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CO School
:
CO
Theory
1) Saul
Alinsky's Followers
30 Years Later
2)
13
Tactics
3)
Organizer's
Checklist
Organizer's Checklist
Are our
ideas up to date? Has time passed us by? If you're worried at all, please look
at the following points raised by a variety of people,
Education, It is used to be one phrase: the education and
organization of the poor. It appears that way, for example, in the resolutions of the Asian
bishops meeting with Pope Paul VI in Manila in 1970. Later the two ideas were separated.
Some groups
organized without any formal education sessions. They thought the people
learned enough about politics, economics and other such matters by engaging in
action. There is truth in their position, but some conceptualization of experience or
summing up is always useful. Also some matters can't be learned through action,
such as, history.
Other
groups had formal education seminars, but they were always on an abstract
level and had no relation to day to day organizing. Some of this type of education
is criticized in Optima's evaluation of ZOTO.
These
seminars dealt with the national situation and the urban poor sector, but they
left the people, according to OPTIMA, passive,
uncritical, and without a sharpness in understanding. Further the people
who took these seminars never felt the need to pass the ideas learned along to
others.
We need
some kind of regular, formal education sessions or regular reflection. Ed
Gerlock who has worked with farmers for many years has ideas on how such sessions should be run:
* We
shouldn't treat the people as if the organizers had everything to teach and
nothing to
learn. That is how colonizers act Organizers and poor should be a community of
learners. Do we believe we can learn from the poor? Basically we should also
remember people teach themselves, so our sessions should allow people time to
react to what's being said, or to show what they know on the matter.
* The more senses involved in education the
better. Thus, there shouldn't be Just talking, but visual aids, things to
touch, things to do, etc.
* The closer a teacher is to the people being
taught the better. So a poor person teaching poor people is better than a young
college graduate doing it.
* Education is best if it's for life. If people need
math to learn how to sell abaca, they'll learn. Abstract ideas unrelated to life
ore death in education matters.
* Role playing is a powerful education tool, and
most poor people are very good at it.
New
Opponents. New Allies.
Several members of ACHR emphasize that big capitalism or big business is now
the main opponent of poor peoples groups and not governments. In matters of
housing, for example, it is the market and especially real estate speculation
that determines if poor people can get lots within the city, or whether they'll
have to move far out of the city. The price of land will determine if poor
people sell their rights to it. It's no longer a government that makes such decisions.
The same
can be said of land reform, urban poor demolitions, low cost housing and labor
legislation. With the fall of socialism, the power of capitalism and free
enterprise has increased five fold. Governments are often in the employ of big
business whether they like it or not. Ed de Ia Torre made this point in a talk
he gave here in early October. The momentum in the world is with capitalism.
It's
conceivable that government at least some levels of government, could be
allies. In Pakistan the lowest level of government is controlled by the poor
and functions in favor of the people. That is not the existing reality in the
Philippines, but it teaches the lesson that times change and yesterday's
opponents can be tomorrowĄŻs allies.
Is it time
to review or-re-evaluate
our relations with government, the Church, NGOs, business, the left, the right, the middle?
Resisters.
Not Builders.
Organizers are regularly described as good at resisting government or other
programs, but weak at building something new. Do the times (widespread poverty) dictate we try to create
Jobs and provide
services that in the past we would hove said çire the responsibility of business
or government?
If we think we should do more than resist what respects of service can we
provide? What are
we good at? Perhaps we shouldn't directly try to create Jobs, something that is
ordinarily beyond our competence, but we could initiate programs that lessen
people's expenses by organizing cheaper medical programs or feeding programs
for children or cheap rice programs for the community.
It is clear organizers have to keep examining
their basic beliefs. Arif Hassan, a Pakistani architect said peoples organizing
groups hove to have a much wider, human vision of the future they are trying
to construct. What precisely in the next five or ten years do we wont to
achieve physically, culturally, politically, spiritually?
A good organizing group must be suspicious of old
certitudes and formulas. We ought to be imaginative and creative as well as
dedicated and hardworking. Above all if old goals ore impossible to reach,
let's forget them.
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