Posts
Bringing consensus elements into community organizing
While an adversarial community organizing model has been highly effective in many cases, from Saul Alinsky's model developed in Chicago neighborhoods, it is not the sort of relational sustainable development that tends to avoid more destructive conflicts.
The Consensus Community Organizing Center[1], founded in 1999 at San Diego State University, introduced another model of teaching and practicing community organizing that was based on developing opportunities for all stakeholders based on mutual gain, which is, of course on the four pillars of principled negotiation. In some ways, it mimicked core components of how Gandhi, MLK, and Cesar Chavez organized--never seeking to crush anyone, always regarding relationships as key--but the method that is the basis of a school of teaching and practicing at the CCOC eschews civil disobedience, not by condemning it or devaluing it, but by focusing on initiatives that will not likely ever be dependent on offering civil resistance.
Having noted that, it is often the case that nonviolent civil resistance can be rendered unnecessary by working to develop alternatives that serve the self-interest of the stakeholders, even when they seem to be opposed to each other. Founder Michael Eichler did this in several community organizing projects, the result of which was to "bake a bigger pie," that is, to find new resources to support the enhancement of multiple stakeholders.
This model can be far more successful than the assumption that "they" are the bad guys bent on being unfair to "us." It may tend to have some limits, which only means it's one approach to consider, not a one-method-in-all-situations:
· If there have been actual atrocities, it may be substantially harder to introduce a model that seeks to serve all parties' self-interests.
· When the issues are highly polarized and girded by deeply morally conflicting ideologies, finding middle ground may be impossible (e.g., impossible to serve the interests of committed racists determined to squash aspirations of minority communities).
Nonetheless, aspects of consensus organizing can make the launch of a nonviolent civil resistance campaign more likely to succeed with far fewer damages--more gain, less pain. Gandhi did that with the British, to the point where British working class people tended to support him, a remarkable gain. Dr. King devoted great effort to healing and improving relationships amongst the Southern clergy who often opposed him--his Letter from Birmingham Jail[2] is a master class in exactly this. Cesar Chavez showed respect for the owners of the fields where they exploited migrant laborers even as he held them to the same high standard of human comportment that he practiced.
African American historian Mary Frances Berry has written about utilizing the "inside game" of political work, which one might roughly equate with consensus organizing, and, when required, the "outside game" of nonviolent civil resistance when the inside game was blocked, stalled, or too slow.
In the end, though there are many paths to victory in any campaign to change, abolish, or defend a policy of a government, corporation, or institution, it is wise to always consider every option except violence. It is unhelpful to disregard any nonviolent method, as all have something to offer in any given moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment