Principles 8 страница

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AND YOUTH-LED FIELD

model places youth in central decision-making roles in all facets of a cam-paign; the second locates youth organizing within a broader community agenda for social change that involves adults as well as young people.

Contrary to what scholars would expect, or perhaps demand, not every youth-led community organizing campaign starts off with a distinct model. As noted by one young organizer:

We didn’t have a model! By the end of my time, we made some progress, but we still didn’t exactly get there. I never had youth leaders that were conscious about turning out other youth leaders. That was the puzzle that I never had a chance to figure out. We had talented young people who were articulate and understood the organization. We had youth on the board, and I think they did a great job. But could they mobilize other young people to take on issues? No. (Beyond Base 2004, 5)

However, failure to use a ‘‘distinctive’’ model (and sometimes even avoiding doing so) severely complicates any serious efforts to evaluate pro-cesses and outcomes, as well as to refine the theory guiding organizing mod-els. Of course, models never should be viewed as only serving the interests and needs of theoreticians seeking to develop a better understanding of a social phenomenon. Models also must help practitioners shape social-change interventions and campaigns. Thus, they can bridge the worlds of academia and practice, and this goal never should be minimized in any form of social intervention. Furthermore, models are not static in composition; they evolve and take into account new sources of information and experi-ences as they mature.

Youth and adult involvement in social-change efforts can be, and has been, conceptualized in myriad ways in the field, as already noted in chapter 1, but it is well worth revisiting. In turn, we classify these efforts into four distinct models along a continuum based on the degree of youth power and control over a community organizing initiative or campaign, as noted in figure 3. 2.

Less power	More power
Less power

Model 1

Model 2

Model 3

Model 4

Adult-Led

Youth-Adult

Youth-Led

with Youth

with Youth as

Collaborative

with Adult

Participation

Limited

Partnership

Allies

Partners

Figure 3. 2. Continuum of youth power in community organizing.

70 SETTING THE CONTEXT

These four models vary according to the degree of power exercised by youth in planning and implementing community social-change initiatives:

1. Adult-Led with Youth Participation: Youth are actively involved in change efforts as participants but do not share power, and there are no efforts to systematically bring them into power positions.

2. Adult-Led with Youth as Limited Partners: Youth decision-making powers are dictated by adults who are always the leaders.

3. Youth-Adult Collaborative Partnership: Youth and adults share power equally.

4. Youth-Led with Adult Allies: Youth are in charge and adults play supportive roles as needed and defined by youth.

The last is the model examined in this book. The youth-led community organizing model advanced here may not appeal across the spectrum of youth organizing; some practitioners and academics may advance a more ‘‘flexible’’ or ‘‘inclusive’’ definition or model whereby youth can learn the ropes, so to speak. We certainly can appreciate the appeal of such a long-term developmental perspective. However, a youth-led community orga-nizing model such as the one presented in this book has a rightful place in the field. We believe that adult-led community organizers and organiza-tions most actively sponsor this model.

Conclusion

The reader, we hope, has developed an appreciation of how geographical and historical context, as well as organizations and models, influence youth organizing and the way the issues they address are framed. Across the board, there is explicit acknowledgment of the importance of the work that youth organizers do in their communities and their role in advancing this field of practice, youth-led or otherwise. Seeking justice to address condi-tions of social and economic oppression no longer is the exclusive domain of adults. Youth rightfully can take their place alongside adults as allies, and also can become advocates for their own causes and social agendas.

This field of practice has deep historical roots that include the ideals of achieving social and economic justice. Failure to acknowledge and explore this background limits our understanding of the role that young people have played in promoting social and economic justice in this country. But familiarity with this context makes it possible to recognize and appreciate current trends in youth-led community organizing, such as hip-hop activ-ism. (The tensions and issues inherent in this form of practice are addressed later in this book. )

Unfortunately, the role of youth in this country’s history of community organizing generally has gone unnoticed or been mentioned only in passing

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING AND YOUTH-LED FIELD

by most mainstream accounts. This slight has perpetuated the propensity to view the nation’s youth from a deficit perspective. However, the develop-ment of youth-led community organizing as a field will help rectify this oversight and lend a strengths and assets perspective on youth in this coun-try. The stage has been set for in-depth case studies, scholarship, and his-torical recognition of the achievements of young people in the United States, as well as the contributions they will make in the future.

We think it appropriate to end this chapter with a quote that describes what youth-led community organizing is all about, one that is a wonderful prelude to the remainder of this book:

Across the nation, youth organizing continues to be a strong, develop-ing, yet under-resourced, approach to positive youth development and community change. Steering young people away from an inward, self-interested focus towards an outward concern for the community and world, youth organizing helps young people move from a place of an-ger, despondency and defeat to one of empathy, compassion and action. (Turning the Leadership 2004, 6)

We would like to add that youth-led organizing also can lead to self-discovery and a lifetime commitment to social causes.

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Part II

Conceptual Foundation for Youth-Led Organizing

From coast to coast, a new wave of youth organizing is

taking form, built on a historical foundation of youth ac-

tivism, and shaped by the current cultural and political

landscape. As in other countries, young people in the

United States have played major roles in social justice

movements. . . . Buoyed by a new crop of intermediaries

and a handful of progressive foundations, the recent

proliferation of youth-led and youth-focused organiza-

tions has even led to talk in organizing circles of a bona

fide ‘‘youth movement. ’’

—Weiss, Youth Rising (2003)

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Guiding Principles

and Analytical Framework

Practice consists of methods and process. . . . The terms go together because conceptions of processes are necessary to design methods to intervene in and to encourage, guide, stop, or redirect processes.

—Brager, Specht, and Torczyner, Community Organizing (1987)

The importance of principles and an analytical framework for youth-led community organizing cannot be over emphasized, and it is necessary to see their origins and relevance within a values foundation and historical con-text. Social and historical forces shape modern-day social interventions. Practice, as noted in the opening quote to this chapter, is shaped by methods and process. Practice is also shaped by principles and analytical frame-works.

Principles for youth-led community organizing provide both practitioners and academics with a navigational tool to keep the focus on the goals of social intervention, such as youth-led community organizing. An analytical frame-work, in turn, fulfills important theoretical and political functions, helping both practitioners and academics better conceptualize, plan, implement, and evaluate social-change efforts. Historically, the field of community organiza-tion has benefited from these tools. The best analytical framework serves to guide without being prescriptive; yet it is descriptive enough to allow practi-tioners to develop an in-depth sense of the key stages and elements that must be addressed in a social intervention, such as community organizing.

The subjects of guiding principles and analytical frameworks for com-munity organizing have a long and distinguished history, replete with

76 CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATION

examples that show how community organizing must be conceptualized and implemented. Weil and Gamble (1995) present a historical overview of the models and frameworks commonly used in bringing about social change. Burghardt and Fabricant (2004) look at community organizing with a social work and labor movement perspective. Rubin and Rubin (2004), in turn, provide a framework for better understanding the skills required of a community organizer involved in social mobilization.

This chapter, as noted in figure 4. 1 and figure 4. 2, presents a set of guiding principles and an analytical framework that will navigate the reader through the rough terrain of community organizing—in this case, one that is con-ceptualized and led by youth. The principles and analytical framework bring together many key elements usually associated with social change, as well as integrate many key concepts and constructs that make up the field of

Communications

Participation

Allies

Leadership

Principles

Finances

1. Inclusive membership

2. Social and Economic

Justice

3. Support for change

4. Training, mentoring, and

leadership opportunities

5. Adult involvement

6. Long-term agenda

7. Consciousness-raising

8. Fun and learning

Staffing

9. Shared vision

Strategy & Tactics

Structure

Target Systems

Goals & Objectives

Figure 4. 1. Analytical framework: The nine principles serve as the core around which the ten elements of the framework are built.

Elements

Principles

Participation	Leadership	Staffing	Structure	Goals and	Target	Strategies	Finances	Allies	Communications
				Objectives	Systems	and Tactics

Inclusive

membership

Social &

economic

justice values

Support for

change

Training,

mentoring,

and leadership

opportunities

Adult

involvement

Long-term

agenda

Conscious-

ness-raising

Fun and

learning

common goals

Figure 4. 2. Analytical framework chart.

78 CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATION

youth-led community organizing. Some of these concepts and constructs are not unique to youth; however, this chapter is written from a youth-led perspective and thereby will emphasize the latter whenever possible.

The reader, we believe, will note how language plays a significant role in both principles and analytical frameworks, and youth-led community or-ganizing is certainly no exception. It is relatively easy to equate community development and change with certain phrases such as community needs and community problems. Youth-led community organizing emphasizes a view of the community that focuses on issues, challenges, capacity, opportunities, and assets. Embracing the following principles and using the analytical frame-work, in effect, requires using a new language—and for the uninitiated, you are warned!

Finally, two words of caution are in order before we proceed to outline our principles and analytical framework for youth-led community orga-nizing. First, it is important to differentiate between a framework and a model. The latter is a conceptual construct, generally consisting of sequen-tial stages or phases that embrace a particular theoretical perspective on a social intervention. An analytical framework, in contrast, is a series of fac-tors, considerations, or what we call elements, that must be taken into ac-count to bring a model to life, so to speak. A conceptual framework pro-vides practitioners with a guide or a series of points that must be addressed to operationalize a theory. Second, principles help practitioners better op-erationalize the various facets of an analytical framework. Principles and framework can exist apart from one another; however, when they are brought together, their use in moving the field forward can be exceptional!

Figure 4. 1 and figure 4. 2 provide different ways of viewing the relation-ship between guiding principles and an analytical framework. Figure 4. 1 lays out an analytical framework that ties together the different dimensions of youth-led community organizing. Figure 4. 2 is a tool to use in determining how and when principles can inform elements. We expect that no youth-led community organizing initiative and sponsor will share all of the principles being operationalized in the same manner, throughout all of the elements. However, figure 4. 2 helps practitioners and academics better understand and appreciate how principles and frameworks—in this case, one focused on youth-led community organizing—get carried out in a social change campaign.

Research Informing Principles and Framework

Writings about social interventions such as youth-led community organizing invariably bring to the foreground the tension between being descriptive and being prescriptive. The importance of local circumstances in shaping how youth-led community organizing gets conceptualized, implemented,

GUIDING PRINCIPLES AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

and evaluated will make either extreme of description or prescription un-feasible. This book has emphasized the critical role local circumstances play in youth-led community organizing, and we recognize that one size does not fit all. Thus, this chapter travels between these two extreme approaches to achieve a better understanding of practice. Such an attempt to moderate, however, may have the unintended consequence of not appealing to either side of the debate.

As noted in chapter 1, an extensive number of research studies from youth development (including leadership development and civic engage-ment), the youth-led field, and more specifically youth-led community or-ganizing have shaped the content of chapter 4. This book draws on more than seventy research studies involving a variety of methodologies from a multitude of fields that inform youth-led community organizing. Several studies, however, have wielded extraordinary influence in our developing this and other chapters of the book.

The ten scholarly publications listed here influenced the formulation of the key principles that are discussed in the following sections.

An extensive evaluation of the Innovation Center’s Youth Leadership for Development Initiative (Innovation Center 2003) resulted in a wealth of data (qualitative and quantitative) about youth involved in social change efforts (principles 1–5, 7, and 9).

The senior author’s book on youth-led research Designs and Methods for Youth-Led Social Research (Delgado 2006) represents a meta-analysis of national and international research findings on youth-led research (principles 1–3, 5, and 7–9).

Eccles and Gootman’s (2002) seminal book Community Programs to Promote Youth Development represents the latest and most compre-hensive national assessment of research on youth development (principles 2, 4, 5, and 7).

The Aspen Institute Roundtable on Community Change (Lawrence et al. 2004) synthesized numerous studies on youth and community change (principles 1, 2, and 9).

Lerner and Benson’s book (2003) Developmental Assets and Asset-Building Communities provides a wealth of data on youth and com-munity development (principles 1, 3–5, and 7).

The Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity’s multi-level study titled Changing the Rules of the Game: Youth Development and Struc-tural Racism (Quiroz-Martinez, HoSang, and Villarosa 2004) re-searched sixteen youth-development organizations and specifically focused on racial equity and the challenges and rewards youth face in addressing social justice issues in the field (principles 1– 4, 6, 7, and 9).

The Carnegie’s Young People Initiative’s (Cutler 2002) research re-port Taking the Initiative—Promoting Young People’s Involvement in

80 CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATION

Public Decision Making in the USA presents findings on over forty youth programs across the country (principles 1–5).

The Movement Center has produced three reports that have direct applicability to youth-led community organizing. The first report ( James 2005), Bringing it Together: United Youth Organizing, Devel-opment and Services for Long-term Sustainability, provides results from an analysis of six community organizing sponsoring organizations and provides a different perspective on youth organizing (inter-generational and youth-led; principles 1, 2, 5–7, and 9). The second report (Quiroz-Martinez, Wu, and Zimmerman 2005) is ReGenera-tion: Young People Shaping Environmental Justice; as the title implies, it analyzes a series of case studies specifically focused on environ-mental social justice and social change (principles 1– 4, 7, and 9). The third and final report is Making Space, Making Change: Profiles of Youth-Led and Youth-Driven Organizations (Youth Wisdom Project, 2004); this report profiled research involving six organizations and provided key lessons and action steps for increasing youth leader-ship in organizations (principles 1–5, 7, and 9).

Principles of Youth-Led

Community Organizing

As noted earlier in the introduction to this chapter, principles fulfill a variety of important functions. Anchoring an intervention, however, stands out. The field of youth-led community organizing has borrowed widely from other fields such as youth development. As the youth-led field has evolved as a social intervention over the past decade, it has developed principles to help guide its operationalization on a daily basis. These principles and operating guidelines effectively serve as bridges between theory and practice, helping to unite academics across disciplines while at the same time linking practi-tioners who may share only geographic residence.

Pittman and Zeldin (1995, 2) tie practice principles to organizational approaches:

Defining practice principles is integral to the effectiveness of any orga-nization but critical to effectiveness of these organizations approaching work with youth and families from a development rather than a problem perspective; and, linking principles to practice within an organization or to standards of practice across organizations is a challenging and some-times controversial task.

Consequently, the importance of principles cannot be cast aside as sim-ply an academic exercise, with little practical purpose and meaning. Instead,

GUIDING PRINCIPLES AND ANALYTICAL FRAMEWORK

we envision principles as setting the requisite foundation for bringing ac-ademic disciplines, practitioners, and communities together in pursuit of a unified vision for youth-led community organizing.

Youth-led community organizing, as with its adult counterpart, brings with it organizing principles that are both unique to this age group and also shared with adult organizing. The National Conference for Community and Justice in Los Angeles raised four questions that effectively strike at the heart of youth-led community organizing and set the stage for identifying com-mon principles for this method of practice (Anderson, Bernaldo, and David 2004, 3):

How to develop a positive identity in a world that is dominated by bias?

How to un-learn stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination?

How to examine the root causes of systematic oppression and hate crimes while proposing real alternatives for positive community development?

How to create a safe environment for youth to dialogue with each other around difficult issues?

It is no mistake that these questions are deeply rooted in social and economic justice, since this perspective also informs youth-led community organizing, just as it informs its adult counterpart (Balsano 2005; Camino and Zeldin 2002).

The following nine core principles of youth-led community organizing are sufficiently flexible in nature to take into account the multitude of orga-nizing campaigns that transpire in practice, yet they also capture some unique dimension of this form of intervention that does justice to its importance. Some of the following principles, the reader may argue, may not be re-stricted to youth and can easily also apply to adults; other principles, how-ever, may have particular relevance for youth when compared to their adult counterparts. Nevertheless, each principle is clearly colored or ‘‘flavored’’ by a youth perspective:

Principle 1: Youth-led community organizing must seek to be inclusive rather than exclusive in nature with the exception of age-restrictions. Each youth orga-nizing group ultimately must determine who qualifies as a youth participant based upon that person’s age. Urban communities are never monolithic in composition regarding ethnicity, race, gender, sexual identity, abilities, or social class. Youth leaders must reflect the population that makes up the areas where they work in order to have legitimacy both within and outside of their communities. It is also important to give a voice to subgroups that historically have not enjoyed recognition within and outside of their own communities.

Principle 2: Youth-led community organizing must embrace principles and values associated with social and economic justice. Social-change campaigns must be guided by a common vision that can help unite young people and their communities. A social and economic justice perspective is powerful in helping view the experiences of marginalized youth in this society and that

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