• What does it mean to organize for community change?

• Why should you engage in community organization?

• What are effective strategies in community organization?

• How do you bring about change through community organization?

Throughout the Community Tool Box, our authors talk about different ways to improve our communities, and how to do all of the tasks, small and large, that make an organization work and work well. But broadly speaking — how does all of this work? What are the overarching strategies that work to improve our communities? Why do some grassroots organizations fail, while others do great things and flourish?

Throughout the Tool Box, we offer many suggestions of what we feel are “right” ways to approach community work, such as Our Model of Practice: Building Capacity for Community and System Change. Our belief in the equality of all people, for instance, or in the importance of individuals’ efforts to improve their communities — are not topics of specific sections, but make up the foundation of what we do. These beliefs and ideas are at the base of all of our work at the Community Tool Box.

One such idea is that of community organization — the idea that people can and should come together to talk about what matters to them, and then work together to successfully change their communities. As this idea is a common thread woven throughout our work, we’d like to use this chapter to make it explicit, and try to explore it more fully.

So, then, on the following few screens (and in the next few sections) we’ll do just that. In the remainder of this section, we’ll give a general overview of community organization — what it is and how you do it. We’ll also give brief explanations of different ways of looking at community organization. Although all of the strategies we will discuss have quite a bit in common, it may be helpful to separate out and compare different approaches in order for us to look more clearly at our work.

What does it mean to organize for community change?

Community organizing is the process by which people come together to identify common problems or goals, mobilize resources, and, in other ways, develop and implement strategies for reaching the objectives they want to accomplish.

As you can see, it’s a big idea — it’s really a way of looking at all of the work that we do. Because of that, it encompasses many of the other ideas discussed in the Tool Box. For example, effective community organization will generally include:

• Gaining an understanding of the community. The first key step is learning what the community is like, and what is important to its residents.
• Generating and using power. There are many types of power; depending on the nature of your organization and your long term goals, your organization may have (or need) different types. Different kinds of power include:
• Political or legislative power — for example, you could work to pass laws to make it more difficult for young people to get hold of alcohol or tobacco
• Consumer power — your organization might organize a boycott against a company whose policies are environmentally unsound
• Legal regulatory power — your organization might take a delinquent landlord to court
• Disruptive power — employees of an organization might go on strike as part of a demand for better working conditions
• Articulating issues. A crucial part of effective organizing is being very clear about what people find important, and what you feel should be done about it.
• Planning purposeful action. Action planning is central to effective community organization.
• Involving other people. Community organizing works in large part because of the strength that exists in numbers. The idea that “what we can’t do alone, we can often accomplish together” is what community organization is all about.
• Generating and using other resources. While involving many people is at the heart of any community organizing effort, a group will need to obtain other resources as well. These may include cash, gifts in kind, and other forms of donations or support.
• Communicating with your community. There are many ways to effectively get the word out and let the community at large in on what you are doing, why you are doing it, and why they should be a part of it.

An important point to remember is that community organization is fundamentally a grassroots process. It’s not about an outside “expert” telling a community what it should work on. Instead, it’s about community members getting excited about something, and using that energy to create change. In short, community organization is all about empowering people to improve their lives, however that might be best done.

Community organizing, done right, leads to a shift in power: you’re building a power base among a broad group of people. Many times, community organization is done among those who have traditionally been denied a voice, or whose needs have been ignored — the poor, the homeless, certain minority groups, etc.

Why should you engage in community organization?

Organizing members of a community — no matter what your goals might be — has some general advantages that will occur if the work is well done. These advantages include:

• A greater ability to bring about the changes you want to see. The collective voice of many people working together on a problem is usually much more powerful than a single voice.
• Empowerment. Involving people (especially those who haven’t traditionally had much power) in improving the conditions which shape their lives can increase people’s sense of their own worth and capabilities, helping them to live more fulfilling lives.
• Increased self-sufficiency among community members. Organizing people to bring about change helps maintain a high level of ownership by people for their own destinies. Ultimately, this reduces the amount of outside help that will be needed.
• Increased social support. By bringing together diverse groups of people who are working for the same cause, people get the chance to talk and learn with others they may not have met otherwise. Both professionally and socially, community organization offers ample opportunity for growth and enjoyment among those who come together.
• Greater equity in the society.  When people gain control over the forces that shape their lives, it changes the balance of power in the community, spreading it more broadly and distributing it more nearly equally.  That, in turn, changes for the better the circumstances of those with the least power, making for a more just society.

What are effective strategies in community organization?

There are many different ways for a community to bring about the changes it wants. In the Community Tool Box, those we are most interested in are those in which people come together to improve life in their communities. This occurs in different ways, and for different reasons. Thus, there can be slightly different ways of looking at the process of organization. The four ways that follow will be discussed in more detail in the subsequent sections of this chapter.

Organization for locality development. Also known as community development, locality development focuses on community building by improving the process by which things get done. For example, it emphasizes the ideas of community competency–the ability of the community to solve its own problems by learning skills such as group facilitation and critical thinking that are crucial to community work — and through working to build harmonious relationships among people from different racial, ethnic, and social-class groups. A lot of weight is put on how people think and feel about things. The idea of “helping people help themselves” is key to this concept. Organizations such as the Peace Corps and VISTA offer good examples of what we mean by locality development.

Social planning or policy change. Whereas locality development focuses primarily on the process of working together, social planning focuses on getting results. That is, it emphasizes solving specific social problems, such as a lack of adequate housing or a very high crime rate. Delivering goods and services and avoiding the duplication of those services are important ends in this type of organizing.  It is often initiated by community officials or planners, or as the result of state or federal programs.

Because it is driven primarily by statistics and other types of data, social planning may be seen as more “scientific” than locality development. For example, an organizer might point out that, “Records from the health department show that only about 65% of the children entering kindergarten are fully immunized; we need an initiative to make sure all of our children receive the immunizations that will safeguard their health.”

The use of “experts” may be considered a necessary part of this approach because of the importance placed on statistics and other data. This is more true of this type of organizing than for any of the others that we will discuss.

Organizing for social action, or systems advocacy. When we think of the civil rights demonstrations in the South in the 1960s, or AIDS activists conducting “die-ins” in front of the White House in the 1980s, this is what we are talking about. Social action organizing is highly adversarial, and the concept of social justice is a dominant ideal.

In social action organizing, members of a certain group — often those who are discriminated against or low on the economic ladder, and thus have little voice as individuals — come together in order to make demands on the larger community for increased resources or equal treatment.

Coalitions are broad groups that bring together people and organizations from throughout the community, including many groups that may not normally work together. For example, a coalition working to increase AIDS awareness in the community might bring together officials from the health department, representatives from the faith community, young people, business leaders, and members of the GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender) community — groups that sometimes don’t see eye-to-eye.

The power of coalitions comes from the idea of strength in numbers — bringing together many diverse people gives you the power you need to make the changes you want.

When looking at these four strategies for community organization, it’s very clear that these approaches are not completely distinct from one another. A group that is mostly concerned with the processes of locality development will nonetheless have, some results they want achieved, and they may well use the more strident tactics of social action to achieve those results. And certainly, a coalition might choose to use any (or more likely, all) of the other three strategies at some point during its life span.

However, our hope is that by separating these ideas — even if the separation is somewhat academic — we can help organizers to think systematically about their desired ends and the means it will take to get there, as well as to organize their work in accordance to their values.

How do you bring about change through community organization?

Community organization can be done in many ways; how you do it will depend on where you are working and what your specific goals are. More detailed “how-to’s” are found in each of the strategy-specific sections that follow this one.

However, some of the basics are pretty much the same, whatever your ultimate goals might be. What follows then, is simply a general overview to get you thinking about the fundamentals.

• First of all, and most obviously, you need to involve people in your community efforts. This is the heart of community organizing. This may be done in many ways — from informal conversations, to going door-to-door, to using more formal methods of recruitment.

Door-knocking is a classic tactic in community organizing that is still used regularly by community activists. Going door-to-door in the area that interests you with a short script like the following can do a lot to spark original interest.

Be careful here. There may be some members of your group not comfortable going door-to-door as a way to get the word out. They may be unsure about the safety of the neighborhoods they are visiting. It may also be illegal for your organization to communicate with community members through door-to-door visits. So, before you begin your campaign, check the comfort level of your members and examine local laws to make sure that a door-to-door campaign is safe and legal!

• Next, from the comments and suggestions you have heard from community members, identify the issue that seems to be of the greatest concern. Three questions are especially important to consider when deciding to tackle a problem:
  • Is it important enough to people that they’re willing to take action about it?
  • Is it specific? For example, violence may be a problem — but what kind of violence are people concerned about? Domestic violence? Violence in our schools? Muggings after dark?
  • Can something be done to affect it in a reasonable amount of time? You may not be able to do much locally to change global warming, but you can probably do quite a bit to encourage energy conservation and the use of green building techniques and power sources.

Then, those who want to do something about the problem should reframe it as a goal. That gives people something positive to strive for, and enlists them in building the community, rather than simply eliminating something harmful or annoying.  It not only makes working on the current issue more compelling, but prepares people to continue the community-building process in the future.

• Developing your strategy is the next step in community organizing. What your strategy will be will vary greatly, depending on what type of organizing you are doing. However, in all types of organizing, members of your group will want to come together and develop agreed-upon answers to the following questions.
  • What are your long- and short-term goals?
  • What are your organizational strengths and weaknesses?
  • Who cares about this problem?
  • Who are your allies?
  • Who has the power to give you what you want?
  • How can we make our work enjoyable for community members to be a part of?

It’s important to build your organization’s strategy in a logical manner. People like to look upon themselves as being reasonable. Thus, organizers should develop the strategy in such a way that each escalation of activity makes sense, so that neither members of the group nor the larger community see what is being done as overblown or reactionary.

• From strategies, your organization should develop specific tactics for the strategy you have chosen. Examples of tactics include boycotts, petitions, demonstrations, meetings with people with power, and so on. As we discussed in the last step on developing strategies, members of the group must be sure that the tactics fit the situation — that they aren’t too extreme (or too weak!); that they target the appropriate people; and that they have a good chance of being effective.
• The next step in community organizing is to choose specific actions to carry out the strategies and tactics you have developed. These action steps are the bread and butter of your community work. They should be very explicit, specifying who will do what in what way by when.
• The organizer should set goals for immediate, short-ending wins, and these wins should be celebrated. Most community work takes a long time; some of it is never done. Your organization’s goals may be very large — ending child abuse; developing a thriving neighborhood in what is currently a run-down, crime-infested area; or an end to all forms of discrimination. These are goals that will take a long time to reach; they may not even be completed in our lifetime.

Because of this, it’s important that the group does win something very quickly. It’s important for the morale of the group to feel you really are making progress; that your work is not only for a good cause, but you’re also going about it in the right way. No one likes to feel that their work is useless, that they are giving up precious free time for a lost cause, or that they are not appreciated for all of their work. So make celebrations of your work — and the people doing it — a regular part of your organization’s life.

• Finally, the organization needs to keep on going. As we said above, community work never ends. Your group may be organizing people to work on specific goals. But when your group has won (or when you have decided it’s time to bow out gracefully), then it’s time to rest, regroup, and move on to the next campaign.

In Summary

The power of an organized community working together to reach agreed-upon goals is nothing short of spectacular. There is no more important step to take than organization when trying to improve life in our communities. And so, it is crucial for those of us working for our communities to understand how to do so effectively.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a tremendously powerful organizer. In a speech in Memphis in 1968, he rallied listeners with the words, “Let us rise up tonight with a greater readiness. Let us stand with a greater determination. And let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation.” We at the Community Tool Box ask that you take that opportunity — that you work to organize people for a better community, a better nation, and finally, a better world.

Suppose the quality of life in your community is declining. The major employer has packed up and moved to a place where labor and utilities are cheaper. Without steady paychecks, a lot of people in town don’t have the money to keep up their houses and yards, or to support charitable organizations. Many people have found other jobs, but have to commute long distances to get to them. In some of the worst situations, individuals and families have become homeless, and are living in shelters or in their cars. Violence has increased, partially because those long commuting times leave many youth unsupervised during off-school hours, partially because of increasing substance use brought on by people’s difficult circumstances. The community has turned into a depressed and depressing place, and most citizens feel powerless to do anything about it. How can you change this situation so that people start to take action to improve their lives?

One answer is to convince people that they can make a difference and get them to work together in thinking out what they can do, and then doing it. But what if there are serious divisions in the community, or what if most people don’t see themselves as able to change anything? Perhaps some groups are shut out of the political process or discriminated against economically or socially. Perhaps the many diverse groups in the community have little contact with or knowledge of one another. Before you can get people working together, you have to help them make contact with and begin to trust one another.

This is a situation when locality development is desperately needed. If community members can learn to communicate across class, ethnic, and racial lines, and to set up organizations, systems, and policies to take advantage of their resources and address their problems, they can make life better for everyone. In this section (and the two that follow) we’ll discuss three different but overlapping approaches to community organization and community change. In this section, we’ll discuss how to lay the groundwork and create a foundation for such a community-wide cooperative effort.

What is locality development?

As we stated in the first section of this chapter, community or locality development is community building through improving the process by which things get done. This can be an end in itself, but it can also be seen as the beginning of a larger process.

While locality development can be defined as improving process, it, like all community organizing, must be focused on action and results. You can’t get people involved in a process, or in creating a process, unless there’s some goal at the end, whether that’s persuading the city to install a new traffic light or ending poverty. That’s why, when we discuss how to engage in and use locality development, we include choosing issues that speak to felt community needs. Only by focusing on taking action to achieve outcomes that address those issues are you likely to get citizens involved.

The four types of community organizing:

1. Locality development creates an infrastructure for community activism and action.
2. Social planning and policy change uses the political and other systems to create policies that work toward improving the quality of life for all citizens.
3. Social action and systems advocacy engage citizens in understanding and building power, and using it to advocate and negotiate for the interests of the community.
4. Coalition building constructs community-wide groups of organizations and individuals, either to work on specific issues or to address more general community needs.

These four aspects of community organization are usually viewed as separate, but it might be more useful to consider them as overlapping parts of a whole. If you do a good job at locality development, you’ll have a secure base of people with the capacity to act in any of several ways. True community organization works to create a community that’s ready for anything. Locality development is the building of an inclusive, community-based infrastructure that can then respond in whatever way is necessary to meet challenges, take advantage of resources, and create positive social change.

Earlier conceptions of the separation of the field into three models – locality development, social planning, and social action – have given way to a more comprehensive view that defines the three as interrelated and overlapping.

The Community Tool Box accepts and extends this latter view. It defines the three models as a continuum — one where the distinctions among models is not always distinct — best served by an inclusive, participatory stance that involves many sectors of the locality or community. Any of the three can be a base for community empowerment and learning, but each is oriented toward a different kind of situation and result.

• Locality development serves as a base for other organizing, and, in itself, is often aimed at community-wide issues that affect everyone: economic development, public health, etc.. Its goal is the building of community capacity to deal with whatever needs or issues arise. It also shows itself in smaller community projects — neighborhood clean-ups, the building of a community playground, etc. — that help to define and build a sense of community among diverse residents of a locality.
• Social planning and policy change is oriented toward policy solutions — changing or passing laws or regulations to address problems or conditions — particularly those initiated by officials or other leaders from inside or outside the community. These policies should be determined through a participatory process that involves everyone they benefit or otherwise affect. This model often involves people with expertise from outside the community working with community members on strategy and planning.
• Social action is based on the assumption that there is strength in numbers. By banding together and taking action, ordinary people gain the political or economic power to create change. Social action is often necessary — and often used — where serious inequity exists and there is no will on the part of those in power to correct it. The group disadvantaged by this situation, through collective action, can gain and exercise power, and bring about a more equitable distribution of official attention and resources.

Common to our interpretation of all of these models is the assumption that the community has, or can develop, the capacity to solve many or most of its own problems, and to determine the direction that health and community development should take. That means that it has — or can gain, with help and experience — the people, the institutions, the knowledge, the intelligence, and the political and economic know-how to tackle the issues it faces.

The terms “community development” and “locality development” are sometimes used interchangeably, but a community and a locality are not the same, and working with each may require its own approach. (For convenience, in this section we’ll use the term locality development to refer to working in a particular way with both localities and self-defined communities.)

A locality is a place — a town, a city neighborhood, a housing project, a rural area — and locality development looks on that place as a community.

The word “community” is commonly used to refer to a locality where people live, as well as to all the people who live there. A community can also refer to a group of people that identifies itself as a community because of shared experiences, backgrounds, values, religion, or culture. The mayor of a city may call his town a community, but most cities have a number of self-defined communities within them — an Italian-American community, a gay community, a Jewish community, an African-American community, a business community, etc. While not all members of these communities share the same points of view or act in the same ways, they do see themselves as having something important in common with fellow community members.

The difference here comes in attempting to organize a locality that isn’t a self-defined community, but merely a collection of people who happen to live in the same place. Members of a self-defined community start with some trust in one another, and with the assumption of at least one major shared idea or experience or value. Citizens of a locality may feel that they have very little in common with one another, or even that their interests conflict. Thus, development in a self-defined community may be able to start relatively easily once community members have accepted the fact that it’s a good idea. In a locality, nothing may be able to happen until residents are able to make connections, identify common interests, and start to see themselves as a community. . . and that may take a long time.

A locality can be a community in the same way. Many small towns, especially those largely populated by families that have lived there for generations, have strong community identities.

The small New England town that the writer lives in has its conflicts and divisions, but when a dairy farmer’s barn burned down, townspeople of all stripes donated money, materials, and labor to rebuild it. The same had been true in prior years for a lumber mill and a timber framer’s workshop, even though the timber framer was a “new person,” someone who had only moved to the town in recent decades. The fact that he lived in and participated in the life of the town made him a member of the community, even though native-born residents hadn’t known his grandparents.

So what does locality development actually consist of? What kind of infrastructure does it refer to? In brief — we’ll go into more detail later when we discuss how to engage in locality development — it’s a matter of creating inclusive and participatory systems and processes that bring everyone in the community together to work on a common problem or toward common goals. It also entails encouraging leadership from within the community, developing communication networks that span all sectors, and establishing the process as an accepted part of community life.

Locality development — often, but not always, in contrast to social action — emphasizes positive action on the part of a whole community, rather than assuming the necessity of conflict. The purpose might be to gain economic stability, to improve social and/or political conditions, to protect the community against a threat — the demolition of a neighborhood to make way for a highway or for expensive housing — or to preserve its historic, cultural, environmental character.

Whatever form it takes, the process is meant to build the community and make it stronger, to help its members see that they need to work together toward common purposes, and to motivate them to create ways to make that happen.

Social action, more fully explained in Section 4 of this chapter, is generally aimed at the members of a community who are in some way disadvantaged, disenfranchised, ignored, or treated unfairly. Its purpose is almost always to gain power and to use that power to erase inequities and/or change unfair or damaging policies and practices that have been used against that community. It is, at least at the beginning, generally an adversary process based on building and consolidating political power.

Locality development is a cooperative process that includes all sectors of the community and is based on finding common ground and defining and pursuing a common vision. (It can, in fact, overlap with social action when a whole community is disadvantaged or discriminated against and must gain the power to negotiate with the state or with other communities.)

Both of these are necessary aspects of community organizing, depending on the circumstances in a particular community. The deeper the divides and the greater the inequity, the more likely that social action — what is often seen as classic community organizing — will be the appropriate course to take. Once an organized community has earned a seat at the table by demonstrating its ability to stand firm and win political battles, social action may eventually turn into locality development. (Or, if other methods of achieving results fail, locality development may turn into social action.)

Why engage in locality development?

• Locality development can break down barriers within the community by encouraging and improving communication among diverse individuals and groups in the population. When citizens from many sectors of the community work together to assess assets and needs, they get to know one another as human beings, rather than as abstractions (e.g., “youth,” “the poor,” “business people”). This interaction not only makes it possible for people from different backgrounds and circumstances to work together, but also fosters mutual respect and empathy.
• Locality development can bring together people who normally have no contact, and define the community as including all of them. Just as it breaks down barriers, locality development binds community members together, and allows them to see everyone as part of a unit that only functions well when all its parts have what they need.
• Locality development can lay a solid foundation for community support of activism around issues of importance. When a community has a process by which to include everyone in the discussion of strategy about how to deal with issues, the resulting action plans belong to the community. When they feel that the plans are theirs, community members will work hard to see them carried out.
• Locality development can help individuals and groups acquire new skills and knowledge.
  • Leadership and administrative skills.
  • A better understanding of, and ability to communicate with, people from a variety of backgrounds.
  • Interpersonal skills.
  • Facilitation skills.
  • Analytical skills.
  • An overview of how systems interact to influence the life of the community.
  • An understanding of how economics, on both the large and small scales, affects people’s lives.
• Locality development can bring forth the natural leaders from within the community. This happens both naturally, as the result of the locality development process, and through the encouragement of current leaders.
• Locality development can encourage the community to identify its own resources and understand its own strengths. Once people have a clear sense of what they have available and what they themselves can do, they can use their resources to their best advantage.
• Locality development can make the community self-sufficient and able to identify and solve its own problems. The advantages of being in this position include:
  • An increase in community confidence and self-esteem, motivating citizens to tackle and solve tough problems.
  • The reduction or elimination of the need for the community to be dependent on outside sources for help, and thus not having “experts” determine what is good for the community.
  • An increase in the speed with which the community can respond to problems and mobilize resources.
  • Assurance that the problems the community addresses are those that really concern it.
• Locality development can give voice to everyone, and make participatory democracy the normal method of community decision-making. Building an inclusive, participatory infrastructure ensures that everyone’s opinions and needs are heard, and leads to the establishment of community systems that involve all sectors.
• Locality development can build a foundation for real community and equity, leading to a healthy community and long-term, positive social change. When people work together as a community, it’s much harder to write off particular groups, or to ignore their needs, and much easier to envision and work toward a community in which all the necessary underpinnings of health are available to everyone.

When and where should you engage in locality development?

In most sections of the Community Tool Box, the answer to the “when?” question begins with a sentence similar to “While this activity is almost always appropriate, there are certain times when it’s especially useful.” In this instance, however, we’ll make an exception to that practice. While locality development usually starts because of a specific need or difficult conditions, it is, in fact, called for at virtually any time and in any place where there are inequities in the social system, where the quality of life for at least some members of the community is unacceptable, where systems or resources are inadequate to meet all the community’s needs, or where the community is threatened from within or without. It’s even appropriate when things are going well, since this may be a good time to make positive changes that would be harder in difficult times (improvements in environmental conditions, for instance, or a push for pedestrian-friendly areas). In other words, locality development is needed at almost any time in almost any community or locality.

In some communities, the need may be immediately obvious: major employers have left, housing stock is deteriorating, Main Street storefronts are empty and decaying, violence is on the rise or already at frightening levels, etc.. There may be racial or ethnic tensions, many homeless people on the streets, or major problems relating to the public schools, the environment, or corruption in local government. Whatever the situation, it will be apparent that the community needs to do something before things get even worse.

In many cases, however, problems are hidden, or are unacknowledged. There may be an unspoken agreement that widespread alcohol abuse and domestic violence are accepted parts of community life, for instance. Community members may turn their heads and fail to notice the hunger and poverty that exist in isolated pockets, or simply not realize that a large number of their fellow citizens have no access to health care. Until there’s a crisis, many communities can’t or won’t see the problems they face. It may take a disaster — as in the case of the flooding and devastation of New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — for a community (or a nation) to face up to its realities.

An ongoing locality development process can not only lead to a healthier community, it can help a community weather bad times, and even prepare for calamity, and take advantage of good times to make things even better. For that reason, locality development is appropriate in any community at any time.

Who should be involved in locality development?

To be most effective, a locality development process should be inclusive and participatory. That means it should include all sectors of the community (and give all an equal voice) and that their role should not be to act as advisors or consultants, but as full participants in all phases of addressing community issues and working toward their resolution and a better quality of life.

It’s important not to think about self-identified communities as all of a piece. The “African-American community” in any U.S. city is not made up of people who all think alike, or who are all of the same income or education level. It may have leaders, but they don’t necessarily speak for all members of that community, any more than any other individual does. It may have institutions or organizations that occupy important places in the community, but they don’t represent everyone. Diversity refers to more than skin color or background: it encompasses opinions, political stances, income, attitudes, and a multitude of other factors, and as many of those as possible should be included when you’re recruiting people to take part in locality development.

Some of the factors that a locality development effort might consider in putting together a grassroots group are:

• Interest in the effort
• Race
• Ethnicity
• Gender
• Sexual orientation
• Geography. This may mean including people from a variety of neighborhoods, from several rural areas, or even from different city blocks. Geography is especially important when people from different areas have different interests because of differences in outlook, income, culture, etc..
• Income. This is purely an economic measure.
• Class identification. Class identification may or may not be tied to income. Some industrial workers may have higher incomes than most middle managers, but still identify themselves as working class, rather than middle class. Those middle managers, as well as teachers and other professionals and “white collar” workers with similar incomes, on the other hand, may be more likely to think of themselves as middle class. A woman on welfare who’s been to college may think of herself very differently from a woman in similar circumstances who’s a high school dropout. Class identification is as much a matter of attitude, personal history, and other factors as it is of income.
• Age
• Religion
• Culture. This may be linked to ethnic or racial background (the factors that usually come to mind when culture is mentioned), age, religion, etc.. Teenagers have their own language, norms, and styles, for instance, as do many immigrant groups and faith communities. Each is a culture unto itself, and needs to be considered when engaging in locality development.
• Language
• Organizations and institutions. Service clubs, fraternal organizations, community-based organizations, hospitals, universities, libraries, and other bodies need to be involved. They can bring valuable resources and constituencies with them.
• Local government and government agencies. Not only elected and appointed officials, but police and firefighters, welfare workers, and others in similar positions should be drawn in. As policies and systems change, they’ll bear much of the burden, and should share in ownership of the development process from the beginning.

How do you engage in locality development?

The “Iron Rule” of community organizing is to never do for people what they can do for themselves. Thus, the process is participatory by definition.

The participatory nature of organizing is crucial, regardless of the type of organizing it is. The inclusive process we’ve been describing may ultimately depend on direct action and the exercise of political power for success, but it may also depend on collaboration. Locality development can also be an exercise in bringing together all the sectors of a community — even those that normally wield the power — in an effort to improve conditions and the quality of life for everyone.

Who is included in the definition of “community” depends on the situation that exists to begin with. If the purpose of organizing is to gain equal footing or fair treatment for a group that has had neither, then that group is the community in question. If the aim is to revive a town whose economy has all but died, or to improve health conditions across the board, then all citizens are the constituency.

The ideal situation is one in which everyone in the locality can be persuaded to work together, and in which everyone’s interests are attended to. In reality, this situation may be rare, but it’s something worth striving for. Building a community and developing an infrastructure that makes it possible for people to work together are necessary regardless of the aim of organizing.

There are a number of basic steps to locality development that we’ll discuss, more or less in the order in which they should be taken.”More or less” because each community and situation is unique. In some cases, you may need to work on several things at once, or to take a particular step out of order, or even skip it entirely. It’s important to respond to the circumstances that exist.

Get to know the community. The term “get to know” really means three things here:

• Learn about the history, relationships, issues, factions, and other aspects of the community or locality you’re working with before you start.
• Get acquainted with the people in the community. Develop relationships, so that they know who you are, what you’re doing there, and why they should talk to and trust you.
• Understand how people in the community view themselves and others.

We’ll briefly examine what each of these means in practice.

Community history
Knowing some community history is absolutely necessary. If you don’t understand the alliances, rivalries, conflicts, and successes of the community, particularly those of the recent past, you’re apt to make huge blunders. The time spent cleaning up after yourself will be far greater than the time you spend making sure you don’t make a mess in the first place.

To learn community history, you have to talk to those who’ve experienced it or heard about it directly from the source. Conversations with community elders or long-time residents can yield a great deal of information (of course, not all of it necessarily objective or accurate). If you make contact with a broad range of people, you can at least sort out where stories agree or disagree. Some research in newspaper archives or on the Web could also be helpful here.

Getting acquainted and building trust
In many communities — whether defined by geography or by class, ethnicity, or some other criterion — it’s difficult for an outsider to make any inroads. Especially if you’re obviously different from community members, they may be reserved about spending time with you or listening to what you have to say. Even if you’re already a member of the community, or come from a background or culture similar to that of the community with which you’re working, you won’t automatically gain their trust. You’ll have to do that by proving your commitment and staying strong.

You have to spend time in the community and meet people where they live — in the streets, at community events, in stores and bars and restaurants, in people’s houses. There’s a reason that the Peace Corps and similar organizations insist that volunteers live in the communities in which they work. Familiarity breeds familiarity. If community members actually know and have a relationship with you — have had conversations with you about your family, your likes and dislikes, your values and ideals — they’re far more likely to trust you and listen when you ask them to join in a development effort.

Understanding how community members view themselves and others
Understanding how community members view themselves and others both inside and outside the community will help you understand where you and the community need to start. Some of the factors you might explore:

• How much do community members interact with one another? How well do they know one another? Is there a sense of community solidarity, or are there deep divisions between natives and newcomers, or between people of different races or ethnicity? Are there existing mechanisms in the community that serve to bring people together or keep them apart?
• Do community members see themselves as a community? Do they see themselves as part of multiple communities? Do people identify with the community as you’ve defined it, or with any community? Or is their world bounded instead by family or friendships or work?
• How do community members view change and their own ability to effect change? Do they want changes? Do they feel that change is possible? Are they angry? Afraid? Apathetic?
• Does the community have a sense of pride, or a sense of inferiority? Does it feel put upon by outside forces?

How community members view change and their sense of the strength of their community are extremely important factors to understand. If people feel that they can’t influence events, or have no skills to use in improving their lives and communities, they won’t try. Convincing citizens that they can make a difference is often the first — and the hardest — task that community organizers and community builders face.

It can be harder still when some community members do see themselves as able to effect change, and others see it as a lost cause (“‘They’ are too powerful,” “we have no knowledge of how things work,” “everything gets decided behind the scenes anyway,” etc.). Keeping the confident group from dominating or taking over — which will only reinforce the others’ sense of powerlessness — while still keeping them engaged is a difficult but necessary balancing act.

• What kinds of current or potential connections do community members have to policymakers or other influential people or groups? Do they see those connections as possible or useful?

Identify the reasons that the community is likely to be willing to organize.

The reason that Saul Alinsky, commonly seen as the father of modern community organizing, was able, in 1930s Chicago, to bring together neighborhood groups that had been hostile to one another is that they all shared a common interest in improving working conditions in the stockyards, and a common resentment of the bosses who were exploiting them. If a community is to come together, it has to have good reasons for doing so, and those reasons have to be determined by the community itself, not by an authority or expert or outside organizer, no matter how well-intentioned.

Those reasons may be small specific issues (the deterioration of a neighborhood park, the need for more streetlights) or larger concerns (the fear that the community is dying economically or socially; feelings of resentment and powerlessness; a sense that opportunities are being missed; widespread discrimination and inequity; hostility from without; etc.). Furthermore, the reasons may not be understood or shared by everyone. It’s crucial to find out what community members are concerned about, and to determine what might move them to unite and take action to address their concerns.

Determine who are the opinion leaders and trusted individuals and groups in the community.

Opinion leaders are those whose opinions are valued and whose advice is followed by a majority of community members. They may be leaders because of their position (CEOs, clergy, college presidents, government officials), because of their assumed intelligence (doctors, professors), or simply because they have demonstrated level-headedness and fairness in the past. Often, they are average citizens who have gained their neighbors’ respect through their exercise of common sense, compassion, and strong values.

Find those people and start with them. They’ll know how to attract others, and who among those others can bring still others with them. Their support will lend credibility to a locality development effort. In addition, they’re likely to be able to identify and help in negotiating the personality and group conflicts and other pitfalls of locality development.

Alinsky’s organizing efforts in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago were successful at least partially because he was able to gain the support of the two groups most important to residents — the unions and the Catholic church.

Perhaps the most important thing you can do is to treat everyone with respect. If you can develop a reputation as someone who’s straightforward and honest, and who respects everyone, people will be more than willing to hear what you have to say. If you’re condescending, or present yourself as knowing more than community members, you might as well leave and find another use for your time.

Recruit community members to the effort.

First and foremost, locality development relies on personal contact. Meetings in people’s living rooms, door to door canvassing, outreach to organizations and institutions and agencies — all of these and other methods are the base of an organizing effort. It’s difficult to convince anyone of anything without direct communication.

Recruitment can and should go on continuously. It doesn’t matter where you are in the locality development process — you can always use more participants.

Recruitment is really inseparable from building trust and becoming part of the community. Many organizers believe that they have to actually live in the community to establish any credibility, and, in at least some communities, that may be true. Having the support of opinion leaders and other trusted community members and groups can sometimes serve the same purpose, but it’s not a substitute for doing the core work of any organizing: making personal contact with as many people as possible, and maintaining contacts day in and day out.

Build a communication system.

The first of the system improvements necessary to locality development is a communication network that makes it possible for anyone to reach anyone else. Not only can such a system make working together a great deal easier, but it also helps to squelch rumors and head off trouble before it happens.

The ability to make direct contact with someone and to find out exactly what she meant in that newspaper quote, or whether she’s actually planning what you’ve heard she is, can make all the difference. She may not have meant her remark to be offensive (or may not have made it at all); she may not have meant to release her plan until she’d discussed it with you and others first. On the other hand, if there’s actually a problem, it’s better to deal with it straightforwardly and resolve it than to complain and wait until it’s too late before protesting.

One of the great miracles of the 20th century is that, since the devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, no one has again used a nuclear bomb against human beings. One possible reason that that disaster has been avoided is the existence of the red phones on the desks of the President of the U.S. and the Premier of the Soviet Union. This communication system, initiated by Lyndon Johnson in the mid-1960s, was used several times to inform the President or Premier of actions that could have been taken as hostile if they hadn’t been explained promptly. Those explanations may have actually prevented nuclear war.

A communication system, in this sense, doesn’t refer to hardware — a complicated phone system, for instance, or a computer network — but, rather, to people knowing whom to call on for what, and making sure that everyone has access to everyone else. This may be as simple as circulating a list of names, mail and email addresses, and phone numbers, or as complicated as setting up communication trees (and allowing for the fact that many low-income people don’t have their own computers or phones).

Encourage leadership from the community from the beginning.

Identify, train, and mentor natural leaders, so that they can take on increasing responsibility and ultimately direct the effort. One of the key pieces of infrastructure that locality development is meant to create is local leadership, making it possible for the effort to be sustained indefinitely by the community.

Some community members may have very little experience in attending meetings, speaking in public, or even in sorting out their own opinions from what they’ve been told. They’ll need support and training in learning those skills.

Create a structure to help the community accomplish its goals.

In order to solidify and coordinate the development effort, it is generally necessary to create an organization of some sort, or even more than one, to provide structure for and coordinate your action. The exception to this rule is a situation in which an organization already exists that has credibility and can take on the work of locality development.

There are a number of reasons for establishing an organization or other structure:

• It makes the work easier. An organization gives the effort an identity that can then be used to seek out resources, devise and carry out actions, gain official status, and state positions. It makes it easier to operate in the world of government regulations and fundraising, it’s easier to explain than a still-formless locality development process, and it can attract members more easily as well.
• It makes the work more efficient and more effective. A structure makes it easier to divide and delegate tasks efficiently, to contact people when things need to be done, and to keep track of everything.
• It gives the effort standing in the community. An organization legitimizes the development effort, and shows that it’s serious and well-supported.
• It lends form to the development effort. An organization is something community members can point to as a result of their coming together. It has substance and purpose, rather than simply being a group of people talking about doing something. It has a name, and people are associated with it. It’s real.
• It creates a focus for community work. An organization can act as a coordinating body for whatever comes next. It provides both a physical focus — an office, a phone, a computer, even if they’re in someone’s kitchen — and a social and political one. People belong to it, or work with it or for it. They care about what it stands for, because it stands for them.
• It unites those involved in locality development. An organization gives community members something formal to belong to and participate in. It both brings people together physically — for meetings and other activities — and identifies them with the organization, and with other members of or participants in the organization.
• It gives the community an entity that it created and owns. If the development effort has been conducted well, the organization will grow out of the participation and ideas of the community. Because they own it, they’ll work hard to make it successful.

To this point, the steps for engaging in locality development apply equally well to social action or policy change. The next few steps are specifically aimed at an effort that seeks to unite the whole community in a drive to improve conditions for everyone, rather than an effort to gain equity or power for a group that’s been treated unfairly, or a drive to change policies and laws.

Define the most important issues that relate to the community’s overall concerns.

Just as when your group came together, the issues to be worked on must come from the community itself and reflect community members’ concerns and needs. Some of these issues may be the same reasons you cited for coming together; others may be stepping stones to a larger goal. In either case, people won’t find them compelling unless they generate them themselves.

Develop a strategic plan.

Once you’ve determined where you’re going — i.e., the issues or problems to be addressed — the next step is to figure out how to get there. The way to do that is by developing a strategic plan — a step-by-step blueprint for accomplishing your goals. This means embarking on a participatory process to establish a vision for the community, a mission for your effort, objectives to be reached, a strategy by which to reach them, and actions that will carry out the strategy (VMOSA).

An important part of planning is considering what’s possible and what will help to keep the development process going. It’s wise, for instance, not to try to reach your ultimate goals all at once, but to work in stages. Aim first for something that’s achievable, so that the effort will have an initial success to build on. When that goal is met, strategize again and set your next, somewhat more difficult, goal. With each stage of the effort, people will become more confident and more committed to reaching the ambitious goals set out in the strategic plan.

Implement your plan.

Here’s where all your organizing and hard work pay off. The community takes action to achieve the results it wants, based on the plan that’s been developed.

Continually monitor and evaluate your work.

The Community Tool Box considers these functions so important to any effort that it devotes four chapters (36-39) to evaluating community organizations and initiatives. Monitoring and regularly evaluating your work gives you the opportunity to change what’s not working and to respond to changes in the community. It also tells you what you’re doing well, and may give you ideas about how to build on your successes.

You should be looking at both the process and the results of what you’re doing. How successfully have you brought in all sectors of the community? How invested are they in making or causing changes that will improve people’s lives? How well is your organization running, and does it meet the community’s needs? Is the action you’re involved in effective at keeping you moving toward your goals? Are you achieving the outcomes you’re aiming for?

Make the locality development effort self-sustaining and community-run, so that it’s established as a permanent fixture.

The Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC) that Saul Alinsky helped establish in 1939 still exists as an organization, even though most of those originally involved are long dead, and the neighborhood has gone from being virtually all white and Eastern European to mostly Hispanic and African-American. You may not be interested in that level of longevity, but locality development is an ongoing process. Individuals and groups move, and others that know nothing of your effort take their places. If you build a strong community and a strong organization that belongs to and is run by community members, it will continue as long as it’s needed.

In Summary

Locality development is the facet of community organizing that concentrates on building an infrastructure of relationships, processes, and systems that makes it possible for the community to solve its own problems and respond to its own needs through planning, action, and advocacy. The development process should be inclusive of all sectors and participatory, and leadership should be encouraged and nurtured from within.

Locality development is the basis for any organizing effort. It is the process by which community members are recruited to the effort and asked to identify and address community needs and problems by using community resources and the clout that comes from many people speaking with one voice. That may mean that all members of a large community unite to address such major community issues as economic development or public health, or it may mean that members of a more closely-defined community (Hispanics, workers in a particular trade or plant, Muslims, welfare recipients, tenants of a housing project) unite to address more specific concerns, or to demand fair treatment.

Whatever the situation, locality development starts with understanding the community and its history, and building relationships one by one. Relationships with key individuals can help greatly in attracting others to the effort and in identifying potential pitfalls and paths to success. As recruitment proceeds, potential or actual leaders from within the community are identified and nurtured with support and training. At some point, the effort will probably form an organization or other formal structure to act as a focus. The organization — community-run, inclusive, and participatory, as the effort should be from the beginning — engages in identifying issues, strategic planning and action, and evaluation. The organization also finds resources to sustain the effort, and becomes the vehicle that carries the work forward for the long term.

Locality development is useful in practically any community. It can address inequities, systemic problems or inadequacies, policy development or change, or serious community problems. Conducted well, it can lead to long-term, positive, social change and a healthier community.

Sometimes, the impetus for community health and development efforts come from social planners and policy makers. For instance, data on the level of diseases or educational outcomes may be used to raise issues on the public agenda. This section discusses how social planning approaches can inform change efforts.

What do we mean by social planning and policy change?

Social planning is the process by which policymakers – legislators, government agencies, planners, and, often, funders – try to solve community problems or improve conditions in the community by devising and implementing policies intended to have certain results.  These policies may take the form of laws, regulations, incentives, media campaigns, programs or services, information – a wide range of possibilities.  A community or state Board of Health that adopts a regulation banning smoking in particular places, for example, is trying both to protect the public from second-hand smoke and to reduce smoking in general.

There is a long history in the U.S. and elsewhere of social planning. Traditionally, this has meant that policymakers decided what they thought was good for a community or a population, and imposed policy that was meant to bring about the results they wanted.  At best, this has meant programs that benefited large numbers of people – Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, Head Start, various public health programs.  At worst, social planning has been used largely for the benefit – economic or political – of the policymakers and their friends and supporters.

In other cases, well-intentioned planning has led to negative consequences. Urban renewal in the 1950s and ’60s, for instance, by clearing “slum” neighborhoods, was meant to make cities into better places to live – safer, more attractive, and economically healthier. In fact, it often had that effect only for the people who moved into new housing and businesses after the original population had been displaced, and given nowhere else to go.  In many cases, it destroyed vital, unblighted communities.

Social planning, however, doesn’t have to take a wholly top-down form.  Starting in the 1960’s, many social programs carried requirements for community participation in planning and implementing programs and initiatives. (The Model Cities Program, a cornerstone of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, is a prime example.) While these requirements were often honored more in the breach than in the observance, they acknowledged that social initiatives work better, and generate better policy, when those affected by them are involved in creating them.

Top-down planning, though well-meaning, may fail to take into account the realities of the situation it is addressing. This failure can stem from:

• Ignorance of the community, and of the fact that what works in one community may not work in another. Community social patterns, history (especially past attempts to deal with the issue in question), or economics may work, individually or in combination, to create a unique situation. That situation has to be understood before the creation of successful policy can follow.
• Ignorance of the lives of those at whom the plan is aimed. The cultural assumptions of immigrant groups, or those from particular ethnic or racial backgrounds, may be totally foreign to those engaged in planning for them.  Even if the division between the policymakers and the population at whom their policies are aimed is solely economic, there may be vast differences in the ways they see the world, as well as vast differences in the worlds they inhabit. If policymakers don’t understand the culture and assumptions – and real needs – of the people they hope to affect, their policies are doomed to fail.
• Unintended consequences that are not apparent initially.  Sometimes, a plan or policy that seems positive on its face has results that are profoundly negative. The public housing complexes erected in the U.S. after World War II were meant to be clean, safe, comfortable residences for low-income citizens.  Instead, their institutional character and isolation from the mainstream life of their communities bred alienation and despair in their residents, and led to crime and horrible living conditions.

• Policymakers’ lack of experience in the field.  Practitioners – especially those who also have academic credentials – know that the difference between theory and reality can often be vast.  When logical, best-possible-scenario initiatives or interventions come up against underfunding, street culture, political maneuvering, substance use, mistrust of outsiders, and turf battles, they don’t always work the way planners think they should.

In addition, social planning can be used to further goals that have nothing to do with the welfare or advancement of those who are affected by them.  Such goals may be intended to benefit friends or supporters of powerful politicians, or merely to generate political capital.  In these cases, they are likely to be badly planned and administered, and to have little effect.  On the other hand, the goals may be appropriate and praiseworthy, but aren’t effectively addressed because of a lack of skill or will on the part of those assigned to carry them out.  Citizen participation can help to prevent the social planning process from failing in these ways.

The Community Tool Box sees social planning and policy change as a partnership between the community and policymakers to create policy that brings about positive social change.  As a result, we will look at social planning and policy change from two angles:

• a.  From the policymaker’s perspective, i.e., how to use the social planning process to create policy that achieves its goals with the best positive results for everyone in the community, as well as policymakers themselves.
• b.  From a grassroots perspective, i.e., how to approach policymakers at the beginning of the process, so that those in the community affected by the policy change can participate in planning and implementing it.

Why should policymakers engage in a participatory social planning process?

We’ve already mentioned that many federal and other grants stipulate community participation as a requirement for funding.  We’ve also mentioned, however, that determined politicians can bypass that requirement by appointing “community boards” that merely rubber-stamp whatever policy the politicians put forth.  In addition, community participation, as we will discuss later in this section, is a process that demands time, commitment, organization, and a good deal of work from everyone concerned.  Why, then, is it worth it to policymakers – who usually have the ability to impose their own plans – to involve the community in social planning and policy change?

There are, in fact, a number of compelling reasons, both short- and long-term:

• Community participation makes it more likely that you’ll come up with policy that’s effective. Without the knowledge of the history and social structure of the community that community members can contribute, there’s a risk of serious error.  Attempting to repeat something that didn’t work in the past, or assuming that particular groups will work together, when actually they’ve been at odds for years, can undermine a community development effort before it starts.  Furthermore, community members can inform policymakers and planners of the real needs of the community, so that the most important problems and issues can be addressed.
• Community participation leads to community ownership and support of whatever initiatives come out of a social planning effort. When people have a hand in planning and decision-making, they feel that whatever plan is implemented is theirs, and therefore they’ll strive to make it work.  The same is rarely, if ever, true about plans that are imposed on a community from outside.
• Policymakers – particularly elected officials – can gain politically from involving the community. They will be seen as respecting their constituents, and will also gain respect and credibility if initiatives they sponsor prove effective.  If they can help improve the quality of life for community members, their political capital will increase.
• Community members can inform policymakers about changes in circumstances that demand changes in policy over time.  What is effective or appropriate today may not be in five years.  Community participation puts eyes and ears in the community to pick up changes that policymakers may not be aware of, and to keep programs and initiatives from becoming outmoded or stale.
• Community participation can create community relationships and partnerships among diverse groups who can then work together. By involving all sectors of the community, it can bring together groups and individuals who would normally not have – or might not want – contact with one another, and help them understand where their common interests lie.
• Community participation helps keep community building going over the long run. By placing planning and decision-making power partly or wholly with the community, the process assures that those who started the effort will remain interested and involved, and not be distracted by other issues, or by changes in the political climate.
• Community participation contributes to institutionalizing the changes brought about by changes in policy. Community members are far more likely to buy into policy that’s been created with the participation of all sectors of the community.  Their support over time will lead to permanent change.
• Community participation energizes the community to continue to change in positive directions. Once community members see what they can accomplish, they will be ready to take on new challenges. Community participation can change their attitude about what is possible – probably the single most important element to creating change.

Why should the community engage in a participatory social planning process?

While it would might seem obvious that communities and grassroots groups would want to participate in planning and carrying out policy, that’s not always the case.  They may feel it’s someone else’s problem, or that they simply don’t have the time or energy to be involved in a planning effort.  People who haven’t had the opportunity to be decision-makers often find the prospect intimidating.  Because they haven’t had experience in functioning in meetings, planning, and other similar activities, they feel awkward, and find it easier to let others make the decisions.  They may also feel that they have little to contribute, or that they won’t be listened to even if they are at the table.

It can take time and effort to make it possible for community members to contribute. They may need training and/or mentoring in order to become comfortable with the procedures and assumptions of a participatory process. They may have the skills to participate, but need to be motivated to do so. Establishing trust in the process and the policymakers may require a lot of community organizing – door-to-door canvassing, personal conversations, small meetings in people’s houses – before the community is ready to take on the risk or the burden of participation.

The rewards for the community, however, can be great. Many of the reasons for the community to embrace participation are reflections of the reasons why policymakers would want it.  Some of them are:

• Participation provides the opportunity to educate policymakers to the community’s real needs and concerns.  As we’ve discussed, when policymakers plan a vacuum, their plans usually fail, because they don’t account for the realities of the situation and the real needs of the population they’re aimed at.  Community members can help policymakers understand their lives – the difficulties they face, the strengths they bring, and what they feel must be addressed.
• Participation allows community members to help create policy that really works to meet their needs.  By participating in their development, community members can see policies put in place that actually improve their lives, rather than having no effect or imposing added burdens on them.
• Participation affords community members the respect they deserve.  Rather than being seen as victims or nuisances, community members engaged in a participatory social planning process are seen as colleagues and concerned citizens working to improve their community.  They are respected both as human beings – as should always be the case, but often isn’t – and for the skills, knowledge, and effort they contribute to the process.
• Participation puts community members in control of their own fate.  The participatory social planning and policy development process results in citizens deciding what policies will work for them, and gives them the opportunity to change those policies if they’re not working.  It puts into practice the motto of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council in Chicago, founded by legendary organizer Saul Alinsky: “We, the people, will work out our own destiny.”
• Participation builds community leadership from within.  Those who take part in the process both learn and exercise leadership skills, and also start to see themselves as having the capacity to be leaders.  The most important step to leadership, and to taking action to influence events that affect you, is to believe that you have the ability to do so.
• Participation energizes the community to take on other issues or policy decisions in the future, and to see itself as in control of its future.  Thus, the community development process will continue over time.
• Participation leads to long-term social change.  As community members take more control over more areas of their lives, as a result of the skills and attitudes gained from the participatory process, they will create and institutionalize changes that improve the quality of life for everyone in the community.

When is social planning and policy change appropriate?

Unlike locality development and social action, the other two types of community organizing discussed in this chapter (see Sections 2 and 4), social planning originates with policymakers or their contractors.  From a policymaker’s point of view, social planning is appropriate when:

• The community asks for it. A community problem may have reached the point where the community feels something needs to be done, and doesn’t feel it knows what that is, or that it has the resources to do it. It may ask policymakers or an outside source for help.
• An issue or problem has reached crisis proportions, and it’s obvious to everyone that something must be done.  It sometimes takes one or more specific events – the riots in many American cities in the spring of 1968, for instance, or the 9/11 terrorist attack – to set a social planning process in motion.  In other cases, however, the process may be a response to an ongoing condition ( e.g., rising unemployment, or increasing youth crime).
• There is a long-standing major issue – poverty, violence, housing, hunger, etc. – that has attracted policymakers’ attention. Because of media publicity or public opinion, elected officials, agencies, or others in a position to do something about it feel the need to respond.

• There are resources made available to address the issue.  The federal, state, or local government may decide to appropriate funds for a specific purpose, for instance, or a large foundation might turn its attention – and financial resources – to a specific issue.

• A powerful figure – a president or prime minister, a leader in Congress or Parliament, a governor, a mayor – is concerned about a particular problem, issue, or population, and determines to do something about it.
• A strategic or economic planning process that policymakers engage in determines that a particular issue must be addressed, or that particular communities or populations need some kind of assistance.
• It becomes apparent – on the municipal, state or provincial, or federal level – that there is a general economic, social, and/or environmental downhill slide that needs to be stopped.

Social planning can be appropriate from a community perspective at all these times as well.  If the community has not already initiated some action – either to address the problem or to get help in doing so – it may need outside assistance in order for anything to happen.

Who should be involved in social planning and policy change?

Again, social planning is different from both locality development and social action. In locality development, all sectors of the population in a town or area – rich and poor, young and old, male and female, all races and ethnicities, etc. – should be represented in the effort.  In social action, the necessary participants are only individuals and organizations that represent the particular population that is working to gain power.  The number and character of the important participants in a social planning process fall somewhere between these two extremes.

For social planning to work well, both policymakers and all stakeholders should at least be invited to participate; the more are actually represented, the better. “Stakeholders” is a term that includes all of those directly affected in some way by the potential policy changes or by the issues under discussion. Some examples of stakeholders include:

• Those whom a policy is meant to benefit.
• Those whom a policy is meant to control in some way. Land use policy, for instance, may place restrictions on developers, so they should be represented in discussing and creating it, although their voice should not dominate.  They are one interested party among many.
• Those who will have to administer or enforce the policy.
• Those who work with or serve a population that is directed affected by a policy. This category may include health or human service workers, educators, clergy, etc.
• Organizations or businesses that stand to gain or lose revenue or other resources, or will have to alter their mode of operation because of a potential change in policy.
• Policymakers and public officials.

How can policymakers engage effectively in social planning and policy change?

As a policymaker, you may have concerns over and above the outcomes of whatever policy you establish. You probably have to keep an eye on costs, deadlines, political fallout, and other factors that influence policy, but don’t necessarily relate to whether a particular policy is workable, or whether it benefits or harms those it’s aimed at.  It may be tempting to skip community participation entirely, and simply create a plan and impose it on the community.

As tempting as it is to save time and be “efficient,” it usually makes more sense to spend the time necessary to have everyone involved enthusiastically backing – or at least accepting – any new policy and willing to support it when it is put in place. You’re likely to be most successful if you think and behave more like a community organizer, and less like an expert who knows what’s good for the community.

Community participation is an important goal for almost any community organizer, and community participation starts one person at a time. In the previous section, we describe the process for making contacts, building trust in the community, and ultimately involving all sectors in community assessment and in the planning, carrying out, and evaluation of activities and policies aimed at improving the quality of life.  Policymakers, if they’re serious about community involvement and participation, should engage in that process as well.

As a policymaker, you have advantages and disadvantages in this process. You’re a known quantity, so people are not likely to be confused about your involvement, but since you’re a known quantity, with a reputation in the community that may not always be positive, you may be distrusted from the start. You’ll have to overcome that, and convince people of your good will in order to get anything going, which may lead them to fear contact with anyone official.

For these reasons, and because you’re coming into a community with an idea of what area you’re going to address, the process of organizing is a little different than it might be for either locality development (Section 2 of this chapter) or social action (Section 4).  Something is going to go forward; the organizing task here is to involve the community, and particularly stakeholders, as much as possible in every phase of the effort, and to be guided, to the greatest extent feasible, by their knowledge and needs.

You may be working through one or more local organizations, or through a government or other agency that has a presence in the community.  Your credibility may depend on that of the organization or agency, so choose carefully.  If the only consideration is political, you may end up with a process that has no concern for community participation, or even active opposition.  (Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley got around the community participation requirement in the Model Cities Program by appointing a “community representative” board of political hacks that answered only to him.)

The bottom line is that people have to believe you’re serious about including them, and you have to be serious about it. If you promise community involvement and don’t follow through, or provide only token participation, whatever trust-building you’ve done will probably evaporate, and you’ll have start over again. Once again, see Tool #1 for a full discussion of the levels of community participation, what they imply, and how and when they might be used.

How-to steps for policymakers to involve the community:

• Make contact with agencies, organizations, and individuals that know the community well, and use their knowledge and credibility to ease your way in.  They can help you to avoid making the kinds of tactical errors that your lack of familiarity with the community can easily lead to.   They can also introduce you to the people whose opinions matter to those whom you want to involve, as well as to potential participants.
  

  • The same caution applies here as applies for all community organizers: make sure you’re getting all sides of the story and making contact with all the people you need to.  Community leaders, for instance, may not want, at least initially, to work with gang leaders on ending youth violence, but if the gang leaders aren’t involved, it’s unlikely that the effort will go anywhere.  Spread your network wide, and use all your contacts to make sure you’re reaching everyone, not just those that your initial contacts want you to.

• Make your goals and process clear in small meetings that lead up to a larger one.  Meet both with formal groups – clubs, fraternal organizations, sports teams, faith-based groups, participants in health and human service programs, unions and other workers’ groups, classes – and with families and groups of friends in people’s living rooms or similar informal settings.  Take a trusted community member with you, or make sure one is hosting or attending the meeting, to vouch for you.
• Hold a community meeting to explain your purpose and start recruiting community members to participate in assessment and planning. Encourage as many of the people you’ve talked to as possible to attend, and plan to ask for a commitment from people who are willing to be involved in the process.  It might make sense for a someone local to convene and run the meeting – a respected community leader or community member, or a particularly good facilitator.
  • The meeting should explain clearly the issue or problem that needs to be addressed, and the participatory process by which you intend to address it. The audience should have an opportunity to ask questions, and should be asked for their thoughts on the issue, on what kinds of outcomes they’d like to see, and on how the process might take place. This is the time to recruit members of the planning group, and to ask people to pull in others they know.  Ideally, you’ve already gotten a train of support through the smaller meetings.  With this large meeting, the goal is to get the community at large on board and agree to be involved.
• Schedule the next community meeting, and start the planning process. You should continue to hold community meetings at regular intervals to inform those who aren’t directly involved in the planning about what’s happening.  At the same time, a planning group, representing all the sectors and groups that will be affected by the policies they come up with, should begin to meet to hash out logistics (meeting times and places, a timeline), procedures (how decisions are made, how and by whom the process will be coordinated), and define their task.  Part of the groups’ job at the beginning is to determine what kind of support it needs. Will members need training? Are there things that they should know (best practices, for instance, or the results of research on the issue)?
  

  • The composition of the planning group is important. It should be truly representative of all stakeholders, and that may mean you or members of the group have to recruit or persuade others to join.  People opposed to the process should be included, even though that may seem like a bad idea.  If the group establishes proper ground rules at the beginning, it should be possible to conduct productive discussion, and for those with opposing ideas to feel that the process is fair and inclusive, even if their ideas are not adopted.

• Provide whatever training or support is necessary. Depending on the people involved, you may want to pair less-educated or low-income folks with mentors from health or human service agencies, or simply to provide training in meeting skills, strategic planning, conflict resolution, and/or other areas to everyone, to avoid singling out any individual or group. Training and support serve at least two purposes: to make sure all involved have the intellectual and social tools they need for the task at hand; and to ensure the continued involvement of all the groups affected, not just those who are educated and used to participating in meetings and social processes.
  • Depending upon the scope of the change you’re concerned with and the level of community involvement you’re aiming for, you may not need to go through all these steps.  In some cases, just keeping the community informed – through regular meetings, the media, an e-mail list – may be enough.  In others, one or two public meetings with the opportunity for community input may be all you need. If you’re hoping for full participation, however, taking the steps above makes sense.

How can communities engage effectively in social planning and policy change?

As we’ve discussed, there are several sections of the Community Tool Box that deal with how communities can initiate policy change. When the initiative comes from policymakers, the situation is somewhat different, since the issue of community participation may not be on the planner’s agenda.  So in good measure, it’s up to community leaders and activists to raise the issue and make sure the community becomes part of the process. If policymakers resist the idea, and can’t be swayed by logic or argument, then it may be time to switch to social action mode.  It’s generally far more productive, however, if policymakers and the community can work as partners, rather than as adversaries.

How-to steps for community leaders and activists to ensure community involvement

• Get to know and maintain contact with policymakers from the beginning, so that when issues of policy arise, you’ll have an open communication line.  Congresspersons, state legislators, city councilors, county commissioners, mayors aldermen, selectmen, members of municipal boards – all are concerned with what citizens think, and all are accessible at least some of the time.  If you make the effort, you can meet them and get to know them well enough so that they’ll recognize you in a crowd, return your phone calls, and be willing to discuss issues with you.  When they initiate a policy change process, you’ll be able to approach them about making it participatory, and be heard.
• Try to anticipate the community’s policy needs, and approach policymakers before they have decided to act.  As a community member, you’re apt to know more about the community than a policymaker, and to know what’s needed and when. If you initiate the conversation about policy change, you may have a much better chance of initiating a participatory planning process as well.
• Equip yourself with as much information as possible, both about the benefits of a participatory process and about the issue itself. Read the research and literature about social change policy and inclusive, participatory process. Learn what other communities have done, search the web for best practices, etc. The more knowledge you have, the more convincing you can be.
• Mobilize the community.  Preach the gospel of participatory process to your fellow citizens, so that they’ll stand with you in demanding to be involved in any policy decisions that affect them.  If it’s obvious that the community wants to be involved, it is ready to put in the necessary work, and will support the implementation of the resulting policy, it will be hard for policymakers to resist.

In Summary

Social planning can be an effective means of community organization and development, and of policy change, if it’s entered into in a spirit of partnership with the community.  If, as either a policymaker or a community builder, you can make it a truly inclusive and participatory process, chances are that it will have long-lasting, positive results for both policymakers and the community.

• What is social action?

• Why engage in social action?

• When should you engage in social action?

• Who should be involved in social action?

• How do you engage in social action?

Sometimes, the best way to inspire change is to confront decision makers in a concerted action. This is called social action, and can range from organizing a letter-writing campaign to assembling tens of thousands of people in the state or national capital to protest government actions. This section looks at organizing communities to engage in social action – why and hwo to do it, when it’s appropriate, and what it might accomplish.

What is social action?

Social action is the practice of taking action – usually as part of an organized group or community – to create positive change. Sometimes social action can lead to profound social change, as in the case of the Civil Rights Movement; sometimes social action seeks more limited and specific changes – the preservation of an open space, for example, or better pay for a specific group of workers.

Social action, by its nature, is often practiced by those who either traditionally have little power in society – the poor, minorities, or people with disabilities, for example – but it may also be used by any group that feels its concerns are being ignored. By working together, members of these groups can exercise power collectively because of their numbers, using the media, their votes, boycotts, and other types of social, political, and economic pressure to convince those in power to rethink their positions.

A few of the numerous reasons that a group might engage in social action:

• To include in policy considerations, the interests of those who have traditionally been ignored in these discussions, most often low-income and minority communities.
• To institute fairer policies and eliminate discrimination.
• To right past wrongs, as in providing apologies and restitution to Japanese-Americans who were unfairly – and unconstitutionally – interned in concentration camps in the American West during World War II.
• To prevent harm to the community. This might mean challenging the siting of an industrial facility because of pollution concerns, for instance.
• To gain particular benefits to the community, or a part of the community, sometimes on quite a small scale.
• To preserve something of historical or social value.
• To include in policy deliberations those who have been previously shut out, as in, for example, involving minority citizens on a police review board.

These are only a small number of the nearly endless possible reasons for engaging in social action. Just as there are many reasons you might take action, there are many different kinds of action you might take, ranging from explaining your situation to policy makers to confronting force with civil disobedience. Some examples:

• Organizing a group to write letters, make phone calls, or send e-mails to policy makers, particularly legislators, in order to make both your position and the extent of your constituency known.
• Persuading the media to cover events or to publish stories that highlight particular issues or embarrass politicians and others in power who refuse to do what’s right. You might also plan events particularly to attract the media.
• Putting together or backing a slate of candidates for public office. This may entail anything from stuffing envelopes to going door to door discussing the issues to driving voters to the polls.
• Attending, as a group (or packing or disrupting, depending on your philosophy and the circumstances), a public meeting at which an issue of interest to your community is being discussed.
• Performing street theater. Street theater, as its name implies, is theater performed in public that is meant to ridicule the opposition and/or to convey a profound message in a way that is easily understood and  entertaining. It goes back at least to ancient Greece, continued through the Middle Ages in morality plays and puppet shows, and has been used in modern times, particularly since the mid-Twentieth Century, for political protest.

The Bread and Puppet Theater, now based in Vermont, was known particularly during the Vietnam War for its political street productions featuring huge puppets and its custom of sharing bread with the audience.

• Organizing demonstrations, rallies and marches. The “classic” social actions, these often involve signs, speeches, entertainment, and/or elements of street theater.
• Picketing or organizing a strike. These are, of course, time-honored labor tactics, usually applied to a particular plant or corporation or industry. There is also the possibility of a general strike – a situation where everyone in a group, a community, or even a whole country, refuses to work for a day, a few days, or indefinitely until those in power accede to demands.
• Organizing a boycott. Named after Charles Boycott, a British land agent in Ireland who was ostracized (i.e., no Irish would deal or communicate with him) for his policies, a boycott consists of refusing to deal or trade with a company (or a city, state, or country) that the boycotters believe is doing something morally wrong.
• Organizing a sit-in. Often an act of civil disobedience, this involves a group occupying a space – perhaps the office of an official who made or represents a policy the group is protesting, perhaps a courtyard or a particular building or a park – in order to make a moral point, to assert their right to use the space, or to force the owners of the space (or public officials) to negotiate or meet their demands. The act becomes civil disobedience if the group is trespassing on the space they occupy.

Civil disobedience is a particular kind of action in which the group engaged intentionally breaks the law as an act of conscience. They might do so because they are protesting the law itself, or because they want to make the strongest statement possible about an issue. Civil disobedience is only effective as a strategy if those who practice it are willing to accept the consequences of their actions, and face arrest, trial, and possible punishment. Otherwise, they are simply lawbreakers, and their protest loses its moral force.

Social action is probably what most people think of when they hear the term “community organizing.” It is the type of organizing that Saul Alinsky, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, and other well-known 20th Century organizers primarily engaged in. It is meant to empower people who have been shut out of the political or social system, and help them gain control of their lives and destinies. For this reason, the “Iron Rule” of community organizing is never to do for people what they can do for themselves.

The father of modern community organizing was Saul Alinsky,who, in the late 1930’s, drew together a neighborhood of mutually hostile Eastern European slaughterhouse workers in Chicago into the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council. Alinsky used existing organizations – unions, churches, and fraternal organizations – to create a political power base for workers who had been abused and exploited. The results were better working conditions and pay, neighborhood improvement, self-respect, and an organization that still exists.

Citizens for New York City, a resource for NYC neighborhoods has several tip sheets on various aspects of neighborhood organizing.

Alinsky’s type of organizing is based on building political power and using it to confront authority – generally through employing social action – and, if necessary, force those in power to negotiate. This kind of organizing is still widely used and still effective, especially in situations where power has long been in the same hands. The larger organization that Alinsky founded to carry his work around the country, the Industrial Areas Foundation, explains its strategy on its website:

“The IAF is non-ideological and strictly non-partisan, but proudly, publicly, and persistently political. The IAF builds a political base within society’s rich and complex third sector – the sector of voluntary institutions that includes religious congregations, labor locals, homeowner groups, recovery groups, parents associations, settlement houses, immigrant societies, schools, seminaries, orders of men and women religious, and others. And then the leaders use that base to compete at times, to confront at times, and to cooperate at times with leaders in the public and private sectors.”

This is probably as good an explanation as any of what social action is meant to do.

Why engage in social action?

Social action can sometimes be confrontational and combative. It can even be dangerous at times, as evidenced in the many bloody beatings at the hands of mobs and police experienced by Civil Rights marchers and organizers in the 1960’s, and in the violence deployed against striking farm workers in California in the 1960’s and ‘70’s. If you choose to practice civil disobedience, you could possibly get arrested, and have to pay a fine, or go to jail. Even in the mildest of circumstances –sending letters to the Editor, for instance – you might make your neighbors angry, or be seen as an extremist. So why would you choose to use these methods?

There are several reasons why social action is often the appropriate choice:

• It can empower and energize populations that have traditionally been powerless, or haven’t understood their potential for exercising power. The experience of participating in an action – especially if it’s successful – can be uplifting for people who’ve never thought they could influence the course of events. It can change the way they look at themselves, and give them a different perspective on what’s possible. And it can prepare and sustain them for along struggle to achieve far-reaching goals.

This can be true even for people who may not have been part of the original action.  Witnessing what people like themselves can accomplish may inspire others either to join the current effort, or to join – or even start – similar efforts in the future.

• It can unify communities. Collective action brings people together in the way that many collaborative activities do. It creates a spirit of shared effort and shared passion, and binds individuals into a community of shared purpose.
• It can demonstrate to the larger community that the organized group is a force to be reckoned with. People have to respect and deal with its needs and interests, even if they don’t agree with them.
• It may be the only thing that will move a stubborn opponent. The targets of social action may have been in power for a long time, or may believe that things were simply meant to be the way they are. It may take a long campaign of action to convince them that they have to address your concerns.

Arkansas Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) worked for years in Little Rock and across Arkansas to organize previously hostile groups – low- and moderate-income blacks and whites, who didn’t at first realize that their interests were similar – and to gain and consolidate enough power to achieve increasingly significant victories. The power structure was not only uninterested in the needs of the poor, but much of the state was, in the 1970’s, still the unreconstructed South, with its segregationist attitudes intact. ACORN used the law, reinforced by social action, to make its points and work for economic justice. No amount of polite talking would have convinced the Little Rock power structure of the time that they should change their attitudes.

• It may be seen as morally necessary. Social action can be hard and unpopular. People generally engage in it because they believe their cause is right, and may see it as their moral duty to do something about it.

When the writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau was jailed for refusing to pay a tax to support the Mexican War, his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson, the philosopher, asked him “Why are you in there?” Thoreau replied with his own question: “Why are you not in here?” He clearly saw his action as a moral issue.

• It can motivate people to take other kinds of positive action. Once people realize that they can influence what happens in their world, they become willing to take on other kinds of tasks – starting cooperatives, rehabilitating derelict housing, cleaning up neighborhoods. They begin to understand that they have the resources to solve many of their own problems, and they develop the motivation and skills to use those resources.
• It can be the beginning of a process that ends in a more unified larger community. Once a group has established its strength and made clear that it can’t be pushed, there is a possibility of accommodation and eventual collaboration with those who were once its opponents.
• It can lead to long-term positive social change. Social action, like other forms of community organizing, generally has long-term as well as short-term goals. While the purpose of a particular action might be narrowly defined, the long-term goals of most organizing are greater equity and social and economic justice. A well-managed social action campaign that maintains its momentum over the long haul can result in a truly democratic society, where everyone’s voice counts. Once again, the prime example in our time was the Civil Rights movement, which, through action that demonstrated its moral force, moved the whole country to demand an end to segregation and racism.

In another example from ACORN, the association’s initial actions were aimed at obtaining the furniture and clothing for welfare recipients that they were entitled to under Arkansas law. As ACORN grew stronger and added more groups to its membership, it advocated for the rights of working-class homeowners, and stopped the construction of a power plant that would have devastated farming in its area. At this point, it has expanded to 75 cities in the U.S.and other countries, and works for affordable housing, fair lending,living-wage jobs, and better schools, among other causes. From modest beginnings, the effort has grown to encompass all aspects of economic and social justice.

Just as there are many reasons to engage in social action, there may be many reasons not to. In general, it makes sense to use the least aggressive method possible to achieve your goals. If you can get most of what you’re after by collaboration and compromise, you can retain a positive relationship with the opposition, and they’ll be more likely to be willing to negotiate the next time. Therefore, social action should only be used when it’s necessary. Some times when social action would be unwise:

• When you can get what you want by lower-key means – negotiation, acceptable trade-offs, persuasion, compromise, etc.
• When you don’t have the strength to mount a convincing social action. If you don’t have a large enough group to exert any power, for instance, you still have organizing work to do before you’re ready to take action.
• When you’re operating on rumor rather than fact. Make sure you know that you’re taking action about something real, rather than gossip or fourth-hand reports. You can discredit your whole effort by failing to check your facts.
• When an action, even if successful, could have disastrous social or political consequences. In some instances, you could gain your immediate demand at the cost of creating a backlash that drives your cause back beyond where you started. Social action may still be warranted here – the Civil Rights Movement certainly could be described in these terms, especially at the beginning – but you should be aware of its consequences, both to your cause and to the individuals and groups involved.

When should you engage in social action?

• When negotiation and reason don’t produce satisfactory results. Sometimes, being reasonable just doesn’t work. For whatever reason – fear, anger, the impulse to protect privileges, prejudice, political philosophy – your opponent won’t listen or respond to your concerns, or won’t go far enough to truly address the issue.
• When time is short. The chainsaws are already running to devastate that patch of old-growth forest; the wrecking ball is swinging toward the wall of that historic building; legislators are about to cut food stamps to pay for disaster relief. In these cases and many like them, action may be the only quick way to draw attention to the short-sightedness or injustice of what’s about to happen.

The implication here is that time may be short because what’s about to happen can’t be reversed once it’s done. You might be able to change a law, or to challenge it in court; but you can’t bring back an old-growth forest or a historic building.

• When the time is right. The issue may be gaining recognition in the media or public opinion, or public opinion may be changing in your favor. You may have a window of opportunity here. An action at the right time can solidify support, and really put your effort over the top.
• When you have the resources to make action possible. Just having the resources– enough people, money, media contacts, etc. – is hardly an excuse for engaging in action, but it’s a necessary foundation for doing so.
• When you want to make a dramatic statement that will focus public attention. Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white man, but that wasn’t what eventually integrated public transportation in Montgomery, Alabama. It was the year-long bus boycott carried out by black citizens of the city that led to an end to segregated buses. The boycott caught the attention of the nation, and affected business in Birmingham. Ultimately, the case was decided in federal court and black citizens won: public transportation in Montgomery was integrated, and the boycott ended.
• When you want to energize and empower the community, and develop community leadership. Social action gets people moving. It makes them feel strong, and makes them less likely to submit meekly to the rules and demands of those in power. It gives people responsibility for their own lives and actions, and brings out their leadership potential.
• When you want to catch the attention of the public – and the media – and galvanize public opinion in your favor about an issue or about your organization or community. In the barrage of news reports and disasters that assaults the public consciousness every day, it’s easy for your message, or even your existence, to get lost. Social action can make people aware of your cause and your community.

Until the grape boycott organized by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm workers Union (UFW) in 1967, few people were aware of the plight of migrant workers. Chavez’s action not only made headlines, but also recruited millions of Americans to the UFW’s cause, and forced the grape growers and the state of California to recognize the union and negotiate better pay and working conditions for farm workers.

Who should engage in social action?

Social action is most effective when those who engage in it are those whose interests are at stake. This is a case where the Iron Rule definitely applies. Not only should those who engage in action stand to be affected by it, but they should be the ones who decide that action is necessary. They should understand what the possible consequences of the action are – from compromising their cause to political backlash to physical danger – and should make the decision as to whether the risks are worth the potential benefits.

There are really two constituencies to organize here. Alinsky approached already-existing organizations in the community – unions, fraternal and service organizations, churches – and enlisted their members through them. But in the efforts of Cesar Chavez and others to organize farm workers and gain concessions from growers, organizing usually had to concentrate on individuals.

Migrant workers had no organizations to draw on until the union brought them together. Because they had no permanent homes and because workers often split and went indifferent directions, depending on where the work was, they had little opportunity to form long-lasting groups. The growers quickly fired anyone who engaged in anything that looked like union organizing; churches couldn’t travel from Arizona to Oregon to California with the workers. As a result, organizers had to approach workers as individuals and small groups in order to form an organization that could plan and coordinate the actions that eventually improved conditions.

The answer to who should be involved in social action, then, is both organizations and institutions that include and represent the community in question, and individuals who can form groups where there are none.

How do you engage in social action?

Social action is different from locality development…but not entirely. Both start with the most important parts of community organizing – getting to know the community and its individual members, making personal contacts, and establishing trust both with and among community members. The steps to getting the community involved are discussed in detail in Section 2 of this chapter, Locality Development. We’ll review them briefly here, and add some details that are specific to organizing for social action.

Once the community is involved and a structure for action has been created – and it’s been determined from that process that social action is what’s needed in this situation – planning is the next step. Plans then have to be turned into action, and your strategy carried out. Finally, you have to follow up, evaluate what you’ve done, and decide what your next step will be.

Preparing for social action

• Get to know the community. Learn community history, passions, relationships, and culture. Get acquainted with as many individuals as possible – have conversations not just about politics or social issues, but about families, sports, relationships, and your own histories. In other words, make friends as you would in any other circumstances.
• Identify the issues that are likely to lead the community to social action. The assumption behind organizing is that this is a community that has traditionally felt powerless. What is important enough to move people to act?The answer to this question, if it is to lead to anything,must come from the community itself. In meetings with individuals and groups, especially those in which community members discuss issues with one another, the major community concerns should surface. It is sometimes an organizer’s job to frame these concerns in terms that resonate with community members. Just as often, however, they’re already clear to nearly everyone, and the organizer’s task is to help people understand that they can take action.
• Identify and contact key individuals and groups. Starting with trusted and respected individuals and groups gives you automatic access to much of the community. If the priest or another key individual vouches for you, or if you’re working with a well-known and well-respected community-based organization or institution, you have credibility. In addition, these individuals and groups can help you avoid making damaging mistakes by informing you about relationships within the community, past failures and successes relating to organizing and the issues at hand, and other factors that might affect your effort.As we discussed earlier in this section, whether you concentrate on individuals or groups may depend on the situation of the community you’re approaching. Where groups exist – churches, unions, community-based health and human service organizations, fraternal and service organizations, etc. – most organizers would try to use them as a base, since they already have members and structure. Where there are no or few functioning groups, key individuals are much more important, both in gaining access to others in the community, and in bringing people together.Even where there are many groups in the community, your first contacts will usually be with individuals. How those individuals – clergy persons, organization directors, business owners – view you may well determine whether their organizations will join the effort. Thus, establishing relationships with key individuals is often the first step toward successful community organizing.
• Recruit community members to the effort. This is the heart of any community organizing campaign. It involves personal contact, in the form of door-to-door canvassing, meetings in people’s houses, public meetings, conversations in bars and laundromats, etc. There is no substitute for face-to-face communication, for honesty about your purposes and goals, for personal openness and lack of pretension, and for treating people with respect. It’s difficult to build trust from a distance.

You also can’t build trust based on false premises. Be whoever you are – don’t try to pretend you’ve grown up working class, for instance, if you haven’t. What many would-be organizers often don’t understand is that you don’t have to pretend. Be comfortable with yourself and others will be comfortable with you, regardless of who you are, as long as it’s clear that you respect them for who they are. Be willing to learn, and others will be willing to teach. Never talk down to anyone, but don’t hesitate to use what you know in the service of your effort and the people you’re working with.

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the courtier Polonius is often mocked for his pomposity by both characters in the play and audiences. If you pay careful attention, however, you realize he is both honorable and wise. In his advice to his son, he speaks lines that are remarkably relevant to anyone who wants to engage in community organizing: “This above all: to thine own self be true,/ And it must follow, as the night the day,/ Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

Recruiting community members may take some time. Gaining the trust of a community, especially of a community that has been abused or ignored or treated with contempt by outsiders, is not an overnight task. Organizing often proceeds one individual or household at a time. You make a friend, who then introduces you to his friends, who then…

This may take a while, but it will eventually snowball, if you’re doing your job well, and if the people you recruit truly feel that the effort belongs to them. For this reason, it’s extremely important not to approach a community with a plan for what the community should do, but to wait for direction to come from the people themselves.

Saul Alinsky, in organizing the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC) in Chicago in 1939, partnered with Joe Meegan, the respected manager of a local park. As individuals and organizations were recruited, it was clear that the people would make the decisions about what direction the organization would take and what it would do. The motto of the BYNC was (and still is), “We the people will work out our own destiny.”

• Build a communication system. As you recruit individuals and groups and start to plan and carry out a social action strategy, it becomes crucial that people be able to contact one another, and that news can be spread quickly and efficiently to everyone. Having a way to make that happen – whether by phone, e-mail, or personal contact – will make your work possible.
• Encourage leadership from the community from the beginning. Some of the key individuals you contact may not be identified as “community leaders,” but maybe trusted individuals whom people listen to. They are already leaders, with or without the title. In addition, many others have the potential for leadership, or exercise leadership in certain situations or with certain groups. The sooner you can identify and start to mentor and encourage these real or potential leaders, the sooner the community will begin to “work out its own destiny.”
• Create a structure to help the community accomplish its goals. Once the number of individuals and groups committed to the effort reaches a critical mass, it’s time to pull them together into an organization or other structure that will make it possible for them to hash out differences and plan and implement a unified social action strategy.The other great advantage of an organization or other structure is that it provides coordination and a focal point for whatever the community does. If there are negotiations with those in power, for instance, the organization can represent the whole community, rather than each of several groups negotiating separately. This allows the community to speak with one voice, and gives it a great deal more clout than if it were divided into a number of interest groups.

Planning for social action

Sometimes, social action arises from circumstance. The Czech opposition had for decades been hoping and planning for the spontaneous demonstrations of the “Velvet Revolution” of 1989 that led to the downfall of the Communist government. Leaders were available, and there were plans for a transition to non-Communist government,but there had been no planning for the huge demonstrations. They were a public reaction to the brutal repression of a student demonstration and to the demise of the Communist stranglehold in much of the Eastern Bloc.

On the other hand, when Wade Rathke arrived in Little Rock to start what became ACORN, he had no illusions about a spontaneous movement arising. He spent time recruiting organizations and individuals, identifying the important issues, forging alliances among groups that had previously been mutually hostile – particularly across racial lines – and planning with the community the ways in which they would approach the goals they had identified as most important and most reachable.

Whether it takes place over a long or a short period, planning is an important part of a social action campaign. Once you’ve laid the groundwork, and the community has organized, it’s time to strategize.

• Develop a strategic plan for social action. A social action campaign is just that. It’s likely that the community’s ultimate goals are long-term, and focus on permanent changes that will lead to social and economic justice. Goals that significant can’t be achieved quickly, or with only limited action. You’ll need a long-term strategy, as well as a strategy and action plan for reaching each of the interim goals that lead to the final outcome.We recommend the VMOSA process – develop a shared Vision; establish the Mission of your organization or initiative, based on the community vision; choose Objectives that reflect your vision and mission; formulate a Strategy for reaching those objectives; and devise Actions that will implement your strategy. Each element of this process should be carried out with the participation of – and, ideally, under the leadership of – the community, so that all of the plan is theirs. Organizers can play an important role as consultants and facilitators here, using their experience and expertise to help community members envision both short- and long-term goals, as well as what kinds of strategies and actions they might employ to reach those goals.

Some community organizers and community-building organizations limit their work to training organizers from within the community. The Highlander Center trained many of the leaders of the Civil Rights Movement, and continues to bring together and train activists from all over the country. The Direct Action and Research Training Center (DART), based in Miami, and the Chicago-based National Training and Information Center (NTIC) both provide training and technical assistance to community leaders and others interested in organizing within their own communities. Many other organizations, including the Industrial Areas Foundation, PICO National Network (formerly the Pacific Institute for Community Organizations), Chicago-based Midwest Academy, and ACORN provide community organization training in addition to their community-building work.

• Decide what kinds of actions will work best in your community, and what kinds of actions the community is and is not willing to take part in. There is a broad range of possible actions that a community can take. At one end are those actions that simply announce that the community exists as a unified force – letter-writing, calls or visits to officials relating to a legislative issue, etc. These actions require coordination and timing, but don’t ask anyone to subject themselves to any risk or public exposure. At the other end are acts of civil disobedience that may subject people to arrest and/or place them in physical danger.​As a community, it’s important to know what you’re willing to do at any given time. This will depend on:
  • What is likely to be effective. Acts of violence against property are highly symbolic, but seldom convince the opposition of anything, and often split your own group, so that their effectiveness in most communities is questionable.
  • What community members see as ethical or moral.The whole concept of nonviolent resistance, used by Gandhi and emulated by Martin Luther King and his colleagues in the American Civil Rights Movement, is based on the premise that violence against others is simply wrong, and would rob their movement of any moral force if they used it.
  • What they will accept and are ready for. This is related to the bullets both above and below, but has more to do with the social and cultural norms of the community. Some groups may have strong taboos against confrontation or against individuals standing out from the group, for example, and social action strategies may have to work around or counter these. People have to be psychologically ready to do whatever is planned.
  • What kinds of risks they are willing to take. This may change as time goes on (see directly below), but communities may differ in what they’re willing to risk. Some will be willing to expose themselves personally and politically; others, at least at first, may not. It is sometimes important to push people beyond their comfort zones…but not too far. You may be dealing with a community that has suffered the consequences of public protest before, and those consequences may have been severe. Even if circumstances are different now, the community has to start at a level of risk that seems reasonable to it.
  • What has already been tried. A community unwilling to engage in civil disobedience at the beginning of a campaign may feel differently after its milder efforts have been ignored. A community that’s staged a successful social action effort and reached its immediate goal may be willing to up the ante the next time. Circumstances and people change, which is why it’s important to revisit this question from time to time.
• Prepare contingency plans based on the level to which you’re willing to escalate. Sometimes a social action effort works on the first try. Sometimes it takes several tries, a change in procedure, an increase in intensity, or some other factor to bring success. Sometimes the effort doesn’t work well, or at all: that’s when you need to have a Plan B.Your contingency plans can encompass almost anything. One possibility, for instance, is to simply let that particular issue drop and switch your efforts to something more winnable, in order to build strength and morale. Another is to change tactics – going at the issue from another angle, or aiming your action at a different target. Still another is to threaten the next level of action – either subtly or directly – and offer to negotiate before you “are forced” to carry it out. A fourth is to ratchet up your level of action without warning, with the purpose of attracting the notice of the media, putting your opponents in a more difficult position, and/or demonstrating the extent of your strength and support.

Escalation is not the most desirable outcome here. If you can accomplish your goals by switching tactics or some other strategy, that’s by far the better outcome. You should have contingency plans that cover a lot of different possibilities, so you’ll not be surprised, and so you’ll have some choices as to how to react when things don’t go as you’d hoped. Those contingency plans should encompass escalation as well, however. You may not need it, but if you do, you should know exactly what it will look like.

The community should be clear about what level of action it’s willing to take. Will you go all the way to civil disobedience? Are there other, equally drastic measures that you’re willing to risk? What are the probable and possible consequences of your plans, both for the individuals and groups involved, and for your effort? Do you have the resources and the will to carry a difficult process – a lawsuit, for example – to the end?

Whatever your answers to these questions, it’s necessary to plan for as many possibilities as you can. Never assume that just because you’re engaged in an action, it will accomplish your goals. You have to know what your next step is if it doesn’t.

Carrying out a social action strategy

Social action doesn’t always mean gathering the troops and marching on City Hall with fire in your eyes. It certainly can, and there are many times when that’s appropriate. But it can also mean testifying at a legislative hearing, going door to door to talk to voters about an upcoming election, filing a lawsuit, meeting with a representative of a regulatory body to demand proper enforcement of already-existing rules, or paying a visit to your Congressman with a group of fellow citizens.

The key difference between social action and simple democratic participation is the display of power that comes from the presence or the support of a large group of like-minded people. Calling the White House as an individual to protest the American invasion of Iraqis democratic participation. Calling for the same purpose as part of a coordinated effort to bombard the Administration with hundreds of thousands of phone calls is social action.

Examples of social action abound. Read practically any newspaper for a week, and you’ll probably see at least one. At the current writing, for example (Fall, 2005), just one organization, ACORN, has recently:

• Mobilized voters – through door to door canvassing, voter registration, and participation at rallies, along with many elected officials – to defeat a number of California ballot initiatives.
• Flooded the board meeting in Cleveland of the National Paint and Coatings Association with 400 ACORN members to demand – successfully – that the industry organization discuss with them the paint industry’s responsibility for lead paint poisoning and its obligation to victims.
• Co-sponsored a rally in New York City attended by over 1,000 home childcare workers to highlight low wages and lack of support. (ACORN helped unionize home child care workers in New York state last year.)
• Held numerous actions of various kinds around the country to try to convince Congress to change a budget bill that would cut programs for the poor in order to help pay for disaster relief.
• Taken part in actions and court deliberations that led to the postponement of a permit renewal for a smelter in El Paso, Texas, that emits heavy metals into the air.

Eventually – usually sooner rather than later – you must go from planning to execution. Even in the simplest and least risky of actions, however – sending letters to legislators, for instance – people often need training or other kinds of help. The more complicated and potentially risky the action, the more support those engaged in it are likely to need.

Most of the steps below refer to carrying out an individual action. Remember, however, that carrying out a social action strategy is not the same as engaging in an individual action: it is often a long-term commitment to action of various kinds, usually with the goal of changing the distribution of power toward greater equity.

• Choose the time, place, target(s), and nature of your action based on its purpose, and on how it fits into your overall strategy. If you want to convince legislators to listen to you, or to act in a certain way, it makes no sense to demonstrate at the State House when they’re not in session, or at a place where they’re not likely to be aware of what you’re doing. If you want a bill passed, your action should aim at legislators; if you want a corporation to change its policies, your action should target the offices, or the officers, of that corporation. Think carefully about what you want to accomplish, and who actually has the power to make it happen.By the same token, consider what kind of action will be most effective for the purpose at hand, and for your long-term strategy. In general, it makes sense to use the lowest-key action possible, saving the more drastic – demonstrations, marches, chaining yourself to the CEO’s front gate – for when you really need them. If you can accomplish your goal in a way that doesn’t involve confrontation and accusations, that both makes your opponents more willing to deal with you in the future, and leaves you with many more options if they won’t. If you start by firing your biggest guns, you’ll have nothing left in your arsenal if the first blast doesn’t accomplish its purpose. Furthermore, if your opponents and the general public get used to hearing those big guns, they’ll stop paying attention to them.
• Provide the training and other support necessary to carry out a successful action before you engage in it. There are a number of different kinds of support that you may be able to provide:
  • Training. If people are writing letters or making phone calls, especially if they’re doing it for the first time, they may need a sample letter or script to use as a model. Participants should be briefed as fully as possible on the nature and extent of the action, on what their roles are, on exactly where they’re expected to be and when, etc. If people are testifying before a legislative committee or a court, they should have a chance to practice what they’re going to say, and to be briefed on what to expect, who will be there, how much time they have, etc. If there’s to be civil disobedience practiced, it’s extremely important that participants receive training in non-violent protest, in how to behave and what to expect if they’re arrested. They should understand their range of choices – to engage in civil disobedience, to support those who are engaged in civil disobedience, merely to be present, etc. The more participants know about the action beforehand, the more effective it’s likely to be.
  • Logistics. If you’re planning a march or a picket line, participants will need signs. People may need rides to a public meeting, or to polling places. For some actions, costumes or clothing imprinted with appropriate slogans may have to be supplied. Participants may need maps or other information. For a media session or rally, you may need photos or pictures, sound equipment, newsprint, computers, a movie screen – the list of possibilities is nearly endless. Anticipating and supplying what organizers and participants need is an important part of organizing an action.

Don’t forget basic necessities. If a group is meeting with officials at City Hall or the State House, what will they do for lunch? Particularly if it’s a warm day, you may have to provide drinking water. Restroom facilities – portable or otherwise – might be needed. An adequate number of trash cans available during a rally will make clean-up after it much easier. The more of these kinds of things you can anticipate, the smoother your action will go.

• Coordination and support. People function better if they know someone’s in charge. Having people designated to provide directions, instructions, information, etc. at an action will both make everything go more smoothly and give participants the sense of security that comes from good organization.

This kind of coordination and support are especially important if there’s a threat of violence, real or imagined. Because violence can discredit not only your action, but your whole organization and its cause, it’s important that there be crowd control (as informal and low-key as possible), and that any move toward violence can be stopped before it gains momentum.

• Plan the action in detail, then follow your plan. Just as with the overall strategy, the planning of an action should be participatory, involving people affected by the issue, representatives of member and/or affiliated organizations, etc. The more stake participants have in a social action strategy – which includes the planning of individual actions – the more likely it is to continue over the long term and to be successful.The planning of an event should cover every possibility you and everyone else involved can think of. It’s much easier to stave off trouble before it happens than to deal with it when it does – and it will, if you don’t plan properly.

So what happens when you’ve planned carefully, and the absolutely unexpected happens: the legislative hearing you’d lined up testimony for is canceled; your main speaker is injured in a traffic accident on the way to the rally; the leader of your opposition has a heart attack on the morning of the day you’d planned to confront him?

One answer is, of course, that you should have foreseen the possibility of all of these events, and planned accordingly… and perhaps you did. But it’s simply not realistic to assume that anyone, no matter how clever, can think of everything that could happen. The best you can do is to make general contingency plans for when things go wrong, and to have a backup for everything. A speaker who’s ready to go on if she’s needed, an alternate route, an indoor space in case of bad weather – these and other contingency plans can save your bacon when the unexpected happens. Just as with the data on your computer, back up everything. You won’t be sorry.

• Organize for action. This means activating your communication network, going door to door, calling meetings, and doing whatever else it takes to get the right people to the right place at the right time. Whether you want 20 people to write letters to the Editor, or 2,000 people in front of City Hall at 2:00 on Monday, they need to be contacted and coordinated. Here’s why you have an organization and connections with community organizations and institutions and key individuals.
• Carry out the action. All the planning and philosophizing in the world won’t get you anything unless you translate them to action. Now’s the opportunity – do it!
• Follow up and evaluate. You’re not done when the action itself ends. You still have a number of things to do:

Take care of the logistics: Make sure people who need them have rides home, deliver that petition to the appropriate office, tally up the number of phone calls made, etc.

If you’ve staged a large rally or demonstration, someone has to pick up after the crowd, so that your message isn’t lost in complaining over the mess that your action left. There has to be an orderly and reasonable way for a crowd to disperse and get home when the action is over.

If you have follow-up activities planned (a State House rally can turn into visits to legislators, for instance), see to it that they take place, and that everyone knows what they’re supposed to do and where they’re supposed to go. At the end of that activity, you still have to get people home in an organized fashion, pickup the trash, etc.

If you’re very clear about avoiding violence or vandalism – and in most cases you should be – the marshals or coordinators have to stay on the job until everyone involved in the action has left the scene and is actually on the way home, rather than wandering around in small or not-so-small groups. Especially if there are opponents of your issue or point of view in the area, you’ll want to do everything you can to make sure that any encounters stay reasonably civil, and that high spirits don’t turn into rash behavior.

When everything’s actually all over – the next day or the  next week – the planners should meet to evaluate how things went. Did everything go according to plan? Did the people with responsibilities do a good job? Who was especially competent (or incompetent)? What was most effective? Least effective? What was media coverage like? How would you stage such an action in the future? Overall, did this type of action seem to work toward the purpose you set for it? If not, what might have worked better? Use your evaluation to adjust your next action – or your overall strategy, if necessary – to make it more effective.

As you know if you’ve used the Community Tool Box before, we consider evaluation to be an integral and extremely important part of any health or community development activity. If you evaluate honestly, you’ll have tremendously valuable information about what you’re doing, information that will allow you to change and improve your work. Don’t ignore the opportunity, but use it consistently to hugely increase your chances of mounting a successful campaign.

• Finally, plan your next move based on how what you just did fits into your overall strategy. You’re in this for the long haul; everything you do should fit into your long-term plan, and move you forward. Social action strategies are seldom complete in themselves. They help establish gains that ultimately add up to significant change over time, but there’s always more to accomplish. The Civil Rights Movement drastically changed the lives of black people in the U.S. for the better, but there’s still a long way to go after more than 50 years. Community organizing and social action (if necessary) can’t stop until a community – or a society – is truly just and equitable. >That means that successful organizers simply keep at it – forever.

In Summary

Community organizing, as practiced by Saul Alinsky, Martin Luther King, Jr., Cesar Chavez, and their colleagues and inheritors, leads to the assumption of the power that the unity of a large number of previously powerless people brings. This is social action, and it can take forms ranging from letters to the Editor to serious civil disobedience.

Social action often means refusing to follow the rules laid down by those in power, and exercising instead the right to protest and contest unfair or ill-conceived policies and decisions. It is meant to empower communities that have been abused, neglected, or treated unfairly by authority or the society as a whole, and to give them a voice and some authority of their own. By drawing attention to inequity and injustice, and by using unified action to confront – or cooperate with – policy makers and the society as a whole, a social action strategy can bring about significant social change.

What is advocacy?

Before direct action comes planning, and before planning comes an understanding of what needs to be put in the plan. So first, here’s a reminder of what advocacy is (as well as what it’s not).

• Advocacy is active promotion of a cause or principle
• Advocacy involves actions that lead to a selected goal
• Advocacy is one of many possible strategies, or ways to approach a problem
• Advocacy can be used as part of a community initiative, nested in with other components.
• Advocacy is not direct service
• Advocacy does not necessarily involve confrontation or conflict

Some examples may help clarify just what advocacy is:

• You join a group that helps build houses for the poor–that’s wonderful, but it’s not advocacy (it’s a service)
• You organize and agitate to get a proportion of apartments in a new development designated as low to moderate income housing – that’s advocacy
• You spend your Saturdays helping sort out goods at the recycling center – that’s not advocacy (it’s a service)
• You hear that land used for the recycling center is going to be closed down and you band together with many others to get the city to preserve this site, or find you a new one. Some of you even think about blocking the bulldozers, if necessary – that’s advocacy

Advocacy usually involves getting government, business, schools, or some other large institution (also known as Goliath) to correct an unfair or harmful situation affecting people in the community (also known as David, and friends). The situation may be resolved through persuasion, by forcing Goliath to buckle under pressure, by compromise, or through political or legal action.

Several ingredients make for effective advocacy, including:

• The rightness of the cause
• The power of the advocates (i.e., more of them is much better than less)
• The thoroughness with which the advocates researched the issues, the opposition, and the climate of opinion about the issue in the community
• Their skill in using the advocacy tools available (including the media)
• Above all, the selection of effective strategies and tactics

For some people, advocacy is a new role. It may be uncomfortable–particularly if confrontation and conflict are involved. But, for others, advocacy is more attractive than setting up and running service programs in the community.

Advocacy can be glamorous: the David vs. Goliath image, manning the barricades, making waves. But the decision to put major resources into advocacy is not one to be taken lightly. If it doesn’t work–if you stick your necks way out and don’t succeed–not only will you fail, but you may do so in public, discrediting your cause, perhaps making conditions worse for the people you set out to help.

Does advocacy always involve confrontation?

Advocacy can be confrontational, but conflict is usually a bad place to start. Good advocates know they must think very hard about any confrontation that’s going to be necessary. That’s one reason for careful planning of strategy and tactics. Even if the issue seems as clear as a bell, and your choice of actions seems just as obvious, it’s a good idea to take another long, hard look.

Why and when would you choose advocacy?

Advocacy is best kept for when “routine” work such as gathering support for a cause, raising money, and recruiting members of a community initiative or program won’t get you where you want to go.

In most cases, it’s a good idea to think twice before launching yourselves (or your group) as advocates, because it’s a strategy that’s more effective if there isn’t too much of it around. Imagine a city where there were public demonstrations every day, where City Hall was besieged constantly by groups with special petitions, resolutions, and assorted agitations. The community would quickly develop advocacy fatigue. So would the advocates.

The best time to start planning for an advocacy campaign is:

• When your direct experience or preliminary research shows you cannot achieve your goals in any other way
• When you are sure you have (or will have) the capacity to carry it through
• When you have enough enthusiasm and energy to last for what could be a long haul!

This chapter will help you get launched. And this particular section will give you a taste of what’s coming up in the seven remaining sections of the chapter, where you will gain a deeper understanding of the issue, identify allies and opponents, plan out your strategy and tactics, and evaluate your efforts.

What are the basic components of advocacy?

Each of these components is addressed in greater depth in the following sections of this chapter, but this is a broad overview of how to advocate for your issue.

Survival Skills for Advocates

Once you go public with an advocacy campaign, you may draw the attention of a number of people, not all of whom will wish you well. If things go wrong, you could end up looking very silly in the local news, which would not be good for your future campaigns. Even worse, in some circumstances a wrong step could land you in court. At the very least, there’s a risk of spinning your wheels if you don’t go about the many tasks of advocacy efficiently.

For example, to look at a worst-case scenario, think of what could go wrong with a campaign to promote better health for the poor:

• You accuse the local hospital of turning away a sick patient, without checking your facts. The hospital proves that it treated the man, but he discharged himself early.
• You push your allies out of shape by launching a press release that uses their name, without checking the wording with them first.
• You announce a big demonstration outside the hospital, and only three people show up.

It’s amateur night!

In the next section of this chapter, we’ve gathered 20 tips that will help members of your group avoid disasters. They’ll be able to take on their tasks efficiently, confidently, and with a low risk of tripping over their shoelaces.

Understanding the Issue

You probably already have a pretty good idea of what the issue or problem is.

For example:

• You are aware of a growing problem of homelessness, particularly among people with small children
• You feel that not nearly enough is being done in your community to prevent youth smoking
• Your group is afraid that a new industrial park up river will pollute the water

However, it is important to develop a deeper understanding of the issue, including research to analyze of who has power. Remember, advocacy is about power–who can influence things that matter. You will need to know where the power of your opponents lies, and how you can most effectively influence or confront it.

Recognizing Allies

If you are the only people in town who want something done about the problem you have identified, your cause could be in trouble. It’s one thing to fight city hall: much harder to take on a whole community of hostile or indifferent people. If there are only a handful of people on your side, it may be all too easy for those in power to dismiss you as the lunatic fringe. One of your jobs will be to make that “fringe” start to look like a representative slice of the whole population affected by the issue. Then people in power will take notice.

Somewhere, there are allies – people who can band together with you and give your cause bulk, visibility, and clout. You can use methods such as a “power grid” that will help you pinpoint those groups and agencies in town that have the power to help your group. This grid will also help you identify specific ways in which these potential allies can help.

Of course, you’ll need to be careful about who you invite on board–some allies may bring baggage that you don’t need. We’ll help you balance potential benefits against potential risks, and come up with some useful backers who will help, rather than hinder, your cause – whether you want to build a full-fledged coalition, or an informal alliance or network.

In addition to deciding whether other groups have an interest in your cause, it’s important to find out if an alliance with them is in your interest. For example, suppose you are planning to make life difficult for retailers who sell cigarettes to kids, and you know that the American Cancer Society, a couple of local youth groups, and a pair of enlightened churches have the same goals. Just how can you best help each other? Do you want a close relationship? Suppose these people are limited by their own charters in the type of action they can get involved in? Suppose they might want to take over the direction of the whole campaign? Suppose they are with your interests on some matters, and against you in others?

Identifying Opponents and Resistance

Although it’s possible to advocate without having an opponent (for example, you may be working largely to overcome ignorance and inertia), most advocacy campaigns have a recognizable Goliath–or even several big (and potentially mean) kids on the block. Who are your opponents? Why are they putting up resistance? And what can you do about it?

Those questions should be answered together. There’s not much point knowing the names of your opponents unless you also know why they are opposing you. Sometimes, this may not be for the most obvious reasons, so you’ll need to know what’s going on.

Starting with the cause for resistance is often more fruitful than starting with a list of people you expect to be bad guys: you may get some surprises. For example, a big developer might turn out to support your drive for more low-cost housing, because he recognizes that the presence of homeless people in the neighborhood can deter rich people from buying his expensive houses. Similarly, people from whom you might expect support might turn out to oppose you. Perhaps a big agency that seems to share your goals is bent out of shape because you seem to be trespassing on their turf or accusing them of ineffectiveness in the past. You can’t take anything for granted.

Encouraging Involvement of Potential Opponents as well as Allies

Once you have a plan, you’ll know where you are going, and how to get there. That will give you confidence, and that confidence will give you clout. Armed with that, you may be able to approach certain groups or individuals whom you thought were opposed to you. Maybe they still are, but you may find that you can find help in unexpected quarters. Now that your plan makes you more business-like, people may decide to cut a deal. Or, now that your position can be made clear to others as well as to yourselves, you may find that although a certain group still may oppose you on some issues, you are on the same side of others.

Developing a Plan for Advocacy

Planning for advocacy is often a complex program because we have to deal with power and opposition. As you know by now, an advocate will usually have to overcome obstacles much greater than “mere” inertia, or lack of funds, which are often the main barriers where other types of community development projects are concerned. In advocacy situations, there are likely to be well-prepared opponents waiting in the tall grass. And they will need to be out-planned.

You will need to develop a plan based on your knowledge of who those opponents are; and knowledge of who can help you.

For a useful analogy, we’ll invite you to think of the overall campaign as a building project:

• Your vision and mission is to provide a place to live that is warm and safe
• Your objective is to build a house
• Your strategy will take the form of blueprints for the house
• Your action plan will include the specifics: who will pour the concrete for the foundation, put up a frame, add the roof, et cetera, and when will they do it

And all will go together as part of one big action plan.

In Summary

Advocacy is exciting work. You get the pleasure of fighting the good fight, and sometimes, the thrill of victory. In order to have that, though, you need to get through all of the day-to-day details and specifics. You’ll need to keep an eye on the forest while working on the trees individually. By going through this chapter carefully, we think you will be better prepared to bring about the changes that matter to your community.