MAY 18, 2004

POLITICS
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.