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Why Organize?

Problems and Promise in the Inner City

B A R A C K O B A M A

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Over the past five years, I’ve often had a difficult time explaining my profession to folks. Typical is a remark a public school administrative aide made to me

one bleak January morning, while I waited to deliver some flyers to a group of

confused and angry parents who had discovered the presence of asbestos in their

school.

“Listen, Obama,” she began. “You’re a bright young man, Obama. You went to

college, didn’t you?”

I nodded.

“I just cannot understand why a bright young man like you would go to

college, get that degree and become a community organizer.”

“Why’s that?”

“Cause the pay is low, the hours is long, and don’t nobody appreciate you.”

She shook her head in puzzlement as she wandered back to attend to her duties.

I’ve thought back on that conversation more than once during the time I’ve

organized with the Developing Communities Project, based in Chicago’s far south

side. Unfortunately, the answers that come to mind haven’t been as simple as her

question. Probably the shortest one is this: It needs to be done, and not enough

folks are doing it.

The debate as to how black and other dispossessed people can forward their

lot in America is not new. From W.E.B. DuBois to Booker T. Washington to Marcus

Garvey to Malcolm X to Martin Luther King Jr., this internal debate has raged

between integration and nationalism, between accommodation and militancy,

between sit-down strikes and boardroom negotiations. The lines between these

strategies have never been simply drawn, and the most successful black leader-

ship has recognized the need to bridge these seemingly divergent approaches.

During the early years of the Civil Rights movement, many of these issues became

submerged in the face of the clear oppression of segregation. The debate was no

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longer whether to protest, but how militant must that protest be to win full

citizenship for blacks.

Twenty years later, the tensions between strategies have reemerged, in part

due to the recognition that for all the accomplishments of the 1960s, the majority

of blacks continue to suffer from second-class citizenship. Related to this are the

failure—real, perceived and fabricated—of the Great Society programs initiated by

Lyndon Johnson. Facing these realities, at least three major strands of earlier

movements are apparent.

First, and most publicized, has been the surge of political empowerment

around the country. Harold Washington and Jesse Jackson are but two striking

examples of how the energy and passion of the Civil Rights movement have

been channeled into bids for more traditional political power. Second, there has

been a resurgence in attempts to foster economic development in the black

community, whether through local entrepreneurial efforts, increased hiring of

black contractors and corporate managers, or Buy Black campaigns. Third, and

perhaps least publicized, has been grass-roots community organizing, which

builds on indigenous leadership and direct action.

Proponents of electoral politics and economic development strategies can

point to substantial accomplishments in the past 10 years. An increase in the

number of black public officials offers at least the hope that government will be

more responsive to inner-city constituents. Economic development programs can

provide structural improvements and jobs to blighted communities.

In my view, however, neither approach offers lasting hope of real change

for the inner city unless undergirded by a systematic approach to community

organization. This is because the issues of the inner city are more complex and

deeply rooted than ever before. Blatant discrimination has been replaced by

institutional racism; problems like teen pregnancy, gang involvement and drug

abuse cannot be solved by money alone. At the same time, as Professor William

Julius Wilson of the University of Chicago has pointed out, the inner city’s

economy and its government support have declined, and middle-class blacks are

leaving the neighborhoods they once helped to sustain.

Neither electoral politics nor a strategy of economic self-help and internal

development can by themselves respond to these new challenges. The election of

Harold Washington in Chicago or of Richard Hatcher in Gary were not enough to

bring jobs to inner-city neighborhoods or cut a 50 percent drop-out rate in the

schools, although they did achieve an important symbolic effect. In fact, much-

needed black achievement in prominent city positions has put us in the awkward

position of administering underfunded systems neither equipped nor eager to

address the needs of the urban poor and being forced to compromise their

interests to more powerful demands from other sectors.

Self-help strategies show similar limitations. Although both laudable and

necessary, they too often ignore the fact that without a stable community, a well-

educated population, an adequate infrastructure and an informed and employed

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market, neither new nor well-established companies will be willing to base

themselves in the inner city and still compete in the international marketplace.

Moreover, such approaches can and have become thinly veiled excuses for cutting

back on social programs, which are anathema to a conservative agenda. In theory,

community organizing provides a way to merge various strategies for neighbor-

hood empowerment. Organizing begins with the premise that (1) the problems

facing inner-city communities do not result from a lack of effective solutions,

but from a lack of power to implement these solutions; (2) that the only way for

communities to build long-term power is by organizing people and money around

a common vision; and (3) that a viable organization can only be achieved if a

broadly based indigenous leadership—and not one or two charismatic leaders—

can knit together the diverse interests of their local institutions.

This means bringing together churches, block clubs, parent groups and any

other institutions in a given community to pay dues, hire organizers, conduct

research, develop leadership, hold rallies and education campaigns, and begin

drawing up plans on a whole range of issues—jobs, education, crime, etc. Once

such a vehicle is formed, it holds the power to make politicians, agencies and

corporations more responsive to community needs. Equally important, it enables

people to break their crippling isolation from each other, to reshape their mutual

values and expectations and rediscover the possibilities of acting collaboratively—

the prerequisites of any successful self-help initiative.

By using this approach, the Developing Communities Project and other organ-

izations in Chicago’s inner city have achieved some impressive results. Schools

have been made more accountable; job training programs have been established;

housing has been renovated and built; city services have been provided; parks

have been refurbished; and crime and drug problems have been curtailed.

Additionally, plain folk have been able to access the levers of power, and a

sophisticated pool of local civic leadership has been developed.

But organizing the black community faces enormous problems as well. One

problem is the not entirely undeserved skepticism organizers face in many com-

munities. To a large degree, Chicago was the birthplace of community organizing,

and the urban landscape is littered with the skeletons of previous efforts. Many of

the best-intentioned members of the community have bitter memories of such

failures and are reluctant to muster up renewed faith in the process.

A related problem involves the aforementioned exodus from the inner city of

financial resources, institutions, role models and jobs. Even in areas that have not

been completely devastated, most households now stay afloat with two incomes.

Traditionally, community organizing has drawn support from women, who due to

tradition and social discrimination had the time and the inclination to participate

in what remains an essentially voluntary activity. Today the majority of women in

the black community work full time, many are the sole parent, and all have to split

themselves between work, raising children, running a household and maintaining

some semblance of a personal life—all of which makes voluntary activities lower

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on the priority list. Additionally, the slow exodus of the black middle class into the

suburbs means that people shop in one neighborhood, work in another,

send their child to a school across town and go to church someplace other

than the place where they live. Such geographical dispersion creates real prob-

lems in building a sense of investment and common purpose in any particular

neighborhood.

Finally, community organizations and organizers are hampered by their

own dogmas about the style and substance of organizing. Most still practice what

Professor John McKnight of Northwestern University calls a “consumer advocacy”

approach, with a focus on wrestling services and resources from the outside

powers that be. Few are thinking of harnessing the internal productive capacities,

both in terms of money and people, that already exist in communities.

Our thinking about media and public relations is equally stunted when com-

pared to the high-powered direct mail and video approaches successfully used by

conservative organizations like the Moral Majority. Most importantly, low salaries,

the lack of quality training and ill-defined possibilities for advancement discour-

age the most talented young blacks from viewing organizing as a legitimate career

option. As long as our best and brightest youth see more opportunity in climbing

the corporate ladder than in building the communities from which they came,

organizing will remain decidedly handicapped.

None of these problems is insurmountable. In Chicago, the Developing

Communities Project and other community organizations have pooled resources

to form cooperative think tanks like the Gamaliel Foundation. These provide both

a formal setting where experienced organizers can rework old models to fit new

realities and a healthy environment for the recruitment and training of new

organizers. At the same time the leadership vacuum and disillusionment follow-

ing the death of Harold Washington have made both the media and people in the

neighborhoods more responsive to the new approaches community organizing

can provide. Nowhere is the promise of organizing more apparent than in the tra-

ditional black churches. Possessing tremendous financial resources, membership

and—most importantly—values and biblical traditions that call for empowerment

and liberation, the black church is clearly a slumbering giant in the political and

economic landscape of cities like Chicago. A fierce independence among black

pastors and a preference for more traditional approaches to social involvement

(supporting candidates for office, providing shelters for the homeless) have

prevented the black church from bringing its full weight to bear on the political,

social and economic arenas of the city.

Over the past few years, however, more and more young and forward-thinking

pastors have begun to look at community organizations such as the Developing

Communities Project in the far south side and GREAT in the Grand Boulevard area

as a powerful tool for living the social gospel, one which can educate and empower

entire congregations and not just serve as a platform for a few prophetic leaders.

Should a mere 50 prominent black churches, out of the thousands that exist in

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cities like Chicago, decide to collaborate with a trained organizing staff, enormous

positive changes could be wrought in the education, housing, employment and

spirit of inner-city black communities, changes that would send powerful ripples

throughout the city.

In the meantime, organizers will continue to build on local successes, learn

from their numerous failures and recruit and train their small but growing

core of leadership—mothers on welfare, postal workers, CTA drivers and school

teachers, all of whom have a vision and memories of what communities can be.

In fact, the answer to the original question—why organize?—resides in these

people. In helping a group of housewives sit across the negotiating table with the

mayor of America’s third largest city and hold their own, or a retired steelworker

stand before a TV camera and give voice to the dreams he has for his grandchild’s

future, one discovers the most significant and satisfying contribution organizing

can make.

In return, organizing teaches as nothing else does the beauty and strength of

everyday people. Through the songs of the church and the talk on the stoops,

through the hundreds of individual stories of coming up from the South and

finding any job that would pay, of raising families on threadbare budgets, of losing

some children to drugs and watching others earn degrees and land jobs their

parents could never aspire to—it is through these stories and songs of dashed

hopes and powers of endurance, of ugliness and strife, subtlety and laughter, that

organizers can shape a sense of community not only for others, but for themselves.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City” was first published in

the August/September 1988 Illinois Issues (published by then–Sangamon State

University, now the University of Illinois at Springfield). Reprinted with permission

of the publisher.

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P A R T T W O

Over twenty years ago, political scientist Richard Couto (1990) pointed out that “because Americans have so little sense of community, we pay a great deal of atten-

tion to it.” He suggested that “our rose-tainted view of community and the processes

we describe as empowerment, community development, and community organizing”

have led to considerable conceptual confusion. That confusion in turn has enabled

both political liberals and conservatives to claim these concepts and to use the term

grass roots “as if it were herbal medicine for current public problems and to renew

American social health” (144).

The past two decades have seen increased attention to community, spurred in

part by Robert Putman’s (2000) lamenting of the disappearance of “civic America”

with the erosion of “social capital,” or mutual trust, social networks, and norms of

reciprocity anchoring people within communities.

The contributors to this part attempt to move us beyond the prevailing confu-

sion by offering conceptual frameworks and models within which community,

community organizing, and community building can be better understood. Although

additional perspectives on these concepts are offered throughout the book, this

initial section seeks to lay a foundation for their subsequent exploration.

In chapter 3, Meredith Minkler and Nina Wallerstein offer initial definitions of

community organizing and community building and underscore the centrality of the

notion of empowerment to both of these processes. Introducing a theme that

appears throughout much of the book, they suggest that real community organizing

Contextual Frameworks and Approaches

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must begin with a group or community’s identification of its issues and goals, rather

than with the goals or concerns of a health department, social service organization,

or outside organizer or funder.

Following a brief historical overview, Minkler and Wallerstein introduce the

best-known typology of community organizing and intervention, developed by Jack

Rothman (2008) and evolving into its current form to emphasize three primary modes:

community capacity development, social planning and policy, and social advocacy.

Alternative and complementary models also are explored, including collaborative

empowerment, community building, and both feminist organizing and organizing with

and by people of color (Hyde 2005; Gutierrez and Lewis, chapter 12).

The heart of this chapter is the discussion of several key concepts in community

organizing and community building central to effecting change on the community

level. Empowerment and critical consciousness, community capacity and social

capital, the principles of participation and “starting where the people are,” and

issue selection are each examined briefly, as is the often neglected area of measure-

ment and evaluation in community building and organizing. Although this chapter

covers a wide terrain, it necessarily does so “once over lightly,” as a prelude to the

more in-depth discussion of many of the issues and topics raised in subsequent

chapters.

The next two chapters in this part each look in more detail at several of the major

approaches to community organizing and community building practice introduced in

chapter 3. Marty Martinson and Celina Su begin in chapter 4 by introducing the

philosophy and approach of two of the individuals whose contributions to our thinking

and practice in these areas have been among the most profound: Saul David Alinsky

(1972), the “father” of social action organizing, and adult educator Paulo Freire (1973,

1994), whose “education for critical consciousness” has been seminal for many in the

way we think about community practice and transformative change processes.

Martinson and Su begin by situating the thinking and actions of these key figures in

their personal biographies and go on to lay out Alinsky’s vision and approach using

vivid case examples to illuminate its classic and more contemporary applications. In

so doing, they also point up the continued substantive role the Alinsky approach

plays in both local organizing and the development of broader social movements in

the early years of the twenty-first century.

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With a few notable exceptions (see Su 2009) textbooks on community organiz-

ing seldom give more than passing mention to Freire’s approach and its potential and

actual applications in community building and community organizing. Chapter 4

highlights several concrete applications of Freire’s pedagogy and its application

in addressing community concerns regarding education in the Bronx, New York, and

an innovative social action program with adolescents in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

In each of these case studies, an emphasis on equality and mutual respect between

group members and facilitators, and the use of problem-posing dialogue and “action

based on critical reflection,” Freire’s approach takes traditional community organizing

in important new directions. It further complements and extends the approaches to

community building described by McKnight and Kretzmann (chapter 10) Walter and

Hyde (chapter 5), and others whose work is highlighted in this text.

Although a number of promising applications of the Freirian approach now can

be found in health education, social work, education, community psychology and

related fields (Carroll and Minkler 2000; Foster-Fishman et al. 2005; Wallerstein et al.

2005; Wilson et al. 2007), Martinson and Su focus on three examples that well

illuminate the contrasts between Alinsky and Freire-inspired community organizing,

as well as the different and shared challenges they may involve.

We conclude this part with new thinking about community building practice by

social work theorists and activists Cheryl Walter and Cheryl Hyde. Whereas many

popular writings on community organizing and other forms of community practice

offer “strategic frameworks” to guide our actions (cf. Homan 2011; Rothman 2007,

2008; Staples 2004 and chapter 11), chapter 5 offers instead an orientation to

practice, and to community, that sees the latter as a dynamic and complex system of

which we as practitioners are a part. It views our role not as solving discrete problems,

but rather as building community capacities. Walter and Hyde also explore in more

depth the notion of community itself, highlighting seminal work by Ronald Warren

(1978) and others, and showing how contemporary scholarship on social capital

builds on and extends these early conceptualizations. Finally, chapter 5 helps us dig

deeper into the meaning and complexity of community building practice using the

example of a largely white, middle-class feminist health center and the self-reflection

and subsequent changes its staff must put into place to better connect with the

broader and more diverse geographic and cultural community of which it also is a part.

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The approach to community building offered by Walter and Hyde differs from

that of many in its emphasis on the professional as part of community rather than an

outsider. As noted in chapter 1, it also differs in important ways from the more macro

approach to community building captured in the principles laid out by Angela Glover

Blackwell and Ray Colmenar in appendix 1. Yet the skills for community building

practice that Walter and Hyde elaborate, including awareness of the dynamic quality

of community and an accent on consciousness, have great relevance for health edu-

cators, social workers, community psychologists, urban planners, and other social

change professionals who work on the community level. Their conceptualization of

community building presents an important new way of thinking about our roles in

community and both complements and challenges more traditional approaches

offered elsewhere in this volume.

REFERENCES

Alinsky, S.D. 1972. Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals. New York: Vintage Books.

Carroll, J., and M. Minkler. 2000. “Freire’s Message for Social Workers: Looking Back, Looking Ahead.” Journal of Community Practice 8, no. 1:21–36.

Couto, R. A. 1990. “Promoting Health at the Grass Roots.” Health Affairs 9, no. 2:144–151. Foster-Fishman, P., B. Nowell, Z. Deacon, M. A. Nievar, and P. McCann. 2005. “Using Methods

That Matter: The Impact of Reflection, Dialogue, and Voice.” American Journal of Community Psychology 36, nos. 3/4:275–291.

Freire, P. 1973. Education for Critical Consciousness. New York: Seabury Press. ————. 1994. Pedagogy of Hope. New York: Continuum. Homan, M. 2011. Promoting Community Change: Making It Happen in The Real World. 5th ed.

Pacific Grove, Calif.: Brooks/Cole. Hyde, C. A. 2005. “Feminist Community Practice.” In Handbook on Community Practice, edited by

M. Weil, 360–371. Newbury Park: Sage. Rothman, J. 2007. “Multi Modes of Intervention at the Macro Level.” Journal of Community

Practice 15, no. 4:11–40. ————. 2008. “Multi Modes of Community Intervention.” Strategies of Community Intervention,

edited by J. Rothman, J. L. Erlich, and J. E. Tropman, 141–170. 7th ed. Peosta, Iowa: Eddie Bowers. Staples, L. 2004. Roots to Power. 2nd ed. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. Su, C. 2009. Streetwise for Book Smarts: Grassroots Organizing and Education Reform in the

Bronx. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Wallerstein, N., V. Sanchez, and L. Velarde. 2005. “Freirian Praxis in Health Education and

Community Organizing: A Case Study of an Adolescent Prevention Program.” In Community Organizing and Community Building for Health, edited by M. Minkler, 218–236. 2nd ed. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.

Warren, R. L. 1978. The Community in America. Chicago: Rand McNally. Wilson, N., M. Minkler, S. Dasho, N. Wallerstein, and A. Martin. 2007. “Getting to Social Action: The

Youth Empowerment Strategies (YES!) Project.” Health Promotion Practice 14, no. 1:201–217.

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Improving Health through Community Organization and

Community Building

Perspectives from Health Education and Social Work

M E R E D I T H M I N K L E R

N I N A W A L L E R S T E I N

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Although health education and social work professionals have developed and adapted numerous approaches and change strategies in recent years, the prin-

ciples and methods loosely referred to as community organizing remain a central

method of practice. We define community organizing as the process by which

community groups are helped to identify common problems or change targets,

mobilize resources, and develop and implement strategies to reach their collec-

tive goals. The newer and related concept of community building is viewed here

not so much as a “strategic framework” as an orientation to community through

which people who identify as members engage together in building community

capacity rather than “fixing problems” through the application of specific and

externally driven strategies (see chapter 5).1

Implicit in both these definitions is the concept of empowerment, classically

defined by Rappaport (1984) as an enabling process through which individuals or

communities take control over their lives and environments. Indeed, we argue

that without empowerment that enhances community competence or problem-

solving ability, community organizing is not taking place.

Strict definitions of community organization suggest that the needs or prob-

lems should be identified by groups within the community, and not by an outside

organization or change agent. Thus, while a public health or social work profes-

sional may help mobilize a community around HIV/AIDS prevention or access to

mental health services, he or she can’t be said to be doing community organizing

in the pure sense unless the community itself has identified this as a key area for

organizing (see chapter 7).

Community organization is important in fields like health education and

social work partially because it reflects one of their fundamental principles, that

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