A Community Organizer's Tale

The weekend has been an eclectic mix of margaritas, mexican food and dancing - all in the name of research. The city is heaving with free year round events and street fairs, which also provide an opportunity for community groups to champion their causes. I attended a number of these this weekend, which provided a real opportunity to talk to volunteers, community leaders and elected officials.  All seemed to echo a sense of community spirit embedded in the city- a city of volunteers and not-for-profites built on a strong sense of the city's past as a site for social and civic movements. Somebody said to me "in San Francisco when people identify that something needs doing- they get together and they make it happen - it's what we do in this city..."

It is understanding the ways in which this community mobilisation happens that is of particular interest to my fellowship. I also spent some time over the past few days with Community Organizers- very much the linchpin of the Community Organizing Model here in the states.
Ruby is a community organizer with the San Francisco Organizing Project and spends much of her time supporting community leaders and Local Organizing Committees on "actions" whether they be particular campaigns or building particular community-based infrastructure to meet local needs. Her role is much akin to that of a Community Development Worker in the UK; she facilitates but doesn't lead, helps groups to build skills and capacity and helps groups to problem solve and formulate actions. The key difference however seems to be the more defined and systematic approach adopted by an organizer- their focus is channeling the groups efforts on struggles for power- and they will often revert a group back to that cause through prompts and wider discussions. They are also there to help organise but not deliver the actions themselves. These are taken on by members the Local Organizing Committees (made up of representatives of the community they are working with). When Ruby attends one of these meetings she often supports the Chair / Community Leader and will usually utilise a 30 minute agenda slot on a "training"- which will often consist of an informal workshop around a particular organizing technique i.e. public speaking or utilising the media (as I saw in Sacrametno last week). Ruby's day is diverse and varied depending on the projects she is supporting. The biggest challenge in her job she says is encouraging leaders to recognise their own abilities. Organizng has become particularly profssionalised in recent years with arange of vocational and academic degrees offered by US Universities (I stumbled across a billboard in the subway). This has been aided massively by the publishing of President Obama's book "Tales from my Father" which outlined his early career as a Community Organizer in Chicago.

I also got to meet Mike Miller for lunch. Mike is author of the book "A Community Organizer's Tale- People and Power in San Francisco" - I read this book before my trip and was therefore really keen to meet up with the author - somewhat of a veteran in community organizing in the city- with a career spanning 4 decades in the field. Mike's book plots the journey of the Mission Coalition Organization in the late 60s-  and the plight of that community in dealing with the consequence of a City Hall led programme of redevelopment across their neighbourhood. The coalition gained 1000's of members through church congregations, neighbourhood and community associations and local businesses- all of whom contributed membership fees to pay the salary of Mike as the Lead Organizer and associated campaign costs. Mike had been trained by Alinsky (seen as the founder of the organizing movement) and utilised those skills to support the MCO in furthering its aims.  Whilst the initial cause for coming together was through a fear of urban renewal and gentrification, the coalition was able to actively mobilise the community to consider other more fundamental issues, such as education and employment. The book is well worth a read and gives a very clear indication of what worked and what didn't.

Today Mike runs his own training centre- "Organize!"
http://organizetrainingcenter.org/about.html
Mike was eager to hear more about the British programme and was sceptical, from the information he had already heard, about whether it would be a pure community organizing model in the Alinsky tradition of organizing. I was overwhelmed by Mike's passion for the cause after over 40 years in the field - he even offered to come back to the UK with me to run some training sessions for community leaders. Mike has also sent me a wealth of literature and papers which I am yet to fully digest. Mike reiterated observations I have picked up over the past few weeks, - organizing is about power - organizing must be lead by communities -  and organizng must build a sense of association and grow from a common set of shared values. Perhaps what struck me most about this was when Mike mentioned a group he was currently working with and I asked "What kind of issues are they looking to address?", Mike replied "They are not yet - the first thing is about coming together to address the issue of power - the specific issues they focus on comes after they have done their research" - In community development practice in the UK- it is usually the grassroots issues that brings people together - the solidarity and community building and strategising over social change often comes later. Mike also reiterated the skills sets required to be both a community organizer and a community leader. The art of being a community organizer is about asking groups questions to get them to rethink their approaches. Mike also believed that for community organzing to be truly independent and owned by the local community- organizing must be funded by membership fees. He suggested that if each household in a block were to pay $40 per month (about £30) it would fund an organizer and associated field and office costs. Mike's observation however, was that organizng hadn't become established in the UK in the same way as the US because of the Trade Union movement in Britain. Certainly the campign for worker's rights- often the focus of community organizng efforts in the US  has been spearheaded by the Trade Union movement in Britain over the last century...

I am planning to meet some other grass roots organizers over the next few days to understand their motivation for organizing and the methodology they adopt. There seems to be a clear distinction between not-for-profit organisations engaging communities on behalf of state institutions or delivering programmes on behalf of the state and not-for-proift organisations developing to challenge state institutions and tackle a perceived notion of inequality and social injustice. The community organizng ethos appears to fit with the latter.

In his book Mike states "Community organizing assumes there are situations, structures and systems that must be changed if values of justice, equality, freedom, security, community and democracy are to be realised" (2009:185). The tale of an organizer is therefore a clear and very distinct one!