Jim Field (left), Director of Organizing at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, says he’s from the Alinsky generation and gives me a copy of the 1972 Playboy interview. He says lots of the first wave of organisers had taken vows of poverty and chastity which made the life easier. Jim was studying to be a Catholic priest but had been inspired by St Damian (who helped lepers) and took an internship at a school of nursing in 1968. That summer he dated an African American woman and the couple were stunned by the hostility everywhere they went. Jim became active in the civil rights movement and realised that his relationship was still illegal in 11 southern states. Over that summer he moved from a focus on service to a drive to change the world. He got involved in student politics but quickly became frustrated with the idea you could make change through argument. He came to grad school in Chicago and was signed up for an internship at Yellowstone. Then a friend of his met Alinksy and was “shaken up like a snow-dome”. For the first 15 minutes Alinsky had completely ignored him and they only spoke for 45 minutes but he was still twitching three days later! So Jim went to see an Alinsky assistant who talked about “democracy and social justice as a vibrant, live thing in a way I’d never heard”. So he dumped Yellowstone and took an organizing internship in Cicero (Al Capone territory, a very conservative town and the place Martin Luther King said scared him more than anywhere). Jim took a group to the town hall about a highway issue and the leaders were treated very badly. These were people with ‘America – love it or leave it’ stickers on their fridges but they went through transformation after that experience. Jim says the big change always comes when people “get in the river”.

The Coalition is 30 years old and is the only non-profit in Chicago combining law, policy and organizing elements. They have worked on the Sweet Home Chicago campaign to achieve the first low income housing ordinance in 20 years. They have five organizers – three in shelters/SROs, one working with an ‘outside base’ (schools, churches, etc) and one working with a state-wide network. Jim has worked in lots of different areas and talks about always adjusting to the environment. He criticises the ‘rigidity’ of some schools of organizing which remind him of religious sects – “we have the one true ideal; everyone else is going to hell!” He emphasises celebrating the victories – it’s a long way from getting in the pool to winning a medal so you definitely need an ice-cream after the first width.

Then I met Ed Shurna (right), the Coalition’s Executive Director, who also has 44 years of organizing behind him. Both Jim and Ed gave me lots of good advice for the English CO programme including, controversially, to “focus on the really good ones, don’t feel you need to spread your attention ‘fairly’. Instead develop success models that the others can aspire to.”

Back at the El, I took the brown line to Kimball to meet with Jenny Arwade, Director of Albany Park Neighbourhood Council, another inspiring on-the-ground hub of organizing. Formed in 2000, APNC is funded by the band of four (Woods Fund, Wieboldt Foundation, Needmor and CS Mott) as a multi-issue community-based organization focused on organizing and youth development to build power. “No matter what issue, if a community member can bring others and is committed to spend some time on it, we will work with them.” There were horror stories about emergency health care with the uninsured being either turned away or sued for charges. APNC developed demands from talking to community leaders about their direct experience and targeted the local hospital. They won policy reforms around translation, making sure people are aware of the charity care forms, the appeals process. They have also worked to highlight the impact of foreclosures on renters after one of their leaders got a 30-day notice and tenants were treated badly by banks and the sheriff. They won a moratorium and have now achieved policy that banks have to sign an affidavit that they have respected tenants’ rights.

Albany Park is very diverse with a large undocumented population. APNC started with outreach through door-knocking but then became institution-based, bringing together churches, mosques, universities, to hold ‘community dialogues’. The Founding Convention involved 1,200 people, truly reflecting all the differences, agreeing priorities across the whole community and ready to hold politicians accountable on a deeper level. Trusting relationships between institutions at this scale can achieve major victories, especially if you “build deeply locally and then form coalitions across the city and the state”.

Jenny says they have now realised the limitations of institutional membership and are looking to build an individual base on top. Institutions move slowly and their comfort levels are more difficult to challenge because they’re thinking about all their relationships and reactions. While a school may be a member, the young people may be disengaged from school so individual membership can deepen the relationships. The same with churches. APNC now has 300 individual members. The young members worked hard to decide on the protocols, the dues and the expectations.

“The history of organizing is about choosing models, but we don’t.” Jenny describes how door-knocking starts the process, surfacing superficial neighbourhood issues but igniting the passion that will get people to a meeting. A follow-up 1on1 creates a more personal relationship, ask where they’re from, what’s their experience, learn about them to understand more deeply. Take care only to ask about issues they will know/understand. On some issues wait until there’s been more political education. For APNC personal stories lead to issues, strategies, policy ideas, and deep bonds between people. It’s all about the leadership capacity of everyday people to change power that impacts on their lives. Jenny is clear that leaders need to be bringing people in, helping newer leaders. “You’re not a leader if you just want to speak out, if you’re not willing to door-knock and help others build those skills.” Get over the ‘leader’ barrier – reflect on small victories, analyse the problem, reflect on where the power was, that you made a difference, that you brought people in. This in itself is leadership.

Then I had the privilege of meeting Juan Cruz (b 1988) who came to Chicago from Mexico City aged 11. Thoughtful and inspired by the Zapatistas in Chiapas, he had high expectations of school but was disappointed and began getting into trouble. He came across APNC in 2003 when friends were coming to do their community service learning (40 hours of community work mandatory in the Chicago Public School system). Juan came to a training at APNC and was excited to find a place to talk about power issues and root causes.

He started working on a campaign for after-school resources. The old police station was vacant and the group wanted to turn it into a ‘teen centre’. “But there was a lot of politics in between”. There was a lot of support, including from the police, but the aldermen had other plans for the available funds. Looking back, Juan says they went in under-informed, with a lack of expertise about buildings, and therefore vulnerable to flannelling and divide-and-conquer tactics [which made me think with a smile of how revolutionary our Asset Transfer Unit is in its own way]. They’ve been building alliances since then and are better able to stand firm [another way Locality supports members].

Juan became a part-time youth intern at APNC when he graduated high school and after graduating from college he became full-time staff. He had wanted to be a teacher but “now I’ve been in organizing it’s hard to think about leaving. It’s like the Matrix. You can’t go back to not recognising what’s happening.”

My last night in Chicago deserved a deep-dish pizza-pie so I headed to Pizzeria Uno for 1,920 delicious calories (you can look it up online!). Then I walked home to take the edge off my gluttony and experience the lovely Michigan bridge at night. I loved the Wrigley building – a marvellous slab of white grandeur for a chewing gum company – and the Chicago Tribune (the WGN stands for World’s Greatest Newspaper!).

The last two days of my trip (18/19^th Nov) involved even more rushing around, but thankfully more of it on the brilliant El trains/subway rather than Shanks’ pony.

First up, Phil Nyden at the Centre for Urban Research & Learning at Loyola University, one of those academics that makes you acutely grateful for education, for allowing people like him to be working collaboratively with communities like those I’ve glimpsed in Chicago. He’s even done some work back here I discovered – for our own Locality member, Birmingham Settlement, which was founded in 1899 in partnership with Chicago’s Association House.

So we got talking and here are a few of my notes:

Why is the Government resourcing the Community Organisers programme? I try out Toby Blume’s theory that it’s to promote “creative disruption” to local vested interests, especially local authorities. Phil says Johnson’s War on Poverty in the 1960s was a federal intervention aimed to deal with city political systems that were “ossified at best, more often corrupt”. Of course the cities didn’t like it and they closed it down. Those community organisers became heads of non-profits. There was a demographic shift as cities became majority black and a political shift as they elected their first black mayors. The economy was doing well but the cities were starved of resources. Federal government intervention and $$$ have made a difference. But the credibility of elected officials is now at its lowest ebb ever.

One of the important aspects of ABCD (asset based community development) is its focus on land, buildings and money (the things that power is made of). For as long as the community sector spends all its energies on direct service provision, on social support, and on mitigating the impacts of decisions about land, buildings and money, it will never have any power in the proceedings. The sector often does have ‘skin in the game’ but it always plays by someone else’s rules. For me, community organising is a way to make that ‘skin’ real – to bring the mandate to life through mobilising.

We talked about the common ground and differences between development trusts and community development corporations. This has come up over and over during the visit, although because I was focusing on community organising I didn’t explore it properly on the ground. From what I can tell, CDCs have a chequered history with highs and lows a bit too closely attached to mainstream politics and economics for my liking. I think that in general (and it’s a big generalisation) DTs are more independent, agile, community rooted, innovative, less able to rely on aldermen’s handouts or a widespread public programme. The common ground might be the focus on rebuilding the physical neighbourhood and making real gains in facilities and amenities, as part of a commitment to social and environmental justice.

But Phil says CDCs were riding high but never super-strong and many have collapsed. They were focused on affordable housing and understood how to do it in a rising market. What to do with no resources? In El Salvador “NGOs are doing stuff with virtually no resources, stretching super-minimal budgets”. How to tame gentrification? Set up the asset lock when the neighbourhood is down, then buy and build – not housing for the poor but housing people will want to stay in. CURL works on diverse, stable neighbourhoods. Phil says the lock-in has to be founded in organising as well as legal. How do you get the community organising to feel good enough that people will do it over and over – “every generation has to win it again. ”

What about settlement houses? Gentrification is an issue for them too. Should they stay in an area once the low-income people who need them most have been displaced? Provide mixed income services? Or sell and move to where the poor have gone? Association House moved, so did Hull-House. Others stay put and serve a wider catchment of low-income people throughout satellite services.

Just like everybody I met in the States, Phil gave me loads of contacts and resources – only his were sociology books and I feared I may be overweight! But the best thing he gave me was just two words – “grounded theory”. This is apparently a legitimate sociological approach in which “you go in as a trained sociologist [or a trained organiser] with no hypothesis, just a sense of what’s going on, and set out to discover.” All day that resonated. It seemed to fit with the wilful unpredictability of organising, the refusal to bring messages, the rejection of specified outcomes. We need to make this case to our foundations – the grounded theory of grant-making!

I zipped back down the red line to meet Jim Field at the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless on East Lake (new offices, fab donated furniture). Jim told me his story – disarmingly. I’ll write it up for the next post (rather than rushing this one).

A/D/J – Congress Plaza Hotel where I was staying. Hotel workers have been on strike since June 2003

B – Ogilvie Transporation Centre – where I met Ken Rolling from Community Learning Partnership at 9am

C – Hull-House museum on South Halsted, a museum in the original building of one of the first (and probably the most famous) settlement houses in the US

E – Navy Pier – the world’s most visited pier

F – La Salle/Randolph where I met up with Regina to join the Occupy Chicago day of action

H – the end point of the Occupy march (much more meandering than shown here)

I – Berghoff’s where Regina took me for some much-needed dinner

Total walked according to Google: 11.4 miles

No wonder my poor old boots needed re-heeling when I got home! But every step of it worthwhile.

The Community Learning Partnership is actively ‘field-building’ for community organizing. It aims to create both a pathway in Community Change studies and a workforce for change and social justice. CLP has been sponsored by Community Catalyst, a large non-profit organisation based in Boston that helped achieve the universal healthcare in the state of Massachusetts (more like proper public healthcare than anything else in America).

With particular focus on attracting people of color, CLP aims to equip people with the knowledge and skills for whole range of community jobs (as well as transferable to many different fields). CLP is working in four US sites at present: Minneapolis, Los Angeles South Central, de Anza College in San Jose, and the New York City Center for Neighborhood Leadership (see my NYC blogs). CLP works with community colleges to create certificates and/or degrees at AA or BA level and is developing open-source curriculum content, using a collaborative approach between academics and grassroots organizers. Ken is clear that the content must focus on individual identity – who am I, who am I in this community, who am I in the world – and the political/social economy of each specific place. The learning goals and tools may be the same – critical thinking, analysis, research, questioning how change comes about – but the rooting of learning in specific context and culture is all important. That’s why they are keen to create open-source approach where anyone (a professor, a school-teacher, a community organizer) can pull down ‘chunks of code’ (ie learning plans, resource materials, pedagogy) to create their own course.

Next I wended my way to Hull-House museum, housed in the 1854 building that Jane Addams and Ellen Gates-Starr turned in 1886 into the most famous settlement house in the US and now part of the University of Illinois.

Rattling round my mind was Lord Glasman’s contention that community organizing arose in hostility to the settlement movement. He says that Saul Alinsky organised the Back-of-the-Yards in direct opposition to the local settlement house (ie University of Chicago Settlement House). Having heard some of the University’s local story earlier in the week from the Caroline Ouwerkerk of the Uni of Chicago Urban Network, I can imagine (though I have not researched it) that at the point Alinsky arrived the settlement may have been ‘part of the problem’. But it was wilfully unfair of Glasman to trash the whole movement in naked bitterness.

In his 1969 foreword to Reveille for Radicals Alinsky castigates the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council that he had created 30 years earlier for “casting their lot with the Have’s… they are part of the city’s establishment and are desperately trying to keep their community unchanged… so with all victorious revolutionary movements that trade in their birthrights for a mess of property, power and the grand illusion of security.” The BYNC website gives a different view of their own change from the confrontational Alinsky style to focus on community and economic development. Who is to say what is right in a given place at a given time? One of the best lessons from this trip has been the way organizing groups and social service organisations have spoken of each other with respect. They draw clear and reasonably objective distinctions between these two approaches to social justice and accept that both are necessary. Indeed sometimes the same organisation will do both – using their social services to meet immediate need while organizing remains at the heart of their approach to making change.

Anyway, times change, I told myself, no doubt the Victorian foremothers and forefathers of the settlements were patronising philanthropists and as with all collections there is quality and there are the rest. Chicago in the 1930s is not the same as 21st century England.

But a couple of hours of intensive study in the Hull-House museum would puncture even Glasman’s scornful prejudice. The enormous dedication and imagination of Jane Addams – her pacifism, feminism, radical inclusiveness and the sheer achievements of Hull-House in terms of improving human lives – were all put in perspective when I picked up Elizabeth Dilling’s The Red Network: a “who’s who” and handbook of radicalism for patriots from 1934. This sly, vitriolic 350 pages of bile slates Addams and others involved with Hull-House. Would Alinsky have put himself alongside Mrs Albert W Dilling, who has Gandhi top of her list of ‘red propagandists’? I don’t think so!

Thomas Paine’s “Call me rebel” quote (that Alinsky appropriates) could have been invented for Jane Addams.

“Let them call me a rebel and welcome,

I feel no concern from it; but I should

suffer the misery of devils, were I to

make a whore of my soul…”

She was a purist, refusing to help directly with some union activity because it broke her pacifist principles, but in the best tradition of flexible, pragmatic womankind, she let the union organizers meet at Hull-House nonetheless.

Having sucked the place dry, I made my way to the other surviving building, the old Dining Hall now Gift Shop, but was turned away at the door for the unforeseen reason that Mayor Rahm Emmanuel was ‘making an announcement’ in there at the time. Instead I bought a copy of Jane Addams ‘Twenty Years at Hull-House’ and slunk away.

I walked ‘home’ via a sandwich and then set out again for Navy Pier. I’ll do a proper blog about this under the Seaside theme of my schizoid life. For now let’s say a) it’s a long walk, b) it’s 9 times the size of #hastingspier and c) I was surprised and delighted at the relevance of the conversation with Steven Haemmerle, Exec Vice President of Navy Pier Inc. For now, here’s the beautiful view of the city from the pier.

Regina had called to invite me to the Occupy Chicago event. As I walked back from Navy Pier along Grand Avenue, she was with a load of people sitting on LaSalle Bridge. 46 people, wearing blue shirts so they could be easily identified, were led away and ‘ticketed’ by the police in a choreographed performance. The others moved south and I joined them at the Board of Trade on LaSalle. For a while it felt like not much would happen; then people broke (fairly gently) through the (rather laid-back) police lines and ‘occupied’ the street, jumping for joy in the way young men do best. Then we chanted some more and were encouraged to join up around the building. But then we were on the move. And a good thing too given how b****y cold Chicago gets. So we moved, and every few yards Regina would comment that she was surprised and impressed that we were able to close these downtown streets. As we passed the Congress Plaza Hotel to chants of ‘Congress Hotel, Shame on you’, I hung my head and battled with my contradictions. When I spoke to the strikers next day I simply listened and apologised.

We finally got to Grant Park, where Occupy Chicago has been trying to pitch tents for the past 2 months but kept off by 100s of arrests each time. Here was a classic moment of the movement. A group of mainly female organizers leapt up onto the steps at the foot of the Native American Spearman statue, the usual gathering point, and called for a General Assembly or at least a People’s Mic to decide what to do next. A group of mainly male rebels walked away backwards shouting “Let’s take Michigan”, meaning the Avenue rather than the State of course. We all went with them, and fairly quickly it became clear that this was the police expectation. Regina spoke to a moustached police head honcho, who looked (to me) like something out of a western, congratulating him for good policing, which was certainly true. She said he has been at previous events and they have all been calm. This was my 11^th walking mile (not to mention the slow museum trail round Hull-House) so we quit and Regina took me for some much-needed sustenance at Berghoff’s, Chicago’s 100-year old German restaurant. It closed as a family restaurant in 2006 but was re-opened by the Berghoff Catering & Restaurant Group.

Here’s some coverage of the Chicago event:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2011-11-17/news/chi-occupy-chicago-demonstrators-block-lasalle-street-bridge-20111117_1_demonstrators-block-protesters-loop-streets

http://www.wgntv.com/news/wgntv-occupy-chicago-occupy-chicago-crowd-block-lasalle-street-bridge-in-chicago-20111117,0,1695576.story

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/11/17/occupy-chicago-protest-takes-over-lasalle-street-bridge/

Next post: Grounded Theory (Phil Nyden, Jim Field, Albany Park Neighborhood Councl)

After a misleadingly warm day yesterday, now it’s sunny but cold like Chicago’s meant to be.

Today’s dollops of inspiration come from

• Jeff Pinzino at National People’s Action (NPA)
• Joanna Brown, Logan Square Neighbourhood Association
• Malcolm Bush, formerly of Woodstock Institute, a contact through the world of community finance.

Founded by legendary organizer Shel Trapp and neighbourhood activist Gail Cincotta, NPA is 40 years old. It emerged from the experience of ‘panic peddling’ (unscrupulous real estate agents frightening white people into selling their properties cheap in advance of black in-migration and then selling them to black families at inflated prices) and ‘red-lining’ (banks drawing lines on maps to exclude neighbourhoods from all lending). A network of community organizations nationally pressed for the Community Reinvestment Act which forced banks to disclose the geography of their lending and threatened fines or loss of certification if they failed to lend in poor neighborhoods. This has released trillions of dollars up to 2008, although since the crash the relationship with CRA compliance officers has deteriorated dramatically.

NPA currently has 29 affiliated organisations. Unlike some networks that require a single fixed model of organising, NPA encourages a variety of approaches. While all its members are independent organisations, they represent a range including door-to-door, church-based, immigrant worker centres, rural areas, and some that are primarily electoral though not partisan. All of them must be legitimately democratic, run by the people they serve. They share common ground in building power and taking action. Some members use multiple approaches such as advocacy, social service, policy development as well but organizing is always central to their work.

After many years as a training provider (5-day retreats), NPA is currently revamping its training curriculum, rethinking what it means to train organizers in the 21st century. This focuses on:

• base-building (both face to face and online)
• alliance-building (particularly long-term relationships that go beyond coalitions for specific campaigns)
• narrative and communications (a strategic approach to consistent story-telling). Until two months ago the story was all about deficit-cutting. Then it shifted to the 99% and became about fairness, the fact that people are hurting and that the fault lies with Wall Street rather than the Government. Although the eviction of Occupy Wall Street is underway, ‘you can’t evict an idea whose time has come’. A lot of NPA folk are involved with Occupy – eg. they presented to Occupy Chicago their proposed action to disrupt the mortgage bankers event. The question is: how can the organization contribute to the movement? The ability to stay for the long haul and to get the stories of local communities into that narrative. Regardless of who is in the parks, what they are speaking to affects people in communities all over.
• Electoral work – one place to build power. NPA is a charitable non-profit allowed to encourage civic engagement through voter registration and ‘get the vote out’ though not to endorse candidates.

Misc Insights

As with many of the organisations I met, NPA’s board does the minimum – focusing on organisational sustainability – while decisions about issues and actions are made by the wider membership.

Funding – nationally there are a handful of foundations that support this work (CS Mott, Ford, Open Society, Atlantic Philanthropies). The lion’s share of NPA members’ funds come through these routes. The dues base is usually around 10-15%, with a similar proportion coming from fundraising events and individual donors. Some organisations take some government money, usually for noncontroversial programmes connected to their organizing. NPA itself is 95% foundation funded, with the remainder from donations and conferences. Training tends to be break-even.

I asked whether students seek accreditation. The answer was no. “Credibility comes from community organizations that see it as useful.” (‘Accredibility’?)

Back on the Blue Line northeastwards to meet Joanna Brown who runs the ground-breaking education organizing for the Logan Square Neighbourhood Association. LSNA is 50 years old and currently has 44 member institutions, including 10 schools. Their focus on parent leadership has developed over several years into a holistic approach ranging from parent mentors to the ‘Grow Your Own Teacher’ programme. They recruit welfare mothers, including many immigrants, who undertake a week-long training that emphasises they are already leaders at home and can be leaders in the school and the wider community. These parent mentors work in the classroom for 2 hours a day. After 100 hours they receive $600, which was set as the threshold above which you have to report earnings to the IRS. This approach opens up involvement beyond traditional volunteering parents. Those in the programme are seen as bridges to other parents. LSNA also run an Americorps programme which hires experienced parent mentors as tutors for the 8-10 children who are furthest behind. They work 20 hours a week (700 hours a year) and get a stipend of $4,000 plus food stamps and medical cards. All the parent mentors (10-25 per school) are hired in September and train as a cohort. Each school team meets weekly and once a month all 150 of them meet together to address big issues like the lengthening of the school day. At the start of each year LSNA runs a neighbourhood-wide workshop which includes their other organisers and leaders (immigration, housing, etc). The programme respectfully uses culture and family in a system that devalues both and promotes mutual understanding. The parents learn that the teacher’s job is hard. Teachers realise that parents are an asset.

One of the first outcomes of the organizing was the development of the first after-school community centre in partnership with the school principal who was determined to get her building opened after 4pm in defiance of arcane union rules. Now there are four more of these in the programme and around 100 altogether in Chicago.

The progression routes for the programme are extremely impressive, stretching from true ‘entry-level’ roles to a full professional qualification as a teacher with all kinds of opportunities in between. Parent mentors often get work in the community centres, or as teacher aids, security or cafeteria workers. They have the opportunity to progress to the Americorps programme. 71 of them are studying or have graduated as bilingual teachers. Many of the LSNA staff that Joanna introduced me to started as parent mentors.

From the perspective of women’s empowerment there are amazing outcomes every time. “The school doors are opened up. They walk around like they own the place! Many go from very shy or depressed to being able to speak to elected officials in Washington.”

Schools are the new churches – the logical place to do organizing/social services/community-building work in local communities. They are also, of course, the subject of fierce and highly politicised debate that matters to large numbers of people from the Mayor and School Board to the most vulnerable families and children. Joanna told me her fears for the 400,000 kids in the Chicago Public School system, especially in the face of Charter schools that do not have to abide by the same rules (eg don’t publish scores).

I was still buzzing from talking with Joanna as I rushed back downtown to meet Malcolm Bush who gave me what the Americans would call ‘US Economics 101′ which was extremely useful and wide-ranging. We talked about banks and credit unions, business support, low-income housing and Community Development Corporations – the nearest equivalent to development trusts. He told me about the 24 CDCs in Cleveland, each getting $500k from their alderman, that for 20 years have put all their efforts into low-income housing for home ownership. That has collapsed so what now?

Almost as an aside we talked about how large employers in poor areas find it hard to recruit local people. The problems as presented by a hospital clinic and a bank in Cleveland are that they can’t find people who will a) turn up on time, b) look the customer in the eye, c) speak properly, d) show initiative. When they do find someone the fact that they’ve managed to get a job makes them by definition the most capable person in their household so whenever anything goes wrong they are called upon to deal with it. I described the detail of the parent mentor approach and we began to see an approach to ‘entry’ that is quite different from the usual ‘entry-level’ jobs on offer (which are usually full-time, low-paid, hard work, isolated). Instead develop an approach rooted in the mutual support of the cohort, starting with a couple of hours a day for larger numbers of individuals and including an organizing element that brings a wide range of other benefits. The more I think about this the more I like it…!

Next post: Hull-House, Navy Pier and Occupy Chicago

A beautiful sunny, warm day in ultra-civilised Chicago began with a wander in Grant Park. Everything takes just a bit longer than you expect because of waiting to cross the enormous roads. So then I hurried to the Metra to head southwards only to discover one of those things that everyone knows and no-one tells you: while the CTA El trains are superb and as frequent as London tubes, the Metra is a rarified form of transit for those people who don’t mind waiting 40 minutes for the next one! So I had to rush straight out and hurtle into a taxi

I met with Caroline Oewerkerk and Trudi Langendorf at the University of Chicago, pausing to take a quick pic in front of Frank Lloyd Wright’s building.

Caroline (pictured) manages the University of Chicago Urban Network, while Trudi is in charge of the Community Service programme that offers opportunities for students to learn in different ways, through placements rather than books. Michelle Obama was Executive Director of the programme in the early 1990s.

They described the deep and far-from-glorious history the university has in the South Side area. Caroline told me her own version of the legend of Woodlawn, famous in the history of organising and the subject of many dissertations including Caroline’s: The area went from 98% White to 98% Black over 20 years (1965-1985), lost 80,000 people and went from 60 grocery stores to 10. Alinsky united the Woodlawn community in opposition to UC’s plans to erect a giant fence between the Uni and the community. UC was lobbying for Woodlawn to be declared a slum and cleared which would enable the Uni to build on the land. The community united in opposition to form the Woodlawn Organization (TWO). They had great ideas but many didn’t come to fruition. They won the largest contract for federally subsidised housing but were simultaneously being investigated for embezzlement. Caroline argues it was unsustainable anyway because it focused too much on housing and campaigned against transportation. There are still many vacant lots in the area that were bulldozed but unbuilt. The neighbourhood continues to campaign against actions by the university such as the closure of the adult trauma center.

I know there are many ways to tell these tales [eg. see
http://wecanwoodlawn.community.officelive.com/aboutus.aspx to understand these were not the same organisations anyway] but whatever the details, both historical and contemporary – there is no doubt that the University of Chicago plays an ambivalent but important role in the story. It will always be remembered as doing sociology to the community (what we call ‘neighbourhood data mugging’). Its physical and social impact on the area is self-evident, though whether that’s ‘for the good’ is a question for local people and its complex implications are for historians with more time than me. I asked if the university has any way of listening to local concerns. There is an Office of Civic Engagement but this is “at a high level”. The general story is familiar to me from Deptford, SE London – a well-intentioned but paternalistic university, embedded in a poor neighbourhood, preaching radical anti-poverty in its sociology lecture halls while the estate management rides rough-shod…

Insights:

• Occupy Chicago – more conversation needs to happen between Occupy and the neighborhoods. There is organizing going on in neighborhoods but Caroline and Trudi felt there was a need to do more organizing between neighborhoods. We talked about bi-focal organisations, those that focus on the fine grain but also have the ability to look around, to share experience and build coalitions.

• We talked about Americorps and Public Allies. Michelle Obama was president of PA in Chicago. Caroline’s husband is currently doing the one-year Americorps VISTA (Volunteers in service to America) programme. It seems to me a great shame that this is not seen as a potential Welfare 2 Work programme, a route for people dependent on welfare to build useful skills and social networks that may help them into work in the future while being good for the neighbourhood in the meantime. In other words, like the Community Allowance.

So then I expressed back north to the Loop on the #6 bus to meet the fabulous whirlwind that is Regina McGraw of the Wieboldt (‘WEEbold’) Foundation and knew what my favourite funder would be like.

Wieboldt is 90 years old, founded by a German immigrant couple who owned neighbourhood stores. Their $2m is now worth $17m (even after the crash). Originally funded direct services but in the 1960s Regina’s predecessor Bob Johnson convinced the board, which includes four community members, to focus on organising. They look for a defined leadership development programme (not just learning by doing), evidence of local support, seeking public policy change, and ‘playing well with others’. Most grantees are neighbourhood based. The ‘product’ is leadership development because the working poor don’t get those opportunities AND public policy change AND sometimes self-help solutions like the Grow Your Own Teacher work done by Logan Square Neighbourhood Association. When organisers come to Wieboldt they usually know the issue they want to work on because they’ve already been doing the listening. Sometimes they come at an earlier stage, in which case they must have a clear plan but no predetermined issue.

Regina took me under her wing, sweeping me up to an event at Mercy Housing, a celebration of tenant leaders in SROs (single room occupancy – like our HMOs houses of multiple occupation). We were too late for the main event but got to meet some of the organizers, had a tour of the facility and a gripping lecture from one resident about the meaning of democracy. Two days later she called to invite me to the big Occupy Chicago event at LaSalle – she’s that kind of funder! The US equivalent of the redoubtable Julia Unwin.

Insights:

“The first wave of organising was by white men and it was a blood sport. Now there are more African-Americans, more women… The second wave knows how to do the web.”

“The big lesson in the US has been the vetting of people at the table. Can you depend on them to be speaking for a lot of people? You have to agree to the campaign and you have to have something to bring to it – ideas and fast talk are not enough. Organising is working class not middle class – it’s more important to get things done than to be polite. The Grassroots Collaborative is a successful ongoing organisation, the most diverse coalition across the whole city. To join you have to have a base (defined as two buses of people to a big meeting).” Another interesting model, particularly for Locality members, is that of Organisation of the North East – a very successful organisation in which social service agencies become members of ONE, giving access to their service users to become involved in organizing. This allows the agencies to support advocating for policy change by the grassroots – it gives them cover.

Next post: Chicago 2: More inspiration than I can do justice to (planning to write it up on the train to Birmingham tomorrow before returning fully to the real world of community organising and pier-saving in England!)

Just as it started to rain for the first time, I had the privilege of lunch with two of the private foundations that fund organising – Dave Beckwith from the Needmor Fund and Cris Doby from the CS Mott Foundation. I love the way people here, brimming with contacts, knowledge and resources, start instead with ‘who you are’. My version was all about how I came to do the work I do, which I thought was a very personal story but when I finished Dave gently corrected me by telling me he’s married with three children, with their ages and interests. I got the message and reached for the phone to show off my beautiful Eve. With that clarified we quickly moved onto the programme. Here were two people who have the big picture and understand both the detail and the sweep of the challenges facing the programme from the micro-management to the grand ambition and it was great to be told – “now we’ve met you we’re on your team, in your corner!”

Some insights…

We have to create the political will for change AND the infrastructure for people to own the process of change. People look at community organising and think it takes too much time, so they retreat to community engagement, consultation and the provision of social services. They’re missing the point.

Funders find it difficult to structure the grants to fund field-building and outcomes in parallel. Organising is less like a project and more like ‘Whack-a-Mole’! It is hard for funders to cope with the idea that the outcomes are not predictable until they are achieved. [Phil Nyden gave a good lead on this - 'Discovery by Grounded Theory' is a recognised sociological research approach that does not begin with a hypothesis but allows the trained sociologist (organiser]) to explore the field and respond sensibly to what emerges].

The leadership ladder is a series of circles. The core is the paid CO and a few others who talk about the work, the effort we’re organising, as ‘us’. The next ring are those who always come, the key leaders, co-creators or consistent participants who can be relied upon. Next are the people who come sometimes, and the outer ring is the wider community. In terms of measuring what’s going on, a lot can be gained by analysing these rings, who is in them (numbers, demographics), trends and movements between rings. People in the central rings are on a path of personal growth and transformation and the work must develop their leadership if it is to keep them interested, but just as crucial to keep open the entry points from ‘community’ to ‘come’ and from ‘come’ to ‘us’.

Cris got me to the bus where I got chatting to Chad, a food and nutrition journalist who kept me entertained all the way to Chicago. Along with Lauren the driver who reminded us at every opportunity that there was to be “no foul language on the bus, We don’t want anyone to be disrespected in that way.”

Driving out of Detroit as the sun set was another exercise in heart-break and bewilderment. How can all these massive buildings – along the river’s edge, many of them really beautiful, every one a reservoir of embedded energy – be so mistreated? It would be bad enough if it was just this vast swathe; knowing that this blight stretches across the whole city makes me furious (more so given the occasional ugly-as-sin newbuild, such as by the casino). As we draw into the Wayne State University area the empties disappear and within an hour we are at Ann Arbor where the University of Michigan creates a dull kind of bustling with neither the charm nor the horror of Detroit. The answers for Detroit are the same as the answers everywhere – positive action by local people who care enough to come together, to challenge themselves and the people with power to imagine a different future. “Another world is possible”.

Next post: Chicago

I was so delighted to get a call on Sunday morning from Rich Feldman of the Boggs Centre for Nurturing Community Leadership. He had received last night’s email and could meet me today and hoped that Grace may also be able to meet me. He sent over some reading, including a YouTube link to Grace’s message to Occupy Wall Street and a great list of contacts for the positive community in Detroit.

The Centre is in a house in east Detroit, in what would be a ‘nice neighbourhood’ if half the properties weren’t abandoned. Grace lives downstairs and is at the heart of a swirl of activity. Rich and I talked fast about their work and mine, checking out our respective positions in a way that reminded me of the sectarian shorthand of a Northern Irish introduction, finding lots in common in our commitment to local people building their own solutions. Then we went downstairs to meet Grace who was surrounded by paperwork, books, a laptop, busy preparing new prefaces to her book ‘The Next American Revolution’. Sharp as nails, warm as toast, born in the First World War but with a 21st century sensibility to match any bright young occupier, she was, of course, an inspiration. I wish my historian boss, Steve Wyler, could have been there. I wish I’d had a tape recorder to keep her voice. I wish i lived in Detroit so I could be part of her crowd. I loved her parting words – “until we meet”. I hope we do, and I hope I live like this when I am old.

Grace spoke about ‘visionary organising’ – focused towards people creating and owning their own solutions rather than only trying to influence the powerful. We talked about supporting local economies, how Locality members run all kinds of buildings and businesses, creating wealth in local communities and keeping it there.They are still buzzing from their Reimagining Work event. Recognising that this is what I have been trying to do for 10 years, I ran the Community Allowance past her. Although broadly supportive, her response reminded me how language divides us like the ocean. She asked how we would make sure it was ‘supportive rather than enabling’. The word ‘enabling’ was seen as negative, creating dependency. It’s like the term community development which here is completely associated with physical buildings. We’re back with the ess and the zee…

Back upstairs I showed Rich our Meanwhile report, ‘No Time to Waste’. Detroit’s empty property issues seemed to me way too big but Rich, like Kendall in New York, felt there was real potential in the approach, particularly around foreclosure. It would be great to see a Detroit massive on the meanwhile ning at www.meanwhile.ning.com.

So then I walked again. I kept hoping there’d be a bus but not really believing in it. I’d gone nearly three miles, past nearly 200 empty properties, before I saw it coming up

behind. I was nowhere near a stop but the kind woman driver saw the foot-sore hunger in my eyes and waited for me at the traffic lights while I ran to catch up. Not a single person on that bus was white. Some seemed more battered down than others but only the driver smiled.

It was only 3 blocks before I had to get off again but it was a welcome respite. Then another long walk up Woodward, passing in daylight the spaces that had unnerved me last night in the dark and certainly hadn’t got any prettier.

By the time I got to the Detroit Institute for the Arts I was tired out but a cup of spearmint tea and the superb collections revived me – among them my eclectic favourites Giacometti, Titian, Whistler, Van Gogh, and a beautiful 450BCE rider.

Then suddenly I was in Rivera Court surrounded by the Diego Rivera murals and remembering that one of the many takeaways Rich had loaded upon me was an article about this great Detroit artwork. I spent a good hour with it which felt like a cleansing, and was glad to have missed the Ford propaganda machine at Dearborn. I’ve got lots of good pics but here’s just one – I love it because it is the only panel that actually shows a car and it’s tiny – a little red thing about 2 inches across! The people and the work mattered so much more than the product.

At the exit door, the lovely Vanessa called a taxi for me and then looked after me while we waited for it long time. However mad this city is, the people of Detroit are adorable and they will win through. When I told Vanessa how scared I’d been on that long night walk, she said my angels had been walking either side of me. She was so convincing I can still see them now – seven feet tall, but one looks like her and the other like Antonio from the Motown Museum!

Next post: The Funders and a Bus to Chicago

Never let taxi drivers influence your view of a place! Their livelihood depends on scaring you out of your wits.

I already knew Detroit was a strange place but I was determined to give it a chance. As Jerry Herron, Director of American Studies at Wayne State University puts it “Nowhere else has American modernity so completely had its way with people and place alike”. So much so that some of the basics of civilisation have been removed – the car is so dominant that the only shuttle services from the airport are run by the car rental firms. There is no option but a taxi, and there is a man whose job it is to explain that and open the car door with great courtesy. Massive road-side ads implore the kindly to ‘DONATE YOUR CAR’ to veterans or mothers of toddlers or other needy and deserving folk. My driver explained that the depopulation of Detroit is a good thing because lots of the bad people (‘the welfare’) have left. He said he did not want to sound like a racist, he couldn’t be one because he’s from a minority, but that ‘African-American men have destroyed the city because they don’t care’. Then he told me how bad the crime is, how I shouldn’t go out or walk anywhere and certainly mustn’t catch buses. And then he dropped me off at the Renaissance Centre – a mini-city in a set of futuristic towers, an alien environment that brought home what London’s South Bank would be like if Coin Street Communitybuilders had not fought and won their struggle back in the early 1980s. It’s like a cross between an airport, a car showroom and a shopping mall in a luxury timeshare resort. But my room is on the 65th floor of the hotel tower with floor to ceiling windows looking out at Canada just over the river for the price of a Premier Inn on the Euston Road, so I shouldn’t complain.

I was just grumbling to myself about having to pay for wifi when I realised that the Motown Museum is closed on Mondays as well as Sundays so if I was going to make it I’d have to go right away. I hurried down the 65 floors and was bundled into a taxi by the red-coated doorman who had been told to look after me by my airport taxi-man.

Motown Museum at Hitsville USA, 2648 West Grand Boulevard – the best museum tour imaginable and, until Ben Stiller invites me to a sleepover at the Smithsonian, it’ll be the highlight of my museum experiences. A good video to kick off and the museum is well laid out but it was our guide Antonio who made it special. Incredibly knowledgeable, fast-talking, full of facts about the amazing story of Berry Gordy and the $865 family loan that turned into the mega-wonderful Motown. He also had us all singing along to the songs that punctuated his commentary, clapping our hands into the attic space to hear the echo that made the Motown sound, gasping at the couch where Marvin Gaye would crash out, the Baby Ruth candy bar that was Stevie Wonder’s favourite, the typewriter Martha Reeves used when she was just the secretary, the silver encrusted glove donated by Michael Jackson that was stolen but recovered when MC Hammer offered a $50,000 reward.

By the time we got into Studio A the magic was palpable. This old converted garage was a place of dreams. Antonio made us imagine it in the mid 60s when they only had a two-track so the chain-smoking Funk Brothers musicians, the hand-clappers and the foot-tappers all had to be in the room together with no air-con in case it spoiled the sound. He told us how a few months ago he gave the tour for Sir Paul Macartney who promised to get the old 1887 piano re-tuned and has lent them a brand-new Steinway to take its place in the meantime. For his grand finale Antonio got ‘the ladies’ on one side of the studio being the Supremes, hand on hip singing ‘Stop in the Name of Love’ and then the men doing the Temptations Walk and singing ‘My Guy’. I absolutely HATE singing and would normally squirm with shame. But I loved every second and so did everyone in that room. Maybe you can tell from the pic?! I wish I could have photographed the ladies… We even met Antonio’s mum at the very end!

Then suddenly we had exited through the gift shop, bought the t-shirt, and everyone else was off to their cars. I was faced with dark and scary Detroit where “the crime ain’t just muggings and robbery but murder and rape and all that”. I tried calling my Senegalese taxi driver who had brought me here but there was no answer. I set off walking and was immediately accosted by two separate degenerates. I hurried back to Hitsville USA, thinking I could wait inside but they were closed now. A smart black couple that had been on the tour were still outside so I talked to them. The guy was from Detroit and reassured me I could either get a taxi from outside the Henry Ford Hospital a few blocks away or walk on and go down Woodward which would be safe enough and leads due south all the way to downtown.

Well, reader, I walked… a total of 5.2 miles which took me an hour and a half and included some pretty stressful stretches of desolate roadside. If I hadn’t stopped smoking six weeks ago I’d have finished a pack tonight. The main reason it’s so bad is simply that there aren’t enough people and everyone drives. So the people that are out tend to be scarier, partly for their own protection no doubt. The vast open lots, half-lit underpasses, and the occasional small crowd of men outside a liquor store felt like an endurance test and it didn’t help when some weird scurrying in a rubbish bin turned out to be a large rat making its way between the inner bag and the outer grille. Not that rats are dangerous but they’re not good for the nerves! Anyway, eventually I arrived downtown which is definitely being regenerated with a lot more light and public realm improvements, and was completely taken aback by the sight of several dozen well-dressed white people making their way towards me in little clusters – they were on their way to the Opera House in their lovely dresses and bow-tie tuxes. I got lost for a while because the grid system had disappeared but eventually made my way to Greektown, which my airport taxi had said was ‘nice’. Mmm, it’s lively, bright and human-scale with roads no wider than most English high streets and a rash of neon signs announcing ‘Pegasus’, ‘Parthenon’ and ‘The Golden Fleece’. I ate in the latter, recommended by Rough Guide, and it was good and friendly and the pint of iced water was sublime after my trek.

Then I made my way back to the RenCen, passing a woman crooning to herself at top decibel and street guys cuddling up to the warm air vents (how come they have these NY-style vents when there’s no damn subway?). The alien RenCen environment managed to feel like ‘home’ after my adventures and I shot up to the 65th floor for a shockingly good river view with the lights of Canada’s casinos outshining the moon. On this side a multi-storey carpark is flanked by 1,500 further empty spaces while a small colony of nine cars huddles close to the base of the tower.

Tomorrow I’ll decide between a trip to the Henry Ford Museum at Dearborn or heading back 3/5ths of tonight’s walk for the double-bill of the Museum of African American History and the Detroit Institute of Arts. What I’d really like is to talk to some Detroiters, especially Grace Lee Boggs, the 95-year old widow of civil rights activist Jimmy Boggs. I read an interview with her about food farming in Detroit. When asked whether the city government would support large-scale urban agriculture she said “city government is irrelevant. Positive change, leaps forward in the evolution of humankind, do not start with governments. They start right here in our living rooms and kitchens. We are the leaders we are looking for.” I wish I’d done more to prepare the visit and/or that I was here for longer. But I’m off to Chicago on Monday and she’s probably too busy occupying somewhere…!

Up early to make my way to East Harlem where the Center for Neighborhood Leadership/Public Allies training would take place at the sparkly new Hunter School of Social Work building. The bright white atrium – incongruous in its scruffy, colourful surroundings – is due to become a gallery for local artwork. Upstairs in a classroom space the 10 CNL apprentices and their fellows from Public Allies gathered for their monthly joint training session. Hector Soto, the larger than life director of CNL, and Marissa Guiterrez-Vicario from Public Allies New York welcomed me with a gift of Paul Schmitz book Everyone Leads, launched just last week. Zera, CNL’s assistant director, arrived with the adorable 11-month old Sofia who took the whole thing in her stride.

Hector launched straight in, asking each of us to say one or two words about what “housing” means to us. SAFETY, SHELTER, SANCTUARY, COMFORT, REST & DREAMS, HOME, INTIMATE, ROOTS, CULTURE, A HUMAN RIGHT, A ROOF OVER YOUR HEAD, FAMILY, TRANQUILITY, WARM, PLACE TO KEEP YOUR THINGS. We discussed these in three groups and were asked to come up with 3 sentences that captured our thoughts. Almost everybody had spoken about housing as an ideal in contrast to the perceived hostility of the streets. Housing was a place of shelter where you feel secure and it is a human right to feel safe in the home. Stability and continuity were core ideals and yet… slowly everyone remembered that these are not common, and that in reality ‘housing’ is a business, whether run by private or public landlords, and the odds are rarely stacked in favour of the ideals we had discussed. We began to introduce the idea of ‘housing’ as a process, a verb, raising the question of whose responsibility it is to house others. The discussion included several very personal stories (“when I was young and rebelling my dad always said ‘there’ll always be a roof over your head here’”; “on the way here I overheard a woman shouting at her son, ‘if you leave this house don’t think you’re coming back’”). A series of dualities emerged – the physical/emotional nature of housing, its individual/collective aspects (surprisingly no-one had mentioned neighbourhoods when asked to respond to the word ‘housing’), the dream vs the reality, questions of process and questions of access. Overall I found this an excellent introduction – far more than the usual ‘ice-breaker’ it got people thinking deeply about the topic in preparation.

We then had a series of four speakers which Hector said was unusual and would have been too much except that they were all brilliant.

• Dave Hansell from the Association of Neighbourhood and Housing Development gave a gripping and useful overview of housing issues in New York City since 1974, from abandonment to affordability. Thirty years ago the City invested in private investors to rehabilitate buildings as long as they kept them rent-regulated for 30 years – that time is up now and 40,000 affordable units have been lost while a further 55,000 are at risk. In any case the housing lobby forced through loopholes in the regulatory system and 341,000 units left rent regulation 2001-2008. ANHD’s current focus areas are: locking in permanent affordability to future schemes and tackling predatory equity in which new landlords bought rent-regulated property with bank debt and then caused trouble for tenants to try to force them out so that they could redevelop the blocks at market values. This model has collapsed in the wake of the financial crisis, leaving many of the properties owned by banks unwilling to reduce the price to a level at which new owners might purchase.
  
• Ericka Stallings from the Initiative for Neighborhood and Citywide Organizing gave an excellent overview of organizing and voiced the relationship with the Occupy movement that has been a feature of all my conversations here. I loved the way she acknowledged that the decentralization of Occupy is alienating for traditional organizers – “never mind the opposition, we the progressives can’t wrap our minds round it so we can’t co-opt it” – and then joked that as she walked round the tent-door she was still saying “who is the person I can email?”
  
• Rolando Guzman from St Nicks Alliance made me wish I had another day in New York to get to see what sounds more like an English development trust than anything else I’ve come across. In the 1980s when New York was ‘a warzone of abandoned buildings’ there was a fire in a block in Williamsburg. Six families died and many others were left homeless. The St Nick’s pastor worked with local people to rebuild the block and manage it against drugs. Williamsburg was an ex-industrial zone with a gorgeous view (sounds familiar to London’s Thames-side communities). They confronted and campaigned, facilitated and built a stake-holding community that could understand and manipulate the tension between profit and need. 36 years later they own and manage affordable housing (including 1800 units for people with special needs) after-school programmes, business support. Rolando spoke of developing leadership, envisaging the community member in 10 years’ time in a decision-making position. 80% of their workforce has come through this route.
  
• Kendall Jackman from Picture the Homeless described the vacant properties count undertaken by 300 volunteers throughout NYC over this summer and mapped by supportive experts using inexpensive software that (with a bit of detective work) can track down the owners of each lot. In just one zip code (Central Harlem) the space in vacant buildings could house up to 17,000 people while 72 vacant lots could yield over 2,000 new apartments. Given the history of 30-year agreements in the 1980s that is causing so much loss of affordability right now, permanence is important so the focus is rightly on community land trusts and mutual housing associations. However, Kendall found the Meanwhile approach appealing, particularly in the case of foreclosures like the one that made her homeless while her old house remains empty and in limbo.
  

On a more prosaic note, I was slightly shocked to find that the programme does not provide any kind of lunch for the trainees. They have a lunch break and out come the sandwiches or they potter off to a local café. Take note ye well-fed Englanders…!

The afternoon session grouped the trainees around the different strategies for social change:

• Community organizing (recruit, train and mobilise people directly affected by problems to create systemic change that addresses the root causes of problems; build people power and the power of an organisation directed by its constituency; build constituent leadership skills; mid to long term; change/modify existing power structures)
  
• Social service (provide resources or skills to address immediate direct needs; primarily individual impact; usually short term; no real change in power structures)
  
• Advocacy (represent or work on behalf of the constituency; protect or obtain rights, goods, services, usually for special interest groups; create or respond to legislation, address elected officials and policymakers; medium to long term; structural power changes moderately due to changes in law and/or policy; educate the public, collaborate with researchers and lawyers, testimonial/lobbying)
  
• Community development
  [by which they mean physical development of new housing etc by community development corporations] (focus on building physical infrastructure, finance or construct housing, business parks etc; impact on individual and community; immediate to long term; moderate power shifts usually by building participation; work with agencies, funders and partners)
  
• Legislative/electoral change (use votes/running for office/candidates to pass legislation to create change; medium to long term; impact on communities, can engage communities; moderate change to power structures through community participation)
  

Each group chose a housing-related issue to consider from one of these perspectives and used the following questions to guide them:

Who will we serve? How will we serve them? What resources do we need and give? Who else cares about this? Who is against this? Who may be affected but is not involved? Who do we need on our team? Pros, cons, other considerations.

After maybe 90 minutes in their groups they were asked to report back – and what a call to order! It involved Hector doing La Bamba… say no more (I just wish I’d had the camera set to video)!

To be honest, feedback is never brilliant though it is important. I thought it was good that in each case the whole group stood up and reported rather than one poor volunteer from each. Zera kept it moving along: warm and coaxing, she insisted they manage the questions themselves. Baby Sofia is used to it all. She arrived in the world during a training session and she seems to have been to every one since!

I really enjoyed the training day and felt privileged to have met the CNL and Public Allies participants as well as the facilitators and speakers.

There are two additional aspects of CNL that are relevant to our thinking as we develop the Community Organisers programme in England:

• The Fellowship began life as a ‘mid career seminar’ to address the problem of burn-out and convince organisers to stay in the field. It became clear that there’s also need to develop and validate the skills and knowledge that organisers have built up that they can then take with them into other fields (including politics).
  

• The Strategic Assistance Unit, beginning to be known as the Collaborative, aimed to respond to requests for best practice, sign-posting, peer learning, to develop its own e-library and to see the bigger picture beyond the silos. Talking this through with Hector and later with various others I have met here, there is huge potential for an international, or at least trans-Atlantic approach – ‘organising without borders’ (although we’d have to decide on ‘ess’ vs ‘zee’ which might scupper progress forever if we’re not careful!)
  

Here’s my favourite picture. It’s got everything – dark night, bright lights, El Barrio restaurant vying with the 1 buck whopper, the ‘popular’ bank (sic) and the Loans R Us pawn shop, and the great combo of Beauty Supply, Gynecology and Dental!

Next post coming soon, in which I leave the Big Apple and land in Motor City…

On Thursday I went to see whether the original #Occupy is as well organised as Occupy London Stock Exchange, which I visited just before coming away on this US trip. I was much reassured by the similarities. Apart from the accents they have everything in common – the same focus on living democracy minute-by-minute, the same witty posters, the same cramped-up tents and workshop schedules, and always the dogs of the occupation looking on with their sad, loyal eyes. But most of all: open, friendly, peaceful people with the shared knowledge that they are on the big side of the 99%:1% dividing line.

From Wall Street to the Lower East Side, a neighbourhood that stole my heart as soon as I emerged from the subway into glorious sunshine. The perfect mix of grit and vibrancy, though suffering from not having had a development trust (community development corporation) to buy up properties and keep them affordable against the gentrifying tide.

Demaris Reyes introduced me to Good Old Lower East Side (GOLES). Another of the hosts for the Center for Neighborhood Leadership apprentice organisers, they are 35 years old next year and best known for tenant organizing focusing on housing, land use, economic justice and environmental public health. There are several aspects within these which each have their own organizer working with a series of steering committees made up of members of GOLES. They all come together into the organizing committee (they’re considering the name Tenant Union) for strategic planning and then the steering committees work to develop tactics and implementation.

Demaris was explicit about the links that keep coming up in conversation between social service, learning and organising. GOLES provide direct services “because the problems are immediate and urgent” but they see this as relationship-building rather than service for its own sake. They provide training – everything from workshops on technical issues (’10 things your landlord doesn’t want you to know’) to training for organizers and leaders, including outreach, listening, public speaking, campaign planning, political science and the vocabulary of change. And they do organizing, working with those directly affected to get to the root causes and build the power to make change happen.

In the CNL programme, unlike our Community Organisers, the host must identify an issue and a plan of work for the apprentice. Demaris decided that their CNL apprentice Nikita would focus on economic/financial justice. They had a successful campaign with a group of retail workers some years ago, winning a $1.4m settlement in back pay and union card neutrality. Nikita is starting again with outreach and one-to-ones, what are people interested in, what makes them angry, what do they want to know more about? In the early meetings she is asking what people think of #occupywallstreet? Do they feel part of it? Who is the 99% and why? She is base-building, finding a ‘population’ of her own (rather than cannibalising and overloading those of the other organizers. They will partner with a specialist organization to offer training that explores the financial practices that target low-income people of color, ensuring there is a ‘takeaway’ – “planting a seed and you don’t know where that plant is going to sprout”.

One emerging worry is the ‘lobbying designation’. If you meet with an elected official or attend a rally, if you spend more than $2,000 on this kind of work then you have to register and file quarterly reports on your activities – a burden Demaris perceives as part of the US crackdown on organizing.

After a great lunch which included meeting Hector at last, my next stop, a few blocks away was another neighborhood institution – much larger and 90 years older. Established in 1886, University Settlement was the first settlement house in the US, inspired by Toynbee Hall, the oldest Locality member (founded 1884). I met with Jennifer Vallone who oversees Project Home and had recently returned from the Locality Convention in Manchester.

As with Queens Community House, the scale was bigger than most English settlements – 20 locations, $21m pa budget, working in Brooklyn and Harlem as well as LES. Although individual programmes have community advisory boards, there is no membership and the main board is ‘bigwigs’ who have a ‘give or get’ role and don’t often meet in the LES neighborhood. We talked about another key difference from Locality members who are ‘community anchors’, supporting and hosting other delivery organisations in their buildings rather than delivering all the services directly. Jennifer had sometimes wondered if running the buildings wasn’t distracting from the true mission (a question I know Locality members make sure they ask themselves regularly).

The University Settlement approach to ‘organizing’ is that staff are encouraged to be involved in policy work that affects the neighborhood. They pick issues that span various service programmes – eg welfare, language services – and work on petitions, rallies, meetings etc. Every year they take a group to Albany to talk to elected officials about the annual budget-setting. Jennifer felt their impact on the budget may be small but the opportunities for personal and group development are significant.

We went to meet Melissa Aase in the main building which is almost entirely given over to children’s services, with all the liveliness and cute tiny furniture that brings, along with a mental health service in the basement where they employ their own psychotherapist. Melissa told me about the 50-year battle over the development of a nearby city block which was finally developed to include community facilities jointly owned and managed by University Settlement and the New York YMCA. One of the wonders of the here-forever nature of our movement is its sheer staying power!

Back in Queens I had dinner with Irma and her young cousin Julie, along with Mary who supervises QCH’s community organizers. We had a good talk about the perverse outcomes and contradictions of the welfare systems on both sides of the Atlantic, the way they create and reinforce terrible dependency and then blame the people with least power for being trapped. I introduced the idea of the Community Allowance. Supporting work that is transitional for the individual and good for the neighbourhood. A win-win-win approach that helps individuals, local communities and wider society, rethinking what ‘work’ could mean in society. A million miles away from the whiplash of workfare and I believe it would be a million times more effective – they loved it!

Next blog will report back on the CNL Training Day – the topic for the day was ‘housing’ and Hector promised to change our view of what that meant.

I’ll also try to cover the other aspects of CNL – the Fellowship and the Strategic Assistance Unit (aka the Collaborative)

At some point I’ll catch up with myself…