Scattering virtual ashes

I am at home in Hastings while the ashes of an old friend are being scattered from a bridge we helped to build. In memory of Pete Pope and in recompense for not being there today, I want to get the story of the Ha’penny Hatch online.

I was researching Turning the Tide: the History of Everyday Deptford (published 1993) when I came across this most mysterious of pictures. On the reverse was the note “Edgar Wallace used to play here”. Steeped in Deptford’s historical topography, I knew that this little footbridge was attached to the south side of the longest listed building in the world – the 878 brick arches of the London & Greenwich Railway viaduct. The first urban railway in the world, it included a road along its whole length for those who could not afford to travel on trains. For two years, while engineer George Landmann worked out how to get the line across the busy and tidal Deptford Creek, the viaduct made it only as far as Deptford and the footbridge was the only way Greenwich passengers could board the new trains. Once it did cross the Creek, the viaduct had to be lifted to allow boats through. This took 12 men an hour to achieve until a new “most modern” structure was built in 1963 – the imposing landmark which straddles the site today.

Tragically the Ha’penny Hatch itself was lost some time in the 1930s and I have never found an explanation as to why.

Sixty years later, three people came together with their own peculiar skills and obsessions and an overwhelming shared passion for Deptford: Richard Walker (environmentalist, economist, party fixer, crane-lover), Jess Steele (historian, publisher, entrepreneur, arguer) and Pete Pope (artist, communitarian, pedant, drinker).

Privileged to know many other local people with a fantastic range of skills, we set up the Deptford Discovery Team to bring these talents to bear on protecting, enhancing and celebrating local heritage, environment, tourism and sustainable travel.

The Discovery Team was named, proudly if rather perversely, after the Discovery convict hulk moored at Deptford in the 1820s after serving on Captain Cook’s last voyage.

First and foremost on our to-do list was always the replacement of the Ha’penny Hatch. Inspired by the past and fully alert to the frustrations and dangers of a modern walk to Greenwich, it seemed obvious that we should recreate this most useful of amenities.

It was a long fight that I’m going to gloss over in the hope that Richard will join in here and describe it properly.

We helped win an £8.2m regeneration programme for Creekside – it was called ‘Building Bridges’ – and we helped keep it rooted. There were a hundred hurdles and a dozen doubtful moments. Negotiating with Railtrack was one of the lowest points of my regeneration experience. But in the end we did it! The new Ha’penny Hatch opened in 2002.

Pete died on 11^th May 2012 and last Friday we had the best funeral I’ve ever been to. A great turn-out of Deptford’s finest, a cycling cortege, and the perfect humanity of Billy Jenkins’ humanist service.

We made it to the Dog & Bell (‘Woof/Clang’) just as the heavens opened and were treated to free drinks on Pete (a most uncommon phenomenon), an endless buffet from Eileen and a bizarre set of eulogies from seven friends – Brigitte from Bench Outreach who took the best care of Pete that he would allow; Jim Carey who used to take cans to the hospice on a Friday night and AWOL whose tales of teenage debauchery at the end of life had us in shocked laughter; Tony O’Leary, distributor extraordinaire, who told a tale of trying to get Pete to do some hard graft; Bill Ellson, the Other Half of Trouble; and Clare McRandall who reminded us that Pete believed in theatre because it actually changes lives. Inevitably it was Richard’s speech that touched my nerves, capturing the brilliance and the frustration of Pete as we knew him. Both of us have left Deptford (for Hastings aka ‘Deptford by the Sea’ and Bristol aka ‘Deptford with Knobs On’) and Richard ended with a plaintive ‘I don’t know where’s home anymore’. But of course home is where the heart is, and our hearts get bigger when we have friends like these.

@deptfordis has just tweeted me to say the ash scattering ‘went off with a bang’. They’ll all be back at the Bird’s Nest by now, just as Pete would have wanted. I raise my glass to you Mr Pope in memory of a bridge we built…

Deptford Discovery Team

Last day in Chicago

I can hardly believe it’s taken me so long to write this. I suppose it’s cos I didn’t want my trip to the US to be truly over. But until it’s finished I can’t write anything else so…

That last day in America I had almost no pages left in the notebook I’d been filling for 10 days. I didn’t think it would matter because it was Saturday, I had to leave for the airport at 4pm and I planned to wander the city and maybe see a museum. No more meetings left. But I went to Starbucks for breakfast – very dangerous because free wifi = twitter = notification of organizing training on offer that very afternoon about 2 blocks from my hotel! So I rushed off to the Field Museum to get a bit of leisure in quick. Here’s what I saw on the way.

The Field Museum is beautiful and the whole area around it (Museum Campus) is lovely to walk around once you’ve negotiated a way in from Lakeshore Drive. As I walked in I was grabbed by a funny feeling that lots of Brits get in America. I watched Night at the Museum with my daughter just days before I set off. Now here I was inside the film!

It’s an amazing museum – just so well kept and well signed, the exhibitions so comprehensive, the place vast and not far off empty in large tracts. On one side a massive exhibition on the history of humans in the Americas, on the other a vast number of stuffed animals, in between a bizarre but wonderful temporary exhibition called Walk a Mile in Someone Else’s Shoes. I don’t think anyone could walk a mile in these shockers:

But I was in a rush and grateful for the ordinary black boots that had done me such service on this walking tour of New York, Detroit and Chicago, so I headed back to the Grace Episcopal Church on South Dearborn, where Will and Kelvin from SOUL (Southside Organization for Unity and Liberty) were offering a training session on effective ‘one-on-ones’ for #occupychicago.

Will gave an overview of the goals of 1-1s within organizing – an intentional conversation to initiate a relationship, to understand the person’s self-interest and to give the person a chance to gain clarity. To illustrate the key concept of self-interest he described a spectrum between selfish (all about me) to selfless (all about others) where the middle ground is self-interest (about me in relation to others). Getting clarity on self-interest means asking the question ‘what makes me tick?’ and for this he used a simple stick figure.

The purpose of a 1-1 is to get at somebody else’s stick figure so we can answer ‘in what ways would I want to suggest s/he gets involved?’

Examples of questions:

• What was it like for you growing up?
• Tell me about your job
• When were you most proud? What have been your biggest disappointments?
• Times you’ve felt powerful? Times you’ve felt powerless?
• What makes you really happy? What really pisses you off?
• Prompts: What was that like? Why did you do that? What happened then?
• Meander around, collect details, give people a real sense that you’re not just trying to use them for your interests

Mechanics

• 30-45 minutes (no more – Will said he usually finds after that length of time people will be pleased to arrange to meet again)
• By appointment
• Don’t take notes until afterwards, but always write it up then (you’ll get better at remembering the details)
• Meet at a place convenient for the other person – not over a meal

Will asked for a volunteer and did a 1-1 in front of us for about 40 minutes. This was a great luxury – too often these role-plays end up being too short to be real. By the end of it I felt I knew Mikah better than I know some of my closest acquaintances and I understood exactly what drives his passion for organizing exploited workers. Then it was time to listen to each other. I was paired with Collette who was there with her husband Jack, both of them “so disappointed in the inability of the political system to address the needs of ordinary Americans”. I’ll respect her privacy here of course but by the end I felt that I knew her well and liked her very much, but perhaps more importantly, that I could trust her to watch my back in any situation.

So then off to the airport – a short walk to the subway, a comfortable ride out to O’Hare, all for less than $5. And what an airport – these pics don’t really do justice to how it feels after you’ve scoffed a Deep Dish pizza!!!

I’ve been home now for 10 weeks – a good amount of time to reflect, although of course I had to get on with our own programme which never sits still for a minute. I prepared a short presentation Nov 11 Lessons from the US for the CO Programme Board, distilling some headings from more than 30 meetings in 12 days. The slides are just an aide memoire rather than any kind of analysis. I’d like to thank (again) all the people and organizations I met who provided me with so much inspiration and good will.

Chicago 5: Generations of organizers

Friday 18^th November 2011

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!).

Next post – my last day, including organizing training from SOUL, and some reflections since

Chicago 4: Grounded Theory

This is my public apology for not yet having emailed to thank all the wonderful people I met in Chicago (I’ve started it on the train home tonight).

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).

 

 

Chicago 3: All kinds of walking

I’m back in the UK now but determined to finish this blog account of my trip to the US to explore community organising. I ran 3.5k on a treadmill today and all the way I was thinking about my much more exciting (and exhausting) Thursday in Chicago

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)

Chicago 2: Oodles of inspiration

Weds 16^th November 2011

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

Chicago 1: The South Side & Regina

Tues 15th November 2011

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!)