Hi, everybody, come on in. Set yourselves down. I know many Gentle Readers are still in the next room, talking about the Introduction; if you missed last week, just virtually go in there, too. Plenty of virtuality for everyone. It’s all good.
OK, Chapter One. Valley Interfaith. How about a couple of observations and then a handful of questions. Yes? And if you are particularly interested in this group, evidently this site has some videos of the people involved. I haven’t watched them or read the associated thesis, by the way, but it looks pretty interesting.
OK. First, the style of organizing seems to me to be directly taken from Cesar Chavez and the UFW. Or, rather, Cesar Chavez learned it from Fred Ross of the Community Service Organization, and Fred Ross learned it from Saul Alinsky, who founded the Industrial Areas Foundation, which worked with local Catholic churches to create Valley Interfaith. Most of the organizational stuff—the emphasis on house meetings, on grooming new leaders, and on winning small victories quickly—is straight out of Alinsky, or at least out of Chavez. Not to knock Valley Interfaith, which takes from the best, as it should, but the book gives the impression that the very things that they take are the innovations.
Second, the most memorable thing in the chapter, for me, was the story about someone telling a story. Mr. Ortiz, on pp. 12-13, sparks a story session at a house meeting that turns it from a bull session to a happening, and changes the social network almost entirely. It’s not just that, as the book describes, the private pain made public provides the fuel needed to bring their concerns to the officials’ attention. It’s that the social norms of interaction changed and the people started relating to each other as people rather than as policy positions and interests. And, of course, they paid attention, which is an important part of storytelling. It seems to me that the story Mr. Ortiz told was what made the people at the meeting more likely to join (or rather to return), to trust each other, and to give to each other (at least their time and attention). Perhaps those things lead to more voting; they did in this case.
OK, some questions, which for me are about the Alinsky stuff. I’m afraid I’ll let some Gentle Reader start the conversation about the specific south Texas content.
There are some obvious advantages to house meetings, that is, to having the initial meetings in somebody’s home. People are more likely to trust someone whose home they have been in. People are more likely to want to reciprocate; there is a norm there that when you have been in somebody’s home, you owe them a return invitation. People are more likely to share stories and to treat each other as people if they are in a home. On the other hand, most of us don’t want to open our home to people we don’t know. For one thing, it’s a ridiculous amount of work; for another, it feels tremendously vulnerable. There are also turf issues from the visitor’s point of view, and other issues that tend toward homogeneity in house meetings. Can meetings in libraries or municipal buildings replace house meetings? Is there a way to resolve this?
I certainly understand the value of setting small, achievable goals for a young organization. Winning one thing makes winning other things seem easier. Nothing sparks good chemistry like success. People are more likely to vote if they win an election, to join a network with a track record, to trust a winner. But in a lot of cases, isn’t this like rearranging the proverbial deck chairs? There are serious structural problems; we can’t solve them quickly, but if we take our eyes off the prize, we won’t ever solve them. My own experience (very limited) is that too much pragmatism turns off potential members, who want high ideals. How do we get people to come to union meetings with the news that the pitiful Child Care subsidy has been increased by twenty percent?
Finally, my most serious discomfort with the Alinsky school (as I think of it) is the recursive emphasis on finding new leaders who can find new leaders. Too much of the definition of leadership is caught up in the search for new leaders. It’s a Ponzi scheme (in a good way) to get people to come to rallies, but it doesn’t do much to help people know where to lead, or what else leaders might do other than find leaders. The next thing you know, Valley Interfaith is in bed with the Governor and his faith-based foolishness, and then the man is in the White House. I blame Sister Judy.
No, seriously, I see that Valley Interfaith’s work has resulted in a very wide social network, and that the norms of that network (such as voting for the things your neighbors vote for) have had some political power, some of which has had a positive effect on the lives of the people who live nearby. It really is an inspiring story. But if the networks and norms are a commons, how much of the job is making the commons bigger, and how much is taking care of what you’ve already planted there, and how much is deciding what to plant?
,
-Vardibidian.
One of the things which struck me about the organizing model is that at least in theory, participants meet at a house and through discussion achieve a political point around which to work. So (theoretically) you develop an understanding of what your participants find the most pressing and respond to it. In theory, what you aim to do is create a community used to talking to each other and that what that community aims for is a sustained bond that can tackle more than one issue and can continue beyond the solution of the first problem.
I suspect that in practice there’s a lot more directive pressure to come together around particular issues and to shape the conversation towards certain aims. To sort of lead out a list of issues. To tell people that even though issue X might be important, they should tackle Y first, as it might be more successful. (Which I don’t mean to totally disparage–you do need an organizer who can direct things. What I mean is that it’s easy for that organizer to be directing for other reasons.) [As an aside, how do we define success? Isn’t speaking to people’s hearts, even on an issue they cannot immediately solve, a success in that it improves awareness, draws together like-minded persons as a future resource for action, helps to change slowly if not quickly?]
I suspect too that the emphasis on finding new leaders is because the toll is so high–that the truth of the matter is that even the initial efforts which might win a small battle are so high that they need to keep bringing people in.
On the aside, the way libraries can replace the house is by accepting what the library is becoming (jumping the gun, see Ch.2). Libraries also offer the advantage of neutral space, not charged with the social weirdnesses of how much wealth the host/guest has (as manifested in all kinds of architectural presences–parking space, driveways, foyers, size of rooms, appointments). I’m not sure houses are that great of a meeting space for strangers; just as social capital builds between people to turn strangers into acquaintances or more, physical spaces can encourage that transition.
I’m a bit surprised that our host comes away from the Valley Interfaith chapter with concerns about the house meeting as a model and looks for a replacement.
I make the following observations. In the South Texas situation, the house meeting is clearly necessary for two reasons. First, in the particular situation we are introduced to at the outset, the teachers in a school are visiting parents in the parents’ homes. The sense of outreach, of the usual flow of people from home to school being reversed, is essential in this particular case. Second, part of the problem in the colonias is precisely a lack of public infrastructure. They have to gather as a community somehow when the place that they live has been designed by those with the power to make the rules to make their gathering as a community difficult. Under these circumstances, there is probably no good alternative to meeting in homes.
On the other hand, most of us don’t want to open our home to people we don’t know. For one thing, it’s a ridiculous amount of work; for another, it feels tremendously vulnerable. There are also turf issues from the visitor’s point of view, and other issues that tend toward homogeneity in house meetings.
It seems to me that it is exactly these factors that make house meetings important. Opening one’s house is a big step — I would guess that a lot of what organizers do is help get people ready to take that step. Once they have done it, they are empowered socially in a way that they haven’t been before. Second, opening your house is like telling a story, so it accomplishes a number of the same things that the act of story-telling within the meeting does. Overall, it seems to me that house meetings are not ancillary to the process, replaceable by meetings in other settings. Once the people who live in a place become comfortable meeting together in one another’s homes, a significant piece of community-building has taken place.
I wouldn’t argue that house meetings are the only appropriate model for this sort of community building/organizing or that they would be appropriate for every context. But I think the right question to ask, in recognizing the difficulty of house meetings is “What kinds of work/support are necessary to face those difficulties?” rather than “What alternatives would enable us to avoid those difficulties?”
This isn’t completely related, but possibly of interest:
I now live in a condo that’s part of a five-unit condo complex.
Every few months, we have a Homeowners’ Association meeting; the meeting takes place in a different one of the condos each time.
As someone who’s always been twitchy about interacting with neighbors, this has been a bit of an adjustment for me. I don’t know these people; I’m unlikely to become friends with them; I was thrown together with them pretty much by accident.
I haven’t figured out how I feel about the meetings being in the various homes. It makes me a little uncomfortable to be in someone else’s house in a situation where they didn’t exactly invite me. But it does kinda force us to be neighborly in a way that might not happen if we met at a local park or something.
So I guess I think there are some good sides and some less-good sides to these mini house meeetings, adding up to tentative approval from me. So far. I think. Maybe.
…Another perhaps relevant item: I’ve attended a couple of “house concerts” in the past year or two. The idea of being a member of an audience of about twelve to twenty-five people for a performance doesn’t really appeal to me in general; I like being able to blend into a crowd. But it’s definitely a more intimate setting for a concert.
Oh, and while I’m being tangential, a note about telling stories: DH once told me that a friend of his had made a comment about people who were used to and comfortable with storytelling (even in the sense of using anecdotes to support an argument); they said something about such people using stories both as a medium of exchange and as the item being bought/sold/exchanged. I wish I could remember the exact phrasing; it was much more elegant than that.
Chris, I think you’re right. In particular, right about house meetings being necessary for Valley Interfaith, for the reasons you mentioned and also because the way people lived was one of the issues at hand. But in general, I think your comment I think the right question to ask, in recognizing the difficulty of house meetings is “What kinds of work/support are necessary to face those difficulties?” rather than “What alternatives would enable us to avoid those difficulties?” is spot on the money. But it brings up another question, that both Fran and Jed address: “How can we change our homes into meeting places for strangers?”
By that, of course, I don’t just mean our homes, Gentle Readers. I suppose I mean “How can we change the culture to make our homes more sociable?”
In the last seven months, since we moved in to our current residence, the people who have crossed the threshold fall into three categories: Family members, old friends, and people we’ve employed in one way or another. The last category includes movers, babysitters (and potential babysitters coming to be interviewed), maintenance people of one stripe or another, people who work for the landlord, and possibly a delivery guy or two. The only exceptions, I believe, are the downstairs neighbors, who were in the apartment a total of four times, only once for longer than five minutes (one of them), and who have since moved out. None of the other people in the complex have visited, nor have we invited them in. The situation was more or less the same in our last place, if anything moreso. And it’s pretty similar the other way, although not as stark. So I have no practice at dealing with the issues that Fran raises, which are real, and require practice at accommodating.
For the most part, I think the blame goes on our rejection of the social demand that people do what is socially done, even if it isn’t fun. I don’t think that the Bunkers really wanted to have dinner with the Jeffersons, or with the Findlays for that matter. They did it because it was done. Nobody particularly expected to enjoy it; that’s all right, nobody particularly expects to enjoy Friends, either. Of course, the reason why our grandparents had to exchange dinner party invitations was because they were already in social networks with people who leaved nearby. I don’t particularly have anyone to invite to dinner. My acquaintances are nowhere near close enough (I don’t, for instance, even know the names of the children’s librarians who I see twice a week or so). So it all goes round and round: if there were better social networks, it would be more common for us to have people in our homes, which would make it easier (at least conceptually) to have house meetings that could make better social networks.
House concerts might be an answer. What about Meetup.com? Any Gentle Reader have experience with that?
,
-Vardibidian.
One other thing to toss in: I think some kinds of people in some kinds of contexts are better at meeting strangers than others. Kam has been known to make lifelong friends with chance encounters on buses; I’ve been known to carefully avoid interacting too much with grocery-store clerks on the grounds that I assume they don’t want to have to pretend to have personal relationships with hundreds of customers a day.
More on related topics anon.