Conscientization approach in community organization

Read Chapter 4, Then Make A Few Observations On The Differences And/Or Distinctions In The Alinsky And Freire Approaches To Leadership. Then Review You Tube Videos And Select One That Reflects Either The Alinsky Or Freire Style And Explain.

The “Alinsky Tradition” and Freirian Organizing Approaches MARTY MARTINSON CELINA SU

C ommunity organizing efforts across the country and the globe reflect a range of models with different philosophies and strategies for systematically bringing people together to bring about social change. This chapter explores two such models of community organizing—the “Alinsky tradition” and Freirian approaches. Here, we examine the key components of each model, contrast the basic assumptions and strategies embedded in each, and identify the ways in which these models might complement or learn from each other. Community organizing in practice, of course, rarely reflects an ideal model in its pure form, as each effort requires strategies and tactics that are specific to the given situation (Rothman 2008 ; Sen 2003 ). Nevertheless, the influence of the ideas and practices of Saul D. Alinsky and Paulo Freire over the past several decades have been significant and thereby warrant more detailed examination. Saul Alinsky ( 1909– 1972 ) Born into a middle-class Jewish immigrant household in Chicago, Alinsky worked as an early labor organizer with the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and emerged in the 1930 s as a formidable community organizer when he worked with the Back of the Yards neighborhood in Chicago. There, he built an “organization of organizations” that brought together churches, labor, and service organizations to successfully fight for expanded social services, education, and other community needs in the meatpacking and stockyards section of Chicago. As community organizer Mike Miller ( 2009 ) notes, Alinsky “borrowed from the tough approach of the industrial union movement, grafted its strategy and tactics onto the poor, working-class communities that surrounded the great industrial stockyards of the Midwest, and found in local traditions and values the ideas that supported organizing” ( 10 ). Alinsky’s efforts succeeded in achieving his goal of using “people power” to counter the “money power” of the Chicago political machine and to gain seats at the decision-making tables (Miller 2009 ). After the successes of the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council (BYNC), Alinsky founded the Industrial Areas Foundation in the 1940 s to expand the BYNC model to other parts of the country. Alinsky employed and promoted a conflictoriented and pragmatic style of organizing. As he pronounced, “The first step in community organizing is community disorganization,” achieved by identifying the controversial issues upon which people feel most compelled to act (Alinsky 1971 , 116– 7 ). While Alinsky himself said that there is no such thing as a step-by-step “prescription” for organizing, as each effort requires situation-specific tactics, the ideas and strategies he described in his books Reveille for Radicals ( 1946 ) and Rules for Radicals ( 1971 ) suggest that there are general principles to be followed in an Alinsky tradition of community organizing. The Alinsky Tradition of Community Organizing According to Alinsky, the organizer’s role is that of an outsider who agitates, listens to the concerns of the people, and then mobilizes them to act on those concerns. In order to do this, the organizer needs to establish legitimacy in the community—or, as he phrased it, “get a license to operate” ( 1971 , 98 ). The organizer gets this license by demonstrating “credentials of competency” ( 101 ) through prior successes and by agitating within the community so that people will voice their concerns and invite the organizer in to help. In Alinsky’s words, the organizer must “agitate to the point of conflict,” “rub raw the resentments of the people of the community,” and “fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression” ( 1971 , 116– 117 ). The organizer then helps people move from this generalized discontent to focusing on specific issues around which they can organize campaigns and create change. Overall, the organizer must persuade the people that they can do something about those issues if they mobilize to create a mass-based organization. Again, quoting Alinsky ( 1971 ): “As long as you feel powerless and unable to do anything about it, all you have is a bad scene .... The organizer makes it clear that organization will give them the power, the ability, the strength, the force to be able to do something about these particular problems. It is then that a bad scene begins to break up into specific issues, because now the people can do something about it. What the organizer does is convert the plight into a problem .... The organization is born out of the issues and the issues are born out of the organization” ( 119– 120 ). The issues to be addressed through the community organization must be selected appropriately. Alinsky noted that a “good issue” is one that is simple, specific, and winnable ( 1971 ; Miller 2009 ; Staples 2004 ; see chapter 11 ). This stands in contrast to other strategies that may integrate broader ideological issues into organizing, such as antiracism or antiviolence campaigns (Sen 2003 ; Su 2009 ). For Alinsky, rather than taking on such ideological issues, it is essential to choose specific battles that can be won rather quickly in order to give the community a sense of confidence and achievement. Related to this focus on a specific, winnable issue, Alinsky also asserted the importance of choosing a campaign target—a specific individual or organization that has the power to make decisions and therefore make change (Sen 2003 ). In Alinsky’s ( 1971 ) words, “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it” ( 130 ). For example, when organizing with the low-income African American community in Rochester, New York, Alinsky identified Eastman Kodak, the antilabor industrial giant of Rochester, as being largely responsible for the economic plight of the community. After picking this target, he “froze” it with the provocative comment to the media that “the only thing Eastman Kodak has done on the race issue in America has been to introduce color film” ( 137 ). Alinsky then personalized and polarized this target by deliberately expressing confusion over the identity of one of the directors of Eastman Kodak. W. Allen Wallis had a history of discriminating against African Americans in his position as president of the local university. When the media asked Alinsky about Wallis, the former’s response was, “Wallis? Which one are you talking about—Wallace of Alabama, or Wallis of Rochester— but I guess there isn’t any difference” ( 137 ). At the time, Alabama governor George Wallace was a strong segregationist; in 1963 he had famously stood in the doorway of the University of Alabama to stop two black students from entering. Therefore, Alinsky’s quip struck a nerve and was widely quoted. Alinsky was well known for his controversial approach to “the ethics of means and ends,” which he detailed in Rules for Radicals ( 1971 , 26 ). His list of ten rules pertaining to these ethics is summed up well in rule number ten, which states, “You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.” In general, he believed that the ends can justify the means, depending on whose side you are on, how passionate you feel about the issue, or how close you are to defeat. Importantly, Alinsky believed that no action should be taken until the “mass power base” had been built, for without that base, the organizer “has nothing with which to confront anything” (Alinsky 1971 , 113 ). Therefore, the initial focus of Alinsky organizing efforts is to build the organization through recruitment of huge numbers of people. Once these numbers are obtained, the organizer then helps the people identify specific, concrete actions using that “people power” and concurrently assesses the power base of the opposition (Alinsky 1971 ). Overall, as Minkler ( 2005 ) described, Alinsky-tradition organizing “emphasize[s] redressing power imbalances by creating dissatisfaction with the status quo among the disenfranchised, building community-wide identification, and helping members devise winnable goals and nonviolent conflict strategies as a means to bring about change” ( 28 ). In the end, this kind of social action organizing serves to shift power from being concentrated among elite power brokers to being shared with previously marginalized communities, which, through their organizing into a mass power base, gain access to the decision-making table. The power structure is changed in terms of which individuals or groups hold power and how much power they hold. In the following passage, Alinsky ( 1971 ) dramatically illustrates how community organizing moves individuals from a place of invisibility and voicelessness to that of visibility and influence: A man is living in a slum tenement. He doesn’t know anybody and nobody knows him. He doesn’t care for anyone because no one cares for him. On the corner newsstand are newspapers with pictures of people like Mayor Daley and other people from a different world—a world that he doesn’t know, a world that doesn’t know that he is even alive. When the organizer approaches him part of what begins to be communicated is that through the organization and its power he will get his birth certificate for life, that he will become known, that things will change from the drabness of a life where all that changes is the calendar. This same man, in a demonstration at City Hall, might find himself confronting the mayor and saying, “Mr. Mayor, we have had it up to here and we are not going to take it any more.” Television cameramen put their microphones in front of him and ask, “What is your name, sir?” “John Smith.” Nobody ever asked him what his name was before .... Nobody ever asked him what he thought about anything before. Suddenly he’s alive! ( 121 ) Present-Day Examples of Alinsky-Tradition Organizing While Alinsky’s specific ideas and strategies have been critiqued, debated, and revised over the years, there are several powerful community organizations— including the Alinsky-founded Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF)—which continue to help constituents build broad-based coalitions. By 2010 , this strategy of building “organizations of organizations” had grown into a vast network of over sixty IAF affiliates across the United States and in Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom, training leaders in over forty organizations and representing over a thousand institutions and a million families (www.industrialareasfoundation .org). In Alinsky style, these coalitions are formed through both shared values and self-interest in a “scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” exchange (Miller 2009 , 12 ). After Alinsky’s death in 1972 , some of his associates, such as his successor Ed Chambers at IAF, modified the Alinsky approach to create more sustainable structures while maintaining most of the key components of the Alinsky tradition (Kleidman 2004 ). Yet the IAF remained heavily focused on power, describing itself as “non ideological, strictly nonpartisan but proudly, and persistently, political” (www.industrialareasfoundation.org). Other notable examples of Alinskytradition “organization of organizations” are PICO (formerly the Pacific Institute for Community Organizing); the Direct Action Training and Research Center (DART); and the Gamaliel Foundation, discussed here and in chapter 2 . Gamaliel describes itself as “a grassroots network of non-partisan, faithbased organizations ... that organizes to empower ordinary people to effectively participate in the political, environmental, social and economic decisions affecting their lives” (http://www.gamaliel.org). Gamaliel’s “general standards of organizers” directly reflect Alinsky’s rules for community organizers, including building an organizational base through recruitment of dues-paying members and organizations, being committed to the self-interest of the community organization, developing local leaders, remaining in the background as an organizer and leaving it to local leaders to serve as spokespeople for local organizations, and helping communities identify specific and winnable issues (http://www.gamaliel.org/ AboutUs/Careers/GeneralStandards.aspx; see also chapter 2 ). In the Alinsky tradition, the main strategy of Gamaliel’s organizers is to build broad and powerful faith-based community organizations and train local leaders in low-income communities. One of the more than sixty community organizations affiliated with Gamaliel is Minnesota’s ISAIAH, a coalition of congregations that have mobilized to address issues of racial and economic justice (see chapter 20 ). In the Alinsky tradition that strives to bring together diverse groups to “struggle together to realize their common interests” and “[build] relationships that cut across historic lines of antagonism” (Miller 2009 , 12 ), ISAIAH has taken on the challenge to “build all the bridges necessary to craft one organization out of the interests of new immigrants and old ones; city-dwellers and suburbanites; activists and people for whom acting in the public arena is new” (www .isaiah-mn.org). Outcomes of ISAIAH’s successful organizing efforts include their leveraging of $ 68 million in state funds to clean up three thousand acres of toxic “brownfields” in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota (Kleidman 2004 ); securing a dedicated state funding stream for public transportation; obtaining land and funding for affordable senior housing; working with coalition partners to restore $ 1 . 5 million in funding for battered women’s shelters and services; and successfully advocating for increased funding from the state for public education (www.isaiah-mn.org; see chapter 20 ). ISAIAH’s specific organizing tactics reflect the Alinsky tradition in their use of confrontational strategies and mass protest efforts. One such tactic involves their use of media-capturing stunts such as their “Honest Abes” truthtelling campaign to protest the inequity of transportation access. In this 2008 effort, a dozen ISAIAH leaders, wearing beards and stovetop hats, greeted legislators as the latter entered a House transportation hearing. A similarly Alinsky-style tactic involved their organization of a mass demonstration in front of the headquarters of UnitedHealth—the largest private health insurance company in the United States. At the ISAIAH rally, a local reverend delivered a sermon declaring, “If they [UnitedHealth] win, the people who you care about, the people standing here, the people who you want to have health care will lose .... It is not okay to profit on other people’s despair.” Meanwhile, protestors carried signs with photos of people who had died or were ill because they were denied or could not afford health insurance. Other ISAIAH members blocked entry into the building until they were arrested (http://www.isaiah-mn.org). Critiques of the Alinsky Approach The original Alinsky organizing model has been substantially criticized over the years, in part because of its insistence on organizations’ maintaining a nonideological stance. The model’s failure to adequately build local capacity and leadership, and the limitations of its focus on local targets in an increasingly multinational world with powerful corporate capital that crosses local and national borders, also have been critiqued (Delgado 1986 ; DeFilippis et al. 2010 ; Stall and Stoecker 2005 ). Critics have also focused on the approach’s resistance to directly confronting issues of race and racism (Chavez et al. 2010 ; Delgado 1986 ). Community organizing trainer and activist Rinku Sen ( 2003 ) describes the antiracist critique as being centered on three key concerns: the predominance of white staff and formal leaders in community organizations, the hesitation among many organizations to take on issues of racism, and the inflexibility of the rules and tactics of organizing that do not always fit the values and experiences of communities of color. Sen ( 2003 ) and Stall and Stoecker ( 2005 ) also underscore the feminist or gender-based critique of the Alinsky tradition, with key concerns including the emphasis on “public sphere” interventions, the lack of work/life balance for organizers, the use of narrow self-interest as a primary motivation, and the reliance on conflict and confrontational tactics. Many organizations in the Alinsky tradition have adapted their practices to address such concerns. Gamaliel, for example, has developed a multiracial leadership and included a component of political education in its training of leaders (Kleidman 2004 ). And such traditional Alinsky organizations as the IAF and PICO are much more attentive today to community capacity-building (Sen 2003 ; Miller 2009 ). Yet rather than adapt a modified and modernized Alinsky-type model, many other community organizations have developed alternative approaches to frame their organizing efforts in ways that better match their philosophical and cultural values. The “woman-centered organizing” model described by Stall and Stoecker ( 2005 ) and the model for organizing with women of color described by Lorraine Gutierrez and Edith Lewis (see chapter 12 ) are illustrative. We turn now to an approach that has become increasingly recognized across geographic, gender, and cultural lines as a significantly different approach to Alinsky’s community organizing—Paulo Freire’s ( 1972 ) model of liberation, or popular, education for critical consciousness and structural transformation and its use in community organizing and community building. Paulo Freire ( 1921– 1997 ) Paulo Freire grew up in northwest Brazil in a middle-class family that then endured hunger and poverty during the Great Depression. Although Freire was trained as a lawyer, his passion was adult education. After working as a teacher, he began to study and critique the Brazilian education system for its perpetuation of the oppression, exploitation, and powerlessness of poor people. Freire challenged the traditional “banking system” of education, in which teachers “deposit” information into students’ heads, waiting for the students to uncritically absorb their knowledge (Freire 1972 ). The danger of this sort of banking education, according to Freire, was that it kept learners from attaining a “critical consciousness” regarding sources of oppression and inequity; it thereby kept people from becoming agents of social change in their lives and their communities. Freire promoted an alternative model of education that supports human liberation and makes people the subjects of their own learning (Chavez et al. 2010 ; Freire 1972 ; Wallerstein et al. 2005 ). He argued that in order to build a stronger democracy, education must be rooted in the lived experiences of the people who are learning and in the development of critical consciousness. Rather than the teacher simply treating students as “empty vessels” in a manner that promotes passivity and perpetuates the status quo, the responsibility of the teacher in liberation education is to support social justice and social change by facilitating a process whereby marginalized people can come to realize the sources of their oppression as an essential step in mobilizing to change it. Freire reflected on his own role as an educator working with poor farmers: “I cannot remain neutral .... I must intervene in teaching peasants that their hunger is socially constructed, and work with them to help identify those responsible for this social construction, which is, in my view, a crime against humanity” (Freire and Macedo 1995 , 391 ). Popular Education and Liberation Education At the heart of Freire’s approach is popular education, which, as Bernard ( 2002 ) notes, “begins with people’s own experiences. It gives them the tools to analyze their situation and take action to transform themselves and their conditions” ( 7 ). Although we focus here on Freire’s use of popular, or liberation, education, it should be pointed out that the approach itself preceded him. As noted in chapter 14 , for example, the Highlander Center, which Myles Horton founded in Appalachian Tennessee in the early 1930 s, has used popular education and literacy since its inception as a means of promoting civic participation and social action organizing (Horton 1998 ; Horton and Freire 1990 ). In their classic book, We Make the Road by Walking ( 1990 ), Horton and Freire indeed reflect on their mutual commitment to this approach and on how their own paths intersected and complemented one another’s as fellow travelers. While Freire’s work is grounded in popular education, he himself tended to use the term liberation (or liberatory ) education more frequently, and therefore we use the term liberation education in this chapter. Freire first employed his liberation education ideas in the early 1960 s in a pilot literacy program with three hundred sugarcane sharecroppers. The success of that program led to his development of broader literacy campaigns for the poor in Brazil through which people learned to read while they also learned to “‘read’ the political and social situation in which they lived” in order to transform it (Carroll and Minkler 2000 , 23– 24 ) . When President João Goulart’s government was overthrown in 1964 by a coup d’état, Freire was imprisoned and then forced into exile in Chile, during which time he further developed his ideas about education and human liberation from oppression (Freire 2000 ). This approach to education, which he and others have shared throughout the world, has come to be known by many names, including popular education , critical pedagogy , empowerment education , liberatory practice , and, as we refer to it here, liberation education (Chávez et al. 2010 ; hooks 1994 ; Su 2009 ; Wallerstein et al. 2005 ). Freire described the key principles and strategies of liberation education in a number of writings, including Pedagogy of the Oppressed ( 1972 ). A Freirian approach to liberation education involves a facilitated social action process in which groups come together in “culture circles” to listen to each other, engage in dialogue about the struggles in their lives and the social and historical roots of those struggles, envision and employ collective actions to create change, and reflect upon those actions as they develop further actions for change (Wallerstein and Bernstein 1988 ). Thus, the act of learning is not divorced from the social, economic, and political conditions of their everyday lives. Rather than emphasizing right or wrong answers, teachers act as facilitators in helping students (or “learner-teachers”) think through issues and put forward their own analyses. This methodology of listening-dialogue-action-reflection represents a participatory model of learning that promotes the development of conscientization , or critical consciousness that leads to action. As such, the process is transformative for both the individual and the community (Freire 1972 ; Chávez et al. 2010 ). The initial listening process allows group members to hear from each other and identify key issues of common concern. Together, they then engage in dialogue in a manner that allows them to employ critical thinking around the issues they have identified. This facilitated process, in Freirian tradition, often uses codes or triggers—visual, audio, or other forms of representation of the concerns raised by the participants—as catalysts for the dialogue (see appendix 9 ). As Wallerstein and her colleagues ( 2005 ) describe, “A good trigger is a creation from the listening process that captures the emotional meaning of key problematic issues and the social context of these issues in participants’ lives yet does not present solutions” ( 224 ). One early example of such a trigger was an unlabeled bottle of medicine, received by a low-income elder in a crowded San Francisco clinic. Facilitators used this bottle to engage this man, and his fellow single-room-occupancy hotel residents, in a dialogue about their experiences with health care and the root problem of a two-tiered medical care system (Minkler and Cox 1980 ). In New Mexico, youth in the Adolescent Social Action Program created and used videos and fotonovelas as triggers to engage other youth and community members in dialogues regarding the high rates of substance abuse among Native American, Latino, and low-income white communities (Wallerstein et al. 2005 ). Using the trigger as a prompt, the facilitator engages participants by asking questions about how the problems they have identified affect their daily lives, what the broader social and structural issues that perpetuate the problem might be, and what actions they might take to address the problem and thereby transform their reality. The S-H-O-W-E-D model (Shaffer 1983 ) has been used as a problem-posing guide to encourage this kind of critical thinking and thereby raise critical consciousness. Wallerstein and her colleagues ( 2005 ) describe the following sample questions represented by this acronym: What do you SEE, or how do we name this problem? What’s really HAPPENING to the individual/people represented here? How does this story relate to OUR lives, and how do we feel about it? WHY does this happen? Why has this person experienced these problems as an individual or a family member? Why do we face these problems on a community or societal level? How might we become EMPOWERED now that we better understand the collective nature of the problem? What can we DO about these problems? ( 224 ) Liberation education has, at its core, the Freirian concept of praxis —the fusion of theory (or reflection) and action that people engage in to create personal and community change (Blackburn 2000 ; Freire 1994 ; Wallerstein and Bernstein 1988 ). As Blackburn ( 2000 ) notes, praxis both feeds and results from the process of critical consciousness. Freire believed that social change can happen only through the development of critical consciousness, because people must understand the root causes of their daily life conditions before they can work toward addressing and transforming those root causes. As Soler-Gallart and Brizuela describe in their introduction to Freire’s ( 2000 ) book Cultural Action for Freedom (published posthumously), Freire believed that “the only road to humanization of both the oppressed and the oppressors is through transformation of the structures that dehumanize them. This requires their commitment to understanding the denounced reality and to a theory of action that supports the announced transformation” ( 2 ). Liberation Education as a Community Organizing Approach As theories of action for structural transformation, liberation education and critical pedagogy have long been adopted by people outside the field of education— including community organizers and public health activists—as essential strategies for mobilizing communities to work for social change. As Sen ( 2003 ) notes, community organizations have embraced a number of key components of liberation education to inform their organizing approaches. These premises include the following: people learn better when learning is connected to their day-to-day lives; people “have the seeds of knowledge within themselves” that can be discovered and nurtured in the right environment; and traditional teacherstudent hierarchies must be abolished to create shared power with all participants being teacher-learners in an environment of liberation education ( 105 ). According to Sen, when community organizers use popular-education approaches, and particularly in leadership development, there is “greater engagement of participants in the material [skills of organizing], more opportunities to build community among members, and more opportunities to raise participants’ confidence by stressing internal knowledge” ( 105 ). In addition to these benefits for the organizing and leadership development processes, using the methods of liberation education may also advance two critical dimensions in changing the reality of people’s lives and moving toward social justice as they “democratize the learning process and produce new knowledge for all involved” (Sen 2003 , 106 ). One example of a Freirian approach to community organizing for health is the Adolescent Social Action Program (ASAP). Initiated in 1982 and continuing its work for over two decades, ASAP was a youth-centered, intergenerational prevention program with the goal of reducing morbidity and mortality from substance abuse and related problems among youth living in high-risk environments (Wallerstein et al. 2005 ). Implementing a Freirian model of empowerment education, ASAP was both a health education and a community organizing effort. Beginning with listening sessions, the youth visited hospitals and local jails to hear the stories of people whose lives were affected by substance abuse. In subsequent facilitated dialogues, the youth shared stories of how substance abuse and related issues affected their own lives, identified broader environmental forces that contributed to the problem, and developed ideas for how to respond individually and collectively. Through these processes, the community organizing aspect of the project emerged as increasing student interest led to youth organizing across local schools to increase visibility and critical consciousness about substance abuse and other community concerns. This, in turn, spurred youth involvement in state policy, developing and advocating for local policy changes related to tobacco use, and engaging in other social action projects. Through their engagement with the statewide YouthLink project, for example, some ASAP youth helped introduce bills in the state legislature to secure more appropriate sentencing and counseling for young people arrested for driving while intoxicated, improved resources for homeless youth, and so forth (Wallerstein 2002 ). As Wallerstein and her colleagues ( 2005 ) described, the empowerment education approach was an essential strategy for moving students from individual to collective action: “Empathy with each other and critical analysis of social forces in a safe group context created a bridge between one-dimensional behavioral change and group efforts for social change. The youths were encouraged to engage in dialogue about their own lives and their relationships to their communities to develop an awareness of school and neighborhood resources in order to build socially responsible behaviors. Active participation was a key tenet of ASAP” ( 222 ). Although we focus in this chapter primarily on examples from the fields of health and education, Freire felt a special kinship with social workers and, particularly in his later years, made a special effort to direct many of his ideas to this group (Freire 1990 ; Carroll and Minkler 2000 ). Freire ( 1990 ) thus wrote of his desire to sharpen still further in his social work students, colleagues, and friends the qualities of “activism,” “permanent critical curiosity,” tolerance,” and “patient impatience” with and in the world. He considered these qualities central to social work practice ( 7– 8 ). Yeich ( 1996 ) and other social workers subsequently have used his approach in their work with the homeless, persons with mental illness, and other vulnerable populations (Carroll and Minkler 2000 ). Comparing Alinskyite and Freirian Approaches A book by one of this chapter’s authors, Streetwise for Book Smarts (Su 2009 ), compares the practical application of Alinskyite and Freirian approaches to community organizing. The book’s four case study organizations were all working to address school violence and local school reform, had similar levels of resources with which to organize, and had similar core constituencies—primarily poor and near poor communities of color (Latino, African American, and African) who lived in the Bronx, New York, and whose children attended local schools. Despite these similarities, the organizations used very different strategies that emerged from different cultural practices within each organization: “It was not just what they did but how they did it that mattered” (Su 2009 , 3 ). The differences in the what and the how of their organizing efforts were explained in large part by their adherence to either an “Alinskyite tool kit” or a “Freirian tool kit.” The two case studies whose organizational cultures and practices reflected the Alinsky approach were the Bronx chapter of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and the Northwest Bronx Clergy and Community Coalition (NWBCCC). The two case studies that employed the Freirian tool kit were Sistas and Brothas United—a student activist group that was associated with NWBCCC but that used a organizing model different from that of their umbrella organization—and Mothers on the Move. An organizational culture includes not just articulated values but also normative practices, such as “how organizers talk to and relate to leaders and members, how meetings are conducted, and how decisions about campaigns are made” (Su 2009 , 11 ). Among the four groups, the Alinskyite and Freirian approaches differed in three key areas: ( 1 ) the emphasis of organizational activities, ( 2 ) their approaches to organizational versus personal development, and ( 3 ) the nature of leadership development and of the organizer-leader relationship (see table 4 . 1 ). This following is a summary of these key areas of difference.

Alinsky Tool Kit: ACORN Bronx and Northwest Bronx Clergy and Community Coalition Emphasis of Organizational Activities: Recruitment and Campaigns The organizational activities of ACORN Bronx and NWBCCC predominantly focused on recruitment of members and issue campaigns. As previously noted, recruiting large numbers of people to build a power base is a critical component of organizing efforts using an Alinsky approach. The ACORN Bronx organizers’ work schedules exemplified this. Working from 11 : 00 A . M .to 10 : 00 P . M .on weekdays and half a day on Saturdays, organizers spent four to five hours each day doing door-knocking outreach to recruit members and another three hours in the evenings calling existing or lapsed members to encourage them to renew their memberships and attend meetings. The occasional ACORN Bronx membership meetings were focused on specific campaigns and allowed members to “quickly learn about the organization’s work and about the roles they could play in assisting the organization to grow and secure campaign wins” (Su 2009 , 56 ). NWBCCC also held mostly campaign-related activities, and they integrated recruitment efforts into these activities. The impact of each issue campaign on the entire organization was kept front and center, with “strength in unity” as a key theme. In Alinsky fashion, organizers in both groups were sure to tie these broad-reaching campaigns to the shared self-interests of the membership. The benefits of these Alinsky-type approaches could be seen in their successful use of mass mobilization for and against policy proposals. For example, NWBCCC garnered six thousand extra classroom seats in the South Bronx schools by successfully lobbying the city during its capital plan decision-making process, which occurs only once every five years. Meanwhile, ACORN Bronx helped to mobilize opposition to a citywide referendum that would have allowed Edison Schools, a for-profit school management firm, to take over a few underperforming schools. Statewide, ACORN’s New York chapters used their impressive legion of organizers and members to join the teachers’ union and ensure high voter turnout at the referendum, and they ultimately defeated the pro-Edison votes by a four-to-one margin. Emphasis on Organizational Development By organizing activities that were predominantly geared toward recruitment and current campaigns, ACORN Bronx and NWBCCC demonstrated an Alinsky-type emphasis on organizational development over personal development. ACORN enhanced its capacity as a broad-based organization by generating revenue through membership dues. These dues helped strengthen the organization by holding organizers accountable to the members. As one ACORN organizer described, “It’s coming out of your pocket. You’re paying my salary [so that] in essence, I need to bust my ass for you” (Su 2009 , 59 ). ACORN Bronx also built the organization by involving members and leaders in campaigns that extended beyond the Bronx and supported citywide or national issues. This helped to strengthen the larger city-, state-, and national-level ACORN organization and create massive scale in its broader campaigns. NWBCCC also emphasized organizational development as it employed new dues systems and bylaws during the study’s fieldwork period. Unlike ACORN, however, it used its large membership base to engage in a variety of activities driven by neighborhood offices rather than by broader citywide or national agendas. In the end, NWBCCC was adept at balancing organizational development with individual interests, while maintaining its focus on the organization as a whole. Nature of Leadership Development: Organizer as Teacher-Guide In terms of leadership development, both ACORN Bronx and NWBCCC positioned the organizer as a teacher-guide to the local leaders. This leadership development approach sees the organizer imparting information, tools, and strategies to the local leaders, with the former holding the key to accessing power and the latter learning from the organizer how to gain access to that power (Sen 2003 ). Alinsky ( 1971 ) saw this as an important distinction: “The leader goes on to build power to fulfill his desires, to hold and wield the power for purposes both social and personal .... The organizer finds his goal in creation of power for others to use” ( 80 ). NWBCCC took more time to provide local leaders with in-depth training in how to obtain access to that power than did ACORN Bronx, but the role of organizer as teacher-guide to the leaders was consistent for both organizations (Su 2009 ). Struggles Faced by This Organizational Culture Some of ACORN Bronx’s and NWBCCC’s struggles reflect common challenges of the Alinsky tradition. To different degrees, the emphasis on recruitment and organizational growth occurred at the expense of in-depth membership participation and leadership development. This, in turn, contributed to high turnover rates in both staff and membership. A more substantive sort of tension arose with the pragmatic, nonideological Alinsky-tradition of organizational development and issue selection. When some local leaders wanted to take on political issues such as police brutality and racial profiling, they were discouraged from doing so because the issues were deemed too controversial or divisive. As noted earlier, this nonideological stance often includes maintaining a “color-blind” approach to issues of race/ethnicity that is frequently critiqued as a weakness in the Alinsky model and that, in many cases, has been modified by some newer organizations using the Alinsky tradition (Sen 2003 ; Su 2009 ). Freire Tool Kit: Sistas and Brothas United and Mothers on the Move Emphasis of Organizational Activities: Emotional and Cultural Exchange In contrast to the Alinsky-type focus on campaigns and recruitment, the Freirian approach was generally more holistic and less pragmatic, with activities like soul food events, fiction book clubs, hip-hop workshops, “sister-bonding” and rap sessions, ball games, and tutoring and yoga. The following description of a typical day in the office of Sistas and Brothas United (SBU) suggests a very different approach to organizing from that demonstrated by the Alinskyite model: Every day, dozens of teenagers showed up to discuss local education politics, conduct orientation sessions without the supervision of organizers, carry out research, chair meetings, and strategize campaigns .... One girl sat alone .... “Leila,” another girl asked, “[w]hat’s up?” Leila quickly slid a composition book across the main table and said, “Last page.” The other girl quickly opened the composition book and read a poem to herself. She then nodded, walked over, and gave Leila a hug. The scene evoked images of support groups, therapy sessions, or conflict resolution meetings. It did not conform to traditional notions of community organizing in the United States. Yet these participants were empowering themselves in a way that belied traditional notions of service organizations too. (Su 2009 , 76– 77 ) While many of the activities at SBU and Mothers on the Move (MOM) did not appear to be directly related to campaigns or recruitment, a closer look at their use of Freirian approaches revealed that many of the socializing, consciousnessraising, and political education activities served as foundational components of their community organizing strategies. In addition to providing informal opportunities for the development of relationships and trust between members, these activities allowed participants to engage in dialogue about the issues that concerned them and to identify the root causes of those issues. As previously described, Freire emphasized the importance of engaging in critical reflection and dialogue before deciding on a course of action. He noted in Pedagogy of the Oppressed ( 1972 ) that without critical reflection, social change cannot occur, because “the context of the situation, that is, oppression, remains unchanged .... To surmount the system of oppression, [people] must first critically recognize its causes, so that through transforming action they can create a new situation” ( 31– 32 ). This kind of critical reflection and dialogue was integrated into SBU’s and MOM’s organizational activities. Emphasis on Individual Development Dovetailing with this wide range of activities, an emphasis on individual development alongside organizational campaigns was evident in the Freirian organizations. Organizers often blurred the line between “traditional” community organizing and social services. MOM, for instance, developed out of a literacy class for Latina mothers astounded by news reports on Bronx schools. MOM’s organizers then continued their attention to individual development with the use of the Social Justice Organizing Training Matrix, which included ten categories, each with a skills list, including both the predictable ones, for example, “relational organizing” and public relations, and also such atypical skills as “body practice (the integration of healthy living practices in personal life through diet, exercise, and recreation) ... and leadership for family, work, and life” (Su 2009 , 97 ). Similarly, SBU paid careful attention to individual development through peer tutoring, spoken word workshops, and informal socializing. One organizer described this essential component of developing emerging leaders when he noted, “I spend quality time hanging out with leaders .... We talk about how they’re doing in schools. We get into family business, get them to the right resources, and get them to advocate for themselves. Building them as individuals is as important as campaign work .... We need to build the skills and inner confidence so that they can maintain a certain level of conversation amongst themselves” ( 87 ). Through these opportunities for individual development, leaders and members of SBU and MOM experienced personal transformation that often led them to a greater commitment to the work of the organization and, notably, to each other. Nature of Leadership Development: Organizer as Partner In keeping with Freire’s notions of a liberatory, rather than banking, mode of pedagogy, organizers at MOM and SBU also worked hard to engage member-leaders as partners. Leaders repeatedly stated that friendship and solidarity, not just overlapping self-interests per se, underlay their decision to join the organizations. One SBU leader noted, “We were friends already; it was a connection we already had.... If it had been a regular ... organizer, it would have been, ‘Oh, another routine thing, you got to listen to older people do this, and say that’” (Su 2009 , 89 ). Rather than building interchangeable leaders, organizers encouraged individual members to pursue tailored interests and build expertise in the policy issues, research methods, or organizing activities they found most compelling. Thus, meetings at SBU and MOM were more likely than those at the Alinskytype organizations to include leaders’ taking turns in reporting back findings from research, or presenting ideas for an ongoing campaign, to the larger group. They were also more likely to insist upon active consensus at meetings, whereby each attendee explicitly approved or questioned an agenda item before votes were taken. Ultimately, organizers hoped to engage in dialogue, which Freire ( 1972 ) stated is essential to “generating critical thinking” ( 81 ). Struggles Faced by This Organizational Culture Partly because the Freire-inspired model of organizing is most participatory and focused on building both trust and relationships, it is also quite a bit more labor intensive. With less emphasis on large numbers, and more on individual transformation and building deep, sustainable foundations of support based on relationships, Freirian groups struggle to achieve the large scale of Alinskyite groups. These organizations further emphasize the importance of looking at root causes, not just winnable issues, making it that much more difficult to capture the “clincher” of a decisive campaign victory. Indeed, as Schutz ( 2007 ) has argued, Freirian approaches do not always help marginalized constituencies move beyond social critique and build concrete political power. Still, one MOM organizer insisted that “we have a moral imperative—that we as organizers of color also deeply feel—to take on ... nonwinnable issues if that is where the people are at and what they are feeling!” (Su 2009 , 102 ). Ideally, this sort of deep-seated commitment helps to build sustainable, meaningful participation and lifetime activists for social change overall, not just for the specific campaigns or organizations. Implications for Policymaking The Alinsky- and Freire-inspired organizational cultures yielded different political strategies for policy reform. Overall, the Alinsky-type groups aimed to “pursue strategies that help constituents to win referenda of existing policy proposals or elections, engage in confrontational strategies, and build broad-based coalitions in the name of ‘color-blind’ equality,” in which race and ethnicity are not explicitly addressed (Su 2009 , 3 ). In contrast, the Freirian-style SBU and MOM primarily worked to construct and implement new policy proposals (rather than support existing ones), engaged in mostly collaborative strategies (rather than confrontational ones), and addressed issues of race and ethnicity directly and adeptly (rather than taking a “color-blind” approach). Further, while the Freirian groups emphasized means as much as ends, and deliberately blurred the two, the Alinsky groups’ strategies followed Alinsky’s quip that “the end justifies almost any means” ( 1971 , 29 ). While Freire insisted that Rather than building interchangeable leaders, organizers encouraged individual members to pursue tailored interests and build expertise in the policy issues, research methods, or organizing activities they found most compelling. Thus, meetings at SBU and MOM were more likely than those at the Alinskytype organizations to include leaders’ taking turns in reporting back findings from research, or presenting ideas for an ongoing campaign, to the larger group. They were also more likely to insist upon active consensus at meetings, whereby each attendee explicitly approved or questioned an agenda item before votes were taken. Ultimately, organizers hoped to engage in dialogue, which Freire ( 1972 ) stated is essential to “generating critical thinking” ( 81 ). Struggles Faced by This Organizational Culture Partly because the Freire-inspired model of organizing is most participatory and focused on building both trust and relationships, it is also quite a bit more labor intensive. With less emphasis on large numbers, and more on individual transformation and building deep, sustainable foundations of support based on relationships, Freirian groups struggle to achieve the large scale of Alinskyite groups. These organizations further emphasize the importance of looking at root causes, not just winnable issues, making it that much more difficult to capture the “clincher” of a decisive campaign victory. Indeed, as Schutz ( 2007 ) has argued, Freirian approaches do not always help marginalized constituencies move beyond social critique and build concrete political power. Still, one MOM organizer insisted that “we have a moral imperative—that we as organizers of color also deeply feel—to take on ... nonwinnable issues if that is where the people are at and what they are feeling!” (Su 2009 , 102 ). Ideally, this sort of deep-seated commitment helps to build sustainable, meaningful participation and lifetime activists for social change overall, not just for the specific campaigns or organizations. Implications for Policymaking The Alinsky- and Freire-inspired organizational cultures yielded different political strategies for policy reform. Overall, the Alinsky-type groups aimed to “pursue strategies that help constituents to win referenda of existing policy proposals or elections, engage in confrontational strategies, and build broad-based coalitions in the name of ‘color-blind’ equality,” in which race and ethnicity are not explicitly addressed (Su 2009 , 3 ). In contrast, the Freirian-style SBU and MOM primarily worked to construct and implement new policy proposals (rather than support existing ones), engaged in mostly collaborative strategies (rather than confrontational ones), and addressed issues of race and ethnicity directly and adeptly (rather than taking a “color-blind” approach). Further, while the Freirian groups emphasized means as much as ends, and deliberately blurred the two, the Alinsky groups’ strategies followed Alinsky’s quip that “the end justifies almost any means” ( 1971 , 29 ). While Freire insisted that