Two Nagging Questions
SHORRIS, EARL
Two Nagging Questions Gathering Power: The Future of Progressive Politics in America By Paul Osterman Beacon. 220 pp. $28.50. Reviewed by Earl Shorris Author, "Riches for the Poor:...
...The major political crusades in Texas were spurred by the Crystal City boys, who fought for Mexican-American rights...
...Blacks, as one would expect, are mainly connected to Protestant churches, Latinos to the Catholic Church...
...I talked to many members in Pharr, Texas, for instance, and do not recall meeting anyone who was not Catholic...
...It was the same with EPISO...
...Near the end of his brief, well-written book he says, pointing to the accomplishments of the IAF, "Organized people, and not simply organized money, have a strong voice in government...
...The IAF lacks the drama of the civil rights movement and its all-encompassing character...
...Perhaps the IAF is a model, but even if it is not, it has made for better lives and better government...
...Osterman does not confront the issue...
...But Jim Hightower is long gone from public office...
...Without the changes it wrought in the American psyche, most of the social legislation of the last half-century probably would not have passed...
...Why does no branch ever reach the point at which the IAF sets it free...
...he argues that community organizing is far better, far more democratic, and more beneficial to progressive hopes than the lonely abstraction of politics via television...
...Can an organization that is socially conservative be politically progressive...
...They practice democracy...
...If so, the future is not bright, at least not in Texas...
...Cortes calls the shots in the Southwest, moving organizers in and out of cities, avoiding long-term entanglements...
...The second nagging question is whether a group set up and managed by paid professionals can be fully democratic...
...This is good reporting and interesting reading, but it doesn't deal with the matter of democracy...
...Avila told me that more than once a sheriff warned them, "You better be out of town by midnight, boys...
...He goes so far as to report the dialogue between an organizer and a woman the organizer selected as a possible leader...
...was a Protestant minister, and the SCLC was the Southern Christian Leadership Conference...
...But I came away with the same reservations I had more than a decade ago...
...Of course, the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr...
...Sol follow the situation with some interest, and I wish I could say the IAF has made a difference since coming to town...
...True, but democracy must always be a risk...
...The IAF organizations are generally—and I do not know all of them by any means—politically progressive and socially conservative...
...And who could disagree with its method, its local success, the hope instilled in the people by its practices...
...But the organization does not necessarily belong to the people...
...Osterman does quote Benjamin Barber, who said, "At the heart of strong democracy is talk...
...Osterman shows how IAF professionals choose and train leaders, who then choose and train other leaders...
...People who join and attend meetings either know how to talk or learn to talk...
...Nor are the U.S...
...Reviewed by Earl Shorris Author, "Riches for the Poor: The demente Course in the Humanities," " Latinos: A Biography of the People" It has been a long time since I was seduced by the objectives of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in Texas, and I was pleased to have that good feeling again as I read Paul Osterman's new book...
...The farther south one goes in Texas the more likely the IAF is to embrace the poor, although even they are concerned about property rights, something Osterman gives little importance to in his book...
...But the civil rights movement expanded far beyond the churches...
...Osterman, who recently evaluated the IAF's activities in the Lone Star State for the Ford Foundation, gives a clear picture of the enterprise that grew out of Saul Alinsky's neighborhood organizing efforts in Chicago in the 1930s...
...The civil rights movement was progressive politically and socially, inspiring women, gays and others to also seek their rights...
...It focuses mainly on people at the nether end of the middle class...
...Why do they continue to pay dues to the central organization that then manages them, trains them, directs them in how to be democratic...
...The late Willie Velasquez, who founded the Southwest Voter Registration Program, and attorney Joaquin Avila Jr...
...Osterman finds in it "the future of progressive politics...
...The first concerns the connection of IAF units to churches...
...Among those who came out of Alinsky's work were Cesar Chavez of the United Farm Workers and Ernesto Cortes, who manages IAF branches in the Southwest...
...Osterman dances around both...
...There are two nagging questions, though, about the IAF and its methods...
...As Osterman explains, the IAF program is based upon self-interest, shifting alliances, demands for accountability from public officials, and an unwillingness to sacrifice power for principle...
...Osterman compares the IAF and the way it functions to modern media politics...
...EPISO, along with the media (Life and Harper's did major pieces on the subject), helped to bring the State of Texas to the defense of people in the colonias...
...Osterman makes the point that the civil rights movement grew out of Protestant churches, and that is certainly true, but the IAF started 20 years before the civil rights movement and it has affected the world far less...
...The developers had promised them water, streets and sewerage, but delivered nothing...
...It calls for a different name, it is a different politics...
...In that respect, the Industrial Areas Foundation is indeed democratic...
...King took all Americans of good conscience into his grand army...
...The IAF suffered a great failure in California when it became involved with an ultraconservative Roman Catholic Cardinal, but that is hardly sufficient to condemn a system...
...Hegemony without end is not democracy...
...The IAF is a top down organization...
...Thus many of the organizers in the IAF are members of the clergy, Catholic nuns, men who studied for the priesthood, and Protestant ministers...
...in a genuine democracy the organizers must eventually step away from the organized, setting them free to sink or soar...
...I do not often go home to West Texas, but someone in my immediate family has been involved in Texas Democratic politics, albeit not in elective office, for half a century...
...If it all sounds cut and dried from this brief description, much like any large business, it is not...
...IAF groups are as warm and winning as any tough-minded contingent could possibly be...
...The IAF is now a national operation, usually affiliated at the local level with churches and occasionally schools...
...As Osterman shows, on a one-to-one basis the IAF tugs at your heart and arouses your ire against the unfairness in American life...
...Whether that kind of community organizing will or could replace media politics in a nation of more than a quarter of a billion people seems questionable, yet not impossible...
...EPISO was led by Sister Mary Beth Larkin when I knew it, and worked with people who had bought land and sometimes houses in colonias (unincorporated settlements) west of El Paso along the river...
...often went from town to town to sue for voters' rights and educational opportunity...
...Osterman maintains that churches are stable organizations bound to outlast groups formed for a single purpose, like an end to flooding in a neighborhood...
...Valley Interfaith is largely Roman Catholic...
...The IAF has several large branches in the state...
...IAF units pick their targets carefully and seem almost always to succeed...
...The IAF has been hard at work there for many years, through many elections, yet it has not become a major force...
...Nonetheless, Osterman makes an impressive case for the power of local organizing...
...Campaigns run by nuns, for example, do not usually support abortion rights and many churches do not support gay rights...
...COPS was organized around people who were unhappy about the flooding of their homes on the West Side of San Antonio...
...Texas still elected Democrats when it began its activities...
...Senators from Texas...
...Ann Richards wrote a blurb for Osterman's book, but she was the last Democratic Governor of Texas...
...But who rules in a democracy...
...In Texas, where Osterman did his study, that means owners of very modest homes who have a Lockean sense of their footing in the world, but want a better life through better government...
...The man who defeated her is not a progressive's dream...
...The State of Texas would not do anything to help them, so they joined EPISO and took to blocking streets and bridges until they got help...
...These include Communities Organized for Public Service (COPS) in San Antonio, The Metropolitan Organization (TMO) in Houston, Valley Interfaith along the Rio Grande Valley, and the El Paso Interreligious Sponsoring Organization (EPISO...
...In every group there is a professional IAF organizer who chooses leaders from the membership he or she builds...
...Osterman fobs off the social conservatism by saying the IAF does not engage in single issue politics, but that is a euphemism...
...While Barber's idea would not have been news in fifth-century Athens, it comes as news to the poor and near poor in America...
...I have never met anyone in a Texas IAF affiliate who did not win me over on a personal level...
...The IAF knew how to stop the flooding in San Antonio...
...Why do the democracies of the IAF continue to need organizers...
Vol. 86 • January 2003 • No. 1
