Community organizing: a quiet revolution
Working in relative quiet, millions of local activists based in churches, mosques and synagogues are working to improve neighborhoods, cities and individual lives. Their work goes by different names, including faith-based or congregation-based community organizing. Unlike government-sponsored faith-based initiatives, these well-trained groups confront government by partnering with secular organizers, unions and civic and neighborhood groups. They use aggressive tactics learned from 1940s Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky and are highly political. Yet most are adamantly nonpartisan, saying that their power rests in their refusal to endorse candidates.
Richard Wood of the University of New Mexico studies the phenomenon. He says that in 2000, at least 3,500 congregations and 500 union locals, public schools, PTAs and neighborhood groups worked on issues including jobs, public safety, schools, housing and access to health care.
Four large and several smaller national and regional networks provide training and support. These networks help set local agendas, making them “invisible actors” in American urban politics, according to Professor Heidi Swarts of Syracuse University. One of the largest, the California-based Pacific Institute for Community Organizing, says its affiliates currently are pushing 50 projects in 150 cities in 16 states, involving an estimated 1,000 congregations and a million families.
Participants report great satisfaction in this work, and congregations often find new relevance and vigor. That may be a result of the intensive training given community leaders, which fosters confidence and determination. New leaders hear that “power speaks to power” and learn to take on battles they can win. Terry Boggs, director of congregation-based community organizing for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, says people of faith find tension and joy in public conversation, in critiquing prevailing norms and in cooperatively imagining a community future.
Why it matters
Researchers say most American cities have at least one of these organizations. Meanwhile, government-financed faith-based initiatives, which many had hoped would fill the vacuum created by scarce public resources, have not matured to fill expectations, partly because of lack of new funding.
Questions for reporters
• Ask local groups to identify their national affiliate networks, philosophical models and local allies. Ask to observe the training of community leaders. Don’t be surprised if your request is declined. Organizers may be protective of new members and reluctant to let the media watch what they consider fragile work.
• Ask participants whether they believe that harnessing the resources and social networks of churches really does help make up for the loss of other institutions in poor urban neighborhoods.
• Get participants to discuss benefits and drawbacks of faith-based organizing. Congregations, for example, can contribute offices, photocopy machines, leadership and communications mechanisms that aid organizing. But does a religious base constrain groups from the kind of disruptive tactics that secular organizers may find effective in getting attention from city hall? Ask organizers to talk about the rewards and frustrations of their work as agents for change within congregations. Question clergy about the tensions - and growth - created in a congregation by training and nurturing organizers.
• In today’s polarized and partisan climate, how does a faith message address both political parties? Old Testament prophets spoke both to people and to the power centers, in a way that was critical and that reminded them of their responsibilities.
• What do the power structures - mayors, council members, legislators - say about the tactics, goals and effects of faith-based community organizers?
• What do local groups say about their concrete successes and failures? What have they learned along the way?
• Leaders of faith-based community organizations often have had humble origins, little education and no experience leading others until their capacity was spotted and encouraged by organizers. These transformations make compelling stories. After the campaigns are over, what becomes of leaders who have risen from neighborhood obscurity to lead local campaigns? Which return to quiet lives? What do they say, looking back? Which go on to enter politics or other leadership work? How have congregations been changed, energized or upset by these newly active individuals in their midst?
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National sources
FAITH-BASED
ORGANIZING NETWORKS
Most local faith-based organizing groups are affiliated with a national or regional network. These networks, or federations, are organizations of organizations. See their web sites or contact their headquarters for local affiliates. The largest are:
• The Industrial Areas Foundation, founded by Saul Alinsky, on whose ideas and strategies most national community organizations are modeled. The Chicago-based IAF calls itself nonideological, nonpartisan, yet insistently political. It has 55 affiliates in 21 states, Canada and abroad. It conducts 10-day intensive training sessions and sets standards for the approximately 150 professional organizers nationwide. One basis of IAF organizing is the “face-to-face,” individual meetings in neighborhood homes for the purpose of initiating relationships and re-knitting the frayed social fabric. Organizers listen to identify issues and values important to neighbors and spot potential leaders. Ed Chambers, executive director, says congregations are only part of the IAF’s strength - the other is American secular democratic tradition. The IAF includes secular groups, such as labor unions, civic associations, neighborhood groups and clubs. Contact Chambers at 312-245-9211, iafil@ix.netcom.com.
• The Chicago-based Gamaliel Foundation, a network of some 55 faith-based community organizations in the United States and South Africa. The foundation, named for a figure in the Book of Acts, aims to create grassroots, interfaith, interracial, multi-issue organizations that work for justice and democracy and empower people to participate in the political, environmental, social and economic decisions affecting their lives. Gamaliel began in 1968 by supporting African-American homeowners on Chicago’s West Side who were facing discrimination from banks and savings and loans. Call to learn locations of affiliates. Contact national director Gregory Galluzzo, 312-357-2639.
• The PICO National Network, begun in 1972, a “national network of faith-based community organizations” that recruits and trains local community organizers and works with grassroots groups. Affiliates take on small (installing stoplights at bad intersections) and large (promoting education reforms through the small schools movement) projects. In California, Missouri and Louisiana, PICO groups helped get legislation passed paying teachers to visit students and their families in their homes. Other PICO-affiliated groups have helped expand access to health care and drug rehabilitation locally and been instrumental in passing a bond measure in San Francisco to build affordable housing. In San Diego, a PICO group was behind the city’s recent tenants’ rights bill. See local affiliates. In the fall, PICO groups plan to confront 100 members of Congress - half Democrats and half Republicans - in community meetings across the country with demands for improvement on crime and safety, health care, schools, housing and immigration reform. Contact Scott Reed, national director of organizing, at 619-501-1804 ext. 207 (office), 858-254-0821 (cell), sreedsd@earthlink.net.
• The Direct Action and Research Training Center in Miami, which has focused since 1982 on training and building new organizations engaged in faith-based community organizing. DART’s 21 affiliates (call for updated information) around the country work on neighborhood issues (sidewalks and street lights) to city issues (PACT in Miami claims to have gotten the city to double the Miami-Dade County bus fleet, and a Columbus, Ohio, affiliate pushed to create a $20 million housing trust fund) to state issues (Florida groups helped persuade legislators to spend $7.25 million for phonics-based reading programs in select school districts). Contact director John Calkins or associate director Holly Holcombe, 305-576-8020, Dartcenter@aol.com.
• The Regional Congregations and Neighborhood Organizations Training Center in Los Angeles, which provides nondenominational training of African-American clergy and lay leaders in small and medium-size congregations. They take part in faith-based community organizing to protect and revitalize their neighborhoods and communities. Call to learn which 28 cities nationally have affiliates. Contact the Rev. Eugene Williams III, national director, or Cheryl A. Branch, director of training and development, 323-755-7266.
OTHER SOURCES
• Richard L. Wood is an associate professor of sociology and director of religious studies at the University of New Mexico. He has written extensively on faith-based community organizing in low-income neighborhoods, religion and democracy, including Faith in Action: Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America (University of Chicago Press, 2002). Contact 505-277-3945, rlwood@unm.edu.
• Heidi J. Swarts, assistant professor of political science (with a master’s of divinity) at Syracuse University, teaches, among other things, “Organizing for Power.” She is writing a book about her research in San Jose, Calif., and St. Louis, comparing community organizing in low-income neighborhoods and community organizing through federations of churches. She studies processes that produce robust political participation - especially for politically disengaged Americans, including African-Americans, Hispanics, the poor, immigrants and women. Contact: 315-443-1744, hjswarts@maxwell.syr.edu.
• Interfaith Funders in Syosset, N.Y., is a network of nine faith-based and three secular grant makers committed to social change and economic justice by supporting grassroots community organizing. Contact director Jeannie Appleman, 516-364-8922.
• William Julius Wilson is director of the Joblessness and Urban Poverty Research Program at Harvard University’s Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy. Wilson is Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University. In The Bridge Over the Racial Divide: Rising Inequality and Coalition Politics (University of California Press, 2001), he points to community organizations as a promising vehicle for crossing the race and class divide in the United States. Contact 617-496-4514, bill_wilson@harvard.edu.
• Robert D. Putnam is Peter and Isabel Malkin Professor of Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in American politics, international relations, comparative politics and public policy and founded the Saguaro Seminar: Civic Engagement in America, a program that brings together leading practitioners and thinkers to develop ideas for fortifying civic connectedness. His Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (Simon & Schuster, 2000) describes the degradation of social capital in contemporary society. Contact 617-495-0539.
• Jewish Organizing Initiative trains young Jews from around the world using one-year fellowships in community organizing. Fellows study Jewish texts to make the connection between Jewish identity and tsocial change and work in a model program in Boston. Contact executive director Michael Jacoby Brown, 617-350-9994.
• The Center for Community Change in Washington, D.C., acts as a consultant for many of the community organizing networks, bringing in advisers, helping connect groups with financial resources, sponsoring forums and linking like-minded organizations. See a list of regional field offices. Contact Stephanie Robinson, national director for public policy, 202-342-0519.
• Marshall Ganz is a lecturer in public policy at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at John F. Kennedy School of Government. Contact 617-495-3937, marshall_ganz@harvard.edu, or contact him through his assistant, Jessica Mele, 617-494-9637.
• Robert J. Vitillo is executive director of the Catholic Campaign for Human Development at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is a Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Paterson, N.J., and has a master’s degree in social work. The campaign provides seed money to train community leaders for projects initiated and led by low-income people. It has given a total of $260 million to 4,000 such projects. In 2004, it is supporting 318 local projects in 45 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Contact 202-541-3367 (office), 202-413-0675 (cell), Bobvitillo@cs.com.
Background
• Read the Pluralism Project’s 2006 research report on the national impact of the PICO National Network Network.
• Read a brochure by University of New Mexico scholar Richard Wood describing the genesis, rationale and practice of faith-based community organizing around the United States.
• Read “Congregation-Centered Organizing: A Strategy for Growing Stronger Communities,” by Mark I. Wegener, past president of the Gamaliel Foundation’s national clergy caucus. He explains how church-based community organizing works and why. The article is re-published from the October 1996 issue of InterAct, a publication of the Minneapolis Area Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
• Read the web site for Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam (Simon & Schuster, 2000). In it, Putnam uses the term “social capital” to describe the collective value of all social networks (who people know) and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other (”norms of reciprocity”).
• Read a March 7, 2000, Pastoral Letter on Wealth and Poverty from the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America’s Conference of Bishops, urging congregants to, among other things, support church-based community organizations.
• Read an address to the Unitarian Universalist 2003 General Assembly by community organizer Michael Gecan, author of Going Public (Beacon Press, 2002), describing how an organization created change in devastated East Brooklyn.
• The large organizing networks avoid taking government money. They are funded through national church denominations, grants from foundations, corporations and individuals, and consulting fees from local member organizations. Local organizations rely largely on dues from member congregations and local fund raising.
• Read “Faith-Based Community Organizing: A Unique Social Justice Approach to Revitalizing Synagogue Life,” a booklet by the Jewish Fund for Justice. Contact Julie Chizewer Weill, 212-213-2113 ext. 41.
• Read about Naropa University’s master’s degree program in “engaged Buddhism” in Boulder, Colo.
Regional sources
• Ken Galdston directs the InterValley Project in West Newton, Mass., a regional network that, through member organizations, claims to have saved thousands of jobs and created affordable housing. It links religious organizations, labor unions, ethnic communities and urban and suburban neighborhoods in New England industrial areas affected by economic downturn. Projects are in New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Contact 617-796-8836.
• Fred Rose directs the Pioneer Valley Project, an interfaith, interracial coalition of 23 congregations and labor unions that is turning 80 abandoned houses and 130 empty lots into affordable housing in Springfield, Mass. Rose has a doctorate in city and regional planning. The PVP belongs to the InterValley Project network. Contact 413-827-0781, fredrose.pvp2@verizon.net.
• Lew Finfer directs the Organizing and Leadership Training Center, another New England network of faith-based organizing projects, which helps groups conducting a number of projects in Massachusetts. OLTC is affiliated with the Industrial Areas Foundation. Contact 617-822-1499.
• Heidi B. Neumark is pastor of Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church in New York. She is the author of Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx (Beacon Press, 2004), the story of her 19 years as pastor of Transfiguration Lutheran Church. The church became the center of a community effort that created low-income housing, first-rate schools and neighborhood and church restoration. Contact 212-222-7045, heumark@worldnet.att.net.
• Michael Gecan wrote about his years as an IAF organizer in East Brooklyn in Going Public (Beacon Press, 2002). Gecan, an active Roman Catholic, shuns the term “faith-based,” preferring “multifaith” or “multidenominational.” A member of the national staff of the Industrial Areas Foundation, working primarily in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, his emphasis is on power. Contact 609-924-7356, mgecan@erols.com.
• Donna C. “Katie” Day, professor of church and society and practical theology at the Lutheran Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, has studied African-American congregational participation in Philadelphia Interfaith Action (an Industrial Areas Foundation affiliate) and in independent community economic development efforts in North Philadelphia. She can discuss racial dynamics in faith-based community organizing. Day is ordained in the Presbyterian Church and directs the seminary’s Urban Ministry track. She teaches “The Congregation in the Community” and wrote Prelude to Struggle: African American Clergy and Community Organizing for Economic Development in the 1990s(Rowman & Littlefield, 2002). Contact 215-248-6345, kday@ltsp.edu.
• Professor Stephen Hart works in AIDS research at Frontier Science Foundation and teaches about culture and religion in the sociology department at State University of New York, Buffalo. He wrote Cultural Dilemmas of Progressive Politics: Styles of Engagement Among Grassroots Activists (University of Chicago Press, 2001) and What Does the Lord Require? How American Christians Think about Economic Justice (Rutgers University Press, 1996). He studies the “cultural dimension” of politics, particularly among people seeking social change. Ask him how people express their religious values in ordinary ways. Hart says that progressives are tending toward anemic, constrained discourse, downplaying moral passion, and that this has weakened their politics. Contact 716-834-0900 ext. 7328, sahart@buffalo.edu.
• Randy Keesler, field representative for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, can discuss a study by Interfaith Funders, “Renewing Parishes: Congregational Development Through Faith Based Community Organizing,” which examines community organizing projects and congregational development. A former organizer, he helped found Interfaith Funders. He believes religious institutions should combat poverty and injustice in society and support and sustain vibrant democracies. Contact 202-541-3369, rkeesler@nccbuscc.org.
• Terry Boggs, director of congregation-based community organizing for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, says that where Saul Alinsky’s relationship to religious institutions was rather utilitarian, congregation-based organizing today has a richer and more respectful relationship with congregations and ethical traditions. As a result, Boggs says, the organizing goes deeper into communities, and congregations, shaped by the training and practice in organizing, develop more powerfully. Contact in Chicago at 800-638-3522, terry_boggs@elca.org.
• Ram Cnaan is a professor of social work at the University of Pennsylvania and directs the Program for the Study of Organized Religion and Social Work there. He is a national expert on nonprofit organizations and voluntary action with a specialty in the study of volunteerism. He wrote The Newer Deal: Social Work and Religion in Partnership (Columbia University Press, 1999) and The Invisible Caring Hand: American Congregations and the Provision of Welfare (New York University Press, 2002). Contact 215-898-5000.
• John Aeschbury, an ordained United Church of Christ minister, left the pastorate 15 years ago for professional organizing. He works for DART (Direct Action and Research Training Center) in Miami. He helped begin several community organizations in Ohio, resulting in gains in health care, housing, education, labor, transportation and public safety. He can describe the work of organizing, the philosophy and tactics, and the training and motivation of organizers. Contact 305-576-8020, johna@ee.net.
• Stephen C. Rasor is a professor of the sociology of religion at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. He is a co-director of the Institute for Black Religious Life, working in the area of congregational studies (black churches) and teaching sociology of religion, including social analysis, community organizing and social change and justice. Contact 404-527-7765, scrasor@itc.edu.
• Walter Earl Fluker is a professor in the department of philosophy and religion/leadership studies and director of the Morehouse Leadership Center at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He is also Visiting Professor of African American Religious Traditions at Harvard University Divinity School and is an ordained Baptist minister with standing in the United Church of Christ. He is finishing a manuscript titled “The Ground Has Shifted: Visions of National Community from the African American Christian Tradition.” He can discuss the historical role of congregation-based organizing, particularly in black communities, from the civil rights era to the present. Contact 404-681-2800.
• Psychologist Paul W. Speer is an associate professor in the department of human and organizational development at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College in Nashville. Speer’s research is on community organizing, social power and community change. He studies processes and mechanisms of community organizations among groups working to change social conditions in their communities. He teaches community development theory, action research and research methodology. He is evaluating the effectiveness of a program of the Pacific Institute for Community Organization called the Skipper Initiative. Contact 615-322-3117, paul.w.speer@vanderbilt.edu.
• Michael Byrd has been involved for more than 10 years as a participant-researcher in Tying Nashville Together, an Industrial Areas Foundation affiliate in Nashville. He wrote a doctoral dissertation and published several articles on faith-based community organizing in metropolitan areas. He is an independent scholar and a freelance writer, and his involvement with TNT and faith-based organizing continues. Contact 615-496-8058.
• Phil Tom oversees the grant program for faith-based community organizing in the Urban Ministry Office, National Ministries Division of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in Louisville. He is co-chairman of Interfaith Funders. Contact 502-569-5845, ox_49@yahoo.com.
• Mark I. Wegener is pastor of the Woodlake Lutheran Church, affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in Richfield, Minn. He is past president of the Gamaliel Foundation’s national clergy caucus. Ask him how local, congregation-based community organizing works and about the theological basis for congregations’ participation. Contact 612-866-8449.
• Omar McRoberts is an assistant professor in the sociology department at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Streets of Glory: Church and Community in a Black Urban Neighborhood (University of Chicago Press, 2003), about religion and community revitalization in a poor, black neighborhood in Boston. He can discuss urban religious landscape, particularly in black and poor neighborhoods, and the potential and limitations of faith-based organizing. Contact 773-834-8970, omcrober@midway.uchicago.edu.
• Dennis A. Jacobsen is author of Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing (Fortress Press, 2003) and pastor of Incarnation Lutheran Church in Milwaukee. He and his congregation work with Milwaukee Inner-City Congregations Allied for Hope, a 46-congregation coalition that helped win passage of a city ordinance stiffening penalties for negligent landlords; forge a banking campaign involving 17 financial institutions, which committed $500 million to central city lending over five years; close drug houses; secure improved police protection; and create church-operated community development corporations. Contact 414-372-1600.
• Ernesto Cortes Jr. is Southwest regional director of the Industrial Areas Foundation. Forty years ago he founded Communities Organized for Public Service, an IAF affiliate, to serve the mostly Hispanic, low-income West Side and South Side of San Antonio. COPS claims to have brought hundreds of millions of dollars in streets, drainage, sidewalks, libraries, parks and street lights to poor neighborhoods, as well as buildings and housing to poor neighborhoods. COPS also says it helped rebuild the culture of the city’s public life, opening debate to many nonpartisan interests. The IAF’s Southwest region comprises 23 organizations, representing an estimated 500,000 Texas families. Contact COPS lead organizer Ramon Duran, 210-222-2367. Contact Cortes through assistant Patty Tenorio, 512-459-6551, Patty@swief.org.
• St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church in McAllen, Texas, a congregation of migrant farm workers, working poor, educators, service and managerial workers, and professionals, worked for years to change McAllen’s white-dominated city council structure to one that made it easier to elect Latinos. The congregation continues holding politicians accountable for living-wage jobs, good education, health care and the environment. Contact the Rev. Alfonso Guebara or Sister Maria Sanchez at St. Joseph the Worker, 956-682-1351.
• Valley Interfaith in Mercedes is an organizing arm of the Industrial Areas Foundation serving South Texas. Contact Valley Interfaith organizer Elizabeth Valdez, 956-565-6316.
• Professor Jeannie Oakes is Presidential Professor in Educational Equity and director of UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education & Access and the All Campus Consortium on Research for Diversity. Her research examines inequalities in U.S. schools and follows the progress of equity-minded reform. She can discuss how faith-based community organizations have worked around the country to change schools in poor communities. Contact 310-206-8725, oakes@ucla.edu.
• Mary Gonzales, director of California for the Gamaliel Foundation, has been an organizer since 1980. She is creating a regional organization in San Diego County and in the San Francisco East Bay. Contact 312-371-2577, CAleadorg@aol.com.
• Robert Linthicum, founder and director of Partners in Urban Transformation in Tehachapi, Calif., has created a video course, “Building a People of Power,” and written several books about community organizing. He leads workshops in biblical foundations for community organizations, is active in Christians Supporting Community Organizing, and participates in the Los Angeles metropolitan broad-based organizing effort for the Industrial Areas Foundation. Contact 909-982-3676.
• Douglas McAdam, professor of sociology at Stanford University and a scholar of social movements and collective action, directs the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. He wrote Freedom Summer (Oxford University Press, 1990), among other books, and teaches introduction to sociology, political sociology, social movements and a freshman seminar, “Making Sense of the Sixties.” Ask him about the role of cultures in social movements, what makes people mobilize and what role religion plays in social mobilization. Contact 650-723-9401.
• Bishop Roy Dixon is president of the board of the Pacific Institute for Community Organization and pastor of Faith Chapel (Church of God in Christ) in San Diego. He oversees 30 Pentecostal congregations and is a businessman and staunch Republican. He has worked with the San Diego Organizing Project, a PICO affiliate, for 17 years. Contact 619-266-2626, roydixon@sbcglobal.net.
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