2 page reflective analysis paper

Downtown St. Louis facing the capitol rotunda and arch. Top inset photo: Redbrick houses, indicative o f St. Louis's historical architecture. Bottom inset photo: Gentrification over the last two decades has dramatically reshaped the D elm ar Loop into one o f the prem ier real estate districts in the city.

Community Organizing in St. Louis B y S C O T T HUM PHREY History and the Challenges of Organizing in St. Louis

T hree broad issues rooted in the historical context of St. Louis, entrench the status quo and limit opportunities to organize for social change. Examining these problems means taking into account the intransigence of certain social and

political problems set into motion more than a century ago in many cases. T h e challenges are: (1) spatial & political fragmentation; (2) ongoing racial divisions; and an (3) 14 | Social Policy | Spring | 2015

antagonistic state legislature. Each of these challenges and the sub-challenges associated with them offers insight into the shape progressive organizing takes across the metro area. Although activists work in a variety of settings and with varying demographics, die efforts that have been most successful at jumping to the metropolitan scale or to the state level have confronted these challenges strategically and exploiting opportunities for organizing in the local context.

L e ft photo: Colonel Edw ard Butler, a notorious city boss who ran the corrupt Democratic Barry machine fr o m 1876, the yea r o f the “Great Divorce” u n til his indictment in 1904. R ig h t photo: D red Scott, p la in tiff in the fam ous 185 7 Supreme Court decision in which the non-citizen status o f persons o f African descent was upheld.

Spatial & political fragmentation Reformists and activists working in St. Louis

confront a landscape characterized by urban sprawl, political factionalism and uneven service delivery. The contemporary population inherits the accumulated legacy of one crucial folly: city-county separation - that set the subsequent path in motion. The Great Divorce of 1876, as it is known to historians, established St. Louis as the first municipal home-rule charter (Stein 2002). City leaders were concerned that overweening ‘out-state’ interests, particularly rural voters exerting influence on taxation issues (Primm 1998, 297) would subject the increasingly important shipping site to unwanted interference. As a result, they demarcated the city by its 1876 borders, abrogating any future annexation and preserving self- determination in municipal governance. The legacy of this decision and the full weight of its implications cannot be overstated. Cordoning off the city at such a stage of relative infancy has spawned huge challenges for generating adequate revenue to fund service delivery to this day. It has also meant that the urban area constitutes a hyper- fragmented polity. Today, the metro area is the second- most fragmented MSA in the country (Miller & Lee 2011), with hundreds of municipalities forming in not only suburban settings but also the inner-ring belt that would have been annexed in comparable urban areas throughout the early to mid-20th century.

Within the city, another slate of challenges diminished the opportunities for progressive reform throughout the 20th century. As Stein (2002) writes in her history of the city, The Triumph of Tradition, “by the end of the 20th century, St. Louis remained virtually alone in perpetuating a fragmented ward system.” Even within the municipal boundaries, a ward-based political arrangement has persisted, entrenching a system of patronage and factional interests. St. Louis’s “unreformed” city politics resisted progressive-era reforms of the first three decades of the 20th century, institutionalizing only weak civil service requirements and maintaining a weak mayoral role through the 1914 & 1941 municipal charters (Stein 2002, xvii). The patronage system was institutionalized throughout the late 19th and first half of the 20th century by a series of city bosses, most notoriously Colonel Edward Butler (Zink 1930). A factional ward-based system and weak mayor constitute and mutually reinforce one another, resisting efforts by a long line of leaders to cut through the fragmented political environment. The Great Divorce helped to lay the path that defined the 20th century of St. Louis politics, entrenching a set of provincial interests and conditioning the urban area as one that would be very difficult to politically organize, despite the interests of a heartened a charismatic leader. N ot until the 1950s and the infusion of federal urban renewal monies and consolidating

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Population & Race, St. Louis City & Country A C S , 2 0 0 8 - 2 0 1 2 e s t i m a t e s

S t . L o u is C i t y S t . L o u is C o u n t y

T o t a l P o p u l a t i o n 3 1 8 , 5 2 7 9 9 9 , 1 4 7

W h i t e 1 3 4 , 5 8 1 4 2 . 3 % 6 8 8 , 4 7 1 6 8 . 9 %

B l a c k o r A f r i c a n A m e r i c a n 1 5 5 , 4 9 5 4 8 . 8 % 2 3 0 , 2 7 3 2 3 %

H i s p a n i c o r L a t i n o 1 1 , 0 0 5 3 . 5 % 2 5 , 0 1 6 2 . 5 %

A s i a n 8 , 4 6 1 2 . 7 % 3 4 , 1 2 5 3 . 4 %

O t h e r 8 , 9 8 5 2 . 7 % 2 1 . 2 6 2 2 . 2 %

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Am erican Com m unity Survey, D P 0 5 : D em ographic & Housing Estimates, 2 0 0 8 - 2 0 1 2

banking influence over issues of local urban development would a coalition emerge that could cut through the morass and stagnation of city politics.

T he importance of the city-county split emerges decisively amidst the great suburbanization of the United States beginning in the first decades of the 20th century. This frantic settlement of outlying areas in exclusively residential areas hit St. Louis with intensity after the Second World War. Cohn G ordon’s Mapping Decline (2008) addresses the consequences of unrelenting sprawl amidst social and political fragmentation. T he key consequence of a pattern of suburbanization and rigid municipal boundaries entailed a shrinking city population, wreaking further havoc on municipal tax receipts and in turn, service capacity. As the federal government reduced its investment into cities after the 1960s, St. Louis’s problems worsened. T he combination of subsidized urban sprawl, racialized disinvestment and real estate steering has led to massive white flight [and later black flight], reducing the city’s population from a peak of over 850,000 in 1950 to under 320,000 in 2010. Race, undoubtedly, has played a central role in this process and the city’s history.

O n g o in g r a c ia l d iv is io n Much like the Great Divorce of 1876, the long-term

effect of an institutionalized policy of segregation casts an immense shadow on St. Louis to this day. Missouri was admitted as a slave state in the 1840s as a result of the Missouri Compromise. Helping to inflame the antagonism that led to the Civil War was the 1857 Dred Scott decision that played out in St. Louis’s Old Courthouse in which

the U.S. Supreme Court ruled slaves could not be counted as citizens (Primm 1998, 228). As German and Irish immigration increased, nativism rose alongside it, leading to conflagrations of violence and unrest. T h e dimensions of this violence etched a landscape of separation, division and hostility as the immigrant, increasingly Catholic city faced alienation from the mostly Protestant and rural state (Stein 2002). Perhaps it is not surprising that city voters in 1876 would support the [ultimately fateful] decision to adopt independent status as a way of avoiding rural and conservative interference. Race, much more than religion, however, carried the greatest momentum into the 20th century as a source of ongoing spatial and political separation.

T he character of suburbanization in St. Louis was heavily influenced by racialized housing policy adopted by local leaders in the early 20th century. T he 1916 segregation ordinance (Stein 2002; Gordon 2008) led to a legacy of restrictive covenants that patterned residential settlement across the metro area. Gordon (2008) describes the importance of racialized local policy decisions that spatially entrenched racism across St. Louis:

T he intent and effect of local public policy, in St. Louis and its suburbs, were to tilt the playing field dramatically in favor of those who were already winning. T h e economic and locational disadvantages suffered by African Americans lengthened (in time and space) the dismal reach of Jim Crow. They undermined the legal victories of the civil rights movement, as the right to employment or education meant little in settings where the jobs had fled and the schools were

16 | Social Policy | Spring | 2015

crumbling. And they eroded the legitimacy of even modest efforts at redistribution or redress, as inner- city poverty was willfully misdiagnosed as a sort of community pathology, as something African Americans had done to themselves (13).

T h e realities of ward-based factionalism and residential segregation contribute to the social and political fragmentation of the metro area. Only in exceptional circumstances, including the election of Freeman Bosley who rode a wave of African-American discontent with public housing and inner city hospital closure (Stein 2002), have popular coalitions overcome the gridlock to win at the ballot box. T he prevailing political economy of racial segregation in housing markets (Denton & Massey 1993, 76; G ordon 2008) and longstanding political division diminishes the opportunities for broad community organizing. After surveying the landscape, it should not be surprising how fleeting has been die success of political or social movements. An additional factor makes organizing for social change difficult in the contemporary context: an antagonistic state legislature, riding a wave of anti­ immigrant sentiment to power in the last decade.

Antagonistic state legislature Regarded as a national bellwether state for its

history (Missouri aligned with every presidential victory,

excepting 1956 & 2008), a decisively conservative turn was undertaken more recently, animated by anti-immigration sentiments from conservative, rural politicians outside of the state’s urban centers. These elected officials in Missouri form part of a national wave of nativism in the last 10 years that has contributed to oppositional statewide organizing efforts. Both the antagonistic legislation and the oppositional organizing mirror trends across the country.

At the national level, the 2006 Sensenbrenner bill (HR 4437) in U.S. Congress set off a wave of “extensive mobilization efforts in Latino” communities that responded to what protesters decried as “threats [in the bill]... that would have increased penalties on undocumented immigrants as well as those who employ and assist them” (Barreto et al. 2006, 736-7). Responses on the ground to the national legislation and similar state­ wide efforts described the large urban areas of Chicago (Cordero-Guzman et al. 2008), New York (ibid) and Los Angeles (Barreto et al. 2006, 746) and the extensive civil society, and migrant civil society networks from which they drew. In those places, “political threat” was transformed into “political opportunity” by dense networks of immigrant institutions (ibid, 746). As the reality of social and political fragmentation would suggest, St. Louis should be an inhospitable place for such activism. However, a menu of legislation that would criminalize undocumented status by lawmakers in Jefferson City, beginning in fall 2006 with the convening of a House Special Committee

Marchers advocate fo r im m igration rights in St. Louis, 2013.

Social Policy | Spring | 2015 117

1

Fast food protesters gather downtown w ith Arch in rear, 2013. 18 | Social Policy | Spring | 2015

on Immigration provided the impetus for a large scale defensive effort (MIRA’s website, 2009).

To deepen our understanding of organizing the ordinary city, I present St. Louis as a case study, with attention to three ongoing efforts to expand economic and political justice. T h e campaigns I describe: fast food worker organizing; immigration reform; and ballot initiatives to raise the minimum wage and regulate payday lending all rely on four key aspects. In order to advance their goals, organizers must work across an urban landscape fragmented politically, socially and spatially. T he most successful efforts build associations between different types of networks, including community, labor and faith- based. Using a model of congregation-based community organizing, even secular and progressive campaigns for economic and political justice draw from existing networks of churches to build power. As they work through networks, strengthening ties as they attempt to cross the urban and suburban spheres, campaigns gain enough momentum to jump scale and influence public policy at the metro and state levels.

Case Studies Amidst this adverse landscape, an array of effective

organizers overcomes fragmentation to unite different types of networks and institutions. In order to explore the specific and concrete ways activists navigate the terrain in St. Louis and identify opportunities, I conducted 25 semi- structured interviews with organizers and institutional actors. Initially, I appraised the internet and secondary sources to identify prominent organizations that were actively networking and moving their agenda forward. I was able to attend the St. Louis Labor Conference in October 2013, which led to a series of less formal conversations and more ideas for central actors in the labor and economic justice realms. My second trip focused on the question of immigration as a potent lens into on-the- ground organizing for economic fairness. Ultimately I narrowed the focus of my third trip to more explicitly focus on faith-based institutions after their centrality as sites of organizing became clear.

I focused on groups with a shared agenda of economic and social justice. In fact, what was readily apparent was the dearth of these organizations. St. Louis offered nothing in the way of worker centers, and its quantity of immigrant­ serving organizations is no more than a handful. St. Louis has one of the smallest immigrant populations of any large MSA. St. Louis, one of the 20 largest MSAs, had only the 37th biggest immigrant population share (Strauss report). Absolutely - and proportionally - there are fewer immigrants in St. Louis. So how do we understand a St. Louis model of organizing that draws its strength from different types of groups, forming networks that allow access to low-wage workers and residents? This compelled us to shift the way we were approaching the city and to interpret the ways in which immigrants occupied a different place in St. Louis’s political economy. Clearly, organizers who were able to build networks across the

metro area had a different kind of approach. W hat we encountered, and what the two dozen

interviews confirmed, was the primacy of faith-based institutions as providing the only glue to bond an otherwise completely fragmented metropolitan area. In terms of a progressive organizing force, even the ostensibly secular Jobs with Justice or MIRA depended on organizing a base of churches or utilizing M C U ’s pre-established network of congregations. T he interviews shaped our conclusions about the organizing challenges laid earlier: political & social fragmentation; ongoing racial division; and an antagonistic state legislature. Although pernicious and potentially overwhelming, activists continuously spoke of the myriad opportunities to advance an agenda of economic and social justice for immigrants and low-wage workers.

Interviewees included two workers, eleven faith activists, seven institutional leaders and four professional organizers. They told a consistent story of how they do their work. To overcome barriers to organizing of political, spatial and social dimensions, organizers must work through networks of existing organizations. Whereas workers - whose struggles are at the center of economic and political justice struggles - are covered by networks of CBOs, worker centers and immigrant-serving organizations in cities including Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, the landscape is different in St. Louis. Organizers rely on building power through networks of congregations where they find pre-organized groups of citizens and recent immigrants. As they carve out a shared agenda of economic justice, including campaigns to raise wages for the lowest paid, improve workplaces and protect and expand unionization, they must build associations between local networks in order to jump scale and influence higher level public policy. Only after they have linked progressive, secular, religious and union-based organizations across the urban and suburban landscape can they generate capacity to make demands at the state level or on an industry as large as fast food.

To illustrate the ascendant potential of congregation- based community organizing as a strategy for labor, faith and community based networks, I will examine three campaign case studies:

1. Fast food organizing: “We C an’t Survive on $7.35!” is an effort coordinated at the national level through the SEIU. St. Louis, according to one interviewee, has 36,000 fast food workers.

2. Immigration reform: Immigrants sit at the intersection of low-wage work and an unresponsive political system. Organizing efforts in St. Louis seek to boost immigrant participation in the political realm and create a more just and humane immigration system.

3. Minimum wage & payday lending ballot initiatives: “Cap the Rate! & Raise the Wage!” were the two campaigns in 2012 that sought to raise the minimum wage statewide and limit the rate payday lenders could charge.

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Labor D ay gathering fo r S E I U members, 2014. The S E I U has been among the most active unions in social justice campaigns ranging fr o m im m igration rights to healthcare access.

Campaign Case Study #1: Fast Food Organizing

Fast food worker organizing brought the issues of higher wages and unionization for employees in the sector to the level of national dialogue 2013, culminating with work actions in hundreds of U.S. cities. Coordinated by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) on- the-ground organizing depended on the recruitment of actual workers and managers from stores like McDonalds and Jimmy Johns. In many cases, the success of actions relied not only on the SEIU’s organizing capacity or the charisma of particular employees, but also the collaboration of external community members. The shape that such organizing took in St. Louis reflects its distinctive identity as a faith-networked metropolitan area. Religious leaders, performing acts of solidarity and support, took the campaign to lift wages and allow fast food workplace unionizing to another level.

Overview: fast food workplaces & organizing

Fast food workers face poverty wages (Allegretto et al. 2014) and unsafe workplaces. The average workers makes less than $9/hr (ibid), regardless of experience. In many chains, including Jimmy Johns, workers cannot count on completing a full shift without an interrupted “break” because of an exploitative practice of sending workers home during a lull in the late afternoon (personal interview). Fast food, if it ever was, is no longer the domain of teenagers making a few extra bucks on the side

in high school. Workers in the industry are getting older, particularly after the economic recession of 2007-2009. As a result of depressed wages, de-regulated workplaces and an older, more experienced employee base, fast food worker organizing is also increasing (NY Times November 28, 2013 “Life on $7.25 an hour”).

In St. Louis, according to an organizer working on the local campaign, there are over 36,000 fast food workers, for whom the average wage is $8/hr. (personal interview 10/13/13). The low wages, combined with the lack of union coverage leads to a precarious employment situation in which grinding poverty is often the result. Workers, even part-time, are often unable to secure a second income to supplement their meager wages because of inconsistent week-to-week scheduling. As a result, with the support of the national SEIU and statewide JWJ organizing in St. Louis took considerable steps forward in 2013, peaking in a series of city-wide strikes as part of the broader Fast Food Forward national effort.

Campaign strategy Fast food organizing faces long-shot odds, for in many

respects, the industry itself is set-up to resist unionization efforts to demand profit-sharing and dignified treatment for workers. As Josh Eidelson, a labor journalist who covered the actions in St. Louis writes, their tactics reveal the opportunities and limitations for organizers:

Some of the features these recent strikes share in common can best be understood as strategies for dodging those obstacles [unsupportive federal apparatus and fragmentation of fast food workers

20 | Social Policy | Spring | 2015

through franchising]: striking for just one day in order to draw more workers, and more attention, at less risk; citing labor law violations as a cause for the strikes in order to bolster workers’ legal protection; staging actions with a minority of the workforce in hopes that it will inspire more of their co-workers to get involved. (Salon.com May 8, 2013)

A St. Louis-based worker and organizer described the course of events that led to him taking a leadership role in the organizing effort. One day last year he was accused of making multiple “mistakes” on orders, and as a result was forced along with another supposedly mistake-prone co-worker to pose with signs that described their errors as the manager snapped a photo with his camera phone. Embarrassed, he and his co-worker took action. Importantly, the groundwork for his militancy was laid by a personal relationship with Jobs with Justice [JWJ], the “biggest tent” of labor-community-labor activism in St. Louis. Already in touch with a JWJ organizer, he was further mentored into next steps by an SEIU organizer appointed to St. Louis. He explains what happened next:

First they [JWJ & SEIU] showed us a video of workers striking in New York, then a bunch of us, maybe 20 or 30, went to Chicago for a strike in April. We came back from that really motivated. We thought

‘why not us?’ After the incident four of us were really agitated. This led to the small strike on May 8 th. Community members supported us by delivering a letter to managers saying “These workers are going on strike on this date and we expect no retaliation.” That day was small but the next day was much bigger with 50 workers taking part, we marched up and down the loop. We used that story about the manager and the photos he took as we talked to the press those days.

As the worker’s narrative shows, these strikes are often very small, involving just a few workers from one or two stores at first. In St. Louis, the actions grew in size and visibility over the summer, culminating with much larger actions in July and August, involving hundreds of workers from across the city. He also reveals an important tactical question that confronts the SEIU and the organizers working locally - how to motivate workers to take the risk,

A St. Louis-based worker and organizer was accused of

making multiple “mistakes” on orders, and as a result was

forced along with another supposedly mistake-prone

co-worker to pose with signs that described their errors as

the manager snapped a photo with his camera phone.

Photo #1: Fast food strikers march in 2013, carrying banner with campaign slogan. Photo #2: Fast food strikers outside o f J im m y Johns in St. Louis, 2013. Photo #3: Fast food protester addresses motorists, 2013.

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Metropolitan Congregations United helped organize the Faith-Labor alliance, linking religious leaders and labor activists across the St. Louis area, 2013.

T h e f a s t fo o d

especially when very few others might take part? A faith- based organizer offers one answer in the form of a tactic employed in St. Louis to discourage retaliatory firings for striking workers:

We have 350 clergy who are part of JWJ. If a worker is released after participating in a work action, we will send out a call. Faith leaders in that neighborhood will then show up at the workplace. Probably three will go and speak with the manager to ask that the worker be reinstated. If the manager says no, we’ll unleash what is called “Fast Food Fridays”. Those clergy will then fill up the counter and start placing a bunch of complicated orders. But they’ll move very slowly and pay with pennies. It works because it slows down the whole operation in their busiest rush. Fast food franchises depend on a one or two hour rush at lunchtime. If you mess that up you screw up the entire business model. So managers usually respond after one of those actions. But they can’t call the police because what we’re doing is entirely legal.

Missouri Jobs with Justice deployed the network of clergy to respond in particular circumstances of retaliation also encourages broader community participation through

o rg a n iz in g e f fo r t s n o w s t h a t t h e S E IU ’s n a tio n a l

p r io r itie s in S t. Louis m a n ife s te d

a s a lo c a l-ru n c a m p a ig n .

the “Be T h ere” pledge which encourages all members to take part in five demonstrations or public actions throughout the year. This helps to ensure broad coverage across the metro area for a wave of actions that grew throughout the summer. As the “St. Louis Can’t Survive on $7.35!” campaign reveals, an industry that perhaps more than any reflects the decentralized, de-regulated and de-stabilizing trajectory of the growing service economy

in the last 30 years must be tackled with a strategy of appropriately innovative and flexible tactics. T he fast food organizing effort shows that the SEIU’s national priorities in St. Louis manifested as a local-run campaign. Specifically, networked clergy provided the best opportunity to respond positively and adequately to a fragmented organizing landscape.

Campaign Case Study #2: Statewide Ballot Initiatives

Organizing for progressive change in Missouri means generally accepting that your cause will have few allies at the highest levels. Historically a swing state, Missouri has moved decisively into the red column over the last decade, culminating with the resounding electoral victory of Republican nominee M itt Romney in 2012. Attendant with the consolidation of Missouri into the G O P column this last decade was the electoral sweeps of conservatives “out-state” leading to a solid majority in both houses. For

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progressive activists, the political landscape at Jefferson City tends toward defensive organizing across the state, particularly in the urban areas of Kansas City and St. Louis where the preponderance of voters are more progressive. Although conservatives have swept recent elections for state legislature, Missouri’s referenda and ballot initiative laws allow for binding citizen initiated reform through a rigorous signature collection process. A broad coalition put this approach to the test in 2012, following on the footsteps of a successful initiative to raise the minimum wage by ballot referendum in 2006.

we came back stronger and are going to push ahead with it again. The other network is the faith-based national organizations: Gamaleil and PICO. A couple of years ago the faith and Organizing Collaborative came together for lobbying. It was almost like a marriage. Again, the payday lending campaign tested and really fused it.

Overview: statewide minimum wage and payday lending context

In early 2012, two statewide ballot initiatives linked their efforts, arguing for a higher minimum wage along with cap on the rates allowable for payday lenders. Having been successful in 2006, a coalition led by Jobs with Justice believed they had the organizing capacity to generate adequate signatures to make the November ballot. The initiatives hit a crucial snag when the Secretary of State rejected their signatures based on a technicality, dealing the campaigns a fatal blow.

Campaign strategy The coalition involved a range of organizations under

the direction of the Missouri Organizing Collaborative which includes Jobs with Justice, a People Improving Communities through Organizing [PICO] affiliate in Kansas City, Metropolitan Congregations United [MCU], Pro Vote and the SEIU. A senior faith advocate I spoke with described how congregations formed part of a broader network of economic and faith-based activists. His comments show the unique position MCU occupies as a force that can bridge gaps across the politically, socially, and spatially fragmented landscape that dampens the power of urban activists and voters. By working at the scale of statewide organizing and tapping into a network of national faith-based institutions, he helps build the political power of St. Louis-based activists:

We have two primary networks of relationships. One is statewide, this is the Missouri Organizing Collaborative. This includes community-, faith- and labor-based organizations. For example we worked with the NAACP on the minority hiring provisions of the CBA we struck with MSD. This statewide coalition was tested on payday lending campaign. So you might have expected that to really depress people, which it did, but

The success of organizers collecting

close to 2 0 0 , 0 0 0 signatures illustrates

th e potential for activating

Missourians in a broad cam paign.

The campaign was able to generate hundreds of thousands of signature because the issue highlighted issues that were salient to urban and suburban residents. Urban voters tended to rally on the minimum wage, though many were concerned about payday lending as well. Jobs with Justice was able to rally its members across the city and county on a higher minimum wage as they recruited volunteers to go outstate. For faith-based organizers working in both inner-city and suburban contexts, pairing the payday lending reform

was a tactical strength. A suburban parishioner engaged with M CU explains why:

On payday loans we saw an issue that got people at St. Ferdinand excited. It’s tough to get them active on anything outside of their own church. We’re just trying to get them to look past their own doorstep. I think it was because people were using these payday loans and being affected by them that was really important. People in our parish are using them, sometimes they’re unemployed but it’s not just something that affects minorities. Take my son-in-law for instance. So we did prayers outside of payday offices... One thing I remember was a parishioner here counted the number of offices he saw in Florissant. It was just during his daily commute, he saw 23 of them. So I think the visibility was really key.

In a fragmented environment where many of the most palpable dimensions of economic and racial inequality are deliberately outside of the suburbanite’s gaze, finding an issue with high visibility was crucial to energizing her fellow congregants.

The failure to anticipate and respond to the technical challenge raised by the Secretary of State was fatal for the 2012 election cycle and means much of the work will have to be duplicated the next time around. As the senior faith organizer said, perhaps understating the force of the setback, the coalition was “tested”. The success of organizers collecting close to 200,000 signatures illustrates the potential for activating Missourians in a broad campaign. In doing this work, the coalition of organizations, both faith-based and progressive and secular, worked through congregations that reached thousands of residents in suburban and rural contexts where social justice

Social Policy | Spring | 2015 | 23

involvement is framed very differently from diverse, urban settings. In the future, organizers are likely to turn once more to ballot initiatives to overcome an intransigent state legislature, in doing so they will rely on networks of faith- labor-community organizations, crafting messages that span social and economic fissures across the state.

Campaign Case Study #3: Immigration Reform

Overview: opposition to state legislative action

Activism to increase rights and legal coverage for immigrants has steadily mounted for more than 10 years, reaching an initial peak in response to a House Bill: HR 4437 in 2006 that proposed major steps toward harsher criminalization of undocumented status. The public demonstrations of 2006 drew on an existing network that was built in the summer of 2003 from the Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride - a national effort aimed at emulating the Freedom Rides of the civil rights era to foster a more cohesive immigrant rights movement (Leitner et al. 2008; Barreto et al. 2006). In St. Louis, organizing around immigration reform began when Jobs with Justice coordinated the task force that greeted freedom riders when they passed through the Gateway City. The Immigrant Rights Action Task Force (IRATF) of JWJ brought together more than 5,000 people by the time protest waves spread in 2006 responding to the Sensenbrenner House bill (MIRA’s website, 2009).

Organizers across St. Louis are aware of the principal role

churches play in doing the work of bringing people

together.

“I’ve seen a willingness to collaborate. I think a lot of it is that there aren’t established, institutional organizations. People aren’t particularly turfy... There’s generally a willingness to collaborate when it makes sense to do so. One thing that is challenging - and I don’t know if St. Louis is unique in this at all - is getting different immigrant groups to identify common cause with each other and then be willing to move together. T hat’s just hard... One thing we’ve seen in North County is that African Americans, Africans, Muslims (who may or may not be immigrants) and

Latinos are all experiencing discrimination at the hands of the same actors. But nobody’s talking to each other and nobody identifies. T hat’s been a challenge.”

The inability to “identify common cause” came up repeatedly in my interviews with activists from faith, labor and community backgrounds. Particularly deep is the perceived fissure between immigrants, especially brown-skinned, and African-Americans. This limits different marginalized groups - facing discrimination

and institutional oppression from the same sources - to coordinate a strategy based on solidarity. Racial profiling in the county, particularly St. Ann and Overland, is felt by black and brown-skinned people, however, it was clear from her comments, as well as those of another immigrant rights organizer that an effective oppositional strategy struggles to take off because of ongoing racial divisions.

Immigrant rights organizing has taken a different shape in the last several years, with immigrant capacity for leadership increasing. An organizer working with congregations on immigration reform reiterated this shift during our interview, homing in on the emergent Latinos en Axiom

Campaign strategy: organizing through congregations to build statewide coalition

As the Missouri House Special Committee on Immigration began to hold hearings across the state in the fall of 2006, concerns about legislation that would criminalize non-citizen status loomed large. The IRATF moved expanded its activities to meet the challenge, leading to the formation of Missouri Immigrant and Refugee Advocates Coalition (MIRA) in November of 2006.1 interviewed an immigrant rights organizer who works within the city, in the county and “out-state.” She confirmed that the dispersed immigrant population, fragmented across the metropolitan area and in only small communities ‘out-state’ lacked a political territory from which to build a power base. She pointed to challenges that indicate the obstacles to organizing across fragmented space:

This action on the 4th [of November 2013] was primarily organized by Latinos en Axion, and the advocacy groups that normally do a lot of this immigration work were assisting and not taking the lead... In 2006 in St. Louis there was a huge march - I think several thousand people - and it was a shock to St. Louisians: ‘who are these people and where are they coming from?’ It was really exciting for immigrants here. But then there was a period without a lot of activity. But just recently it’s been ramping up. Big rallies and marches. I think the immigrant community enjoys occupying really public space in that way. T hat’s what I’ve heard from Latinos en Axion...

Latinos en Axion grew out of grassroots relationships in pockets of St. Louis’s fragmented immigrant population. Its story reveals the dominant feature of organizing in St. Louis - to build a political force capable of advancing

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a political project, organizers meet people where they are in places of worship. A Latina community leader confirmed that their model based on the congregation- based community organizing. The story she shared was a common one for faith-based activists (Christens et al. 2008; Staral 2004) that draw from Saul Alinsky’s model for the Industrial Areas Foundation of the 1960s-70s. ‘One-on-ones’ or intensive listening sessions with parishioners and neighbors allow organizers to identify interests and build personal relationships. As priorities and relationships are developed, organizers move to agitate and encourage people to take action up to and including civil disobedience (Jacobsen 2001). Based on several years of conversations with fellow immigrants, many of whom have faced exploitation through wage theft, undignified work and isolation from their families in Latin America, the organizer motivates them to action. November 4th, 2013 was a big moment for Latinos en Axion, they put several of their members onto the frontline of a civil disobedience demonstration in front of the federal courthouse in St. Louis.

The rally targeted public officials, in particular U.S. Congresswoman Ann Wagner who has remained unwilling to support comprehensive immigration reform (CIR). With a large CIR bill making it out of the Senate in 2013, attention turned to the federal scale as the best chance for a pathway to citizenship and more visas. Rep. Wagner looms as a potentially sway-able Republican in the House, the outstanding voting block needed with both the Senate and Pres. Obama in favor of a legislative path. Despite the huge obstacles in Washington DC, the prospects for anything progressive out of Jefferson City seem even more remote, the organizer expressed disappointedly “we [Latinos and Latinas] have no allies in state government.”

To get to the point of staging a demonstration with hundreds at the courthouse, as well as being able to bring a sizeable contingent to Washington DC in October for an action directed at Congress, she worked primarily with three active churches in St. Louis. One is Santa Cecilia in the city’s Southside, which, as a staff member confirmed in our interview, offers the largest Spanish mass in the metro area. The church in this case does the initial work of bringing people together around a shared conviction in Catholicism - providing a referential frame that fosters a sense of community. People build familiarity with one another and generally view the church as a place of comfort and support. The staff member helps connect parishioners with jobs, services and resources as part of her role. Immigrants come to Santa Cecilia in search of the connections that will allow them to function economically and flourish socially. Organizers across St. Louis are aware of the principal role churches play in doing the work of bringing people together. In terms of organizing for immigration reform, churches are particularly central, as St. Louis lacks strong ethnic neighborhoods that could generate the scale necessary for community-based organizations. For the organizers I interviewed this means their work primarily happens in concert with priests and pastors, accessing congregations to build power.

Opposing Right to Work & new formal alliances

The ongoing opposition to open-shop legislation reveals both historical continuity as well as the new reality in which labor solidarity takes shape. Today, the AFL-CIO of Missouri mobilizes a campaign against the threat of RTW, working with the networks of JWJ, allowing them to more broadly reach a range of non-unionized workers and sympathizers outside of the formal labor movement. No longer able to rely on the strength of simply organized workplaces and local Central Labor Councils (CLCs), the AFL-CIO has adapted its strategy to the emerging conditions. My interview with a faith leader on the anti- RTW campaign, illustrates one feature of their strategy. Hired specifically to venture “out-state” into more hostile and conservative territory where union coverage is thinnest, the former reverend is trying to change opinions on unions. The CLC determined that faith leaders, well versed through a lifetime of conversations with people of conservative social leanings, would have the credibility and perceived neutrality to engage out-state faith leaders on their terms. In his case, he’s “paid to educate pastors on Right to Work.” He is essentially “starting a conversation” through individual conversations in territory that has been intimidating to union organizing.

A new network: Faith & labor alliance Faith leaders like the one I interviewed, find the roots

of their work in the Interfaith Partnership of St. Louis, formed in 1978 to oppose RTW. The partnership appears to have been ad hoc to his chagrin, disintegrating shortly thereafter. A new attempt to institutionalize the connection between faith and labor is taking place with older and newly arrived faith leaders at the forefront. The monthly gatherings, facilitated by faith and labor co-chairs, works on consolidating die power of the respective broad and often segmented groups to advance particular public policy goals. Sitting over pancakes every third Wednesday, they hash out a local and statewide political agenda, sensitive to their respective priorities. Tom sees the meetings as a place to “bring in the average pastor” and start the conversation on practicing faith through acdvism on economic justice. For Mike, as assistant priest at Christ Church Cathedral in the city, the meeting is a chance to more prominently link evangelical Christian language with fights for economic and social justice. The labor leaders see the alliance as a key opportunity to tap into a well-networked group of leaders who already possess the moral and ethical high ground. As labor has lost its ideological power over the last 30 years, labor organizers are becoming more keenly aware of the necessity to work alongside faith. In St. Louis, where faith permeates the landscape of civil society, the imperative is even more obvious, failing to engage pastors, priests and their congregations means the battle against a well-resourced assault at the state level before the battle has begun. A labor organizer described what this entails:

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The fam ous St. Louis Basilica. Catholics play an im portant p a r t in shaping the priorities o f social justice campaigns across the city and state, offering organizational structure and resources to immigration, healthcare and labor struggles.

“We rely on Catholics for their networks and their power to influence public policy [through the Public Policy Committee of the Archdiocese]. So we are willing to engage them on their terms. They have certain priorities - for example on abortion and gay marriage that a lot of our members or allies may not. But we know how important the Catholics are [as individual congregations and as an institution] so we take those issues off the table.”

In St. Louis, this is how things get done. In order to build a network capable of building a metropolitan base of power that can successfully go “out-state” and influence policymaking at Jefferson City, progressive and secular activists work through congregations, sometimes putting their social values aside to identify common cause and advance issues of economic and social justice. If Missourians are able to confront the challenge of Right to W ork legislation in the coming years, it will likely happen in part due to the hard work of labor and faith leaders to organize in concert with one another.

Discussion and Conclusion Organizers working for economic and social justice

across the St. Louis metropolitan area navigate an unforgiving landscape of political, social and spatial fragmentation. St. Louis is one of the most politically fragmented MSAs in the country, consisting of hundreds of municipalities in part because of the Great Divorce of 1876 that fixed the city’s boundaries and prevented it from annexing the sprawling growth that was to come. Many of the municipalities that formed the great sprawl of the 20th century established exclusive residential communities (Gordon 2008), essentially erecting a wall to racial and socioeconomic integration. As a result, the urban area is one of the most racially segregated in the country, a pattern that to a large extent defines the class-based separation as well. Activists and reformists are unable to initiate progressive change at the state level, to the contrary, the conservative turn of the last decade makes Jefferson City a particularly foreboding environment for activists. Nonetheless organizers from a wide range of backgrounds, working for justice in a variety of realms, are able to

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come together and push forward an agenda of legislative and political reform. T h e extensive case study research reveals the importance of congregation-based community organizing as a strategy for linking pre-organized clusters across the city and county. W ithin these networks a common agenda of economic and social justice is hashed out, with progressive and secular activists often negotiating with and deferring sometimes to Catholic parishioners in order to access their vast infrastructural resources.

Three groups of organizers were particularly important to telling the story of ongoing economic and social justice work in St. Louis: SEIU, JW J and M CU. W here the three have been able to come together has led to the biggest and most successful campaigns. In the case of fast food workers’ “Fight for 15 & A U nion”, the SEIU ’s national resources have initiated much of the impetus for work that JW J has facilitated, using their relationships and broad network of volunteers. However, as they have found, in order to reach a broader audience and encourage sympathy from those who may be apathetic, JW J has worked with M C U ’s network of congregations across the city and county. As a result of this strategy, the campaign reached a fevered pitch with three strikes and a variety of actions to restore workers after retaliatory firings. T he moral legitimacy and charismatic public profile that religious leaders cultivate appears crucial to the success of demonstrations, rallies and ‘walk-backs.’

A similar approach is being used by activists working for immigrant rights. At the center of this campaign, Missouri Immigrant & Refugee Advocates Coalition (MIRA) builds a network of volunteers and organizers across the city and county, working closely with JWJ, M C U & SEIU. In one small move towards overcoming fragmentation, all four groups rent office space in the same building. Starting from a base of congregations, the only reliable places where people are pre-organized, they put pressure on elected officials and rally for expanded rights. Much of what they are forced to respond to, including legislative actions from the antagonistic state legislature, colors their day-to-day. T he hostile state legislature proved to be a major feature of the work activists and reformists do, limiting and shaping both strategy and tactics.

One approach that avoids Jefferson City, tested by a broad coalition of interfaith activists alongside JW J and their allies was to take advantage of Missouri’s citizen referendum process, thus bypassing the state legislature

completely. Although the Secretary of State turned the effort back on technicalities in 2012, the ability of organizers to gather more than 200,000 signatures shows the potential of this strategy going forward.

Lessons: A St. Louis model Activists from faith, labor and community-based

organizations are working through networks of congregations to organize across the fractured St. Louis metropolitan area. In doing so, they reveal a particular, locally-grounded response to issues of economic, political and social inequality in a contemporary American urban area. Using the best tactical options available, including “pre-organized” assemblies of residents in congregations; statewide ballot initiatives; and well-networked religious leaders, organizers develop campaigns for economic and social justice that reveal the potential of locally-grounded and informed strategy. Notwithstanding the great barriers to legislative and community-based intervention, these local actors shows the importance of crafting strategies that work through rather than against local social and institutional realities. Needing the capacity and resources of the Catholic Church, progressive campaigns craft their reform agendas accordingly, to not alienate potential allies. Similarly, faith-based activists, aware of the power in a broad labor-faith alliance, align their language with the economic justice priorities of secular allies. Together they are creating space to make the political system more responsive at the state and local levels. They work across a landscape splintered by racial and socioeconomic barriers, highlighting the intense challenges and opportunities of working for justice in the contemporary American metropolis.

Scott H um phrey studied Urban <fr Regional Planning a t the University o f Illinois, Urbana-Champaign -where he chaired the solidarity committee o f his graduate employees union and helped organize a grassroots campaign to shift $ 2 M o f county resources away fr o m j a i l construction toward alternatives to incarceration. H e is currently volunteering a t a bilingual school in rural Honduras and w ritin g about his tim e hitchhiking across Canada.

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