Principles 9 страница

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viewpoint can inspire youth to achieve positive social change for current and future generations.

Principle 3: Youth leaders must be supported in their quest for positive social change. Youth participation in community organizing can be supported in a multitude of ways by providing expressive, instrumental, and informational help. Young people bring tremendous assets to social action campaigns; however, they must have the requisite support, including financial help, to sustain them and their families while they pursue social and economic justice.

Principle 4: Opportunities must be built into the organizing experience that will enable youth to gain training, mentoring, and chances to exercise leadership roles. Personal growth must be an integral part of the experience of young people in youth-led campaigns (Huber et al. 2003). Such personal growth is mul-tifaceted, and opportunities to exercise leadership always must be available for all youth participants.

Principle 5: Youth-led community organizing does not exclude possibilities of adult involvement when necessary. Adults are very much a part of the lives of young people and they should continue to be involved in the experi-ences of youth leaders and organizers. However, adult participation should be dictated by the needs and requests of youth, and not the other way around.

Principle 6: Youth-led campaigns must never be viewed as episodic but rather as part of a long-term change agenda. Positive social change is never easy, fast, or predicable. As in other aspects of life, both victories and setbacks can be expected. Youth participants must be prepared for some failures and need to have a vision of social change with long-term goals and objectives.

Principle 7: Youth-led campaigns must actively embrace a consciousness-raising agenda that addresses key issues of social oppression based on individual characteristics and beliefs. Youth-led community organizing provides young people with an opportunity to better understand how social forces bring about oppression in undervalued communities and how different groups are pitted against each other, rather than coalescing to achieve a common goal. The oppression of one group invariably means the oppression of many groups.

Principle 8: Youth-led community organizing is serious work, but it is essential to build fun and learning into the experience. Youth organizing still involves young people! They must be able to engage in serious work; however, opportunities to have fun and enjoy learning should be a central part of their experiences as well. The greater the integration of fun and learning, the higher the satisfaction and the more likelihood that youth activists will become lifetime organizers, either formally or informally.

Principle 9: Youth must share a common vision of what they mean by achieving social and economic justice goals. The construct of social and economic justice has many different definitions and dimensions. Youth participants must have an opportunity to explore these dimensions, arriving at consensus, if

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possible. This not only facilitates their work on organizing campaigns for social change but also opens up the possibility of sharing this vision within their community.

The above nine principles are by no means exhaustive; however, they represent what we consider to be the core elements of youth-led community organizing, separating this form of social intervention from that of its adult counterpart. The reader may well identify different or additional princi-ples that contextualize youth-led community organizing in their particular circumstances—this is to be expected and encouraged. The manner in which these principles are brought to life in youth-led community organizing will vary according to various factors and forces. Nevertheless, any successful youth-led community organizing campaign will show these principles played out in a variety of ways, as will be shown in this book. When these principles are tied to an analytical framework, not only do they take on greater significance but so does the analytical framework. Bringing princi-ples and framework together highlights the dynamic nature of the field of youth-led community organizing.

Analytical Framework

Grassroots community organizing takes place in four different arenas: turf, issue, identity, and workplace (Staples 2004a). Organizing by turf is con-centrated in a particular physical area that might include a neighborhood, housing development, electoral jurisdiction, church parish, business area, government zone, trailer park, colonista, or school district. Anyone living within the turf area of focus generally is eligible for participation.

Community organizations also may be established to deal with particular issues, such as education, employment, housing, the environment, the crim-inal justice system, or recreation opportunities. Participants in an issue-based organization may be drawn from a wide array of geographic areas.

As discussed in chapter 2, constituency subgroups may organize as com-munities of identity based on shared race, ethnicity, gender, age, sexual ori-entation, immigrant status, religion, and physical or mental disability. A youth organization, disability rights group, lesbian student caucus, or Brazilian immigrant task force would be examples of identity-based orga-nizations.

The workplace also is an important arena for organizing. Beyond labor unions, which really are distinct from community organizations, grassroots groups may be formed to deal with issues such as immigrant rights, safety, or working conditions where no union is present or likely to be established. Community groups also can provide support for workers who are at-tempting to unionize or join with unions to work on issues outside the immediate workplace (Fine 2001) that relate to a particular business, such as

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issues of noise, traffic, odor, waste management, water pollution, and other community health hazards.

These four arenas are not distinct and dichotomous. Many community organizations combineturf, issue, identity, and workplaceorientations. Youth organizing clearly is tied to identity by age; however, usually there also are other elements. Certainly, most youth organizations have a specific geo-graphic locus—the neighborhood or school, for example. These groups also may have a particular issue focus, such as after-school employment, crea-tion of a new youth center, violence prevention, or relations with the police. And they may even be created around a particular workplace—for instance, a municipal summer youth employment program. Nevertheless, the pri-mary criterion for membership is age, and youth identity always is of paramount importance.

Within these four arenas, there are two distinct approaches to commu-nity organizing: community development and social action. According to Staples (2004a, 7), ‘‘community development involves participants in con-structive activities and processes to produce improvements, opportunities, structures, goods, and services that increase the quality of life, build indi-vidual and collective capacities, and enhance social solidarity. ’’ Cooperative strategies and processes to address problems and build communal infra-structure are central to this organizing method (Rothman 1968; Rubin and Rubin 2001; Fisher 1994; Shragge 1997; Pantoja and Perry 1998). Commu-nity development places much emphasis on self-help, integration, internal development, capacity building, social solidarity, and the exercise of power to find constructive solutions to community problems. There is no attempt to redistribute power or resources, and external decision makers are not confronted to redress the grievances of organized community groups.

On the other hand, according to Staples (2004a, 9), ‘‘social action brings people together to convince, pressure, or coerce external decision-makers to meet collective goals either to act in a specific manner or to modify or stop certain activities. ’’ Adversarial campaign and/or contest strategies (Warren 1975) are employed to overcome resistance from powerful actors in the pri-vate and public sectors who have conflicting interests with community mem-bers. Social action is undertaken in order to compel targeted individuals and institutions to do what they otherwise would not do. This approach stresses the need to build an organizational power base, features conflict, seeks to alter existing relations of power, is redistributive in nature, and enables the organized membership to wield power vis-a`-vis other groups (Rothman 1968; Fisher and Shragge 2000; Staples 2004a).

Despite such fundamental differences, these two community organizing approaches share elements, including the resolution of mutual problems through collective action, a strong emphasis on broad-based involvement by community members acting on their own behalf, a commitment to in-digenous leadership, and the formation of organizational structures as the vehicles through which joint action is undertaken. Community development

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and social action also are not mutually exclusive and may be combined in the same effort. For instance, a youth organization might pressure city of-ficials to permit members to organize a clean-up day to resurrect a baseball field that has fallen into disrepair. Or, the same group might invite the media to observe when they begin painting an abandoned recreation center, hoping to embarrass the mayor into making a commitment to rehabilitate and staff this facility.

This book examines youth organizations that use both community de-velopment and social action methods. A range of models is presented, and a ten-dimensional framework is used to compare the approaches. That frame-work includes the following variables: participation, leadership, staffing, structure, goals, target systems, strategy and tactics, resources, allies, and communications.

It is only logical to ask a basic question whenever one analyzes a com-munity organization, ‘‘Who wants What from Whom, and How will the group accomplish its goals? ’’ (Staples 2004a). Clearly, there are four distinct ques-tions in this overarching query, and the answer to each requires the inves-tigator to address all ten of the above variables in turn. Who refers to the action group (community organization) that has been developed, and any-one wishing to understand the nature of this aggregation of people must focus on its membership, leadership, staffing, and structure. What relates to the goals and objectives that the community organization is pursuing. Whom is the target systems or institutions (e. g., municipal government), organi-zations (e. g., Girls and Boys Club), groups (e. g., a youth gang), and indi-viduals (e. g., a landlord) the action group is engaging in an attempt to achieve its goals and objectives. And how involves the strategies and tactics, resources, allies, and communications systems (both internal and external) that the organization uses to carry out its action program.

1. Participation

The number and type of active participants in collective action are crucial variables when examining any community organization, and youth groups are no exception to this rule. Indeed, chapter 5 focuses on participatory democracy as a fundamental principle and theme in youth-led organizing. Elsewhere, we examine the reasons youth are attracted to organizing efforts, the recruitment methods that have been most effective in engaging them, some common barriers to youth participation, and the motivational ele-ments and techniques that sustain active involvement. A variety of factors is analyzed, including the importance of pre-existing peer networks, the process of relationship building, organizational culture, and the collec-tive actions taken for social change, individual development, and social activities.

We also consider both the breadth of participation in the organizations studied (how wide the pool they draw from) and the depth of activism by the

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groups’ members. For instance, the total number of participants might be strong, yet whole segments of the youth community could be underrepre-sented in terms of race, ethnicity, language, gender, age range, social class, sexual orientation, religious affiliation, and physical or mental disability. And there certainly is a critical distinction between active participants and ‘‘paper members’’ who are involved only sporadically. Attendance at meet-ings, events, and actions (without focusing on too many large ‘‘one-shot turnouts’’) provides a direct means for assessing membership involvement.

2. Leadership

Indigenous leadership goes to the heart of community organizing princi-ples. A group’s leadership should be individuals who are representative of its general membership. Leaders may hold formal positions or may fulfill functional roles as needed. Leadership may be centralized (one or several youth) or may be shared. Second-line leaders are core activists who partic-ipate regularly in meetings, activities, events, and committees; they serve as links between the top leaders and rank-and-file members, helping maintain accountability and two-way communication. Frequently, but not always, new first-line leaders emerge from this group. Regardless, second-line leaders usually function as worker bees and provide the honey that holds the group together.

Leadership development is a central element of youth-led organizing, and chapter 6 examines this subject in detail. Throughout the book, we explore a range of topics related to youth leadership, including typical organizational roles and tasks, the process of gaining new skills, the development of critical consciousness, and the unique problems related to rapid turnover and tran-sition as youth leaders age out after a relatively short period of time. Given the latter phenomenon, a steady flow of new blood from the second-line ranks is especially important to maintain the ongoing viability of youth-led groups that may have formed through the extraordinary efforts of a core of committed, talented, and charismatic initial leaders.

3. Staffing

There are two basic models for paid organizing staff who function as com-munity organizers:

1. They may play a facilitative role, in which they do not act as lead-ers and seldom, if ever, speak publicly on behalf of the group; here, there is a strict separation of roles between leadership and organizing.

2. They may wear both hats, combining the roles of leaders who take charge, directing their followers, and organizers, who work to get others to take on key roles and responsibilities. When one person

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acts as both a leader and an organizer, it is important to strike a balance between the two roles or else the organization may expe-rience inadequate leadership on one hand or a lack of organiza-tional development on the other.

The field of youth-led organizing has embraced a multifaceted definition of leadership that prepares youth to assume roles as community organizers that transcend traditional views of leadership, including recruiters, moti-vators, agitators, consolidators, facilitators, strategists, and tacticians. Thus, youth tend to function both as organizers and as leaders. Most, but not all, the youth organizations examined herein have paid staff, and frequently, former youth leaders move into these salaried positions. Three common ex-periences for first-generation paid organizers/leaders are: (1) the develop-ment of political consciousness in high school; (2) college activism; and (3) learning from veteran organizers (Pintado-Vertner 2004, 82). Where paid staff does not exist, youth leaders usually function as organizers by default. Chapter 7 examines the recruitment, screening, preparation, and support of youth-led community organizers.

4. Structure

Organizational structure enables one to see who is responsible for the vari-ous facets of a group’s operations, including formally elected officer posi-tions, permanent and temporary committees, and the general membership. Permanent or standing committees help maintain continuity; while tem-porary or ad hoc committees provide structural access points through which new members can become active. Other structural factors include operating procedures for choosing leaders, running meetings, making de-cisions, and forming committees. The old saying that form follows function is operative; there is no one best structure for all community organizations. Structures that enable an organization to accomplish its basic goals and objectives should be put in place.

Youth organizations often have more streamlined structures than those created by many organizations of adults. Most are locally based and are not affiliated with any national training or support networks (HoSang 2004). California, where there are some intermediary organizations, is an excep-tion. In New York City, the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Co-alition (NWBCCC) ‘‘reinvented its youth organizing, moving it out of the neighborhood level and creating a central youth organization—Sistas and Brothas United’’ (Sistas and Brothas United 2005). On the other hand, most rural areas and much of the South lack sufficient community organization infrastructure to develop separate, freestanding youth groups. Thus, there is wide variation in how youth-led organizing projects are structured across the United States, and structural factors will be considered throughout the chapters that follow.

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5. Goals and Objectives

The analysis of this variable should include what the organization has ac-complished in the past, what its present standing is, and what its goals are for the future. The examination can begin with a look at the organization’s age and history, the rationale for creating it, key actors in its formation, the original mission that moved it forward, and its accomplishments to date. Goals include long-range visions about desirable circumstances in the dis-tant future, as well as middle-range aspirations that are more concrete. Ob-jectives operationalize these goals by specifying measurable outcomes within a particular time period. Grassroots groups use community development or social action methods to meet their goals and objectives, employing a va-riety of strategies and tactics to influence the relevant target systems.

Youth-led community organizing easily can incorporate elements and goals associated with youth development, such as decision making, skills training, relationship building, community service, identity formation, and leadership development (YouthAction 1998). However, an organizing ap-proach can combine youth development with social justice initiatives to fo-cus on youth power for systemic change goals, such as environmental justice, civic activism, antiracism, youth rights, gender and age equality, LGBT rights, peacemaking/conflict resolution, exercising political power, freedom to ex-press youth culture, and education reform (Russell 2002). These broad goals of youth-led organizing are explored in chapters 4–6.

Examples of specific organizing campaigns identified in this study are illustrative rather than exhaustive, but they include keeping an alternative high school open; opposing racial profiling in schools; monitoring sexual assaults in schools; seeking student fares on city buses; improving school lunches; cleaning up a chemical waste dump; obtaining school repair; in-creasing police security; ensuring educational equity; and fighting the crim-inalization and incarceration of young people. Case materials in chapter 9 also present more in-depth illustrations.

6. Target Systems

When community organizations attempt to achieve their objectives, they focus on a target system whose members they engage, activate, or influence. Depending on a group’s organizing approach, target systems may be either internal or external. Both community development and social action require a high degree of participation and constituency involvement. Therefore, community members are internal targets to become active in any grassroots-organizing change effort. Success will depend on how much the community buys into and invests in the effort. A community development approach also may target external institutions to collaborate on or in partnerships

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while, as previously discussed, social action always pressures external deci-sion makers to do something differently.

This study examined a range of internal and external target systems im-pacted by various youth organizing models. Internal recruitment and en-gagement of youth in both community and school settings is examined in chapter 7. All of these organizing initiatives also have attempted to alter power relations between adults and young people. A community organiz-ing approach enables youth to undertake collective action to hold adult institutional decision makers more accountable. Efforts by youth-led orga-nizations to impact common target systems, such as schools, police depart-ments, courts, business corporations, and municipal governments, are re-counted throughout the remainder of this book.

7. Strategy and Tactics

According to Staples (2004a, 56):

Strategies are methods designed to influence targets to act in a manner that enables an organization to achieve its goals and objectives. Tactics are specific procedures, techniques, and actions employed to implement stra-tegic approaches. There can be internal strategies to engage and motivate community members to take collective action, as well as external ones to convince or coerce organizational targets to act as the group wishes. If a strategy is like a stairway to get from one floor to another, tactics are like the individual stairs.

There are three broad types of strategies: collaborative endeavors, persua-sive campaigns, and adversarial contests (Warren 1975). On the other hand, there are an almost infinite number of tactics to pressure an internal or ex-ternal target.

Effective strategies and tactics are critical variables for how youth orga-nizing goals and objectives are realized. According to the Innovations Center for Community and Youth Development (2003), there are three essential strategies of successful organizations with social change initiatives: (1) or-ganizational leadership is able to inspire action and partnership among all members of a community; (2) leaders are able to develop the capacity of their organization to plan, implement, and achieve its social change goal; and (3) the changes created can be effectively sustained and supported over an extended period of time.

HoSang (2004, 67) notes:

Many youth organizing groups have developed an integrated approach to social change, often combining issue-based organizing with leadership development programs, service learning activities, cultural enrichment programs, and even academic and personal support components. In com-parison to adult-based community organizing groups that typically focus on policy outcomes and the organizing skills of constituents, youth groups

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have crafted a more holistic approach to social change that addresses the many issues young members face.

Political education that develops the critical consciousness of youth leaders is a second cross-cutting strategy employed by a high percentage of youth-led organizing initiatives; and ‘‘an unusually heavy reliance on the talents and commitment of a core group of staff members—many of whom are in their twenties or early thirties—who can successfully balance roles as mentors, political strategists, trainers, and fundraisers’’ is a third strategy (HoSang 2004, 68).

Strategies have been developed to meet the particular challenges of or-ganizing a youth constituency. Thus, the absence of a well-developed youth service infrastructure throughout most of the United States has led youth organizers to take a broader, more comprehensive and holistic approach that includes the educational, personal support, and developmental aspects discussed above. Parham and Pinzino (2004) have combined the best of both community organizing and youth development in developing their model of youth organizing.

Also, because most youth organizing efforts are locally based, they often have considerable leverage on specific issues of immediate concern, but usually have difficulty achieving broader systemic change (Parham and Pinzino 2004). This localism, plus the shortage of national training and sup-port networks for youth, often leads to ‘‘a lack of access to replicable cam-paign models’’ (HoSang 2004), which is a challenge frequently not faced by adult community and labor organizing projects that can draw on such larger affiliations. However, the youth-led organizing approach has drawn effec-tively on the lived day-to-day experiences of young people and has devel-oped highly successful strategies for integrating culture as a central com-ponent of its organizing model.

The strategies and tactics specific to youth-led organizing are central to success in overcoming the challenges inherent in building power for this constituency. The approaches and methods briefly identified above will be revisited throughout this book along with other strategies and techniques that have proved effective.

8. Resources

The adequacy of capital resources, as well as the sources and means by which community organizations are funded, have a profound influence on almost every facet of how organizational operations are carried out. Ade-quacy of funding was identified by Sherwood and Dressner (2004), and countless others, as a major challenge—and more specifically, ‘‘too little and too uncertain’’ funding. Too little funding, for example, translates to limited physical space (inadequate office and meeting space) and restrictions on the number of youth who can participate. Further, inadequate funding limits

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organizations from undertaking important strategic planning functions. Uncertain funding, particularly sizable grants, necessitates that valuable time and energy be devoted to writing many small grants.

External funding may be public (federal, state, county, municipal) or pri-vate (foundations, churches, businesses, contracts, individual donors), and usually is most secure and insulated from a funder’s whims and constraints when it is diversified. Groups that engage in social action should be espe-cially wary about accepting money from potential institutional targets. In-ternal sources of capital may include membership dues, door-to-door can-vassing for contributions, and a variety of grassroots fund-raising projects such as raffles, banquets, dances, carnivals, bake sales, ad books, car washes, or potluck suppers. But regardless of the source, there are organizational costs attached to almost all types of funding.

Raising sufficient funds to pay for staff is demanding for all community organizations, but is especially difficult for youth groups. We found that there are particular opportunities and challenges for funding youth-led or-ganizing, which typically operates with limited capital resources. When adult organizations are the sponsoring bodies, money must be squeezed from existing budgets, and youth organizing staff usually are the first to be cut whenever a funding crisis occurs (Parham and Pinzino 2004). Miller (2004,

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