolation and weakness of some 1960s movements...