Principles 2 страница

The field of community organizing has not escaped this renewed atten-tion to youth as key actors on their own behalf. Themes related to social and economic justice have resonated in countless initiatives that seek to bring about positive social change within schools and in the broader community. Community organizing by and for youth can be found in numerous fields, such as transportation, school reform, health promotion, safety, media, re-search, courts, disabilities, gender and racial equality, to list but several of the more prominent arenas (Delgado 2006). The goals for each of these fields may vary, but the central roles assumed by youth do not change, thereby casting them into positions of leadership, decision making, and shapers of interventions rather than as mere participants.

National and local efforts to further democratize this society have only further accentuated the need for youth to organize and exert greater influ-ence over the institutions that regulate and impact their lives (Lombardo, Zakus, and Skinner 2002; Mokwena 2000). Most of these institutions have failed to carry out their missions in a manner that is both respectful of and empowering for youth. Youth-led community organizing has been advo-cated as an effective means for bringing disengaged or disconnected young people into the youth development field (Besharov 1999; Roth et al. 1999).

Not surprisingly, effective youth organizing must draw upon an exten-sive list of knowledge sources and competencies, which places youth or-

OVERVIEW OF YOUTH-LED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

ganizing at the nexus of youth development (Ginwright 2003; Taylor 2000). A partial list includes reflection, recruitment, research, assessment, group facilitation, goal setting, development of public policy packets and position papers, strategic analysis, planning, public relations, direct action tactics, public speaking, negotiation skills, conflict resolution, video production, photography, writing, and editing. These competencies are often at cen-ter stage in any youth development program. However, in the case of youth organizing, the emphasis is on the achievement of positive social change, although individual gains undoubtedly will be part of the process.

Ginwright (2003) goes on to note that youth organizing brings two de-velopmental ‘‘layers’’ to the youth-led movement: a sociopolitical capacity that effectively connects community problems and issues with the broader social and political arena, and the development of competencies naturally leading to community capacity enhancement (Benson 2003; Lorion and Sokoloff 2003). The former serves to ground or contextualize organizing in issues of significance to youth, their families, and community. The later results in youth acquiring key skills associated with building consensus, researching and advancing issues, and creating a social purpose that unites them with the broader community. These skills transcend the field of or-ganizing and have applicability to other realms in the lives of youth.

Currently there is no book specifically examining the phenomenon of youth organizing that describes and analyzes the key advances in this area over the past decade. Such a book not only fills an important void in the scholarly/practice arena but also serves as a vehicle for delineating the youth-led/youth-development paradigm through which this movement can be understood best. Needless to say, this book will appeal to a wide range of audiences, both academic and practice centered, including such professional disciplines as recreation, education, sociology, psychology, social work, and media. Consequently, this book focuses on youth-led or-ganizing from a multidisciplinary perspective, drawing implications and generalizations for a wide range of professions.

Book Goals

This book addresses five interrelated goals: (1) to provide an updated re-view on how the youth-led movement has evolved over the past five years, with special attention paid to its potential for further evolution in the future;

(2) to present a conceptual and practice foundation from which youth-led community organizing can be understood, analyzed, and undertaken, with youth development as a theoretical backdrop and guiding force; (3) to in-troduce the key principles of youth-led organizing through the use of case illustrations and vignettes that will serve as templates for readers to better

12 SETTING THE CONTEXT

adapt their own practice; (4) to identify key facilitating and hindering fac-tors for organizations wishing to embrace youth-led community organizing; and (5) to articulate a series of recommendations and reflections that will help move this field forward in a positive and progressive manner in the early part of the twenty-first century. Each of these goals is worthy unto itself; however, when taken together, they serve a synergistic purpose, il-lustrating the dynamic and fluid nature of the field of youth-led community organizing.

Book Outline

This book consists of eleven chapters and is divided into three parts: (I) Setting the Context; (II) Conceptual Foundation for Youth-Led Community Organizing; and (III) A View and Lessons from the Field. The first two parts of this book effectively ground the reader in the subject matter from an historical, theoretical, and philosophical perspective. The final part draws heavily from the field of practice, although practice issues and examples can be found throughout the first parts of the book.

Who Should Read this Book?

We envision this book as appealing to an audience of both academics and practitioners. However, we realize that embracing this vision brings with it a set of challenges inherent in reaching out to such a broad audience. Nev-ertheless, the importance of the subject makes this goal a necessity, even though the realms of academia and practice historically have been worlds apart, each with a distinctive orbit and only minimally crossing paths. Drawing these two domains together has enormous potential for advancing the field of youth-led community organizing by providing a meeting ground for theoretical ideas and practice methods that do not intersect as often as they should.

Each of these two arenas is dependent upon the other. Practice alone will continue to flourish only up to a certain point without serious scholarly scrutiny. Funders and policymakers invariably will request more and more evidence of the effectiveness of youth-led organizing to accomplish personal and community transformation, necessitating the involvement of academics in helping to document and explain this phenomenon. This is not to say that youth and other practitioners may not fear the arrival of the academics. Concern about academics usurping the voices of consumers and practi-tioners unfortunately is not unfounded (Weisbrod 1997), and the estab-lishment of trust and dialogue is essential.

OVERVIEW OF YOUTH-LED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

Academics, in turn, must be able to join practitioners to increase their relevance in helping to shape practice and social policy in support of any field of practice. In fact, academics are in key positions to influence future generations of practitioners through teaching and scholarship. For example, Strand and colleagues (2003) view sponsorship of community-based re-search involving collaboration among academics, students, and communities as a model with tremendous potential for impacting the future of research. All participants in this collaboration benefit from a working relationship that historically has been one-sided—namely, benefiting academics. Ansari (2005) warns about the challenges of research partnerships involving ‘‘dis-advantaged communities, ’’ however.

The energy in the youth field is self-evident in the amount of activity and the number of publications over the past few years. Clearly, youth-led community organizing has moved forward without academics—or in spite of academics. Unfortunately, from an academic perspective, this is not un-usual; nevertheless, effective collaboration between practice and academia serves to strengthen any field while making academia more relevant. The authors have approached this book with this goal in mind.

While we both are social workers, we firmly believe that this field is too important to be confined to one professional discipline, although we sincerely believe that social work can make significant contributions (Burghardt and Fabricant 2004; Fisher et al. 2001; Mary 2001; Rubin and Rubin 2004). Youth-led community organizing is a very specific method geared to a particular population group, and we hope that this book can find a home easily in social work, community psychology, sociology, youth development, and educa-tional and recreational disciplines. Still, the task before us was demanding and we undertook it fully aware of the challenges that lay ahead.

We wanted to appeal to both the practice field and academia. In the latter, we sought to appeal to a wide range of disciplines. Undoubtedly, the reader will find moments of indiscretion when we have reverted to our social work roots. We believe that the social work profession has a distinct contribution to make to the youth-led community organizing field because of its histori-cal embrace of social activism; however, we have striven to keep such lapses to a minimum and humbly ask that the reader be accepting of them. Last, we hope that youth organizers can read this book or take sections of it for use in training, writing proposals for funding, and as a field manual for supporting other youth organizers. Young people are the ultimate beneficiaries of this book, and they will be the ultimate judges of its worthiness.

Methodology

This book has used a variety of methods to bring forth the field of youth-led community organizing with the perspectives and voices of some of the

14 SETTING THE CONTEXT

youth and adults who are shaping this field as it continues to evolve. First, and foremost, the personal experiences of the authors have played an in-strumental role in shaping the contents of this book; however, we also have relied heavily on a review of the professional and scholarly literature in a variety of fields that intersect to create youth-led community organizing. Foundation and governmental reports also have been used. We obtained some materials that normally would not be read by people outside of the organizations under study. Finally, qualitative interviews were conducted with young people and adults actively engaged along the entire spectrum of youth-led community organizing. All of these sources have found their way into this book.

This book represents a synthesis of the literature, the authors’ experi-ences, and the interviews conducted with a wide variety of sources, youth as well as adult. No specific empirical-based study was undertaken to guide the conceptualization of the book, nor was research funding sought or ob-tained for the actual writing. However, we do not apologize for not under-taking this form of research. The empirical (qualitative and quantitative) findings from seventy sources have been integrated into this book. We cast a wide net in gathering materials and information, some more difficult to obtain than others, and we believe the current format makes that infor-mation reader friendly. To facilitate this process, we have reported research data, with some exceptions, in either summarized form or by highlighting particular findings. In cases where quantitative data were reported in a study, we have reported only key findings. This is a judgment call on our part; however, we believe that it facilitates the reading of this book without sacrificing empirical grounding. Chapters 5 and 9 contain systematically integrated key research findings from studies, reports, and books in a manner that we believe facilitates readability without sacrificing the pre-sentation of research findings from the field.

Authors’ Qualifications and Interests

The reader has every right to question the expertise and legitimacy of the authors to write on this subject matter. We bring extensive histories of both practice and scholarship in the area of macro-practice (planning, program development, and community organizing), as well as work within the youth development/youth-led field. We also share a commitment to mar-ginalized communities and a fundamental belief in the dignity and assets of every human being. Professor Melvin Delgado has either single-authored or co-authored five books on youth development or the youth-led movement (Delgado 2000, 2002, 2004, in press; Delgado, Jones, and Rohani 2005). Professor Lee Staples has authored the first and second editions of a widely

OVERVIEW OF YOUTH-LED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

used text on community organizing (1984, 2004a) and has published nu-merous articles on empowerment and collective action for social change. We believe that the expertise each of us brings to the task of writing this book helps to capture the essence of youth-led community organizing.

In addition, we have relied heavily on the voices of youth, represented in a variety of formats, to help shape the central messages of this book. Youth voices articulating their experiences, both positive and negative, are critical to making this publication relevant for the field of practice. Essentially, this book is about youth and their efforts to bring about positive social change. It also considers the role of the adults who work as allies with youth, and it examines how they can best ensure that the rights of youth are not over-looked in this society.

Neither of us has previously published in this specific area, although we certainly have touched on the subject in some of our writings. The field of youth-led community organizing connects with many different arenas, pro-fessions, scholarly theories, and constructs. As already noted, it is receiving increasing national and international attention. Nevertheless, in spite of the field’s breath, there is no book that focuses specifically on it.

Our experiences in writing for scholarly publications typify what com-monly is found in such journals and books. Professor Delgado has pub-lished extensively in the field of youth-development/youth-led practice, but his prior books do not address community organizing. While Pro-fessor Staples has focused his scholarship on empowerment and com-munity organization, his work to date has not concentrated on youth or-ganizing.

Other Work in this Field

A number of excellent books on community organizing have been pub-lished during the past several years, reflecting an increased interest in this subject. But these works, although making important contributions to the field, essentially have viewed community organizing from an adult per-spective, thus the need for this book. Murphy and Cunningham’s Orga-nizing for Community Controlled Development: Renewing Civil Society (Sage Publications, 2003) addresses the role of civic involvement within a com-munity and societal context, but youth participation is touched upon only cursorily. Hardina provides an extensive review of strategies and tactics for community organization in Analytical Skills for Community Organization Prac-tice (Columbia University Press, 2002); however, youth are not featured in her book. Homan also addresses change from the perspective of adults in Promoting Community Change: Making it Happen in the Real World (Brooks/ Cole, 2004).

16 SETTING THE CONTEXT

Terms

This is a good juncture to address the use of terms that play a critical role in shaping the content of this book. Four terms ( youth, youth-led, community or-ganizing and marginalized/undervalued) will be examined below. A lack of consensus about how these concepts are defined, their scope, and what constitutes optimum activities related to them should in no way discourage interested individuals and organizations from fostering youth-led activities. On the contrary, the proliferation of terms serves as an indicator that this is a field that is continuing to evolve. This is exciting as well as challenging.

Youth

There are tremendous challenges in developing a succinct definition of what constitutes ‘‘youth’’ in this society. Like any social term, there are multiple perspectives on how best to define it. The concept of youth has been viewed historically in a number of ways, including as a state of mind, a legal age, a developmental stage, or a cultural phenomenon. Gillis (1981, 3) notes: ‘‘Evidence of youth as a separate stage of life with its own history and traditions comes to us from a variety of sources, some literary and icono-graphic, others economic and demographic. ’’

For example, a market-value orientation would derive a very different definition of what constitutes a child/youth (Nasaw 1985; Zelizer 1985) from one operating from a rights or developmental perspective (Earls and Carlson 2002; Hine 2000; Scales and Leffert 1999; Swart-Kruger and Chawla 2002; Zelizer 1985). Social perspectives bring with them a specific set of adult beliefs, expectations, and behaviors toward youth (Mortimer and Larson 2002). Thus, a definition of youth is influenced not only by profes-sional discipline but also by the philosophical set of values that guide the definition (Young Wisdom Project 2004).

Not surprisingly, the Applied Research Center’s (Weiss 2003) research on youth-led community organizing concluded that there is no consensus on what constitutes youth. There is little disagreement that individuals under the age of 18 years would fall into the youth category; however, there is some disagreement about the age range of 18 to 22 years, where the ‘‘young adult’’ label is meant to capture this age bracket, reflecting a trend toward expanding how society defines youth. An example of this expansion is the definition of youth that embraces the point at which an individual can be self-supporting economically. This has resulted in broadening the age cat-egory of youth to that of 25 years, or to the point when a young person has finished her or his college education and been gainfully employed for several years.

For the purposes of this book, youth are people under the age of 26 years, although some of the literature reviewed may extend it only to 25 years.

OVERVIEW OF YOUTH-LED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

However, we focus on the ages 12 to 19. This age group bears the brunt of society’s fears, as well as the vicissitudes of social policies and programs (Austin and Willard 1989; Furstenberg et al. 1999; Kipke 1999; Leadbeater and Way 1996; Mortimer and Larson, 2002).

Youth-Led

Any serious review of the field of youth-led programs raises many more questions than it actually answers, and this is to be expected in a field that is only growing in importance. The history of viewing youth from an asset, rather than a prevailing deficit, perspective can be traced back to the late 1970s and the pioneering work of Werner and Smith (1977, 1992). However, it was not until the early 1990s that this movement representing a paradigm shift started to take hold. In the early 1990s, Pittman (1991) identified six terms that were often interchangeable with youth civic engagement: gov-ernance, organizing, advocacy, service, leadership, and engagement. The time period since has only added to this list and further accentuated the overlaps and differences among these terms.

A review of the literature in the early twenty-first century uncovers terms such as youth civic activism, community service, civic engagement, decision making, participation, empowerment, involvement, community-driven, develop-ment, positive development, community development, leadership, and led. The terms emphasizing various aspects of youth intervention share much in common, although at a glance they seem to emphasize different elements. These terms express a fundamental belief in the rights and capacities (assets) of youth, their potential for positive contributions, and the importance of preparing them for adult roles in a democratic society (Halfon 2003). The term youth-led places emphasis on youth rights and the power of young people to define their circumstances and the direction of intervention, as well as the degree to which adults are actively involved as allies (Youth-Action 1998). This book focuses on youth-led community organizing as the vehicle, although as the reader will soon discover, there are numerous types of youth-led models and organizations that sponsor this form of interven-tion. Chapter 3 provides the reader with four models for viewing youth involvement in social change, and one of those models has youth in posi-tions of power, with adults participating as allies.

Community Organizing

Simply put, community organizing is a process through which people sharing similar concerns can unite to achieve positive change, community better-ment, and political empowerment (Rubin and Rubin 2004; W. G. Bruegge-mann 2002). Community organizations are structures, or vehicles, through which participants can exercise power collectively. Typically, they ‘‘engage

18 SETTING THE CONTEXT

in specific campaigns to change institutional policies and practices in par-ticular arenas, ranging from education to income to the environment’’ (R. Sen 2003, xliv). Community organizing draws on models of union orga-nizing, as well as political activism (J. Brueggemann 2002).

Staples (2004a, 1–2) has defined grassroots community organizing as ‘‘col-lective action by community members drawing on the strength of numbers, participatory processes, and indigenous leadership to decrease power dis-parities and achieve shared goals for social change. ’’ Three elements are central to this definition, which is used in this book. First, goals are estab-lished and decisions are made by the people most affected by a particular situation; the operative assumption is that community members should, must, and can organize effectively to set their own goals and to act on their own behalf. Second, grassroots organizing is based on the premise that social change is possible when constituency members undertake collective action that derives its efficacy from ‘‘people power; ’’ large numbers of par-ticipants acting in concert are able to accomplish far more than atomized individuals. Finally, the leadership for a grassroots organizing effort comes from within the affected community, which has ‘‘the requisite strengths, assets, and resources to fulfill this function’’ (Staples 2004a, 2).

Youth organizing, like community capacity enhancement, seeks to achieve social change at the local level. It helps to transform both youth and their communities through an emphasis on knowledge and awareness, commu-nity and collective identity, and a creation of a shared vision (Gaventa and Cornwall 2001; Morsillo and Prilleltensky 2005; Transformative Leadership 2004). Youth-led community organizing is best understood and appreciated through a broad-angle lens (Turning the Leadership 2003, 3): ‘‘More than a training ground for decision-making and leadership assumption, youth organizing enables young people to participate in, shape and lead demo-cratic processes, decision-making and innovation that impact their schools, homes and communities. ’’

An authoritative definition of youth community organizing does not exist. However, the Innovation Center for Community and Youth Development (2003, 3) defines it in a manner that intersects both organizing and youth development: ‘‘Youth organizing is the union of grassroots community or-ganizing and positive youth development, with an explicit commitment to social change and political action. Youth organizing is based on the premise that young people are capable of taking leadership to transform their communities. ’’ The operationalization of this definition, however, can take on a variety of forms and stress a range of youth-development core ele-ments. For example, identity support seeks to provide youth organizers with the space and opportunity to develop a sense of identity affirmation and does so within a social and economic justice context (Gambone et al. 2004). Exploration of oppression is tied closely to young people’s own ex-periences, with subordination based on what they have learned about their identities in this society. Critical consciousness is developed and linked to

OVERVIEW OF YOUTH-LED COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

collective action in the pursuit of justice (Morsillo and Prilleltensky 2005; Prilleltensky 2003; Watts, Williams, and Jagers 2003).

Unfortunately, but predictably, this form of social intervention does not enjoy the same level of professional respect as do other more mainstream and less adversarial modalities, such as planning and program develop-ment. However, youth-led organizing clearly has emerged as a viable and significant method for involving disenfranchised communities. Youth or-ganizing taps into this nation’s long history of social activism, making this form of intervention relevant to young people. This, in turn, channels their enthusiasm and ideals in a direction that increases the collective power of their age group and the power of the community in which they reside. Further, it provides a viable avenue for youth dissatisfied with conventional electoral politics (Turning the Leadership 2003).

There certainly are critics of organizing youth as an identity group (Young Wisdom Project 2004, 11):

Critics have argued that ‘‘youth’’ is a transitional identity—not a real community. On top of that, ‘‘identity politics’’ has major limits. Youth organizing, they said, risked having a narrow analysis, splitting youth from their communities and broader social justice goals. What these critics failed to see is how the youth movement actually used its understanding of adultism as a starting point for understanding and addressing other forms of oppression.

Thus, although youth is a transitional state, it can be fertile ground for enlisting a cadre of future organizers and public servants, making the benefits of youth-led organizing far greater than ‘‘ just’’ the immediate.

McGillicuddy and James (2001, 2) bring a different response to critics of identity group organizing:

The youth movement, in its boldest and most prominent expressions, is defined not primarily by age but by values. It is a movement for fairness: the right of all people for self-representation and self-determination. These values are often talked about in our culture but rarely realized in our institutions and daily lives. That hypocrisy—the discrepancy between the rhetoric of America and the brutal reality—is what young people, like the generations before them, are standing up to confront.

Marginalized/Undervalued

The concepts of being marginalized and undervalued seek to capture both a social condition and a state of mind that effectively render youth to be perceived by society as a surplus population group, along dimensions of class, race, abilities, and gender. Adults control the process of relegating these youth to low-status positions. Viewing youth as in need, reckless, preoccupied with immediate gratification, consumers, and a threat serves to substantiate this perception and the actions that follow.

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