[COMM-ORG] query: has organizing gone national?

Tue Jul 7 08:38:08 CDT 2009

[ed:  thanks to Peter for the reply.  He also invites others to join the 
discussion.]

From: "Peter Dreier" <dreier at oxy.edu>

To respond to Randy's insight about national organizing by community 
organizing groups....

One way to think about Randy's question is to re-read Karen Paget's 1990 
essay in American Prospect - "Citizen Organizing: Many Movements, No 
Majority."  
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=citizen_organizing_many_movements_no_majority

If we were writing that essay today, what parts would be the same? What 
parts would be different?

There has long been "national" work among community organizing groups, 
but it is growing. Part of  the response to Randy's question will depend 
on what we consider to be "community organizing."

The national boycotts of grapes and lettuce in the 60s and 70s sponsored 
by the United Farm Workers were part of a labor struggle but utilized 
local community, student, and religious groups to mount a national 
campaign, and used many of the strategies and tactics we associate with 
community organizing.  Books by Jacques Levy, Marshall Ganz and Randy 
Shaw describe the boycott, which was orchestrated from the UFW HQ in 
California but also had a life of its own.

The civil rights movement of the 60s was, similarly, a national movement 
even though there was no single umbrella group coordinating it -- SNCC, 
NAACP, SCLC, and other groups were independent of each other but worked 
together on some local campaigns. There was some tension between these 
and other civil rights groups - in terms of fundraising, leadership, 
strategy, media coverage, etc - but together the participants in all of 
them thought of themselves as part of a national "movement". 

Among groups that do what most people think of as "community 
organizing," most of the national work has been done by relatively loose 
networks, not strong national organizations. . This was the case with 
NTIC/NPA's anti-redlining work in the 70s ,which helped get Congress to 
pass the CRA. NTIC was always more of a network than a national 
organizaiton with chapters. IAF has a national office it has always been 
a rather loose network of regional IAF groups that mostly join forces 
around training, but not around national campaigns. PICO is a hybrid 
that is evolving from a loose network to a national organization, but it 
still has the culture of a network whose local affiliates have no real 
mechanism for top-down/bottom-up decision-making. PICO's participation 
in the current immigrant rights campaign is a test of its capacity to 
work on a national level as part of a national coalition. Gamaliel is 
somewhat similar to PICO in this regard, except that it doesn't have 
enough affiliates around the country to be a truly "national" 
organization or to mount "national" campaigns. 

The Center for Community Change has been a force for bringing together 
local community gorups around some national campaigns, but these are 
issue-specific campaigns, not part of an ongoing national organization 
that strategizes how to build the national organization from one 
campaign to the next. US Action is more centralized that these other 
groups and has affiiated state chapters that can mount national lobbying 
campaigns, as they are doing around health care now.The Partnership for 
Working Families (PWF) is a national organization whose affiliates are 
17 local or regional community-labor coalitions like LAANE in Los 
Angeles, CPI in San Diego, and others. It is relatively new and has yet 
to mount a national effort, although it has produced policy materials on 
federal issues.

There are also  loose networks of community organizing groups around 
environmental justice and other issues.   In addition, the Sierra Club 
has started to develop into more of a grassroots orgnaization with both 
a strong national office and local chapters whose members meet and help 
mount local campaigns and also work on national campaigns, mostly around 
enviromental legislation. This transformation is still in its early stages.

Within the community organizing world, ACORN is the most like a national 
organization with local and state chapters, and whose local and state 
chapters work on local and national campaigns simultaneously.  John 
Atlas and I have written about ACORN as a "federated" organization, 
based on some of Theda Skocpol's writings about the importance of having 
national organizations with local chapters.

ACORN is closest in structure to labor unions.  Labor unions are 
obviously a good example of national organizations that have local 
chapters (called "locals") and state chapters, and have the capacity to 
mobilize campaigns on the same issue around the country and to 
strategize about how to target its national resources (staff, money, 
members, etc) to be most effective -- for example, by working on 
election campaigns in key "swing" states and Congressional districts.  
ACORN, too, has the capacity to do this on issue campaigns (ie predatory 
lending, living wages, affordable housing) and election campaigns, which 
is what makes it so effective;. Even though the strength of its local 
chapters is uneven, it can sometimes compensate for that unevenness by 
allocating national staff or shifting staff from one city to the other 
in the midst of a national campaign. Only a truly national organization 
can do this.

In terms of thinking about national organizations and networks, some of 
the key indicators to look at are the following:

1.  do members pay dues? if so, how are the dues allocated in terms of 
going to the local, state and natiional office?
2.  does the national office do fundraising that helps support both the 
national organizaiton and state/local chapters/affiliates?
3. does the national office do research that helps support both national 
campaigns and campaigns at the state/local levels?
4.  does the national office train its staff and leaders of national and 
state/local chapters,with the same training methods?
5.  are local/state chapters working on the same campaigns simultaneously?
6. Does the national office have the capacity and authority to shift 
resources (staff, money, etc) to different states and cities as part of 
a national organizing campaign?
7. Are leaders of local/state chapters/affiliates part of an elected 
national governing body that helps decide on issues, campaigns, hiring, 
and allocation of resources?
8. Do members of the local community groups (or chapters/affiliates) 
consider themselves members of a national organization as well?
9.  Does the organization have national leaders who speak for the 
national organization and are recognized as such by local affiliates and 
members?

I'm sure there are other indicators. I just wrote this quickly to 
respond to Randy's question.

Over the past few years, I've posted  early drafts of two papers on this 
site that address some of these issues:
http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers2009/dreier.htm
http://comm-org.wisc.edu/papers2005/dreier.htm

My chapter, "Organizing for What?" in Marion Orr's edited book on 
community organizing also deals with some of these issues:
http://reclaimingdemocracy.us/public/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/organizingforwhat.pdf

My chapter in Greg Squires' edited book, Organizing Access to Capital, 
looks at the community reinvestment movement in terms of the factors 
that helped bring local organizations into national campaigns.

I'm eager to see what others think.

Peter Dreier

On 7/6/2009 8:22 PM, Discussion list for COMM-ORG wrote:
> --------
> This is a COMM-ORG 'colist' message.
> All replies to this message come to COMM-ORG only.
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>  
> Hi COMM-ORG,
>
> I am very intrigued about things I am noticing out in the community 
> organizing world.  I first noticed it over the past year with PICO's 
> push on national health care legislation.  Now I am also noticing it on 
> ACORN's foreclosure campaign.  And the Virginia Organizing Project is 
> now also working on national health care access issues. 
>
> Now, I realize that a number of groups, particularly ACORN in my 
> experience, have always worked on national issues.  But the promotion 
> and visibility of this national level work is unlike anything I have 
> seen in the 13 years I have been moderating this list.  Is it just me, 
> or is something changing?
>
> Randy Stoecker
> moderator/editor, COMM-ORG
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