Why is social action in mid-sized U.S. cities like Milwaukee so lacking? Why is there relative silence in the face of incredible poverty, segregation, racism, etc.?
I have been playing with around with a way to frame the key challenges that seem to block the emergence of a robust ecology of community action organizations in my city, which is fairly similar in many ways to a range of mid-sized, segregated U.S. cities. I tried to get it on two typed pages, but ended up with three.
NOTE: The point is not that there is no organizing, or that the organizing that exists is ineffective. Instead, the point is that relative to the incredible challenges we face, it is very limited. Details on the flip. See educationaction.org for more.
Core Dilemmas of Community Organizing in Milwaukee
1. TRAINING
a. Organizations with their own training programs may be
limited by the "dogma" of a restricted set of strategies.
b. At the same time, groups without their own training
programs often end up either "recreating the wheel," or
picking up scattered training here and there.
RESULT: Cross-fertilization of ideas and strategies between
different groups is limited, and new groups often lack
coherent training preparation.
2. RECRUITMENT
a. Existing organizations sometimes compete for the same
restricted categories of constituents (e.g., churches and
unions), giving the impression of a shortage of possible
recruits.
b. Some key organizations (e.g., ACORN) are essentially
missing from the city, so that many residents are never
approached at all.
c. Many identifiable groups with social justice interests
(e.g., foster parents, child care workers) lack robust
social action organizations, and thus have little or no
collective power.
d. There are few existing efforts to recruit and form new
organizations.
RESULT: Many constituencies are never organized, and many issue
areas remain unaddressed, while existing groups run up
against limits in their possible size and power.
3. SINGLE VS. MULTIPLE ISSUE GROUPS
a. Multiple issue groups can draw in a range of constituents
with different interests. But these groups have limited
"attention," generally focusing on a single project at a
time in each of their issue areas.
i. This means that, for example, in the area of health care
for kids, dental care may get attention while vision care
gets none.
ii.At the same time, prior "wins" can be lost as attention
shifts to new campaigns.
b. Single issue groups have more limited recruitment
possibilities than multiple issue groups. But a large
number of such smaller groups have the potential to
maintain a wider range of campaigns at the same time and
may be able to maintain accountability better on past
"wins" because of each group’s clear ongoing focus.
c. A robust process for bringing single and multiple issue
groups together on different campaigns over time is
lacking.
RESULT: Prior "wins" are sometimes not maintained and the number
of issues addressed in the city are limited by our small
number of organizations, despite the incredible need for
action on a wide range of important challenges.
4. SERVICE VS. ORGANIZING
a. Organizers have generally found that it is a mistake to
have social action groups directly involved in social
service. Historically, doing "service" has tended to
dilute efforts to confront power, and has also opened the
service aspects of groups up to retaliation (e.g., "If
you fight for more health services, I’ll shut down your
clinic.")
b. However, many of the poorest residents in our city need
services of a range of different kinds before they will
have extra time to participate in organizing.
c. Also, unless organizing groups can provide basic
supports, like child care, meals, and stipends to
partially reimburse residents for the cost of their
participation, it is unlikely that they will get full
participation from impoverished members.
RESULT: Organizing groups too often fail to successfully recruit
and sustain a broad range of impoverished and/or
overworked community members.
5. FUNDING
a. Social action is the only community function that cannot
be funded by the government.
b. Financial support from constituents is a key measure of
organizational sustainability, but the money available
from low-income populations cannot fully sustain even
small organizations.
c. The focus of foundations on project-based or initial seed
funding forces organizations to constantly scramble for
dollars and reduces organizations’ capacity for
maintaining clear long-term focuses as foundation
interests shift.
d. The need for funding to survive fallow periods forces
many organizations to turn to funding for "service" or
non-organizing "political" projects to maintain
themselves, diluting their focus and reducing long-term
growth and strength.
e. The need to acquire foundation or other donor funding
creates resource barriers to entry for new organizations.
This means many new organizations never emerge in the
first place, or end up dissolving fairly quickly.
RESULT: Existing organizations struggle to survive, often losing
a focus on organizing in favor of fundable service
efforts, or shifting too quickly between issues in
response to funder preference changes. At the same time,
many new organizations never get the chance to emerge.
Key Questions
• Training
o How can existing groups come together with emerging
groups in contexts where their different visions can
inform and challenge each other?
o In what ways can training be provided to help ongoing
organizations look outside the "box" while bringing new
organizations "up to speed" on the "basics"?
• Recruitment
• Single vs. Multiple Issue Groups
o What mechanisms can be developed for recruiting and
forming new organizations without threatening the
constituencies of existing groups?
• Funding
o How can the ongoing maintenance costs of existing
organizations be reduced to allow these groups to survive
and focus more on action than fund-raising?
o How can entry costs for new organizations be reduced to
allow the emergence and survival of new collections of
committed groups around key areas?
• Overall
o How could we develop overlapping answers to these
questions, creating a synergy across different
organizations and long-term, shared, institutional
support for sustaining old and developing new organizing
groups?
KEY SUGGESTION: A Milwaukee Organizing Retreat
One key suggestion was for a retreat to bring the organizing groups in Milwaukee together with other leaders to explore how to improve our ability to nurture organizing in Milwaukee. Such a retreat would focus on issues external to the day-to-day concerns of individual organizing groups and seek to create a roadmap for addressing these challenges.
For such a retreat to be successful, however, organizers and other over-worked local leaders would need to understand how participation would pragmatically serve their self-interests. For this reason, it seems likely that a retreat will only succeed if:
• It was co-sponsored by one or more significant funders of
organizing in the city, and if
• Retreat participation was linked to potential new funding
to support emerging plans.
Possible long-term solutions
• Co-locate organizing groups to share costs and allow
cross-fertilization.
• Create an "incubator" where groups can come together and
support each other.
• Endow basic infrastructure for groups (buy a building,
create an endowment for shared training, recruitment, and
basic support staff) but require groups to locate funding
for organizing staff, allowing long-term support while
retaining flexibility in organization development (and,
where necessary, die-off).
• Create an outreach program to introduce non-profits and
others around the city to organizing.
• Develop a coherent pathway for educating new organizers
and leaders with multiple entry points.