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Useful Lessons
for Asian Community Organization

After many years of community organization work in the Philippines and other Asian countries the writer had the chance this past year to look into organizing work in the South Bronx, especially the South Bronx Churches organization. The main purpose of this examination was to find useful lessons for the work in Asia. He found much that may be useful, including the organizational structure the Industrial Areas Foundation employs in its work. He also, however, found the same long term, near intractable and dispiriting problems met in Asia.

This is not in any way meant as criticism of CO-workers in the U.S. or Asia: it is difficult for organizers to deal with such problems when they are in the midst of Action; action is partisan, highly emotional, all consuming. The time spent in the South Bronx at a certain distance from the organizing problems was a chance look at them dispassionately and come to some conclusions concerning them.

by Denis Murphy

South Bronx Churches Leadership Structure I did a term paper on South Bronx Churches that came to very positive conclusions about that organization. There is no need to repeat such praise here. What may be of use in Asia is a discussion of the internal organization structure the IVF employs in the South Bronx, and, I believe, in its other organizing centers throughout the United States. It is a structure that IAF has evolved over the years after reflecting on its work. There were a hundred other valuable lessons learned from SBC concerning tactics, training, attitudes, ways of dealing with politicians, etc., for which I grateful. The internal organizing structure is singled out because it may help solve immediate problems faced in Asia.

To understand the IAF structure, it may be useful to outline first the organization structure used in Asia and then contrast it with the IAF model.

In Asia, when the organizers are ready to enter and area, an effort is made to get a priest or religious figure, or some leading and trusted person to introduce the organizers to the people of that area. The person vouches for the organizers, but then the organizers take over and that key person takes a supportive, back seat role. The organizers go about their work, they go door to door, they find issues and leaders, initiate small actions and in time form small local associations. Later as the work develops with larger, more difficult issues, the small associations federate to solve them. At all levels the people elect their leaders and normally these are not the religious figures or professionals. It is a bottom up approach.

The IAF process is quite different. The IAF sees the churches, Catholic and Protestant, as the soundest, most enduring institutions in the communities. It approaches the clergy to interest them in CO. If it is successful, the priest or minister joins the IAF work with his or her church's total resources of history, people, funds, prestige, and access to power. IAF then works with the leaders the churches provide, training them and supervising their actions. A reader might be reminded of the 16th Century when a church could win over a whole country if it could convert the king. In the IVF model there are no permanent elected officers. A strategy Team composed of clerics and poor people makes the important decisions about action and personnel. In SBS there are six clerics on the 15 person Team. The clerics can have tremendous influence because they are usually forceful, articulate persons and the lay people are their own parishioners. It is a top-down organizing process. At times the clerical influence may be especially strong, for example, at the beginning of the work. In the first approach, in what can be called a "door to door" approach, the organizers put together both the building blocks and the building itself. In the IAF approach the building blocks, the churches, already exist and IAF concentrates on the building itself. There are advantages in the IAF approach that give hope it could useful in certain areas of Asia:

1. It is economical. Only one or two organizers work with South Bronx Churches (SBC).
In ACORN another organizing group in the South Bronx that uses the "door to door" approach there are ten organizers, though they cover the same area and issues as SBA. The saving is possible because the churches are already organized units with their own recognized leaders, motivation and discipline. The IAF organizers don't start from scratch.

2. The IAF model has few organizers, but it demands a very high caliber of organizer.
It demands older, more experienced and usually better educated persons than other CO groups do, since the entire organizing effort rests on a few shoulders. In Asia there are increasing financial constraints which work against large staffs. Also there happen to be a number of older experienced COs who fill the IAF requirements for COs.

3. Not having poor people as elected officers avoids problems of factionalism, petty jealousies, financial risk and transience. Clerics who spend decades in an area give grate stability and integrity.

4. In the concrete little may be lost of popular participation or input. In ACORN and SBC the same issues down to the same detailed solutions are undertaken and the size of rallies is about the same, indicating equal poplar participation.

5. IAF judges, it seems, that while their structure may not be perfect, it is the best that can reasonably be expected. It is a practical solution to knotty problems.

On the down side it is not easy at times to find a group of religious willing to enter into partnership with IAF or any other organizing group. IAF puts all its eggs in the clerical basket, so if the priests and ministers break with it, the damage can be great.

Some would argue that the powerful clergy presence limits the actions the group might undertake, since the clergy are likely to be too cautious and controlled by higher church authorities. IAF claims this has not been a problem, and in fact, there seems to be no tactic, short of violence or racism, that the clergy of SBA would not endorse if they saw it as useful for poor. Does the IAF model fail to maximize the chances of developing local people into leaders by denying them roles as officers of the organization with overall responsibility? Does the presence of the religious limit the appeal of the organization for individuals and other organization? While he answer to both questions may be a nuanced "yes," this writer found no evidence one way or the other. Outside of the churches there are few partner organizations in SBC, though the organizers say they are eager to have labor unions, coops, housing associations and other bodies join SBC. Maybe it is seen as too churchy. The door to door model has problems of its own attracting partner organizations.

The old problems

A. Cyclical fat and lean seasons.

Experience in Asia has been that CO work rarely goes smoothly for more than a few years, and then it seems to unravel: the work slows down, people lose interest, leave or fight with one another; issues drag on and on without solution; the problems themselves grow more complicated; good organizers leave for other work and the new ones are not able to keep the key people enthusiastic and hard at work; people, even very needy people, dont seem interested in working together, and people that once worked together collapse into separate stand-offish groups.

Organizing work in the U.S., has its own lean-fat cycles. Even Saul Alinsky's Back of the Yards and The Woodlawn Organization have had their ups and downs. In Asia we blamed ourselves when lean times came, and failed to look into the political, social and economic factors that may have had a hand. It isnt enough simply to try harder when the causes of the downturn lay elsewhere. We looked into the larger society for reasons for our problems, but not in a systematic way. Most of the time we simply berated ourselves and missed chances to preserve our strength and equanimity till better times returned.

There has been the same pattern of fat and lean times in the South Bronx. One priest who has been active with SBC for years said, SBC is the best we have, but no Alinsky operation has ever really succeeded in New York.?He thought New York was too big, too complicated and multi-tiered. He suggested the causes for hard times were independent of the organizers.

It will be useful to review in an Asian context the thesis of Richard Cloward and Frances X. Piven (Poor Peoples Movements) that there are only scattered times when organizing can flourish. In the U.S. these were in the Depression years and again in the 1960s when society was sufficiently shaken out of its usual complacency, when societal institutions were thought to be unreliable and ordinary working people lost faith in their own values, etc. It isn't necessary to accept all the Cloward-Piven thesis to see its merits, namely that some eras encourage organizing and others discourage it, independent of anything individual organizers do. The trick is to know where in the cycle the organizing work is.

Asian COs can also benefit by looking into the relation between what is called by some social scientists social capital?and good organizing. Mark Warrens unpublished manuscript on IAF work in San Antonio, Texas, Bare Bones Rattling, is a very useful text to use in discussions. Basically Warren says good organizing is possible when the people being organized have shared values, habits of cooperation, even at the inter-household level, a clear sense of their identity and some permanence in an area.

The mystery of human motivation often puzzles organizers. One priest told an anecdote to describe his inability to motivate poor people he had worked with for years, and to understand their apathy. He once called a meeting in a broken down apartment building that was half burned out, loaded with addicts and condemned by the city. A few families, some with children, still lived there. He went around the building gathering people for the meeting and found one Hispanic woman weeping over a TV soap opera. There she was, her children half wild, the building liable to burn down any hour and instead of coming to our meeting, she was weeping over some start divorce. How to understand her or how to help her I didn't know,?the priest said.

Organizers can find answers to some motivational problems in the psychology literature. More about the role of the social sciences later.

B. Lack of Unity.

The writer was able to meet persons involved in at least eight church related organizing efforts and two non-church groups. There are at least two or three times that number of organizations active in the South Bronx. Unfortunately they rarely if ever cooperate, and know almost nothing about each other beyond the most simplistic stereotypes. An ACORN official told us, I know SBC is in the area, but I dont know what they do.?They do the very same things as ACORN. Priests who worked with People for Change, an organizing effort of the churches that preceded SBC, claim they are unaware of what SBC is doing. Separately the organizations have done good work, but its hard to argue they have turned the Bronx around. For example, members of SBC say the education system and the public hospitals are no better now than when SBC started, though both issues have been taken up by the organization. A priest connected with Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition said the level of drugs in his area is as great as ever. Is it hard to believe that the lack of unity among the CO groups has weakened their impact? They go one group at a time to politicians to demand change and they receive piecemeal solutions.

One can only imagine what City Hall would do if all the clergy and the CO groups with all their members and supporters descended on it one day with concrete demands.

The same situation exists in the CO world of Asia; the factors that divide the groups appear to be the same - competition for money, headlines, recognition, giant egos. These may be serious concerns, money, for example, but something is awry when these issues rather than objective needs govern decisions. Outsiders shouldn't be too critical: recognition and a small degree of fame are a small reward in a field that doesn't pay high salaries. Also, rivalry in the not-for-profit sectors is endemic, not just among CO, as officials at the United Nations will tell any inquirer.

When a person is in the midst of organizational struggles, it's hard to be objective and work for the common good or even appreciate the need of a common effort. It is easier when a person is outside their own area, as the writer was in the South Bronx, to see the tragedy that organizational competition really is, how ultimately it benefits the rich and powerful.

There should be the basis of solution in the fact that COs are expert in the evaluation and uses of power and very pragmatic. If for no other reason than that they need each other, the groups should cooperate, as politicians or governments do, even when they have little use for the other party.

One task to be undertaken in the Philippines will be to get groups to look at the whole issue of cooperation. Its just possible that at the right time in the right process some progress may be made.

At a very recent meeting SBC organizers shared their plans to unite 50-75 South Bronx organizations into an overall entity that could offer a united powerful force for winning change in the peoples situation, especially in the economic area, which SBC believes will become ever more central to its work.

C. The Knowledge Gap.

The writer has been interested for years in the relationship between social action and the spirituality of people. Others of course are interested; in Asia they are mostly Christian, but include some Buddhists and Muslims. The advantages of linking social action and spirituality are immense. In Manila the largest CO march drew 10,000 people. It took weeks of preparation. On Good Friday each year, without any advertising, three hundred thousand men come to carry the statue of the Black Nazarene. They are mostly poor, the very people needed in the CO work.

The writer asked several South Bronx priests and others about this matter. Two said that Hispanics personalize religion, so it leads to private devotions or very traditional devotions, not to social concerns. Such an answer merely restates the problem: why do they separate religion and social action? Others said they had thought about it, but had no answers. Some had tried to initiate Basic Christian Communities to meld prayer and action, but they had not had much success. One priest suggested it took the traditional devotions hundreds of years to win their popular following and organizers shouldnt expect people to move soon to new approaches in any big numbers. In brief, the priests and others had no answers anymore than was had in Asia.

It may be this gap in our knowledge maybe only a symptom. If we don't understand the social action-spirituality nexus, which should be accessible to church related social actionists, is it possible we dont understand other major problem areas that underlie our work? Do organizers have a sufficiently scientific grasp of peoples motivation, for example, why some join CO movements and others do not? Or are they as puzzled as the priest sited earlier? Do organizers know what people really desire, what they are willing to sacrifice, how hard are they willing to work to sustain the organizing? Do they know what constitutes leadership among the poor? Do they have an adequate scientific grasp of the political, sociological and economic laws that operate? All of these questions are matters explored in the social sciences. Do we use these areas of expertise sufficiently?

CO proceeds with what we can call a gentlemant knowledge of the sciences. More is needed. There is a need for more research into matters of social capital, organizational theory, the economic and political potentials of poor people, and many other related matters. Often the research has already been done and it is a matter of locating it and judging if it is useful in certain contexts. An effort has to be made along these lines. This broad resolution needs sharpening, which can be done if there is a shared desire to look for a more scientific grasp of human affairs.