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Chapter 3

Learning to Secure and Use Civic Rights:

Change Through Organizational Effort

In Chapter 2, we examined the problem of citizenship education in relation to those Indian citizens whose culture differed from the dominant society in significant and even decisive ways. Their ability to participate in local, state and national affairs, to the extent that they wish to do so, continues to be severely limited for many reasons, not least of which is the refusal of the dominant society to allow them to participate except in ways which require suppression, and even eradication, of values deemed incompatible with those of the dominant groups in the society. In this and the succeeding chapter, projects will be examined which were addressed to a different category of persons, persons whose needs as citizens have been ignored or denied as a consequence of gross discriminations against them, particularly in the area of civil rights. Their problems were not due to confusion about whether or how they wanted to be a part of the larger society, including the economy. They knew that they wanted to improve their material condition, whether through access to jobs or through securing the public services to which they were entitled. They wanted equality of treatment before the law. They wanted education and a better life for their children. And they were aware that these benefits were being denied. At the same time, many had little hope that they might ever enjoy them.

They were members of minority groups (principally Mexican-Americans and blacks) who were denied access to benefits which were accorded without question to middle-class Anglos. In general, the great majority of the participants in these projects were poor and had little education. Many older Mexican-Americans could not read or write English. And many of the latter group were dependent on meager earnings from seasonal agricultural employment or were on welfare at least part of the time. Not all were migrants, however. Even in rural areas, former migrants had managed to get a foothold on the outskirts of small towns. In the larger urban centers such as Los Angeles, project participation was drawn largely from the ranks of common labor in industry, service stations, warehouses, etc. For the most part, poorly paid occupations predominated. An important core group in the fifties included World War II and Korean War veterans. In the projects involving blacks in the South, many lived in rural communities but migrant workers were a minority.

On the premise that discrimination was practiced against them more readily because they did not participate effectively as citizens, either as voters or as part of the informal organizational life of their communities, funds were made available to three grantees which were concerned to try and correct this situation. The Industrial Areas Foundation project was funded to undertake to encourage and assist Mexican-Americans in California to form organizations on a community basis. These were known as Community Service Organizations or CSO's. The activities of a CSO usually included organizing citizenship classes (to prepare for naturalization) and English classes, conducting voter registration and "getting-out-the-vote" campaigns, bringing pressure to bear against discriminatory practices in dealing with, for example, issuance of motor vehicle licenses, eligibility for welfare benefits, or police misconduct, etc. Another grant made to the Migrant Ministry of the Division of Christian Life and Mission of the National Council. of Churches was inspired by the success of the CSO program in California. The Migrant Ministry hoped to be able to stimulate citizenship education through organizing work among migrant agricultural workers who traveled from Texas to Michigan and Illinois. Activities somewhat similar (though in varying degrees) to those undertaken by a CSO were initiated in the Texas, Illinois and Michigan communities where organizations were started. The third grant was made to Highlander Folk School of Monteagle, Tennessee. Its principal purpose was to help citizens learn to identify, define and deal with problems in their communities. An important focus was on illiteracy as a barrier to citizenship participation, on promoting voter registration and getting out the vote and on using the ballot to counter the many discriminations practiced against blacks in the South. Although forming organizations in the community as a way of countering discrimination was explored (and, in some cases, assisted), Highlander's emphasis was on helping those who came to its residential workshops to learn through an educational process to become something more than they were when they came.

Although each of these grantees was concerned with helping citizens in a community learn to secure and use rights of which they were being deprived, the projects conducted by the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) and the Migrant Ministry emphasized the importance of forming citizen organizations and learning how to maintain and use them. These projects will be discussed in this chapter. The Highlander project placed its emphasis on the educational process whereby the citizen was helped to see himself as someone who could become something more than he was, someone who could see the problems of his community with a keener eye, who could see and judge among alternative solutions, who could appreciate the need to work with others and come to see how to do this. Most important was the need to see a larger role for one's self. As Myles Horton put it, "Their imaginations must be stretched." This process could be seen, for example, in the perception that in learning to read in order to register to vote, one was moving from second-class to first-class citizenship. The Highlander project will be described in Chapter 4. We turn now to a more detailed exposition of the IAF and Migrant Ministry projects.

Industrial Areas Foundation in California

Before dealing with the IAF activities supported by the Emil Schwarzhaupt Foundation (ESF) in California, it will be helpful to say something about Mexican-Americans in California, particularly in the fifties and sixties, and to summarize certain organizing activities among them which preceded those which were supported on a considerably expanded scale pursuant to the ESF grant.

By the end of World War II discrimination had been practiced against Mexican-Americans in California for over a century. There were many reasons for this state of affairs, some attributable to any minority ethnic group or to the poor, others being peculiar to the Mexican-American community. Testimony presented on July 25, 1962, by Juan Ramos' to the Committee on Perspectives, Objectives and Content of the California Welfare Study Commission suggests some of the cultural and other determinants of discrimination suffered by the million and a half (at that time) Mexican-Americans in California.

Ramos pointed out: (1) Early migrants had not intended to stay. Typically, they did not learn English. Indecision about their own intentions slowed acculturation, with consequent confusion on the part of later generations with respect to values, customs and goals. (2) The Mexican-American, in general, distrusted the Anglo and felt controlled by him. Because the typical Mexican-American leader had seemed more Anglo than Mexican-American, he too had been distrusted. (3) In Mexico, the father has status. In California, the mother sometimes got work more easily or was favored by the welfare program. This placed a severe strain on family relationships. (4) The schools serving the barrio were usually second class. When the Mexican-American youth moved on to high school, they felt inferior and tended to drop out in large numbers (5) A quarter of a million Mexican-Americans could find only the most backbreaking kind of labor to do, working in the fields with no job protection of any kind and with very low annual income (averaging $879 at that time). And (6) many Mexican-Americans, even though they could speak some English, were unable to communicate their feelings in that tongue. About 80 percent of the welfare clients were unable to communicate adequately in English on their cases. (Additional evidence suggests that very few welfare workers could communicate in Spanish.)

When Mexican-American veterans returned to their homes after World War II and the Korean War, the gap between what they had learned in the armed services and what they found upon their return seemed intolerable. Gradually efforts were made to deal with the many kinds of discrimination such as unfair treatment on the part of public agencies in matters involving voter registration, access to school bussing, examinations for naturalization and drivers' licenses and welfare benefits.²

Background

Concerned about the discrimination practiced against Mexican-Americans in California, the American Council on Race Relations undertook to set up Councils for Civic Unity beginning in the spring of 1946. Fred Ross, who had been manager of the farm labor camp at Arvin (of Grapes of Wrath fame) and later assistant director of Community Services in the Farm Security Administration, in charge of twenty-five camps in California and Arizona, was hired to organize such councils, which were eventually to be combined into a state federation, the California Federation for Civic Unity.

As a result of this organizing experience in several barrios in Southern California, he came to Saul Alinsky's attention. A letter in March 1947 led to a meeting in early June and his appointment in August to the Industrial Areas Foundation staff. The meeting in June was a very important one because it was on that occasion that Ross and Alinsky threshed out a very important issue, that is, whether organizing was to proceed on the basis of individual or organizational membership. As Ross described the facts about Mexican-American communities, Alinsky agreed that the Back-of-the-Yards model did not apply because there was no power base controlled by Mexican-Americans. (The Back-of-the-Yards Council--adjacent to the Chicago stockyards was the first mass citizens group organized by Alinsky. Formed in 1939, it was an organization of organizations. The success of this endeavor was the basis for his belief that a membership based on organizations was to be preferred, virtually without exception.) Some belonged to unions, but Mexican-Americans were very much in the minority. Many attended church but their church organizations were weak.

It was clear that among Mexican-Americans an organization would have to be built house by house, and perhaps in time several organizations could be brought together into a federation .³ It is important to make this point explicit because years later (in 1965) at a seminar on mass organization at Asilomar, California, Alinsky said that the CSO was not a typical IAF project so far as he was concerned. Alinsky went on to say that because of a personal tragedy, he was unable to give Ross adequate supervision "so he went off on his own," trying to organize on the basis of individual memberships.⁴ Ross, commenting on the recorded notes of the Asilomar seminar, pointed out that Alinsky's recollection was faulty in that the personal tragedy referred to took place after the agreement was reached between Ross and Alinsky as to the organizing approach which would be followed.⁵ In any case, on June 10, Ross received his letter of appointment effective August 1, 1947. But the question of whether membership of individuals or organizations was the more effective approach was to remain a matter of contention for them and for the field. Unfortunately, the limited funding then available to the IAF ran out and by 1952, Ross was back with the California Federation of Civic Unity. It was during this period that he began organizing efforts in San Jose (in the course of which he met and involved Cesar Chavez) and in Decoto.

In the meantime, Alinsky had been trying to raise money for the IAF organizing program, and in 1951 he forwarded a proposal to the ESF requesting a grant of $100,000 per year for three years.⁶ The sum of $15,000 was awarded on an interim basis pending completion of the report by the University of Chicago Committee. In April 1953, an additional $150,000 was granted for a three-year period beginning July 1, 1953. These efforts were subsequently supported by additional grants in the amount of $376,400. (See Appendix B.)

In his application, Alinsky stressed the importance of having assured funding for at least three years. This was necessary, he said, because IAF experience had shown that it took this long to become self-supporting and to develop effective leadership from the community. In any case, an expectation of at least a three-year period of employment was necessary to get good organizer personnel. Furthermore, effective operation would be impossible in the face of recurring financial crises. With funding assured, Ross returned to the IAF staff, eventually being named IAF field director for California and Arizona. While continuing to work with the CSO's in San Jose and Decoto, he began organizing in Salinas. At the same time, Cesar Chavez was hired to begin organizing in Oakland.⁷

So much by way of an historical introduction to the development of the CSO in California, prior to the involvement of the ESF.

Community Service Organization Programs (1953-1964)

In undertaking to help organize Community Service Organizations, Alinsky had in mind certain principles which he later articulated in an annual report.

1. You must work with people rather than for people. (Social welfare agencies, the 1AF maintained, did the latter.)⁸

2. It is not enough to work, for example, on the problem of rat infestation; you must also get after those persons who are responsible for causing, or who can help to solve, the problem. Inevitably, such a policy leads to conflict and confrontation and seems to be the point at which social agencies and other middle-class agencies want to "get off the bus."

3. The resident of a community is more concerned with his own problems than is anyone from the outside.

4. Given the opportunity, the local resident can and must do the job; no one else can do it for him.

5. The American way of life is to feel that you "belong."

6. When the interests responsible for a problem have been identified, it is important to maintain steady pressure on them until the problem is resolved.

7. To improve one's situation, more is needed than a just cause. To get something from politicians, voting power is required, which implies a mass-base organization.

8. To develop a mass-base organization among Mexican-Americans, the organizing effort should involve those few institutions, such as churches, in which they are involved (and refrain at the beginning from actively trying to bring in other ethnic groups because Mexican-Americans were not ready to join with others who might become members).⁹ The organizing effort must concentrate on bread-and-butter issues if a mass-base is to be achieved.

9. If people "don't want" something, it may well be because their past experience has convinced them that their situation is hopeless. Therefore, it is essential to achieve some visible success quickly in order to sustain hope in the people.

10. Effective leadership can be found at any level.

It is clear that the kind of organization based on such principles is first of all oriented to action to correct injustice. Passing a resolution might be the first step, but it was unlikely to be the last. Furthermore, it was assumed that many voices must join together if they were to be heard and that one's power must be pushed at the ballot box if need be. It was also assumed that to realize one's aims, it would often be necessary to confront those who were withholding that which members of the organization believed to be rightfully theirs. With approval of the grant application (forwarded on September 14, 1951, but not approved until April 27, 1953) work began in July 1953 in Salinas and Oakland and soon thereafter in Fresno and San Bernardino.¹⁰

Given the premises set forth above, how could such an organization be built? The typical approach was for the organizer to visit a neighborhood in the barrio (an area in a town or city with a concentration of Mexican-Americans) and try to get acquainted. He would try to get names of relatives or friends supplied by CSO members elsewhere. He would spend time talking in bars. He would visit the local priest. He would try to find out what problems were of concern and which persons might be interested in trying to do something about them.

At the beginning, in East Los Angeles, organizing was on a one-to-one basis. But this was too slow a process, and then it occurred to Ross to ask a contact to invite a few others to come to his house to talk about what should and might be done.

So, let us suppose that early on a warm evening in May, Ross was meeting with a group of relatives and friends of Senor Sanchez in his house across from the church. Children are playing in and out of the house. Ross has begun by introducing himself and explaining what he has been doing in other towns in the San Joaquin Valley. This soon leads to talk about what is wrong in their town. In no time, there is a list. There are the many discriminations: Mexican-black night at the skating rink (other nights were for Anglos), no school bus routes serving children in the barrio, politicians who pay no attention to Mexican-Americans and their problems, in the barrio none of the amenities such as sidewalks, street lights and sewers. Why is this so? It is because Mexican-Americans do not register and vote. So this must be changed. Before the group breaks up, Ross has commitments from several of those present to bring together their friends and relatives--meeting with whom will keep him busy for most of the week.

The house meeting became an indispensable organizing tool. It saved time. Those attending served to encourage each other. By talking to the host beforehand about what was coming up, he might help to make the meeting go better, become, as it were, a kind of assistant leader. And by talking together, the understanding and the sense of commitment of all would be advanced. At the appropriate time, an organizational meeting would be held to adopt a constitution and bylaws and to elect officers. The next step would be to appoint committees to work on those problems of greatest concern to the group.

Programs to Teach English and Citizenship. Through the fifties, a great amount of time and effort was invested by CSO members in programs concerned with learning to speak English, qualifying for citizenship and voter registration. These efforts, especially the first two, have been largely unreported. In the years following World War II, interest in acquiring citizenship increased enormously, along with a growing desire to learn English. These were concerns around which organizing efforts were soon focused. The program was greatly accelerated by passage of Section 312 of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1951. This law permitted aliens over fifty years of age and resident in the United States for over twenty years as of the date of the act to take the examination for citizenship in their native language. In connection with citizenship, two problems were involved: one was passing the citizenship examination and the other was establishing place and date of birth. For assisting with the latter, lawyers were charging clients five hundred dollars and more--an enormous sum for persons who were so poor.

To cope with these problems, CSO's put on membership drives offering appropriate services to those in need of them, including instruction in English and citizenship and help in securing needed documents. This was in sharp contrast to the local adult schools which largely ignored the need or seemingly had no idea of how to go about meeting it. It appeared also that the school authorities had done nothing to publicize the fact that citizenship examinations could be taken by certain aliens in their native language pursuant to Section 312. In any case, CSO's throughout California began organizing classes in English and citizenship. Because citizenship information materials in Spanish were lacking, the CSO's wrote their own, entitled Lecciones de Ciudadanla en Espanol e Ingles (Citizenship Lessons in Spanish and English).

Although most of the administrators of adult schools interviewed (with at least one exception) did not appear to welcome the CSO citizenship and English class programs, such classes were all organized as part of the adult school offering, except for some classes in Los Angeles. Enrollment records became part of the adult school statistical base, and teachers were appointed and paid by the adult school. In Los Angeles, classes met in community centers with volunteer teachers.

San Bernardino had one of the largest citizenship education programs of any CSO. For two years, the Citizenship Committee worked five nights per week, recruiting teachers, selecting materials and organizing classes on a volunteer basis. Recruiting the right kind of teachers was critical. The opposition of the schools to appointment of Spanish speaking teachers was a major handicap. When queried by me about the success of these classes, the director of adult education commented that he had heard giggling in the classes and because the students (whom he referred to as "primitive Americans") were adults, he judged their average IQ to be about 85. The adult school principal, however, took a more positive view, commenting that the CSO deserved full credit for organizing the program.¹¹ In spite of difficulties and the lack of adult school help, the San Bernardino CSO organized, in 1954 alone, thirty citizenship and English classes with a total enrollment of between 700 and 750 students,

Brawley, which with Salinas, San Bernardino and Fresno, was organized in 1954 under the ESF grant, achieved an even more astonishing record. Although its population was only about 13,000 compared with San Bernardino's 93,000 and in spite of skepticism on the part of the school administration, the initial campaign brought 320 into citizenship classes, divided on the basis of degree of literacy and age. This figure soon rose to 450. In fact, at the Hidalgo School (which Cesar Chavez once attended) there were as many adults in the citizenship classes as there were children attending in the daytime. By the end of the first year, 260 had qualified for citizenship. By November 1962, virtually all those interested in qualifying for citizenship in Spanish had gone through the program.

In Hanford (1961-1962), the CSO had from sixty to seventy participants in citizenship and English classes, In 1962-1963, the adult school moved the classes from the school in the barrio to the high school, and Mexican-American participation in the program fell off to a small fraction of its former level. In the English class of seventeen, only seven were Mexican-American; in the citizenship class, out of eighteen there were only four Mexican-Americans. Service to the Mexican-American community was sacrificed in part to administrative convenience, but also because, as the adult school secretary said, "We felt it was better for them to be with others." The probability that more Mexican-Americans would enroll if the classes consisted primarily of their neighbors of the same ethnic group was a factor of which the school administration was unaware or to which it was indifferent.

Even though citizenship and English classes usually met in schools and students were enrolled by the adult school, nevertheless, the necessary tasks of student and teacher recruitment and follow-up of dropouts were undertaken by the CSO. In Oxnard, for example, committee members went door to door to enroll members. Also, CSO members served as class aides, encouraging those who faltered and providing tutorial help.¹² It was these characteristic elements of the overall program which produced one of the most extraordinary results in the history of adult education in California. These classes were filled with persons who had never attended an adult class before.

The CSO follow-up was the key to the high completion rates in citizenship classes, considering the age and the lack of much formal schooling which characterized most of the students. A representative of the CSO Citizenship Committee was expected to be present at each class session. He encouraged students who were experiencing difficulty and underscored the importance of persistence. He checked on each student after a second absence. Such encouragement was essential, but this kind of involvement was totally foreign to the adult school's operation. Its way of doing things was geared to a middle-class, Anglo clientele. It is interesting to speculate on what the adult schools might have achieved if they had seen the possibility of team effort and capitalized on CSO energy to promote an even broader range of educational activities.

In fairness, it should be noted that data on adult school staff attitudes are incomplete. But of the eight adult school staff interviewed in nine communities where the CSO had an active citizenship education program, only two showed a sympathetic and positive understanding of its significance. In an interview in November 1962, Esther Stone of the San Jose Adult School commented on the value of the citizenship education program and the importance of the CSO contribution to its success. She noted especially that the Mexican-American students stayed in class and that Spanish-speaking teachers were essential because they helped to provide a social milieu for the classes which accounted in large measure for their highly significant impact. She also noted that many of the younger students in citizenship classes went back to complete work for a high school diploma.

At the peak of the program, there were 108 classes with an average enrollment of about twenty-five. On May 30, 1954, 8,000 persons, many of them Mexican-Americans, were sworn in as citizens in Hollywood Bowl. Of the Mexican-Americans, the great majority (3,000) were CSO members.¹³ These were, of course, only a few of the many CSO members who achieved citizenship status through the CSO program. Over a ten-year period, perhaps 30,000 completed CSO-sponsored classes in English and citizenship.¹⁴

For many, however, completing the citizenship classes was not enough. Discrimination might also be practiced by an examiner of the Immigration and Naturalization Service. One of these, who had been reprimanded more than once for practicing discrimination, was notorious among Mexican-Americans. First, he had refused, contrary to law, to examine applicants in Spanish. Second, he asked questions which would be difficult for even a native-born Anglo to answer. For example, he pointed to the chairs in a courtroom and asked the applicant what they signified. Another question required the applicant to state what is the highest law (whatever that might mean) at city, county, state and federal levels. He refused to pass one applicant who could not produce a death certificate for his first wife who died in an epidemic in Mexico at a time when records were not kept. It was only because CSO's carried out vigorous voter registration and "get-out-the-vote" campaigns that this kind of discrimination could be prevented.

By 1962, the emphasis on citizenship classes had diminished greatly. There were several reasons for this. Many of those most directly interested had already become citizens. A related point was that as a culmination of nine years of effort beginning in 1952, legislation was passed in 1961 which extended California state pensions to aliens, a development made possible by the voter registration and "get-out-the-vote" campaigns conducted by CSO's. Another important factor may have been the growing influence of a middle-class membership. The lack of interest on the part of adult schools was a continuing, discouraging problem. And, of course, the lack of staff to push the total CSO program had its impact on the class program too. Hayward was the only community in which citizenship and English classes were pushed year after year. This was due to the accidental factor of having a member who was interested and who saw and remembered the connection between classes and organizing.¹⁵

The English classes involved a somewhat different motivation from the citizenship classes. In addition to the obvious benefits of learning the language as a means of improving one's situation generally, registering to vote required (at that time) a knowledge of English. From the very beginning, voter registration was seen as the key to progress for Mexican-Americans.

Voter Registration. Figures on the numbers of Mexican-Americans who registered as a result of CSO efforts may not be entirely reliable, and such data as are available from a number of CSO's cover different periods. Some sense of the significance of CSO efforts in this field can, however, be gotten from a National CSO report dated September 26, 1960.¹⁶ In that year the CSO embarked on an intensive voter registration campaign which involved over 500 deputy registrars and "bird dogs," the latter going door to door to bring unregistered persons to the deputy registrars. At an estimated cost of over 120,000 hours of effort, 137,096 new registrants were recorded. One deputy registrar in San Mateo county registered 2,300 persons. Between January and April 1960, a mass registration effort in Fresno by the League of Women Voters, American Legion, PTA and AFLCIO yielded 205 registrations. In only one-third of that time, the CSO registered 2,704. In San Bernardino the Daughters of the American Revolution gave its 1960 Award of Merit to the CSO president because the organization registered 4,000 voters in a two month campaign. One deputy registrar in San Bernardino registered 1,478 in a six-week period.

The results in 1960 were due in part to financial support from the AFLCIO which made it possible to hire eleven full-time and nine part-time workers to coordinate the effort. Valuable though this coordinating assistance was, it was the interest, dedication and organizational ability of the CSO leaders and membership which made the difference.

Although no comparable summaries were made for 1962, local CSO's continued to stress voter registration. Between August 15 and September 15, 1,200 were registered in Fresno for the general election. In Stockton, 2,300 had been registered for the primary and 1,500 for the general election. The 1,500 were registered in only three weeks because authorities had resisted deputizing CSO members. In Bakersfield, the respective results were 1,000 and 650.

When one considers that Mexican-Americans tended to vote in greater proportion than Anglos and that the former tended to be more concentrated as to place of residence, it is obvious that not only could the Mexican-American vote be decisive in local elections but it could have a significant impact in elections for state and federal offices as well. And it should be noted that according to the report, the CSO had registered 298,000 persons prior to 1960, for a grand total of 435,000. An unknown proportion, of course, were persons whose registration may have lapsed and were reregistered. But in any event, the consequences were immense.

These results were typical of the work of the many CSO's in California in the fifties and early sixties. The results were not achieved easily. Many deputy registrars had to go up and down ill-lighted streets in the barrio after working all day. In some cases, it took strong pressure on county clerks before they would accept deputy registrars from the Mexican-American community. In one large county, the registrar required handwritten letters of application and then rejected them because the handwriting was too poor until it was shown that he was accepting applications from Anglos in which the writing was no better. He then refused to schedule an evening instruction class for deputy registrars on the ground that this meant special privilege for the CSO. Pressure from the Central Labor Council changed this position. Otherwise, the CSO effort would have been aborted because its adult members had to work during the day and could not attend a daytime class.

To get ready for the county clerk's class and the subsequent examination, Ross set up a special class for the sixty-five applicants to become deputy registrars. First, he qualified as a deputy registrar himself so that he could learn the procedures thoroughly. He took the group through the election code provisions and the affidavit form step by step for an hour and a half. Then group members practiced registering each other. Finally, he asked the two who were best qualified to register each other before the whole group. A second familiarization class was set up for those who missed the first one. When the registrar's class met and was over, all were sworn in. But it took hard work and long hours on the organizer's part and patient attention to detail to recruit the volunteers and carry through despite all of the obstacles.

In another county, the county clerk refused to consider qualifying three deputy registrars. The CSO called a mass meeting and voted to take the matter up with Congressman Saund (who had credited his election to CSO efforts) and to inform the Mexican-American community about the position of the Democratic party in the matter, as well as that of the county clerk who was up for reelection.' ⁷ It is said that within twenty minutes, he was on his way to swear them in.

In the end, the registration campaign efforts made a difference. They registered a relatively high proportion of the eligible Mexican-Americans, who in turn voted in large numbers. In one election, in four precincts of the Stockton barrio, 108 voted of 145 registered. In twenty-two precincts in Bakersfield in 1960, 93 percent of those registered voted. In the 1962 primary in the Brawley barrio 75 percent of those registered voted. As a direct result of these efforts to build strength, Mexican-Americans began actively to support candidates. Some ran for office and gained a few offices. In Hanford, a Mexican-American ran for the city council in 1960 and won the beginning of a major change.

In the pre-Community Service Organization days, whenever a Mexican American had a problem, regardless of whether that problem was related to the police department or to various services concerned with streets, lights, health, education or no matter what, that Mexican-American was always referred to the dogcatcher.... The post was always filled by either political party with a Spanish speaking person who not only served as the liaison between the Spanish speaking population and the public authorities, but actually as the authority himself. As Peter [Garcia, local CSO president] puts it, "This was very bad for all of our people. Imagine, every time something came up which had anything to do with the city we would have to go to the dog catcher! But not anymore! Not since the Community Service Organization! You saw yourself, Mr. Alinsky, at the meeting tonight. There is the Mayor, the Chief of Police present. All has changed since the Community Service Organization. And ever since we registered people and did all those other things, lots of changes have come about."¹⁸

Other victories were won. In Brawley, the CSO fought the granting of a license for a used car lot in the barrio by holding "meet your candidates" nights and getting pledges from them to oppose the license. The license was then revoked by the city council.

We cannot review here in detail a typical CSO program, but mention should be made of "protective" activities, such as demanding investigation of police behavior toward Mexican-Americans.¹⁹ Other action was undertaken against discrimination in getting access to public services and against elimination of the barrio through urban redevelopment. The problems seemed endless. And their resolution took endless time to build the base needed to sustain the grueling confrontations with officialdom. The wear and tear on staff and leaders was great and this in turn was a continuing source of weakness for the CSO itself. What, then, were some of the problems facing the CSO's and what was the role of leaders and staff in dealing with them?

CSO Purpose: To Serve Middle Class or Poverty Interests?

The discriminations suffered by the mass of Mexican-Americans in California were due to a lack of power to compel the community to listen and to accommodate to their interests and needs. It followed, therefore, that any organization working to counter these discriminations had to be large in numbers. It was further indicated that the organizing effort must be built on issues important to the mass of the Mexican-American population. Police brutality; segregated schools; failure to provide school bus service on a comparable basis with Anglo children; denial of welfare benefits; lack of playgrounds, clinics or libraries; and withholding of improvements such as streets, sidewalks, storm drains, sewers, or curbs and gutters provided such issues. As a CSO grew in numbers and support. its leaders became able to confront government agencies and other organizations and demand, successfully, better treatment. Through energetic voter registration and "get-out-the-vote" campaigns, CSO's began to elect Mexican-Americans to public office. In short, Community Service Organizations were a success.

But success was not an unmixed blessing. First, those who had joined because of their interest in a particular issue might drop out when their problems were solved or when problems were not solved quickly enough problems of twenty or more years standing. Second, as Cesar Chavez said in an interview, "The more people actively working, the greater the burden on leaders." Trying to coordinate more and more committees became difficult for a president, especially when a chairman persisted in taking his committee in a direction contrary to board policy. Feeling responsible for success or failure of a program of great importance to members was hard to bear. One's wife or husband would complain about neglect of family because of endless meetings. And there were the many confrontations with the establishment, feeling the wave of disapproval which would emanate from those who were accustomed to ignoring the interests of Mexican-Americans. The psychological strain became intolerable for many. "You can't keep up a fight all the time.²⁰ Third, as a CSO became larger and more powerful and achieved status in the community, it attracted members of the middle class who hoped to use its power for their own ends whether as would be power brokers, to further political ambitions, or as a springboard into Anglo organizations. In some CSO's, such persons became officers (often, because they were more verbal than field or blue-collar workers), usually with disastrous results for the organization. For instance, if a social worker became a CSO president, it was unlikely that he would push an issue with the county welfare department on behalf of a member. His problem not being met, the member would leave. With no action on issues important to the mass membership base, the base disappeared. This happened over and over. The original goal of seeking justice for those most discriminated against was forgotten.

In one CSO in 1962, the executive board was meeting first and members later the same evening which meant the members were left with little to talk about. Most discussions were concerned with questions or problems raised by the National CSO rather than with local matters. Not to have local issues to discuss was, of course, a sign of dormancy. In another CSO, according to Ross, the organizing effort involved people with white-collar jobs rather than low-income Mexican-Americans. CSO meetings were devoted to discussions of parliamentary procedure, raising money for scholarships, integration, Cub Scouts, and cooperation with the Community Council. These topics were of interest only to middle-class members. Member complaints about, for example, the police were turned over to a lawyer.²¹ On such matters, the CSO was moribund.

A specific example of the devastating consequences of electing leadership too timid to support the interests of the members involved a proposal by the city council in a San Joaquin Valley community which would virtually eliminate the barrio through an urban renewal program in favor of industry. The position taken by the CSO chairman (a school teacher) was that the CSO must remain neutral, that the problem lay between barrio residents and the council. Perhaps he feared loss of his job, or perhaps he felt that what the leaders of the city decided must be the proper thing to do. In any case, at the city council hearing, he read a statement disassociating the CSO from the issue. Residents of the barrio had organized its presentation so well, however, that the city council decided not to proceed with its plan. The credibility of the CSO having been destroyed in the eyes of the barrio, the members withdrew leaving only the chairman and a handful of his friends. It was a sad contrast with the earlier history of this CSO which had helped some 1,500 Mexican-Americans to become citizens.

In another case involving the killing of a Mexican-American youth by a policeman, Fred Ross reported on a discussion called to consider what the CSO should do. A stenographer member argued against diverting attention away from "building the organization" to fighting the case because the result would be that "the better element" would not come in. A grocer and a civil service employee supported this position. But another spokesman stated the principle. "We don't have to worry about protecting the organization; our job is to fight for the rights of the people. If we do what's right for them, they'll stick with us. And that's the best protection any organization can get. If we don't, before long we won't have any organization to protect."²² As Ross said on another occasion, "I don't think they want to do anything; they just want to be something." That is, they did not want to become involved in fighting some injustice or solving some difficult problem. Just to be president of the CSO or chairman of a committee or a member of the executive board was what they were interested in perhaps because it would enable them to move into other circles in the community. In Stockton, in 1962, the officers and executive board members included two farm workers, two cannery workers, a railroad section hand, a housewife, two warehousemen, a mother receiving payments under the Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) program. The president was a semiskilled gardener. In Hanford, the president worked in construction or as a farm worker. Other board members included a construction worker, a farm worker, a laborer, a worker in a dry cleaning shop and a building contractor. In Madera, the president was an ADC client; others were a tractor driver, a service station operator, a cook, a farm crew leader, a farm worker, and the operator of a small farm. These chapters were still very much alive.

In two formerly major CSO's, but which were now headed, respectively, by a lawyer and an office supervisor in the county welfare department, the chapters were inactive. In still another CSO, a young, articulate president urged a program which had nothing to do with the interests of the mass-base membership. The concept of program was at the level of putting a float in a parade or supporting some candidate (the latter practice being generally condemned). A tenth anniversary dinner for former presidents was boycotted by half of the presidents and many members because the middle-class leadership group had compounded the existing resentment and confusion arising from its political manipulations by inviting the governor to speak. At a meeting called to consider what could be done to revive the CSO which had declined from a level of several hundred to a point where only fourteen had attended the previous meeting, the president complained that although CSO represented the Mexican-American community to the Anglo community, the bulk of the CSO membership was made up of people who needed to be helped, who could not write, and who could hardly speak English. Nor, he said, were they capable of doing things; they needed people to talk for them at agencies. He had neither a sense of concern for the deprived or for the original goal of the CSO.

With such an attitude, it is no wonder that the membership melted away. The upwardly mobile in the group wanted to believe that the old problems had largely disappeared. They now wanted to use the organization to work with Anglos, to join community coordinating committees. But the organization was by then just an empty shell.²³

Another aspect of CSO leadership merits attention. In connection with field visits to CSO chapters in November 1962, 1 asked questions about tendencies toward monopoly of leadership positions and about the willingness to stay with the program. Although data are fragmentary, there did not seem to be a problem about overly prolonged tenure of individuals in office. Turnover may have resulted, of course, from the strain of representing the organization in so many forums, as well as in actual confrontations. In Gilroy, there had been three presidents in four years. At the Brawley meeting, there were five former presidents in attendance, In Oxnard, of six presidents, three were still active; three had left town. Thirty-five persons had held eight offices during that time. In short, whatever the organizational difficulties of the CSO movement, monopolization of offices did not appear to be a problem.

In his book La Raza: The Mexican-Americans, Stan Steiner reports Cesar Chavez' judgment of CSO:

Unhappy with the middle-class methods of the CSO, he was ill at ease. It was "unheard of" that they meet in a cheap hall, he says: "It had to (be) the best motel in town, very expensive, and it cut off all the farm workers who couldn't afford to be there. The reason given was, `We have to build prestige.' The politicians have to know who we are; we can't take them to a dump, I was naive enough in the beginning to buy that. So we ended up with just farm workers who had gone to school or weren't farm workers any more.

"The officers of CSO were semiprofessionals or professionals," he says. "It became a problem communicating with the workers." It was a conflict of styles of life, goals, attitudes, and even language, that has since divided the civil rights movement. Chavez says, "In most cases, the leadership had more to lose than the workers. They'd say, `We should fight, but we should be moderate.' They felt that farm workers were outside the jurisdiction of the CSO. It was a labor problem."²⁴

So Cesar Chavez resigned from the staff of the National CSO to found the Farm Workers' Association which became the United Farm Workers' Organizing Committee and later the United Farm Workers Union. "The success of CSO tends to destroy it," he said. "People are attracted by what it can do for them."²⁵

Leadership

To help make more vivid how much could be accomplished by leadership "coming from the bottom," as Msgr. O'Grady put it, I include here an account of how a CSO was turned around, as told largely by Cirillo Lopez, a recipient of disability welfare payments from the Madera County Welfare Department. The Madera CSO had been organized by Cesar Chavez in 1954 and was built up to a membership of 200, some Protestant (in larger numbers than was typical of CSO's elsewhere) and some Catholic. There had been solid accomplishments in voter registration, citizenship classes and getting out the vote. Unfortunately, the leadership injected religious differences into the organization, and by 1959 the chapter was dead.

When in 1960, Cirillo Lopez was denied further welfare payments, he sought and received help from Cesar Chavez to have his entitlement restored. Asking what he could do in return, Chavez suggested that he "reorganize the CSO chapter." A list of things to do was written down, discussed and explained to Lopez.

On his return to Madera, he began to visit all of the former members, Catholic and Protestant, asking them why they had dropped out and what should be done. He offered to work full time on reorganization if they would cooperate. In late 1960, a reorganization meeting was held with an attendance of 125, at which he was challenged by the then president on grounds of illegality. His response was, "The officers refuse to hold meetings, so the National CSO has asked me to get the chapter going again. So let the people decide." They decided to elect him president. In recounting the story, Fred Ross stated that it was amazing in itself that a Protestant (which Lopez was, at least nominally) should have persuaded the Catholics, who constituted an overwhelming majority of the membership, to rejoin. In the meantime, the county welfare department denied him eligibility status again. ²⁶ The county welfare director sent him a letter asking for information about when he became president, what his pay was (he received none) and what was the income of the CSO. Lopez replied that to get such information he should become a CSO member and come to a meeting. "Anyway, I don't ask you how you run your department." In the end, his appeal to Sacramento was upheld. It took courage and the backing of the CSO to protest in this manner.

When the previous treasurer refused to turn over the books and funds, the bank advised Lopez to file a formal complaint with the district attorney. But his reply was, "That would cause bad publicity for the CSO; there is a better way."²⁷ He asked the sheriffs advice, and the sheriff sent a deputy to the treasurer, who without further ado signed over the account to the new treasurer. This incident is mentioned because it shows the capacity of this uneducated man, without much status in the community, to anticipate consequences and, indeed, look for a better way.

When the county clerk objected to the appointment of CSO members as deputy registrars on the grounds that the Republican and Democratic party organizations handled this, Lopez replied, "We don't want to be either side. We want to be ourselves. We go down the middle. We do not tell our people who to vote for." Finally, the CSO appealed to the county chairman of the Democratic party, and three deputy registrars were sworn in. When they began going door to door, they found so many persons who were completely ignorant of the voting process that they thought it wrong to register them until they could set up an "educational" on how to do it.²⁸ By November 1962, there were 100 paid members. The board members expected that the membership drive would produce 150 paid members by the end of the year."

In the interview with Lopez, he commented that the pastor of his church had criticized him for spending all his time on CSO. His reply was, "A man must be himself; he must be responsible for his own actions. He must be free to do what he thinks is right and what is good for others. One man is a good thing, two are better and three still better. Hombre sin hombre no vale nada. [A man alone accomplishes nothing.] So he works for CSO."³⁰ Cirillo Lopez was not an educated man. Perhaps his past membership in the United Cannery, Agricultural and Packinghouse Workers of America CIO was of some help to him. But without his qualities of courage, wisdom and dedication, this CSO would not have been revived. These were qualities of which any organization might have been proud. It was men like Lopez whom Fred Ross was always on the lookout for when he came into a community to organize. He recounts a conversation with Cesar Chavez at the beginning of the organizing effort in San Jose when Chavez asked, "Why look for leaders among us? If you're trying to find the hotshots in the barrio you're looking in the wrong place." Ross replied that he certainly wasn't looking for the doctors, lawyers, businessmen, 16th of September habladores or coyotes:

No, they're the last ones I'm looking for. What I want are just the plain, ordinary working people who've been pushed around all their lives like you have. While I'm around with them, I know that somewhere along the line they'll lead me to the second thing I'm always on the lookout for the man among men. A guy the people look up to and trust. A guy who'll really bear down and work and stand up and fight... If I can find a guy like that, he's the one the people will probably choose, later on, to lead the organization. And he's the one that'll keep after them when I'm gone. That's what I mean when I say "leader." ³¹

In talking about leadership, Chavez pointed out its critical importance, even more crucial in the barrio than in Anglo communities. In the barrio, there was virtually total unawareness of their rights and responsibilities on the part of Mexican-Americans. There was no functioning leadership. Organizing started among people with no experience in community work. They did not know that there was a simple way to bring people together and to fan a spark to do something for the community, not only for Mexican-Americans but for everyone. They learned that there is a way to do this, where previously, they would just "cuss the cops." They came to see the futility of this and to understand that there was something they could do themselves. But they also learned that the struggle is unending. Many could not take it and dropped out. But Chavez could see that years later people who "got the bug" continued to work to get others to care and to act. "There have never been such people in the Mexican-American community before."³²

There were, nonetheless, many reasons why leaders dropped out. If the organization flourished, the burden on the leadership increased geometrically. Nor was the poverty level community immune from irrationality, and irrational tactics on the part of a leader or a faction could easily destroy a group whose prospects were fragile at best. Some leaders dropped out because their proposals for action were rejected by the membership or because they were interested in a particular problem and wanted to be head of the organization only to deal with that. Others were recruited into state agencies and boards by Governor Edmund Brown's administration. Still others could no longer sustain the psychological strain of confrontations.

In any case, there was a continuing need to recruit new leadership, with no guarantee that the replacements would be effective. As we have seen, the growing strength of a CSO chapter attracted those--the better educated and mobile--who wanted to use it for their own purposes, purposes which they saw as threatened by confrontation, by bringing in the "wrong element" such as field hands who would talk "strike" or complain about police treatment. A field trip in the fall of 1962 supported my observation that the better educated the chapter leaders, the less active the chapter was. Ironically, educational work among members of the chapter was itself a vitalizing force both with respect to leadership and the program. What was damaging was the drive by certain leaders for personal mobility and status, motivations cynically exploited by politicians, both Mexican-American and Anglo, seeking their own aggrandizement. But recruiting leaders was not the end of it. Leader training must be a continuous process in which the staff worker must play his role carefully.

In one case, Ross was talking with a committee chairman about an upcoming meeting on how to get sidewalks to help residents of several blocks in the barrio, and especially Lopez' block, to get out of the mud. First, Ross asked the chairman how he would handle those who had other problems to bring up. It was decided the group should be asked to assign priorities to the various problems. "But how are you going to decide which comes first?" "Probably I'll have to help them a little on that. Maybe I'll just keep asking them questions the way you're doing now." A useful tactic had been learned.

The meeting was thrown into confusion, however, when the school principal dropped in and asked the CSO for backing to get sidewalks around the school. By raising a question which brought out the fact that Lopez's block ran to the school ground, Ross helped encourage discussion which came to the conclusion that if the school sidewalk project were approved first, it would be more difficult for the councilman to deny support for the Lopez group's request.

When committee members said, "Let's get started," Ross asked, "What's the best way to get people interested?" It was quickly agreed that strangers starting out to ring doorbells to get signatures on petitions would probably not be successful. Instead, they decided to ask certain people to hold house meetings.

Ross and the chairman headed for the bar and a beer to review what had happened. Ross complimented him for continuing to ask questions although, he continued, "A few opportunities were missed to encourage others to talk. But just remember, whenever you're not sure of something, admit it. They'll respect you more for being honest about it. And besides, if they get the idea you think you know it ail, they'll turn against you.... But the best move of all was that idea of yours about holding a house meeting. That way we'll not only have the people themselves deciding what they want, and working for what they get, but we'll probably wind up with a flock of new CSO members."³³

So from the start of talking with the chairman about how he was going to conduct the meeting, to encouraging him to keep others involved in the discussion, to raising a question when it was necessary to encourage the group to reflect on the probable consequences of a proposal, to the looking back over what happened, praising the good points and warning about the others in all of this process, Ross was teaching the leader's art so that when he moved on, there would be leaders able to cope with the task.

To illustrate further the role of the staff member in helping the new leader, Ross recalled his first conversation with Alinsky, relating the latter's interest in an episode involving a meeting with a board of education. Alinsky asked him why he stayed outside and let the council president go in by herself. Ross replied,

"Because I wanted her to get in the habit of standing up on her own .  . and demanding her rights without my help." Alinsky went on to ask why he slipped in later, while she was talking to the board.

"Well," I tell him, "that was the first time in her life she had ever gone up before a public official of any kind; and she was very nervous; and I wanted to be on hand to help her out in case she got stage fright and started to muff the thing."

And Saul is right on me: "And what difference would it have made if she had muffed it?"

"Well, it would have been a terrible blow to the organization."

"Certainly," Saul nods his head, "and that's so obvious you'd think that anyone could see it, wouldn't you? But many people don't, particularly these people who go overboard on this nondirective business. They get so busy trying out their little theories, they forget they've got a flesh-and-blood organization to consider; and of course, before long they haven't!"

"What all of us have got to remember is that, while it's the function of the organizer to constantly push responsibilities on the people, and to assume right up until the last minute that they will carry them out still, he must always be ready to jump in and take over, himself, in case the people, for some reason or other, fail to follow through.

"Oh, of course, many times it's OK to let them drop the ball and fumble around with it for awhile, so they'll learn. But very often you aren't allowed that luxury. Crisis situations develop, and you've got to move in fast; otherwise the whole program--or a vital phase of it--may be destroyed."

"But it's not only the possible destruction of the program that's involved here--and this is another thing these 'nondirectivists' always overlook--there's something else that's equally if not even more, important and that's the effect on the individual. Now, for instance, how do you think this council president we're discussing would have felt if she had dropped the ball, and you hadn't been around to help her pick it up!"

"Oh," I answer, "she would probably have been so discouraged she'd never be able to face that kind of situation again for the rest of her life."

"Right!" says Saul, "but by being there yourself, the moment you see she's going to muff it, you take over and give her the backing she needs--and even more important--the example in action, the 'on the spot' leadership training she has to have to be able to meet the same or similar situations in the future."

"What so many people fail to understand is that, in this field, no real learning takes place unless it's tied right into an action program."

Alinsky went on to ask why, when he came in from outside, he remained in the back, hidden from the council president. Ross said he did so for the same reason he had stayed outside earlier.

"But wouldn't the council president have had more confidence in making her protest if she had known you were there in the room with her?"

"Oh, sure," Ross said. "but that would have given her a false sense of security. I wanted her to prove to herself she could do it completely on her own, so she could begin to develop the kind of self confidence she has to have to face the big shots in the future when I'm not around to rush in to the rescue."³⁴

In this episode, we see several important points: that teaching/learning must be done in the context of action; that the community people must take the responsibility and have the opportunity to exercise it. Until the leaders have learned to cope, the staff must be close at hand to forestall a disaster which could destroy the organization and the confidence of the leader in his/her ability.

Later, there would be a postmortem on the meeting to review what had happened. This was an opportunity to raise questions about weak points, reinforce the good things that had been done, assess the effect on the program, and consider what next steps might be taken.

The instances just described, of course, were only two of many. There were many because leadership skills were not learned all at once, there would be several committees actively engaged in carrying out different parts of the CSO program, and, in any case, there were new leaders to be trained to take the place of those who moved or dropped out.

The reader should take special note, too, of where the training took place. It was not done in a "leader training workshop," specifically scheduled for the purpose. No list of principles of group discussion or leadership techniques was presented to the committee chair, for example. Instead, he was encouraged, through the questions put to him by Ross, to anticipate possible difficulties and to consider how he was going to get the group to think about them and solve them. Training did not deal with abstractions. It was conducted in the course of action, encouraging the chairman and members to apply their own experience to dealing with novel problems as they came up in very real situations. Their judgments as to what to do were quickly tested in action, providing guidance for the next steps.

Training in this mode placed great demands on the staff worker. He must be ever alert to opportunities through his questions to encourage the group to consider the consequences of proposals, to see new possibilities, to take increasing responsibilities, and at the same time be ready if necessary to step in and avert a disaster.

Financial Support

It was a premise of the IAF's original proposal that financial stability of a CSO chapter could be achieved in three years. The record in California does not support this. Three years, however, may have been an unrealistically short time in which to try to achieve financial stability. An organization with a mass base in the Mexican-American community is necessarily dependent upon a low income membership group. There had been a history of dishonesty with respect to handling funds in previous organizations. There was a failure on the part of members to recognize the critical importance of staff support for a voluntary organization which must continually serve needs of individual members on the one hand, and, on the other, assist elected leaders to work out strategy and tactics to further the interests of members.

Typically, those recruited were asked to pay a membership fee of only two dollars per year in the belief that this was the limit of what farm workers could pay. The middle-class elements tried to persuade the organization to divert even these scarce funds to middle-class causes instead of providing the support needed to serve the majority of the members, such as maintaining a service center or staff. If a CSO held a fundraising event such as a dance or picnic, the proceeds would often be put into a scholarship to send someone to college or to support a scout troop. As a result, the members of the majority tended to disappear.

In retrospect, Ross said that the notion that two dollars dues would be the limit was mistaken. And, in fact, the CSO discovered that dues of ten or twelve dollars per year were not unreasonable, providing they could be paid in installments. But by the time this was discovered, the middle-class officers and members were, in fact, unwilling to give vigorous support to the service center and staff operations which were tied to the ten-dollar fee.³⁵

In the late fifties, it became obvious to the IAF organizers that their "consolidation" program (that is, the effort to achieve viability, both in finance and leadership) was not working. To solve the problem, a service center program was proposed, the development of which was financed by the last ESF grant to support the CSO program.³⁶ Briefly, it was proposed that Fred Ross be employed to recruit and train a person to serve in each CSO office on a paid basis. His or her function would be to provide services for members, such as assistance in preparing forms, for which a charge would be made. Ross stated in an interview in 1962 that the service center idea should have been the major element in the consolidation program from its inception, that this was the only way that self-support for the National CSO and the several chapters could be achieved including support for a staff "circuit rider." A substantial charge could be made for a specific service which the applicant would be willing to pay. And if volunteers from the membership could be organized to be in the office on a regular basis to talk about the CSO with applicants coming for service, the applicants would see that there was more to CSO than taking care of the problems of an individual. The service center would become not only a source of financial support for CSO but part of its continuing organizing program as well. By inviting the individual seeking service to come to an "educational," membership would grow and new ideas would come into the movement.

The first steps in getting the service center idea underway involved visits by Fred Ross (February 11 to March 14, 1962) to thirty-four CSO chapters to persuade them to raise dues and to vote in favor of the Service Center idea at the National CSO convention on March 16 and 17. He "gave them a historical account of our various efforts at becoming self-sustaining, our reliance on money from 'outside sources,' reluctance to put the responsibility for the support of the program on the people who benefited from it, total stress on program at the expense of fundraising projects to support it, and eventual collapse due to lack of adequate financial reserves to support the movement."³⁷

The convention approved the program, but it proved difficult to persuade individual chapters of the need to raise dues to the proposed twelve dollars per year, of which seven would go to the local chapter to help support the service center staff and five would be assigned to the National CSO. Although Ross would have asked the local executive board to make this decision before he arrived, invariably he would find that it had been left for him to carry the argument. (This was, of course, politically sound from their point of view.) If he was successful, he would then try to find volunteers to assist with the new program. The purpose was twofold: (1) to avoid allowing the chapter to degenerate into just another "paid-staff" operation and (2) to provide a group who could be trained in the intricacies of forms and regulations involved in meeting various social problems and who could also interpret the CSO program to those coming to the center for help.

The training usually covered the following problem areas: immigration, Social Security, welfare, driver's license and auto and industrial accidents:

It consists of holding a brief "educational" with the staff in connection with each problem that is brought to the center, pulling the answers out of them, helping them work up the courage to phone the various public agencies involved and put sufficient pressure on them to bring about solution of the problem. Gradually the nervousness ... wears off; they become accustomed to getting at the problem ... quickly and taking the action the problem calls for; and they are then capable of carrying on without me.³⁸

An important factor in the success of a service center was a continuing publicity campaign to alert the barrio to the availability of help. Getting a service center started took about six weeks, on the average, which was half again as long as had been anticipated. And from time to time, service center personnel would withdraw due to personal emergencies, moving to another community, or for other reasons. But there were successes. In Madera, the center was open from 3 to 6 P.M. Monday through Friday. Several instances of discrimination or other illegal treatment in welfare and driver's license situations were reversed. During the trainer's short stay, thirty-five new members joined the CSO. In Oxnard, the service center was open eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. The first months in Bakersfield, the income of the service center was about $200 per week. In Stockton, the center was open from 9 to 5 (or even later) five days per week and from 9 to 12 on Saturday. A schedule of charges was set, for example, three dollars for an immigration affidavit or one dollar for a letter on some matter. The schedule was voted by the members and was much lower than lawyers would charge. In October 1962, about $400 was collected through center activity alone. At least for a time, the service center idea was succeeding. The question was whether it would grow and be sustained to the point where local expenses as well as a small national staff of "circuit riders" could be supported.

As part of the change in emphasis in the IAF program from "organizing" to "consolidation," Cesar Chavez had shifted from the IAF to the National CSO staff. The importance of staff was stressed in the IAF Annual Report for 1958-1959 which recorded what a good organizer (in this case, Chavez) could do.

Because of a special grant of $20,000 from the United Packing House Workers, Chavez was sent to Oxnard as his first assignment. Within an eleven month period, the following achievements could be recorded: (1) holding semi-monthly membership meetings with an average attendance of 450; (2) recruiting of 950 paid members at four dollars each; (3) enrollment of 650 in semi-weekly citizenship classes; (4) organizing a credit union; (5) operation of a continuous rummage sale, clearing an average of $200 per month; (6) maintaining a service center that was open eighteen hours a day, seven days a week, with the help of thirty volunteers; (7) registering 300 new voters and putting on the most intensive "get-out-the-vote" campaign in CSO history among the voting population of 1,348; (8) conducting an organization program among field workers which resulted in replacement by local workers of hundreds of Mexican nationals. (This was the first time that the fields had ever been organized.); and (9) getting a statewide investigation of grower hiring practices and proving collusion between growers and the State Farm Placement Service.³⁹

Commenting later on the Oxnard results, Ross stated that forcing the growers to hire local farm workers instead of braceros from Mexico was a significant development. But much more significant was the fact that it showed Chavez that a farm workers union could be organized and that he could do it. It laid the groundwork for the later campaign to organize the UFW.⁴⁰

In the end, the service center concept was unable to maintain itself. Support for the training effort was too little and too late, and in any case, the service center program was addressed to the needs of a mass-base membership. The middle-class leaders, for the most part, saw no advantage for themselves commensurate with the increased dues which they would have to pay. In addition, fundraising events would also have to be organized to make up deficits. The leaders were unwilling to expend the effort to do this for the benefit of the poorest members. In the end, it was more a failure of leadership than of the service center idea. In the UFW, the service center concept works. ⁴¹

The "Educational"

Soon after the initial grant was made in April 1953 to the IAF, I raised a question with Alinsky about the need for some kind of educational program to accompany the action-oriented activities. In a letter to Alinsky, I indicated some of the problems:

The great danger in a program such as yours is that the most obvious and the easiest thing to do is to "operate." There are injustices and inequities. It is possible to identify leaders, work with them to build a power organization and apply the pressure to correct the injustices. This is good. But is not your basic objective to develop certain capacities among the people with whom you work? In the West, you are working primarily ... with a particular ethnic group. Are you developing a set of political bosses, new style, in the pattern of ethnic political bosses as we have known them in Chicago or Boston? If such a result is to be avoided, must not some understanding of the basic problems be shared fairly widely in the group? What are the facts about housing? about alternatives? What are the facts about juvenile delinquency? about causes? about available services? Who pulls this kind of stuff together? Who arranges for some orderly way of getting the facts and their implications discussed? This is only a beginning. But it is an educational job. When the drive is to organize, to get some results, who is thinking about and doing something about the educational side?

To put it in more high-flown language. The function of the citizen is to deliberate, to act and to evaluate the results of the action. Some of this he does directly; some indirectly through representatives. But however it is done, he is responsible for knowing why he does what he does. Developing the program which will make this kind of a result possible in disorganized urban areas (or rural areas for that matter), is the great contribution which the Industrial Areas Foundation can make.... Ought not this educational job to be started earlier in the process?⁴²

Fred Ross expressed it later in another way when he said,

You see, in most organizations, some fast-talking charm boy gets up and says what needs to he done; and the rest of the people just go ahead and vote for his idea without thinking. So, after awhile, the program becomes his program, not theirs at alt; and gradually they drop out and the organization is either dead or ruined. Now, the only way to prevent this in CSO is to start training the people now to quit taking somebody else's word on what's good or bad for them and get them in the habit of always trying to think things out for themselves.⁴³

In its next proposal for the three-year period beginning July 1, 1955 (which overlapped one year of the preceding grant), Alinsky requested $186,000 to continue and consolidate the organizing program, $60,000 for an educational program, and $5,000 for a final report.⁴⁴ This request was approved.

At first, the thinking about the program was quite confused, and, indeed, Fred Ross was skeptical as to its value and even wondered if it would not get in the way of effective organizing.⁴⁵ One decision, made very early, was that it would not be a good use of the funds to hire a director of adult education. Rather,  it was decided to recruit several persons, each to serve a different chapter.

To review the experience, a small group met for two days at the Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove, California, on July 5 and 6, 1956. Three educational chairmen met with Alinsky; the National CSO president; Glen Burch, director of the study-discussion project of the fund for Adult Education; and me. Two of the educational chairmen were social workers. It soon became apparent that their inclination was toward abstractions and concepts removed from action. In one program, two weekend conferences had been held. One goal of these conferences was to consider how to acquaint CSO members with community resources such as the Welfare Commission. Another was to encourage young people to stay in school; still another was to arrange visits to city hall. The most functional idea was to try to help committees work better. But for the most part, it was an exercise removed from issues. In another city, the educational chairman organized classes in public speaking and labor history. The group (at Asilomar) concluded that something much more closely related to the actions of the CSO must be the focus of the educational program.

Subsequently, Alinsky concluded that no one should be chosen to be an educational leader who had not been actively engaged in organizing. Only then could the leader understand what was being said and guide the discussion effectively.

We have become impressed with the advantages of selecting educational leaders who have a formal educational background as limited as their associates ... we find people assuming that the discussion leader, like the teacher in school, knows the answers.

But . . . if the discussion leader knows the answers, why should the group struggle their way through to an answer? In spite of pointing out this danger, the discussion leaders who have achieved a significant formal educational background have such a concern for status that they have to show them how much they know.

On the other hand, when the people know that the educational leader has the same formal educational background (although his experience has been greater and he has already demonstrated a curiosity as to the meaning of his experiences and acquired certain insights into various patterns of life far beyond that achieved by graduation from a college) the previously described barrier does not appear to operate. Everyone joins in to keep the pot boiling and see what kind of stew emerges. They identify the educational leader as one of "theirs." One need not move out of a neighborhood to move out of a community group. ⁴⁶

In Appendix I to the 1957-1958 Annual Report, Alinsky stated;

The discussion leaders or "teachers" must be recruited and trained from the local organization's personnel . . . ; (a) They must be completely involved and familiar with every part and program of the community organi- zation, since those issues provide the skeleton of the curriculum and the mainspring of the discussions. (b) They must be constantly physically available so that as an individual sparks to the sessions he can contact his discussion leader the next day and the spark can be nourished and encouraged.

Starting the Education Program in the Chapter. Although the educational program became controversial in some CSO quarters, the IAF was unable to satisfy all of the requests for the program. So, in some cases, members from other chapters might attend an "educational." At the beginning, in 1956, there were three pilot programs-in Salinas, Soledad and Oakland. A year and a half later, the Oakland educational was terminated in favor of San Jose, and two other CSO's, Hanford and Brawley, were added.

Not all programs started in the same way, although in all cases, the executive board had to request it, following a sample educational which Fred Ross would conduct. The first education leaders were nominated by Ross; later, the executive board would usually nominate one of its own members, and if satisfactory to Ross, he would be hired at a modest stipend of $500 a year and be given some training on the job by Ross.⁴⁷ The training was basically similar to that of organizers in that it consisted of exploration of their own experiences as educational leaders. Only thus could the training be real. The training would begin:

after [the candidate selected] has experienced some discussion sessions with. his particular group and comes to us with an account of frustration, failure, successes, inability to cope with certain situations and other positives and negatives of his first educational experiences. Using these specific issues as our points of departure, the discussions between representatives of the Industrial Areas Foundation and the educational leaders suddenly changed from previous superficial, verbal agreement to discussions in which there is a deep interest, understanding and a desire to explore into a whole new world; an exciting world of ideas, the meaning of experiences and synthesis of action and thought. ⁴⁸

Anyone who wished to attend the weekly or semimonthly meetings could do so. This was not, of course, a mass program, attendance usually varying from ten to fifteen. But those who did take part, often executive board members, were the best informed in the chapter. And, in fact, many participants in these educationals later became officers or board members. As the program evolved, even the meeting places changed. The original idea that the meetings could be held in private homes was found to be unworkable. The houses were generally too small and too close to the telephone which would be used by teenagers. Social callers would disrupt the proceedings. In the end, the groups welcomed the proposal that a room in the local public school be secured so as to be liberated "from the oppressive restrictions and interruptions of what had been regarded as 'an informal, congenial situation.'"

Method and Materials. As I have indicated earlier, Ross had been skeptical of the educational program, seeing it as a diversion from the real business of organizing. He agreed, however, to give the program a try, starting in Stockton.⁴⁹ He recalled that by the end of the first meeting, he became convinced of the value of the program. What changed his mind was Dolores Huerta's reaction to the announcement of the urban redevelopment program. She expressed her confusion and worry about it, but it seemed a lesser evil than the threat of condemnation. (When annexation to the city of the barrio in Goat Valley had been first proposed, the CSO had supported the idea: "At least we will get our streets fixed." Only later did it become apparent that the city intended to apply sanctions against the substandard housing in Goat Valley, in effect condemning them.)

At the first meeting under the new educational program, the group reviewed the literature prepared by the urban redevelopment agency (setting forth the "vision"). The group began to analyze it point by point. The question was asked, "Why did the city decide on urban redevelopment?" There was little response to this question. When the leader asked, "What groups were supporting urban redevelopment?" answers came forth readily: The Chamber of Commerce. Labor (because the building trades would get jobs). The Church (the hierarchy was represented on the Urban Redevelopment Committee of 100 prominent citizens). "Who will lose by it?" Goat Valley. In response to the question of what would happen if the project went through, data on housing ownership and income levels in Goat Valley had been obtained by the educational leader. The leader asked, "Is this fair?" It became quite clear that everyone would get something except the residents, 65 percent of whom owned their homes. Only a very few who had incomes of $400 or more per month could transfer any equity and get a loan for the balance. And those who had received welfare payments in the past would have these deducted from any equity they might receive.^° At this point, Dolores Huerta asked, "What are we going to do about it? How could we win? What is the best we could get?" It was decided the CSO must fight.

By the end of the meeting, Ross could see that by turning the questions back to the group, their thinking had penetrated a complex thicket of considerations; they had come to realize where their interests lay and could form a conclusion about what action they should take based on exploration of alternatives. As he jokingly remarked later, "I stopped being a two-bit Messiah and became a two-bit Socrates instead." Soon, Ross and the several part-time educational leaders were conducting these educationals throughout Central and Southern California.

In the beginning, acceptance of the educational program by the IAF organizing staff was based in part on the hope that it would strengthen the organizing effort (working out tactics), and this it did. Later, it came to be seen as even more valuable for what it could do to develop the abilities of individuals who would, as leaders, contribute greater strength to the organization.

In his 1957-1958 Annual Report, Alinsky had said that it was not concerned with remedial education, liberal education (like college), nor partisan education (in the manner of labor unions) but "development of a freewheeling, purposeful curiosity which is the goal of our search." Hence, the "point of departure for discussion of subject matter is their own actions and decisions, either in terms of the organization or themselves as individuals." A word of dissent, however, must be said concerning the assertion that liberal education was not involved. Rather, it would seem to me that the liberalizing aspect of the educational is precisely why it proved to be valuable because it was there that a picture of alternatives, of different possibilities, of connections between ideas, began to emerge. This is the kind of learning that lies at the core of liberal education. A CSO leader explained it less abstractly: "Your organization is your gun and you learn in an educational program where to aim it and when to shoot. Another thing you learn which you never thought about ... is what the shooting is all about."⁵¹ An interview with Huerta while she was educational leader in Stockton sheds further light. Speaking of the difference between an educational and other kinds of meetings, she said,

You try to crank up your brain. You ask questions to get back to what is basic. You start with: "What's hurting?" and push on to: "What's wrong?" and "Why?" You might have an educational on: "What is a meeting?" "How is it different from a get-together?" "What about parliamentary procedure?" "How does it help?" "What is binding about a meeting?" "Why do we have majority rule?" We might meet on: "How does this happen?" "Who does it?" "What are the duties of officers?" We held an educational on: "What makes a leader?" We ended up saying that it has nothing to do with oratory, clothes, education. Rather, it is one who works for the people. Therefore, even a farm worker can be a leader.⁵²

Ross kept stressing the same point about helping the people. The discussion leader must "keep the organization in the front of his head all the time. So, when an issue comes up, the thing he'll think of first is what's the best way to tackle it so we can help the people, and, at the same time, use it to strengthen the organization."⁵³

The educational had a potential, first, for leadership training and, second, to develop sound thinking, which could be realized in no other way. It was the only regular forum in which the more complex problems and issues could be thought about and talked through. In general meetings, many were reluctant to speak or ask a question. And, in any case, the agenda would usually be so crowded that it was hard to give enough time to any one item. The executive board meetings were also likely to be too full of urgent action items to allow for the kind of reflective discussion which the educational made possible. And just as important, by attracting concerned members and officers, the educational made a powerful contribution to the training of new leadership.

Impact of the Educational. In any case, it became evident that the educationals were having an impact. Alinsky reported that at member meetings it began to be noted that speakers were saying such things as, "Let's examine it calmly," and "Nothing is all good; we know that there are wrong or bad parts of anything, so let's take a good look at the things which are wrong before we make a decision." Or, "How is what we are doing or not doing on this going to affect the other parts of our program? We know that everything is tied up with everything else, and we've got to look at it from that side, too."⁵⁴ No speaker in any meeting at any level would need to feel ashamed of making contributions such as these. But let us look at other examples of the impact of the educational program.

The value of the educational in bringing together the facts and exploring their new meaning can be documented from the Hanford CSO in 1960. To help relocate Mexican-Americans who would be displaced by relocation of a highway, a housing program was proposed. But, according to Gil Padilla, the educational leader, "Without the educational the CSO would not have known how to start. We didn't know what was meant by 'workable plan' and all those names." The group spent separate evening sessions on the meaning of cooperative housing, self-help housing, public housing, urban redevelopment and urban conservation and renewal. The quality of the results was expressed by Herman Thatcher, director of the Federal Redevelopment Agency in San Francisco, saying, "This group has approached housing in the most intelligent and unique way of any instance I can recall."⁵⁵ Following this study and discussion of it, the CSO Housing Committee helped get out the vote which established a county housing authority by a little over 100 votes.

In Stockton, the conclusion arrived at in the educational to fight urban redevelopment was not accepted by other groups in the community. They refused to help, although a door-to-door survey of 100 families in the barrio demonstrated the facts about the low income of the residents and the lack of suitable housing for relocation. They tried to get other CSO chapters to write their congressmen, but in the end, Goat Valley residents lost. However, one consequence of the opposition effort was that the Bakersfield CSO was alerted in time and with the aid of other groups succeeded in confining the urban redevelopment bulldozers to the Bakersfield business area. The Bakersfield CSO also succeeded in promoting a self-help approach to housing improvement, buttressed by city action to put in paved streets and better lighting.

That the Stockton educational had some impact in other quarters is indicated by the fact that the information officer of the Stockton Planning Commission at the time of the fight over eliminating Goat Valley asked Huerta: "Where do your people learn to ask these questions? They sure are educated people."

Another episode involving an educational in San Jose became a cause celebre. Three blacks were refused service by a Mexican-American bartender, who was a former CSO member. Discussion in the educational, led by Luis Zarate, came to the conclusion that it was as wrong for a Mexican-American to discriminate against blacks as it was for Anglos to discriminate against Mexican-Americans. As the CSO president, Ernest Abeytia said, "We are trying to integrate our people into the community by dispelling discrimination. How in the world are we going to do it if we do the same thing."⁵⁶ The CSO decided to join the local NAACP in filing a suit against the bartender. In view of the tensions existing among many in the black and Mexican-American communities toward the other group, it is a tribute to the educational process (and to the persons involved) that such a decision could be reached.

I have noted some of the ways in which various episodes and their consequences were affected by the CSO educationals. But there was also a continuing impact on the CSO itself. Where officers and other board members took part, as in Stockton, the result was a stronger organization, characterized by intelligent and informed decisions and "a purposeful unity which comes out of a people who know precisely why they have taken a particular position....^"57

But in some other CSO chapters, officers felt threatened and remained aloof, while bitterly criticizing the roles of the leader and participants. Those officers who saw themselves as the embodiment of the organization were intolerant of the questions raised by members especially when it became obvious that the latter knew more about a problem or issue than did the officers. The president of one CSO is quoted as having said: "These participants take time to study the problems, and so when they come to the meetings they seem to know more about it than we do and they get up on the floor and make us look like fools." Another executive officer complained. "We are the officers, and we are supposed to make the decisions; but those people in the educational come to these meetings with all kinds of ideas and they learn to shoot off their mouths and by the time they get through with all their arguments, the membership votes their way and not our way. Who's running this organization?" Another officer said, "We are sorry we ever heard of the educational program and that we ever asked the IAF for it-trouble, trouble, trouble! Now our meetings last twice as long because these people have suddenly become little authorities on their subjects." Still another said, "Some of the questions that they raise don't show the proper respect for the officers."⁵⁸

It is unfortunate that a program designed to increase awareness and understanding of problems and the CSO's response to them should have provoked such negative responses in some communities. Because knowledge is power, some CSO officers were unable to tolerate the challenge to their own power based on their personal view of organizational welfare. In San Jose, for example, the officers would often press for action without allowing the reflective process to work. They saw discussion of a proposed action as a personal attack on them. But the education chairman noted that the participants in the educationals became better members, more articulate, better informed, more regular in their attendance and were the ones who kept CSO activity going during the agricultural work months.⁵⁹

The unsettling impact of the educational on the organization was, for Alinsky, its most important value. He had seen and deplored the "hardening of the arteries" which had made so many organizations moribund-whether they knew it or not. He recalled that at the beginning of discussions about an educational program, he had wondered whether it would be possible "to create a situation of constant questioning, challenging, unrest and controversy all inimical to the hardened, settled condition so essential to institutionalization." The possibility was certainly affirmed.

Educationals for Women. A specific development of some significance in the educational program was the proposal that provision should be made to set up educationals for women to be led by women. The stated reason for the request was the observation that the participation of women in the work of the CSO was much less active than Alinsky believed it could or should be. He attributed this to the fact that "the Latin tradition emphasizing a secondary status for the female sex is very strong in these [CSO] groups." It was his hope that more women would rise to positions of leadership in the CSO. Because the National CSO was unwilling to take responsibility for funding, the IAF requested a grant of $9,500 per year for two years in order to undertake such a program .⁶⁰ The request was approved. Dolores Huerta became the director in charge of this program, having had experience as education chairman in Stockton.

In Stockton, one focus had been the Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) program which involved mostly single women with children. This group was subject to gross discrimination by police who often entered their homes at night without warrants. Huerta began holding house meetings with ADC mothers to identify violations of civil rights and discuss possible action. She was trying to train the group to follow up for each other as representatives in responding to various forms of harassment.⁶¹ The goal was to help them achieve dignity and not suffer for the actions of a few.⁶²

In addition, she sought to increase the participation of women in the CSO program generally. Five ADC mothers served as deputy registrars during the Stockton voter registration drive, and one had served as coordinator of the drive in 1962. She worked for four months in Los Angeles and for four months out of Stockton until she had to withdraw for personal reasons.

Unfortunately, Fred Ross was unable to recruit a woman who had the required abilities as well as the freedom to move about. In desperation, he requested permission to employ, part time, Gil Padilla, who had led educationals and was currently (in 1962) actively involved in the consolidation program, including the service center program. Because of the need for orientation of the women being recruited to staff the service centers, he saw the two projects as being mutually reinforcing.⁶³ Permission was granted. The women's educationals, however, inevitably suffered in the face of the urgent need to establish service centers.

The Role of Staff

From time to time, reference has been made to the staff role. Reflecting on the CSO experience, it seems to me that the availability of staff had a decisive effect on the course of its development and subsequent decline. Perhaps decline was inevitable, as more militant positions came to the fore in the Mexican American community, for example, the Brown Berets, but the decline of the CSO certainly reflected to some degree the lack of continuing core staff.

In reviewing the kind of person he tried to be as an organizer, Fred Ross listed the following qualities, abilities and ways of doing things as of critical importance: the ability to grasp the ideas and aspirations of the people, sensitivity to their feelings, having a constant awareness of and ability to articulate the concept of "organization" as a frame of reference in all kinds of action, ability to apply automatically general organizational know-how to particular problems, ability to listen and play the role of sounding board, ease in relating one's own experiences and attitudes to those of the people, patience, frankness, obliviousness to the passage of time, tact, and a willingness to stay in the background so as to not appear to "hog the show." Although partially implicit in this list, 1 would add the ability to assess events and developments as to their implications for the organization and to suggest possible responses to the membership and their leaders.

Being a good staff person meant getting the people to "scratch around for what they know and then spit it out so that they could see that they weren't so dumb as they thought they were." It meant asking, "What are you trying to prove? What evidence do you need? Do you have it? If not, where do you get it?" It meant being ready to step in to forestall disaster for the organization if the president made a mistake in a confrontation. It meant being available to raise questions about what the organization was really for whenever someone was trying to divert it for his own purposes. Attempts to commit the organization to one political party or another were a continual threat to stability--a threat which a staff member might be able to avert by asking the right questions about the purposes of the organization and the probable effect of the proposed action. It meant having someone who could visit service centers to check on training and staffing so that their potential for building the organization would not be lost. It meant raising questions continually as to whether a CSO was, in fact, serving majority needs in the barrio. It meant seeing to it that new life was constantly being pumped in from the bottom. And, of course, a principal function of staff was to carry a certain part of the mechanics of the organizational effort.

This review of qualities to be sought in a staff person suggests another point to be considered. Alinsky indicated that he could tell someone how to organize. Unquestionably, he knew a great deal about organizing. Ross, however, would enter a demurrer to the notion that Alinsky would actually tell someone how to organize; rather, he would talk about what to organize. He generally took it for granted that asking about labor unions and churches was a sufficient clue. Ross did recall, however, that Alinsky noted Mao's advice to any organizer when arriving at a new village. He should seek out someone in need and help him. This would provide an entry point. But this left open the question of how this was to be done so as to maintain credibility. In his own organizing terms, Alinsky was more concerned with identifying the various interests in the community than with the question of how they were to be approached and involved in the program.

Myles Horton would see the matter differently. He would not tell someone to do something. Rather, he would encourage the person to talk about his problem with others who shared similar problems, raising questions himself, as needed. Out of such discussion and testing in action he would expect that the individual would learn what to do. D'Arcy McNickle saw the House Committee at Crownpoint make a disastrous choice of a house manager, but he felt that to interfere would have destroyed the value of all that had gone before. Which is it more important to protect? the organization? the individual? or the cultural collectivity? The choice is one of values to be served.

To Alinsky, constructing an effective organization was of central importance, along with learning how to use it. He was concerned with building enough firepower, so to speak, so that those in control of it could achieve their goals. And goals were to be understood as interests of the members which were to be served.

Myles Horton's view of the matter was much more open-ended. He did not lay out a blueprint to be followed in building an organization. He undertook no responsibility for the creation of an organization. His concern was with helping an individual or small group coming to Highlander to understand their own situation better and what the alternative possibilities might be for fruitful action. Much of this they would learn from each other.

The difference, it seems to me, would be in the depth and breadth of understanding of one's own life situation in the context of one's community which the IAF sought to achieve as compared with Highlander, the latter emphasizing more the development of the individual than of the organization.

Weaknesses in the CSO Organizing Effort

In time CSO chapters virtually disappeared as such, to be replaced by other organizations. (Reference has already been made to organizations continuing to use the CSO name but which are devoted primarily to providing services, the costs being borne from public funds.) Why did this happen? A definitive answer cannot be given but some suggestions can be offered.

1. Alinsky maintained that the CSO never developed a tough organizational structure. There were several reasons for this which were interconnected. The low-income and middle-class elements shared some interests but not all, and the differences were decisive. At the beginning, the house meeting approach brought ordinary people, people of very modest income and status into CSO. The CSO program was based on their needs. Only later did the lawyers, civil service employees, merchants, etc., seek to join. Once in the CSO, their verbal skill gained them preferment. When disillusionment about failure to address their problems set in, the poor dropped out. Without enough staff to push the critical questions, this process could not be arrested. (This is not a problem in the UFW.) Effective staff support was especially critical to the achievement of goals of the lower-income members (which often depended on some kind of confrontation). But effective staff depended on financial self-support as well as a commitment to a program which depended on staff. Middle-class members, however, wanted to devote chapter funds to such purposes as college scholarships or providing a float in a parade; they saw little need for paid staff. The service centers, which were set up in the early sixties, showed great promise toward helping solve the financial problem, but by then many chapters were, in effect, in the hands of middle-class officers. Not needing the services offered by these centers for themselves, they did not exert themselves to do those things which were necessary to make them effective. It was not only at the chapter level where critical support was lacking but at the National CSO level as well. "The failure to get a two-thirds majority at the CSO convention in Calexico for the proposal to establish a sound financial base was disastrous. It meant that there would be no professional staff."⁶⁵ (The program was approved the following year, but by then it was too late.)

2. The combination of the poor and ill-educated with middle-class Mexican-Americans was inherently unstable. The mass-base could not improve its lot in significant ways without a struggle. Confrontation was unacceptable to the middle-class members who came into the CSO whenever it had developed sufficient status and power to make it worthwhile joining and, once in, taking it over. In some cases, would-be politicians sought control so that they could "deliver the vote" for their own advantage. At the same time, they de-emphasized the programs which had produced the membership in the first place. In short, too many people joined only for what it would do for them personally without regard for the welfare of the organization. In fairness, we must note that some may not have been aware of the conflict in interest. In any case, the power base melted away, leaving the officers with the opportunity to seek status by, let us say, attending luncheon meetings of the local health and welfare council. As an example, we can take note of what happened in a CSO in a large California city when "intellectuals" (Alinsky's term) took over. The basic membership issues were ignored in favor of a college scholarship program, discussion of Great Books, etc. Local fundraising events were discouraged in favor of applying for foundation grants.⁶⁶ At one time, this CSO had the second largest citizenship class program in the state, with thirty classes in 1954-1955. By November 1962, there were only thirty-five dues-paying members.⁶⁷ It was primarily because the interests of the poor were being ignored that Cesar Chavez left the CSO to set up the Farm Workers' Organizing Committee.

3. The intrusion of partisan political interests was a continual threat to organizational health, a threat which took a variety of forms. Certain members seeking political preferment for themselves would try to gain CSO endorsement for a particular candidate. Such endorsements resulted not only in losing flexibility in negotiations on particular issues but also risked splitting the organization, Another kind of danger resulted from the fact that Governor Edmund Brown's administration recruited CSO leaders for various positions, which was, in itself, desirable. But there was more than a suspicion that some appointees tried to use their CSO connections to manipulate identification of the CSO with the Brown administration in the late fifties and early sixties.

At the time of my visit to California chapters in November 1962, the National CSO roster listed thirty-five chapters and organizing committees.⁶⁸ Twelve were visited, of which six had a vigorous program; one was struggling to survive against heavy odds; two had an organizational structure but were headed by officers who did not wish to "rock the boat" (but these might have been revived with new leadership); and three were virtually dead. The effective ones were those which were continuing to serve the needs of low-income members.

What Worked?

Without trying to offer an exhaustive analysis of the factors making for the success of the CSO organizational effort (for which adequate data are not available), we can summarize briefly some key elements. (1) A condition existed to which the CSO was an appropriate response (a relationship like that which obtained between Highlander Folk School and blacks in the South). (2) The organizing effort was based on real problems of concern to enough people to form an organization sufficiently large to have an impact. (3) The house meeting approach to organizing ensured that real problems could be identified and that those having the problems could be recruited. (4) The availability of a staff with a realistic approach to organizing was an essential element. (5) Some CSO chapters were more fortunate than others in the quality of leadership which emerged. (6) Wise leadership, able to take a broad view, could make effective use of the educational to strengthen the total CSO program. And (6) the successful CSO chapters were those which maintained their concern for the problems of the majority of the Mexican-American community.

Perhaps the decline of the CSO was inevitable, made obsolete by developments on the larger scene. But for a period of about fifteen years, the CSO did more to help the Mexican-American community to feel a sense of being something, as a prerequisite to becoming something more, than any other organization in California.

What Was Accomplished?

I have referred to De Toqueville's discovery concerning the tendency of Americans to form a committee or an association to pursue some public purpose instead of leaving it to some agency of the government as would have been the case in his native France. It would appear, however, as Cesar Chavez observed, that this tendency was not nearly so characteristic of Mexican-Americans, at least in California. For him, it was one of the great contributions of the CSO that it turned thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people around in their thinking. They became aware not only of their rights as citizens but their responsibility to work for the benefit of the community. Whereas before there had been little functioning leadership, there were now many leaders up and down the state of California, men and women who were leaders because they had a following.

In fact, the impact was evident throughout the rest of the Southwest, especially in Texas and Arizona. According to Ross, it was Ed Roybal's election to the city council of Los Angeles which stimulated Mexican-Americans in Texas to start a voter registration campaign. Chavez pointed out that poor Mexican-Americans had not known that through the simple device of the house meeting it was possible to bring people together and help move them to work for the solution of their problems. Through the CSO, Mexican-Americans had come into the mainstream of community action by private groups to serve a public purpose.

Strengthening the Mexican-American Community. Having learned how to organize themselves to deal with their common problems, many specific activities could be undertaken to improve the standing of and the prospects for the Mexican-American community. What were some of these ways?

1. By organizing classes in English and citizenship for thousands upon thousands of Mexican-Americans, an effort unparalleled in California history, the CSO opened the doors to their effective participation as citizens. This required preparing the study materials, arguing with adult education directors who were refusing to hire teachers who would teach in Spanish, organizing and registering the classes and combating discriminatory practices of Immigration Service personnel. In addition, through the service center program, many aliens were assisted to assemble the documents needed to establish date and place of birth, as well as other documents needed to regularize their status (for example, proof of having met the military service requirement in Mexico and proof of good moral character while living in the United States).

2. According to the National CSO, for the 1960 primary and general elections, 137,000 Mexican-Americans had been registered. CSO chapters held "meet-your-candidate" nights, conducted "get-out-the-vote" campaigns and were responsible for providing the support which gained the enactment of legislation of great concern to the Mexican-American community. And by 1960, a number of Mexican-Americans had been elected to municipal, county, state and congressional offices. By that time, nearly 450,000 Mexican-Americans had been registered by CSO workers.⁶⁹ It was these unprecedented registration totals which were essential to reducing if not eliminating the many discriminations practiced against Mexican-Americans.

3. A third major contribution to the Mexican-American community was the "protective" activities of the CSO. Because of their low status, Mexican-Americans could not count on being treated justly. A welfare client could not depend on getting what he was entitled to under the law as a matter of course. The CSO learned that it was necessary for someone in its organization to know the law and the regulations. Sometimes this was due to the fact that agency personnel themselves were ignorant of changes in the law and the entitlement that it provided for. In other cases, the withholding of information concerning possible benefits was deliberate.

Much CSO activity was directed toward dealing with problems arising out of relations with the police. Search procedures were widely violated. It was only by repeated appeal to higher authority and as a result of building their own power base that some of the worst abuses were minimized. Suits charging brutality in treatment of Mexican-Americans were brought and won. Dragnet sweeps by police and immigration agents at dances and in movie houses, in the course of which individuals were supposed to prove that they were not aliens, had to be fought over a long period of time. There was widespread fraud on the part of employers who failed to deposit the sums which had been withheld for Social Security and other benefits. Pressure had to be brought to force county clerks to refrain from discriminating against Mexican-Americans who wished to serve as deputy registrars. In all of these areas, it was CSO power and pressure, validated by voter registration and getting-out-the-vote, which made the difference.

4. Another significant contribution was the development of leadership in Mexican-American communities to a degree never before achieved. Cesar Chavez asserted that in the years when CSO's were active, the only informed and dedicated leadership in the California Mexican-American community was in the CSO. As a result, each member of a community could take satisfaction in the fact that the CSO in that area was known and was respected for what it could and did do to help Mexican-Americans in very concrete and significant ways. It marked the beginning of self-confidence and the basis for hope in the future. But the results of the CSO's work were not limited to the existence of a viable organization which could achieve benefits for its members and sympathizers. Individuals were helped to change as well.

Improving Civic Competence in the Individual. We can only begin to identify the kinds of changes in individuals that contributed so much to the improvement of civic competence among Mexican-Americans in California. Most obvious was the increase in information acquired by CSO members in the course of dealing with the many problems which they addressed. They learned details of registration and voting requirements, facts about housing laws and the various options available to them, the nature and consequences of urban development, their rights under the welfare laws, and on and on. A federal official at the regional level commented that the housing surveys and program development done in Hanford and Corcoran under the aegis of the local CSO had been performed more competently than in any other community he knew of. Members learned what it took to define and to reach a goal. In those chapters where there was an active educational program, perception and understanding of the consequences of actions and their interrelationships, were stretched greatly. Individuals acquired many new skills, not least of which were those involved in organizing and, subsequently, in furthering the aims of the organization. Some learned how to deal with the problem of factions, a perennial threat to popular organizations. They learned how to run their own meetings democratically, how to express themselves, how to get facts and how to put them together to make a case. They learned to hold a practice session before a hearing to identify the possible arguments and consider what their responses should be. They learned the tactics needed to negotiate.

Perhaps the most significant change was in attitudes. They learned to take the initiative in the face of problems. CSO members gained confidence from the fact of being united, that the organization would back them up. They improved their ability to cope with a situation, which led to a feeling of self-worth and of their effectiveness in the community. Perhaps this change was expressed most simply and effectively by an elderly man in a meeting I attended at Stockton. In response to a question about what the CSO had meant to him, he responded, "Senor, we are no longer afraid."

Changes of this nature and magnitude obviously would have powerful effects on the ability of the members of the community to help themselves to advance toward their goals. In some degree, the kinds of changes noted were reflected almost everywhere that the CSO was organized. But this is not to say that there were only successes; there were many failures, as we have seen. For many leaders the burden became too great, and they were forced to withdraw. And in other cases, organizations were taken over by the glib talkers, the result being failure to serve the needs of the people, which took its inevitable toll in disillusionment. But, in the large, there is no question that the CSO program had a tremendous and positive impact on the Mexican-American community in California during the fifties and early sixties. Clearly, large numbers of Mexican-Americans learned how to secure and use civic rights as a prerequisite to obtaining those benefits to which, as Americans, they were entitled. Furthermore, much of what was learned in CSO was applied by Cesar Chavez, Fred Ross and other CSO leaders in organizing the UFW.

In considering whether the CSO program was a success or not, one further criterion concerns its replicability. This point has two aspects. First, did formation of one CSO lead to organization of another, and, second, did the program persist in one form or another? As to the first aspect, one CSO certainly did lead to another. This happened, in part, of course, because Fred Ross and Cesar Chavez went from place to place to explore organizing possibilities. But it also happened because Mexican-Americans in one place would hear (perhaps from migrant farm workers) about what the CSO had done elsewhere and would ask for an organizer to come in to help them. Even more significantly, it happened that members of a CSO chapter in one community would undertake also to organize a chapter in another. This happened, for example, when members of the Hanford chapter undertook to set up a chapter in Corcoran. So, we can see that the CSO idea had some vitality that carried it beyond its geographical beginnings in Salinas and Oakland.

There is even some vestige of the CSO extant in the late seventies in such communities as Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Lamont, Oxnard, Stockton and San Jose. But their character has changed, although original members of the CSO such as Tony Rios may still be active, even directing them. The difference is that they have become something like agencies, using public funds to provide services. Membership attaches primarily to a credit union or death benefit plan. The current CSO is less of a participatory, activist organization set up to combat discrimination and more of a service agency funded to provide services as an extension of the current version of the antipoverty program.

But even though the basic CSO program cannot be said to continue in the organizations which retain the CSO name, the basic idea persists in an expanded and renewed form. I refer to the United Farm Workers union. Cesar Chavez resigned from the National CSO because he saw that there was no possibility that the organization would try seriously to help the farm workers. He concluded that only an organization free of the drag of middle-class interests could be made to serve this purpose. It is not appropriate here to trace the development of the UFW. Suffice it to say that the union embodied many of the elements of the CSO. House meetings were the starting point for the organizing effort. The program was based on a cluster of economic, social and political needs and interests of farm workers. And the workers controlled the program. Many of the outstanding leaders in the UFW had also been leading figures in the CSO.

Without the deadweight of the middle-class members, the UFW could press forward toward solution of worker needs, including service centers that worked. By limiting the range of interests admitted to membership in the union, the UFW was able to build a more solid organization, an organization with members who were willing to pay dues at a level that would support the union as well as an effective service center program. In short, the CSO program was replicated in new form, attesting to its basic viability.

Migrant Ministry of the National Council of Churches

Inspired by the success of the IAF organizing effort in California, the National Council of Churches applied to the Foundation in October of 1956 for a grant to support citizenship training for leaders among migrant agricultural workers, using an IAF model, and for the training of Migrant Ministry staff to enable them to work with migrants, using community organization methods. The migrant aspect of the project was known as the Migrant Citizenship Education Project (MCEP). In the MCEP, the Migrant Ministry expected to undertake with its own staff organizing among leaders of migrant workers traveling from Texas to Illinois and Michigan. In the staff aspect, the Migrant Ministry proposed to ask the Industrial Areas Foundation to provide training for its staff, utilizing the CSO program in California. The sum of $123,380 was granted for a three-year period beginning January 1, 1957. Of this sum, $29,350 was allocated to staff training. (The staff training aspect will be discussed in Chapter 7. Although the MCEP might have been discussed in Chapter 5, because of the reference to using the IAF/CSO approach as a model, I have chosen to discuss it in this chapter partly because the migrants served by the MCEP were subjected to the same kinds of discrimination as those served through CSO's or the blacks served by Highlander, which group will be discussed in Chapter 4.)

In its application, the Migrant Ministry referred to itself as a "settlement house on the move" for some two million migrant agricultural workers in the United States. To conduct its work, the Migrant Ministry typically established state and local committees which included growers, businessmen, welfare workers and civic and church leaders. Its direct services included child care centers, literacy classes, health education, vocational assistance, clubs, religious education and recreational programs. It sought by education, persuasion, example and social action to improve the conditions under which migrants