{"id":2192,"date":"2004-08-15T15:09:29","date_gmt":"2004-08-15T19:09:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2004\/08\/15\/2192.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:46:39","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:46:39","slug":"tohubohu-book-club-better-toge-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2004\/08\/15\/tohubohu-book-club-better-toge-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Tohu-Bohu Book Club: Better Together, Valley Interfaith"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Hi, everybody, come on in. Set yourselves down. I know many Gentle Readers are still in the next room, talking about the Introduction<\/a>; if you missed last week, just virtually go in there, too. Plenty of virtuality for everyone. It’s all good.\n

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<\/a> 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.\n

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<\/a>, 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.\n

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.\n

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.\n

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?\n

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?\n

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<\/I> 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.\n

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?\n

                           ,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2192"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17088,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2192\/revisions\/17088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}