Americans think of community participation almost entirely terms of social service to individuals. This is a tragedy, and a key factor preventing strong progressive action for change.
If you go to a volunteer center in an American city and ask how you can get involved in a social action project to fight collectively against police brutality, or for more school funding, you will likely be met with blank stares. That’s not "volunteering." Volunteers "help," they don’t fight.
If you go talk to a non-profit leader in America about community organizing, you will probably be treated like a nut. "You mean, like Martin Luther King stuff?" More on the flip. Part of a continuing series. See EducationAction for more. Crossposted from OpenLeft
Civic engagement basically equals direct service in the US. We mentor. We buy yellow armbands for cancer. We pass out sandwiches to the homeless. We help out at the hospital. We work on houses for poor people. Individuals helping other individuals. This is the vision of volunteerism that is celebrated in America.
Our public service announcements, our civic groups, our non-profit organizations, our corporate "citizenship" efforts: nearly all of these perpetuate this vision of civic engagement. In other words, this "service" perspective is not an accident--it's actively engineered by the key media and social institutions of our society.
Non-profit organizations, especially, have learned that social action is the "third rail" of community work. Even when non-profits hire "organizers," these people generally don’t do anything that has to do with building collective power. It’s service, service, service, all down the line.
A year ago, I called a local group working to help adjudicated youth, an organization with a very hip and seemingly socially critical name. Let’s call it "Action for Change." I told this group that we were trying to engage high school students in social action projects in a local charter school, and asked whether there was something that we could work on together.
"Sure," the staff member said, "we’d love to have more mentors and tutors."
"No," I said, "that really isn’t what we’re trying to do. What we want is to develop a collective project to foster positive community change." We wanted to build power.
It took me a while to get across to her what we were trying to do. It was simply outside the framework of how she thought about her job or the youth she worked with.
"Okay," she said after she seemed to finally understand, "we’ll talk about it and call you back."
A week later, they called and said they’d talked about it at their staff meeting. And they couldn’t come up with any way that they could work with us.
This is typical.
We are willing to try to help adjudicated members be "better" people, but it’s just too scary to get them involved in something that might leverage their capacity for collective power. This group thinks they're cool and hip, but when push comes to shove it at least seems like they are a little scared of their own youth.
The problem is not just that people like this are resistant to collective action efforts. In most cases they've never even thought about it in the first place.
This wouldn’t be so depressing if it were just a limitation of some specific non-profits. But it’s not. This is the cultural model that colors how our entire society thinks about social engagement and social change.
In my experience, a great deal of direct service is about self-deception. It’s a way for people to feel good about how they are "helping" others while mostly not doing much. It allows us to stay within our comfort zone. In a general sense, of course, service of all kinds is an absolute necessity. But service disguised as civic action--that's the problem.
Even when it does accomplish something significant, it’s often counter productive. As service volunteers, we do work that the government ought to be doing. We build a couple of houses for people instead of fighting for the large amount of housing necessary to make a real difference for impoverished people. We tutor one or two kids instead of fighting for more funding so the schools won’t need volunteer tutors.
In fact, social service often sets up a "helper"/"victim" relationship that simply adds to the disempowerment of those who are "helped." Social service often maintains (or increases) the sense of the "helpers" that the people they support are mostly helpless.
Of course, volunteer activity could easily be used as an early entry point into broader activities for social action. And many community organizing groups do leverage service work in this way. But that’s not what usually happens. In nearly every case, volunteerism ends with . . . more volunteerism.
This is not simply a discernible pattern, it is a core aspect of how American think about civic engagement. Direct service IS civic engagement in America.
I have taught an introductory course on community organizing for a number of years to a diverse group of college students, averaging about 35 years of age, who are interested in community change. With few exceptions, they have simply never heard about organizing. They have no idea that there are some basic tools for helping people engage in social action. They’ve heard of "MLK" or "Malcom" but that’s about it. And these are often some of the most community engaged people you are likely to meet.
What I would like to see is a focused effort to re-educate people—especially staff in the myriad of non-profits that clog our cities—about the tradition of community organizing. I’d like there to be a group of trainers that goes to every major group of service providers and gives short workshops to at least introduce people to this alternative way of thinking about community change. And I’d like there to be educational programs with many different kinds of entry points for nurturing new community leaders and organizers.
This is very different from the kind of organization-focused work on community organizing that dominates visions of local social action in America. If an effort like this was broad enough, it might begin to shift what comes to mind when people think of civic "service." Of course, spreading these ideas across a large number of individuals, alone, isn’t enough. But as a part of a broader and more comprehensive effort to change the ecology of social action in our cities, it might make a real difference.
Next time I call up "Action for Change," I’d love to hear that they already have begun to engage their youth in projects that will create the community leaders we need for the coming decades.
I won’t, but it would be great if I did.
[By the way, interestingly enough, the Lance Armstrong yellow armband "LiveStrong" campaign says on it's website that it's trying to organize people to fight for more government funding. But I'm sure that's not what all these cool armband wearers think they're supporting when they buy one.]