Diversity in Social Action

It is relevant to address diversity within social action movements. While social activism or social action is not synonymous to community organizing, often times effective community organizing will employ social action in order to accomplish goals for its constituency. When planning effective social actions there needs to be a cohesive community organizing practice where local stakeholders are trained to emerge as leaders, a variety of voices are considered, and community resources and strengths are assessed. 

Community organizing and social action are dynamic processes that ideally originates from within the pertaining community and its residents. The stakeholder's subjective experiences, shaped by race, gender, class, sexual orientation and disability, is crucial when assessing the origins of a social movement. In Celene Krauss article, Women of Color on the Front Line (2010), in Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology, women's differing roles in toxic waste protests and mobilizations are discussed. She employs a feminist lens to better understand how women's experiences and intentions in activism can be shaped by their roles and pre-existing social hierarchies.

White working class women were often drawn into toxic waste protests on behalf of their roles as mothers. A social work strengths based perspective is employed when Krauss considers how these women's extended social networks within their communities and families provided them with a vehicle for information dissemination and community organizing. Traditional female gatherings such as Tupperware parties, which might make most feminists including myself cringe, served as a catalyst when women in a Detroit suburb began to discuss negative health patterns in their community. Krauss's perspective allowed me to reconsider certain traditional female roles and expectation as potentials for strength and transformation. Kraus provided other examples of how white working class women tied their values to motherhood and democracy and these convictions helped them politicize and reconsider inequities related to power and gender. 

Pregnant women protest the use of harmful chemicals outside of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's office

(retrieved from http://www.greenpeace.org/eu-unit/en/campaigns/chemicals/)

Krauss points out that African American women's toxic waste protests originated from a different angle. Their involvement arose alongside issues of race inequality and political disenfranchisement. Similarly to the experiences of Native American women in environmental protests, their awareness of racial oppression connects to a wider political context where toxic waste is seen as "environmental racism". Within a social work perspective, its crucial to understand the subjective experiences of different groups of people and how they might approach and impact macro scale issues. Assessing strengths within different communities might vary according to people's experiences, roles and perceptions of themselves. 

Perspectives on Community Organizing

Conflict versus Consensus Organizing

Community organizing focuses on shifting inequitable balances of power which adversely effect and/or alienate a population. Conflict organizing & consensus organizing are two modes of community organizing that employ different strategies for community intervention. There is also differences in the projected outcome of these two approaches. 

Conflict organizing is often aimed at calling people's attention to a certain problem or condition and it assumes that the opposing side must concede to a demand. It might be based on contesting power hierarchies and battling for a specific or set of causes. Consensus organizing is focused on implementing a project that builds on the mutual self interest of both sides rather than forcing a concession from the opposing side. A consensus organizer can't necessarily afford to disrupt or demonize the other side as one of their main focuses will be based on finding common ground. Prof Hawkin's summarized one of his student's reflections on consensus organizing: "What Ive learned through this process is that I can better get what I want by figuring out how to help you get what you want". Essentially a consensus organizer must put themselves in the shoes of the person or organization they will be negotiating with.

Saul Alinsky, considered the grandfather of conflict organizing, urged activists to consider how symbols are used to convey messages. We discussed in Prof Hawkin's class how Alinsky was attuned to the idea that if you want to use a metafor to convey discontent then you must understand how that metaphor is going to be interpreted by the general public or target audience. Alinksy was opposed to the use of flag burning in opposition to the Vietnam war because it did not effectively communicate a solution or alternative to war and further offended and alienated the public from the anti-war movement.

One of the differences between the two different modes of community organizing is the outcome and strategy for achieving this outcome. At the end of conflict organizing you are trying to achieve a succession from the opposition. For example when Dolores Huerta and Cezar Chaves were organizing the Delano Grape Strike with the United Farm Workers they used boycotts and picketing efforts in order to establish a minimum wage and collective bargaining rights for immigrant farm workers. They collaborated with several other unions in order to achieve an effective and cohesive boycott, such as the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, who would not load nonunion grapes onto shipments. The boycott eventually lead to their victory against the DiGiorgio Corporation and Schenley Industries. 

One of the first figure that comes to my mind when I think about community organizing in the United States is Dolores Huerta. She is an accomplished community organizer that lead stikes and political rallies mobilizing Latinos towards union organizing, labour rights, gender equality and political representation. Along with Cesar Chaves she cofounded the National Farmworkers Association in 1962. Her foundation's mission is "to create a network of organized communities pursuing social justice through systemic and structural transformation". 

National Women's Hall of Fame video about D. Huerta

I found the following excerpts especially relevant to the social work values of employing a strengths based approach, acknowledging the self determination of your client and working to help people empower themselves. “As an organizer you also have to keep in mind that....when people get involved they really transform, they get stronger and the work that they do transforms other people and that makes the community stronger and our world stronger.”

Huerta, shortly after receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom

While not all the contents of this next TED video below are relevant to this post, starting at minute 6:45 Emiliano Salinas describes an example of coordinated civil action or non violent community organizing that is startling and effective in the face of terrorism and fear.

I was having a hard time thinking of how a consensus approach could be employed in situations where entities are fundamentally at odds, human rights have been violated and oppressive practices employed.  I then remembered the amnesty decision during Brasil's transition from dictatorship to democracy. In order for the country to transition as a cohesive unit and collaborate in establishing a democracy, both sides of the long standing conflict between the authoritative military power establishment and the opposition that often times employed violence to oppose the regime, were pardoned of their crimes. This enabled both sides to work together in the future and established some common ground. If there had not been vocal and effective opposition to the military regime via conflict organizing, the opportunity for consensus organizing might not have occurred. Perhaps the necessity and use of these two different modes are reflective of unique moments in history, such that successful conflict organizing can lay the framework for future consensus organizing. 

Community Practice

Strategies for Community Outreach 
(discussed on Nov 4th 2012 by Prof. Hawkins/University of Pittsburgh)

Three modes of community outreach will be discussed within a social work perspective in this post. It remains necessary while considering these distinct modes, to recognize how often times these approaches can be employed simultaneously. Social work practice does not exist in a vacuum and dynamic interlinked practices can strengthen and build upon each other. 

Locality Development

One of the primary goals within a locality development framework is to engage distinct members of a community within a common space. A vehicle for this is to create a physical place where people come together to share a sense of community. This mode of community practice attempts to approach a previously fragmented neighborhood and foster a space where shared experiences, resources and information can be exchanged. The settlement house movement beginning in the late 1800's is an early representation of effective locality development. Jane Adam's 'Hull House' settlement in Chicago is an example of this type of intervention, embodying the value that an individual should be considered and 'treated' within their environment. A person in the environment (PIE) perspective is a key social work value employed within locality development, urging social workers to reform the social and economic environment rather than individually diagnosing an alienated individual. 

Cultural and recreational centers such as the YMCA also fit into this paradigm of community outreach. These centers along with settlement houses were aimed at addressing diverse immigrant populations, assisting with their transition into American society. Initiatives aimed at creating common ground in order to adress rootlessness, disengaged citizens and weak social networks, created social and cultural capital. Accesible and cooperative civic spaces attempted to create a more cohesive society while simultaneously providing essential social services such as child care, medical care, vocational training, cultural workshops and more. Within this locality development, the target population is often viewed as 'citizens', due to a historical attempt to increase people's ability to cooperate and contribute as productive citizens. Within a strengths based approach, a responsible intervention would include different cultural and personal insights. 

Social Planning

Driving questions within a social planning perspective is: How can services be coordinated to better serve a community? What are the primarily gaps in services and resources in the community? Effectively addressing these questions implies a great deal of inter agency networking in order to both adress gaps and create a comprehensive continuum of care. It entails pulling together resources from different organizations to create a consistent intervention. This approach would view their target population either as clients or consumers because they would be generally coming for assistance or services on an individual or family basis. The Mon Valley Providers Council is a program of the Human Services Center Corporation in Turtle Creek, PA. The MVPC provides interagency links and formalizes an alliance between diverse service providers in the region. They discuss and strategize how to better serve the community by bridging gaps in services, creating a more cohesive network of servies, and establishing working groups on housing, health, employment and youth. A list of all their member organizations can be seen HERE. Connecting previously fragmented social service agencies into a cohesive and communicable alliance is a key goal within a social planning framework.

Social Action

Also known as 'community action', a social action paradigm frequently focuses on advocacy and thus it views its target population as constituents. A primary goal of social action is to call the pubic's attention to social problems that are otherwise out of sight. Education, lobbying and mobilization are all tools for social action. Social Action will be further discussed in an ensuing post. 

And finally

Its worth remembering that each mode of community organizing will have distinct ways of interacting with its target population. Within a general social work practice, we refer to the people we are professionally interacting with as clients, constituents, consumers and citizens. Each label carries with it a set of expectations and implications that fall on a spectrum ranging from voluntary to involuntary relationships. There has been a general trend to adress clients as consumers since the title 'consumer' implies a voluntary and perhaps empowering transaction, or at the very least acknowledges a person's choice in services.  Therefore we should remain attuned to how professionals label their target populations, as that provides  valuable information on the nature of their professional interaction and frames their practice within the different modes of social work practice. 

Narrative Nature of Social Work Assessment

Social work assessments can often embody a narrative nature in order to best draw out a client's story. There are several questions a social worker must adress, answer and assess by the end of the assessment process, ranging from micro to macro level problems, strengths and resources. 

retrieved from http://ocw.usu.edu/university_extension/conversation-on-instructional-design/index.html

A narrative assessment should enable your client to make their own discoveries and notice patterns in behaviors or events. When addressing a problematic behavior, it is essential to ask your client: What is the outcome of the behavior? This question is especially important as it can empower the client to self-adress the outcome, aftermath or consequences of a behavior. A social worker's goal within a direct practice paradigm often might entail encouraging self-awareness via self-reflection. This relates to the key social work value of self determination. At best a narrative extends a client's awareness beyond what they have thought about previously by encouraging the assessment to be a discovery process. 

Dynamic questions should help the client create a narrative or story about their behavior which moves them beyond a fragmented view of actions and events to a cohesive story and reflective mode. If people are conscious of their behavior, that gives them something concrete to work with. This moves the social worker beyond passivity,  as they must remain an active listener to help address these questions while giving the client tools to solve a problem. Assessment questions encourage the client to become self reflective regarding their problems and why they are seeing you by tying together different fragments of a problem into a narrative. 

In order to avoid a "one size fits all" mentality within your intervention, a personal and comprehensive assessment must be conducted!