LETTERS
Community Organizing Editors: Michael Walzer's "Pastoral Retreat of the New Left" is sympathetic [Dissent, Fall 1979]; but some facts are wrong. The only organizations he mentions specifically...
...q Why is Mark Rudd Mad at Me...
...Speak for thyself, Michael...
...Since my article was not an interview, "permission" in the usual sense of the word did not apply...
...In those days he read Marcuse...
...Something deeper was involved here...
...The word became a litany...
...One only needs legal standing or the political skills necessary to make city councils, regulatory commissions, and congressional committees listen...
...He goes on to conclude that: "More of a welfare state, not less, is the answer to the problems of recession and unemployment...
...I had made it clear that I was working on an article about the '60s, but that explanation satisfied neither of us...
...But having worked with ACORN for four years I can state categorically that Walzer is wrong in the following particulars: (1) "Except for some union work, the new organizers don't reach into the black community...
...MARK SHRODER, Reno, Nevada Head Organizer, Nevada ACORN MICHAEL WALZER Replies: I had thought that the great virtue of today's community organizers was their candor, their toughminded sense of the difficulties of the work they are trying to do and of their own ambiguous role in the communities they enter...
...My article apparently hit some sensitive nerves on both counts...
...Clark simply believes...
...Needless to say, the angry voice at the other end of the line belonged to Mr...
...2) "This kind of politics, like every other, is routine...
...Meanwhile, the careers he ruined at Columbia—without permission, I might add—are conveniently forgotten...
...All the above played an important part in the half-century since the crash of 1929...
...The only organizations he mentions specifically in his critique of the trends in community organizing are the Midwest Academy, Massachusetts Fair Share, and my own group, ACORN...
...Schroder and I both value 367 require the mobilization of some people, not necessarily large numbers of people (else they would rarely be won...
...I also found that the welfare state there was extended to include worker participation in the management of industry, with salutory results...
...Now it appears he has become a True Believer of Emily Post, full of insistences about decorum and etiquette...
...How dare you...
...Joseph Clark stated in his article "The Kennedys—and their Enemies" that Senator Kennedy has formed coalitions that have helped labor, the poor, the deprived, etc...
...I assume that Mr...
...Any that I've had anything to do with at ACORN had none of this character...
...Clark's statement lies...
...At ACORN we do not await a movement to "deliver" our members to...
...he insisted...
...3. and 4. I also support grass-roots organizing, but I believe that it is important to recognize and admit that organizing is often only the starting point for a political campaign that culminates in negotiations, litigation, and legislative action...
...Later, over coffee, I wondered: Did Mark Rudd ask Lionel Trilling for permission before he publicly berated him as an elitist pig...
...It shouted obscenities, accused me of sleazy journalism and self-serving opportunism, ached with a deep sense of betrayal...
...Visiting, in spring '79, the Federal Republic of Germany, I found that still greater expansion of the welfare state had helped them keep unemployment to 4 percent compared with our 6 percent and 7 percent, at the same time that it had kept inflation to about 4 percent compared with the double digits we had reached...
...But most of all, it insisted that I had not asked for "permission...
...I simply resent my group being classed with them, and my opinion is that most people familiar with ACORN would not recognize it in Walzer's article...
...1. If large numbers of poor people and black people have been organized in Philadelphia, Houston, St...
...5. "We seek to have our members be that movement...
...According to you, Dissent, is "a journal devoted to .. . the values of socialism and democracy...
...Possibly I was wrong...
...My colleagues who write about Chaucer or Milton or even T. S. Eliot have it easier...
...The folly of Hooverism was replaced by measures of a welfare state and these helped prevent recurrence of a depression that some of us are old enough to remember rather vividly...
...Rudd himself...
...At the other end of the line I imagined him holding his breath until he turned blue, kicking his feet into the carpet...
...Each mobilization is enormous work—telephoning, mimeographing, canvassing, meeting, arguing, demonstrating...
...That is the job of the tenants themselves...
...How he arrived at this startling conclusion seems somewhat of a mystery to me...
...It was a sad image, a synecdoche for sadder time...
...Any lawyers we use have to understand their accountability to the membership of the organization...
...Starting this year and next they will be demanding its fulfillment by those who hold power in this country...
...Rudd firmly believed that error had no rights and that "tolerance" was a dirty word...
...3) "The rules [for tenant fights] are complex, and they require interpretation...
...They don't require, and it's not yet clear that they will build, a mass movement...
...the voice screamed...
...I'm not in retreat, literal or figurative...
...Getting a new playground usually and stopping a hike in utility rates always require the mobilization of large numbers of people...
...Then organizing as an activity passes over into pure advocay, like the work of the Nader groups...
...soon he has to bring in lawyers...
...Yes, and those two pronouns tell the whole story...
...Shroder has made such a commitment...
...Louis, Detroit, and 40 other cities, American politics should look very different than it does...
...These low- and moderate-income people have conceived and ratified a national People's Platform that demands representation in all those areas of life in America that low- and moderate-income people are affected by...
...Soon the organizer is negotiating with city officials...
...I do not question his expertise concerning the subject...
...4) "At some point it is hardly necessary to organize at all"—if one does not much care about winning...
...b) One finds "political skills" nearly useless without political muscle...
...it does not happen routinely in the experience of either low- and moderateincome people or the targets of the campaign, and it changes the political environment and political awareness of everyone involved...
...You didn't have my permission...
...2. The victories that Mr...
...Here we have an assertion that most of the things that ACORN sets out to do can be accomplished without a membership, without an active constituency, by (a) legal standing and (b) political skills...
...There was a time when Mr...
...Dissent, Winter 1980...
...5) The organizers "are literally in retreat, waiting for some upsurge of leftist activity, a national movement to which they might deliver their clients and constituents...
...And when one small victory is won, there is nothing to do but the same things again . and again...
...It doesn't make the movement more democratic if these people ritually repeat: There's nobody here but us tenants...
...We seek to have our membes BE that movement...
...If large numbers are not involved, there is no pressure for change, and "Power yields only to demand," to quote Frederick Douglass...
...I should know, having been there...
...Even to win in the courtroom it is often necessary to win first outside the courtroom, on the streets...
...The mobilization of large numbers of people is not routine...
...I don't know what tenant organizing Walzer is talking about...
...He does not bother to explain the foundations for such a statement...
...He ought to be proud of it...
...It is obvious that the nature of such a statement requires more than what Mr...
...its success depends upon one small victory after another—getting a new playground, forcing acceptance of an affirmative action program, stopping a hike in utility rates, winning an NLRB election in a hospital or office...
...We organize low- and moderateincome people, without regard to their color or nationality, and we always organize in some of the lowest income neighborhoods...
...And theirs is not, by any means, a "poor people's movement...
...The same might be said of Philadelphia, Houston, St...
...Editors: I knew, of course, that Life has a way of imitating Art and that picked-up pieces often generate lives of their own, but I was frankly unprepared for the verbal drubbing that followed my article on "Erasing the Sixties—Or, Whatever Happened to Mark Rudd...
...An organization lacking in money must show its muscle in people active in support of its goals...
...Mark Shroder sounds like any politician on the stump...
...I was...
...CHARLES PERRY Akron, Ohio JOSEPH CLARK Replies: Even in such a brief essay I should not have taken for granted that unemployment insurance is better than a dole, that a minimum wage is better than the right to pay starvation wages, that bank-deposit insurance is better than none, that medicare and medicaid are better than charity medicine, and that a complete system of medical insurance would be still better...
...I agree heartily with Mr...
...by a longdistance telephone call...
...I have no familiarity with them except in the most general terms...
...An organizer's job does not include negotiation with city officials, landlords, or anybody else...
...If so, please tell me where the value of Mr...
...SANFORD PINSKER q 368...
...q "The Kennedys . . . " Editors: In the Summer 1979 issue, Mr...
...There may be organizations in this country that correspond to the picture Walzer has drawn...
...a) Walzer seems to be under the impression that American courts are not political institutions and can be counted on not to give political decisions...
...Walzer's opinion would certainly startle the members of the City Council of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, which regularly receives visitations of large numbers of poor, black, and angry ACORN members...
...If the politics of obtaining these things is "routine," they will not be obtained...
...Those of us who do care, organize...
...Rudd still imagines he lives in a world where he sets the rules and where History has no consequences...
...they are never rousted out of bed at 12:30 A.M...
...Indeed, what sort of permission did he have in mind...
...Nader himself understands this as a result of several years of frustration in Congress and has been advocating grassroots community organizing to anyone who would listen for some time now...
...Just to keep going is an impressive achievement, and it requires a commitment to the routines of democratic politics...
...They are and they do...
...that social security is better than a poorhouse...
...Perry that I should not be lazy and I am, therefore, writing a book on the subject...
...At crucial points in that campaign, skilled professionals have crucial parts to play...
...however, if he does not attempt to clarify the reasons for his "belief," I will be forced to think that laziness has got the best of him...
...I hung up the phone...
...Perhaps his comments are true about the first two parties mentioned...
...Louis, Detroit, or 40 other ACORN cities with large black populations...
Vol. 27 • July 1980 • No. 3
