What's bona fide social justice organizing -- and what isn't

Our website stats for May, 2014 tallied to 27, 573.  In that context, our very extensive Combined Community Organizing page saw 205 people get to it.  That's up some, a trend that's been slowly clear for many months.  It's encouraging.

One of the more mangled terms in these times involves social justice community organizing.  It's often gotten mixed up with "mobilization" only -- and with all sorts of service delivery programs.  These foregoing definitely do not constitute bona fide justice organizing. That -- the real stuff -- demands a number of things from both the organizer(s) and the Work.

Here are two pieces of mine that illustrate the basics in real social justice organizing.  One is Organizer's Art and the Romany Trail -- and the other, critical in nature, is Barack Obama and Community Organizing.  (H)

ORGANIZER'S ART AND THE ROMANY TRAIL  (HUNTER BEAR)

Grassroots organizing is Genesis.  Pure and simple.  It's absolutely
critical in building the bona fide human solidarity required for effective
security, enhancement of one's life and that of the group [large or small]
in the immediate and relatively near future senses [on-going], and in
creating a myriad of currents which ultimately and inevitably flow together
at various levels and with varying breadth -- first as Movement and then as
a conscious part of Many Movements and then into a Mighty Movement, for
genuinely fundamental and radical systemic change.  From my little catechism
on community organizing and related dimensions:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
This extensive discussion has now, I'm pleased to say with no false modesty,
been very widely reprinted and both the United States and Canada.

"And any really healthy grassroots organizing campaign has to have a
Vision -- one that is two dimensional: Over The Mountain Yonder, and the
Day - To - Day needs. As I have indicated, a movement which, among other
things, is characterized by an idea whose time has come, is a broad-based
cause growing out of local community organizational efforts -- in turn
inspiring and stimulating new community-based thrusts. To become a bona fide
movement, there absolutely has to be the two-dimensional ethos and active
life. But the purely local effort has to have the same two dimensional
ingredients, whether it's part of a movement or by itself.

[Something with vision only can easily wind up a small, in-grown sect;
and something that's only day - to -day can become a tired service program.
And when an organization has lost its way, factionalism is a sure thing
along with the withdrawal of the local people.]

A good Organizer's role in all of this vision-building is extremely
critical -- especially at the outset. But it's also critical all the way
through in conjunction with the growing awareness of the grassroots people.
The two-dimensional vision -- Over The Mountain and Day - To -Day -- is the
shiny idea that makes people part of a crusade and sometimes a truly great
one. It all gives meaning to life. And sometimes, if necessary, one will die
for it. Each of these two dimensions stimulates and feeds the other. A good
and truly effective Organizer absolutely has to show this interconnection."
--------------------------------------

My oldest son, John [Beba] made this post last night 9/13/05 -- and it's
quite on
target.  Nothing has much changed for us material possessions-wise -- to
this very point -- but we are incredibly rich in family [including animal
companions] and friends.  Our current house on the far-up edge of Pocatello
[Idaho] has proven to be a wise investment from many perspectives.  And we
do take pride in our extensive collection of Native arts and crafts
[including paintings] sprinkled judiciously and often inconspicuously around
our house as well as an extensive library.

This from Beba and then a bit more from me:

"Speaking as the son of a lifelong organizer, I can say this.  We never
owned a new stick of furniture.  We weren't always allowed to answer the
phone as children because men would be on the other end saying they were
coming to kill us.  It was not uncommon to come home from school and learn
that we'd be moving across the country in a couple weeks.  My point being
that we need to separate different kinds of organizers--the light load trail
rider Shane vs. those comfortably ensconced in their settings.  Great topic,
though!"  -- John Salter

http://hunterbear.org/outlaw_trail1.htm

>From Hunter Bear, again:

>From the historic and still very much alive Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers
film of 1953-54, SALT OF THE EARTH, based on the 1950-52 strike against
Empire Zinc in Grant County, New Mexico: Ruth Barnes [Virginia Jencks] on
the life of she and her organizer husband, Frank Barnes [Clinton Jencks]:

"Me, I'm a camp follower -- following this organizer from one mining camp to
another -- Montana, Colorado, Idaho . . ."

I can say I've been a working organizer virtually all of my life -- long
before I married Eldri in 1961.  But since even then, we have lived in 16
different settings all over the 'States. [In a number of those places, I
worked in several different specific areas in the region.]  A good
organizer, sooner or later, works himself/herself out of a job.
Presumptuous as this sounds, see my little catechism:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm


 "The Organizers, who at the outset may well play a very key role in the
function and affairs of the community organization, must, on a step-by-step
and essentially pragmatic basis, shift increasing responsibility to the
leaders and membership of the group, to eventually:

A] First, insure that the community organization can function effectively
with only occasional involvement by Organizers.

B] And then, that the community organization can function effectively
with no involvement by Organizers to the point that, in addition to
conducting its regular affairs, the group can "organize on its
own" --bringing in new constituents and/or assisting other grassroots people
in adjoining areas in setting up and conducting their own community
organizations."

For four years, 1969-73, I directed a large-scale grassroots community
organizing project on the turbulent and sanguinary South/Southwest side of
Chicago -- working primarily with Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano people "of
the fewest alternatives".  We had a wide range of enemies: e.g., white
racists -- organized and otherwise, the Daley Machine, Republicans, many
[not all] police.  We were also vigorously opposed by the Back of the Yards
Council, the first of the Saul Alinsky organizing projects.  That dinosaur
richly exemplified two major organizing flaws: [1] top down organizing and
[2] the fact that some organizers stayed on and refused to relinquish the
coalition."

For a discussion of all of this, see my: Chicago Organizing:  Tough,
Cat-Clawing and Bloody
http://hunterbear.org/chicago_organizing.htm

And, one final time lest it's gotten lost in my verbiage:
http://www.hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm
---------------------------------------
The Internet can help -- help -- mobilize.  But it can never accomplish
fundamentally real organizing.

Real organizing -- the grassroots stuff -- is tough and usually tedious and
always the hardest work there is.

Keeps the Real Organizer usually thin and always happy.

In Solidarity -

Hunter [Hunter Bear]

BARACK OBAMA AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZING  [HUNTER BEAR   MAY 21 2009]

There's a somewhat discussion on Redbadbear with regard to Barack Obama's sins of omission and commission.  This is something I wrote for that -- on Obama as community organizer. [I've now expanded it slightly.]  His repeated labeling of himself as "community organizer" does not, in my opinion, constitute deliberate deception on his part.  But it reflects the often devolving, essentially non-combative nature of what many began to call "community organizing"  in the arid period during which he did community work.
_____

Part of the answer re our RBB discussion may lie in the fact that Obama is not a confrontational fighter. I always winced a little when he described himself as a "community organizer." Traditionally, real community organizing involves getting and keeping people together for action -- and for those of our ilk, action for social justice.  By its very nature, it's confrontational and thus controversial.  By the time Obama tried his hand at that, in the '80s, "community organizing" in many quarters of the U.S. had become tepid -- a reflection of the arid nature of the times. In much of the theoretical academic sector and too often "in the field", it had devolved into more of a social service thing. [A sometime "agency term" is "community development."] In that sense, it reflected many of the relatively impotent poverty program approaches which emphasized drawing existent community resources and leaders together in cooperative common cause "for poor people" rather than hard-driving and hard-fighting on the "social frontiers" with the goal, among other things, of building people power and grass roots self-determination.  Obama has spoken and written approvingly of "post-Alinsky" -- in the contextual sense of Alinsky's confrontational tactics. [Alinsky, of course, was just one of a vast number of pieces in the ages old tradition of effective community organizing -- something of which Alinsky himself was quite aware.] The fact that Obama appears to see Alinsky as the apex of presumably old-school and anachronistic community organizing, something which he [Obama] obviously does not embrace in theory and practice, would indicate Obama really knows little about the rich traditions of the genuinely combative art which will always be in demand by the people of the fewest alternatives -- through all of eternity.


Dale Jacobson writes:

Thanks for this Hunter. I find this distinction 
very helpful and enlightening. Throughout his 
long poem, Letter to an Imaginary Friend, McGrath makes 
the call to "agitate." I don't think there is a lot of 
space between your views and his on this topic. 
Dale 


HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq / 
St. Francis Abenaki / St. Regis Mohawk 
Member, National Writers Union AFL-CIO

Check out our massive social justice website
www.hunterbear.org  The site is dedicated to our
one-half Bobcat, Cloudy Gray, and to Sky Gray:
http://hunterbear.org/cloudy_gray.htm

See my piece ON BEING A MILITANT AND RADICAL
ORGANIZER -- AND AN EFFECTIVE ONE (Mississippi et al.):
http://crmvet.org/comm/hunter1.htm

See our very full COMMUNITY ORGANIZING
page -- with a great deal of practical material:
http://hunterbear.org/my_combined_community_organizing.htm

See my  new expanded/updated "Organizer's Book," 
JACKSON MISSISSIPPI -- with a new 10,000 word
introduction by me. This page lists many reviews.
And this book is also an activist's how-to manual: 
 http://hunterbear.org/jackson.htm   

The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father]:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm:
(Photos)