Community Organizing and Political Agency
A vertical line visually separates two phrases: on one side, “the world as it is” and on the other, “the world as it should be.” The description of “the world as it is” details a world run by power. This view of the world sees bodies of self-interested individuals forming pluralities. On the other side is a world fueled by love. “The world as it should be” is filled with selfless individuals acting not for themselves but for others in society. This love is closer to a genuine form of altruism that takes the pluralities of “the world as it is”—aggregations of individual interest—and unifies them around the goal of pursuing the common good.
The two sides of this line, one embodying self-interest and the other selflessness, at first glance diametrically opposed to one another, make up a paradigm used by the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). Although the two visions of the world described are abstractions, they offer a simple way to see that, as we view them, power and love may be constantly in tension.
Created by Saul Alinsky in 1940, the IAF is a network of community organizations aimed at community organizing. Alinsky’s efforts began in Chicago, where he worked to bring together citizens on a local level around their common interests, and have now spread nationwide to over 65 cities. The network works with thousands of religious congregations and civic associations. IAF organizers work with the individuals in these already-existing institutions to push for substantive changes in community life: housing reform, better healthcare, access to utilities, school standards—the list goes on.
This work, often with the disadvantaged sectors of society, is complicated by an America today where wealth inequality is on the rise. As the rich continue to grow richer, the average citizen is losing efficacy in the political environment. Princeton professor Martin Gilens and Northwestern professor Benjamin Page note the implications of this trend in their 2014 study, Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizen:
“Economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”
The broader import of such a finding resides in a cycle of consolidating control; those without political power grow apathetic in the face of a dominant elite, thereby allowing those same elites to exert more, unchecked influence. In this environment, the tangible changes that the IAF pursues are only part of its mission. Its member organizations represent the active, quantifiable piece of what is a broader goal: to rebuild the community on a local level, helping average citizens rediscover their own political and social agency.
One way in which the IAF and other similar organizations begin to counteract the apathy-fueled narrative is by using the above paradigm to spark a discussion on expanding our view of power. We think about power as the capacity to have an effect on one’s environment. In today’s imbalanced political environment, similar to the abstract “world as it is,” many view power as unilateral.
This notion of power can be thought of as power over others in one’s environment. The economic elite of today’s society wield power due to their ability to monetarily influence policy and elections. Their interests are the controlling forces, while the interests of the average citizen, despite our nominally representative system, are subordinate. In his essay “Two Conceptions of Power,” professor and theologian Bernard Loomer explains how unilateral power works to use others as a means—as “a function of one’s own ends”—thereby separating the relationship between two or more parties into the actors and receivers. It does so by taking into account only the interests of the actor. Even if I act in what I think to be the interest of others, I am still acting unilaterally when I fail to take into account the actual interests of others.
Loomer sees this view of power as the traditional conception, pervading the consciousness of contemporary society. Because unilateral power prioritizes the interests of those in a position to exert their imbalanced influence, it works to “alienate the possessor of power” from his or her environment. In doing so, value is found in the ability to successfully accrue power on one’s own, whereas “dependency on others, as well as passivity, are symptoms of weakness or insufficiency.” If we view power as unilateral, allowing another person to act with us or do something for us, even if the effect is a positive one, means allowing one’s own interests to be subordinated. Allowing someone else to act on us, even help us, is a sign of weakness. Although Loomer does not directly draw the connection, it is easy to see how this view of power contributes to the classic American myths of the “American Dream” and the “self-made man.” Independent success is valued, while cooperation takes a back seat. Welfare programs are shunned in favor of individual responsibility. Those who cannot achieve success on their own are powerless.
The IAF works mostly with the disadvantaged in society who face an uphill battle in the presence of institutionalized forms of unilateral power. When the citizen facing a slew of constraints—commitments, lack of money, recently passed voter ID laws, etc.—on his means to political participation sees the political capital wielded by corporations and the financial industry of today’s society, a feeling of ineffectuality or even helplessness can develop. It is no exaggeration that there is a strong sentiment today that ‘my individual vote doesn’t matter.’ Coupling these harsh realities with the strong ideological undercurrent that hard work will always lead to success helps to shape a society in which citizens may feel they are unable to affect the environment around them—a feeling that they are unable to shape their future and the circumstances in which they live. When citizens are inactive, there are few, if any checks on the powers that be and the few, the elites, the one percent can take even greater control. Democratic resignation is the foundation of oligarchy.
What may be hard to realize in these situations is that the average citizen, despite what may be an imbalance of wealth, political capital, or even social influence, does have power. It is a form of power that lies not in bank accounts or job description, but in the people around us—in community. Unlike the view of power as unilateral power over another person, the IAF offers a view of power as relational power with others. Where unilateral power was the ability to act on another person, relational power combines this with the ability to also be affected. We can have an effect on our environment, on our relationships with others, by both giving and receiving influence. The IAF attempts to teach communities how to harness relational power in order to reclaim their agency and begin to reshape the world around them as they see fit.
For Loomer, the ideal form of relational power is represented by “the capacity to sustain a mutually internal relationship.” Instead of pursuing one’s interests by treating relationships only as a means to personal interest, exercising relational power means treating the relationship as an end in itself. Inequality within relationships may still exist, but “one must trust in the relationship” in spite of imbalances since “the good is an emergent from the relationship.” When all parties commit mutually to a relationship, that relationship will grow and its subsequent strength may facilitate the pursuit of the interests of all parties involved as opposed to only the interests of the unilaterally stronger. Whereas unilateral power had different effects on the acting and the affected party, relational power provides a mutual benefit to all members of the relationship.
IAF organizing provides some concrete examples of this more abstract notion of power, beginning with its relational meetings that focus on sharing personal stories. Community members meet in a public place, whether a church or a recreation center, where each individual is accepted and encouraged to bring their own concerns to the table. In this way, meetings focus on hearing and understanding the interests of everyone in the community, but the purpose of these stories moves beyond simply sharing experiences. The ultimate goal of these meetings is to tease out the issues raised in different stories, analyze them, and find where they overlap. Setting out the concerns of the community in this way then allows those same community members to create a plan to address those concerns.
In his book Blessed are the Organized, Jeffrey Stout describes just these types of meetings in New Orleans at Wicker Elementary School. Parents and teachers generally had concerns about continuous school absences and through the relational meeting were able to narrow down their focus to the cleanliness of the school’s bathrooms. The movement from general concerns to more specific issues allows organizers to pinpoint realistically fixable issues to be addressed. As they move from the general to the specific, a plan of action is formulated. Community members engage in deliberative discussion based on the assumption that each individual has the ability to come to reason-based judgments on what actions should or should not be taken by the group. The meetings recognize each individual’s ability to contribute to the plan and the discussion, offering a forum in which community members can act. They can feel once more that they are having some effect. IAF organizing does not empower individuals, but instead shows them where their power already lies. The community members themselves come together. They select the issues, and they act to change their own circumstances.
This is not to say that the abstract moral gains of agency are the only piece of the puzzle. Another important step that organizing must take is pushing for public recognition and substantive change. In public assemblies and what the IAF calls accountability sessions, the concerns targeted in relational meetings are brought to the forefront by the entire community. Public officials are invited to community gatherings in which concerns are raised. Politicians are allotted limited time to speak, while the focus shifts to acknowledging the importance of community interests. Other methods include demonstrations, strikes, or public shaming of officials. Just as a strike will not succeed if all members are not fully committed, all of these techniques rely on the strength of the bonds between the participants. The power exists in the way they relate to one another.
We saw a similar development here at Princeton following the Ferguson riots earlier this year. After town halls and community-wide protests, students packed in to the Council of the Princeton University Community (CPUC) meeting to force administrators to hear their concerns. These meetings establish a direct relation between community members and those in positions of power. Local public officials, more so than University administrators, are held directly accountable to community members and their concerns. Continuous pressure in these public forums creates a relationship in which officials must recognize the concerns of those present.
The community organizing in which the IAF engages deals mostly with the disadvantaged in society and aims at allowing those people to harness a form of relational power to target existing forms of oppression. The paradigm offers a way to think about striving to create a society closer to “the world as it should be,” while acknowledging the realities of power and self-interest in “the world as it is.” While this is all immediately relevant to those living in some of the, needless to say, less-than-ideal urban centers of America, it is also an important perspective for the Princeton student. For the most part, living at Princeton is an easy life. Our basic needs are met. Workloads aside, our lives are relatively comfortable. This, however, does not mean that there aren’t pieces of campus life that cannot be tweaked. The administration may hold sway over decision-making, but the formation of a number of task forces on diversity following the Ferguson protests are the most visible examples of campaigns currently being pushed for by organized students armed with specific plans of action.
Potentially more important than changes to campus life though, is the way in which we relate to the outside world. Whether we like it or not, Princeton is a campus housing and nourishing the budding elite of society. Princeton’s alumni network already boasts an astounding array of influential individuals, and our classmates will go on to be politicians and corporate executives. Before going out into the real world, we should make an effort to understand the way in which we relate to each other and that our successes need not come at the expense of others. Instead these same successes can be seen as arising directly from the relationships with those around us.
But if such a change in traditional institutional ethos is too idealistic, more may need to be done to question existing authority. The idea of the Orange Bubble is a manifestation of an environment in which the outside world stays out of Princeton life and is easy to ignore. I can certainly imagine going through four years here without acknowledging any problems past Nassau Street. The massive commitments that we make in terms of schoolwork, part-time jobs, and extracurriculars may even allow us to ignore the problems that Princeton could help to solve. This ignorance may not be apathy, but it is close to passive acceptance of the status quo. Pushing for change necessitates, first, an ability to actively point out what needs to be changed in our lives and, second, the recognition that each and every one of us can do something in pursuit of that change. The hard part is that such recognition is often dependent on a realization that change can come from below; it does not need to come from Nassau Hall, or Washington, D.C, but instead can begin from the united voice of a group of committed individuals.