Introduction

Note for electronic version [2004]: Peg Knoepfle was an associate editor of Illinois Issues magazine at the time she directed this project, organized the interviews for the magazine and then put the put together. She has since retired but remains active in the Springfield, Illinois, community.
 

By Peg Knoepfle
(c) 1990 Illinois Issues, Springfield, Illinois

   In "Neighbors and Tenants fight HUD and ComEd" Thorn Clark details how two well-established Alinsky-style organizations on Chicago's north side won battles by doing effective research, making coalitions and getting good media coverage. He also indicates the growing importance of tenants' rights organizations in the struggle for affordability in housing and diversity in neighborhoods.
 

    But After Alinsky, as Joravsky tells us, is also a story of bitter disappointment, reassessment and change. Alinksy-style organizing and the civil rights movement, both strong in Chicago, failed to prevent racial polarization, white flight and economic decay. As a result, there was a tendency to turn away from Alinsky's broad-based, generalist organizing with its emphasis on building "indigenous leadership." Social activists began building coalitions on issues at the city, state and national level. They got involved in electoral politics, making mayoral history in Chicago and sending new people like Aid. Luis Gutierrez, state Sen. Miguel del Valle (D-5, Chicago) and U.S. Rep. Lane Evans (D-17, Rock Island) to the Chicago City Council, the General Assembly and Congress. And, as Cheryl Frank reports, Chicago organizers began talking to people down-state.

Thus Patrick Barry shows how Gale Cincotta moved from organizing on Chicago's west side to waging war against the banking industry, followed by negotiations and new partnerships. And how Heather Booth moved from being a working mother and a former activist to building a national base for a new "populist-progressive" electoral majority.
 

    Meanwhile, in low- and moderate-income Chicago neighborhoods survival was, and still is, the basic concern. During the 1970s and '80s some Alinsky-style organizations became staff-directed providers of social services or created nonprofit corporations to develop neighborhood economies. The risk: mismanagement and loss of purpose and indepen­dence. The need: to stay alive. The hope: to build an economy that is more diverse, more efficient and maybe more sustainable than the one that has produced two decades of deindustrialization, neighborhood abandonment and disinvestment.
 

    In a doctoral thesis cited in the bibliography, South Shore Bank executive Michael Bennett traces the "devolving   roles" of community organizations from advocacy to service provision and economic develop­ment. In the roundtable discussion Clark notes that some of the programs forced on banks by the Community Reinvestment Act have proved to be profitable to the banks rather than merely charitable to the neighborhoods. And Barak Obama ponders political empowerment, economic self-sufficiency and community organizing. He concludes that the first two, necessary as they are, will not succeed in bettering the lot of oppressed people without the grass-roots involvement and leadership that only organizing can nurture. A plurality of problems requires a plurality of solutions.
 

    Cheryl Frank reaches the same conclusion in her extensive research on downstate organizing. She also deals with a plurality of organizing traditions. Among them is Alinsky's — alive and well downstate through the efforts of Shel Trapp from the National Training and Information Center and the connections with the Midwest Academy and Illinois Public Action (formerly called Illinois Public Action Council) — not to mention the United Auto Workers in Danville and Vincent Thomas's feisty Community Action Program in Rock Island.

But Frank also talks about civil rights activism in the courts and on the streets that changed the form of city government in Springfield. And about Richard Poston's model for community development that he is now applying, with the help of white and African-American leadership, in Cairo. Health care, ground water, farm foreclosures and the underground media are among the subjects Frank touches on, as she explains issues and coalitions that will confront Springfield and Washington in the 1990s.
 

    Bill Kemp focuses on some of the poorest communities in the nation, little-known pockets of poverty in Chicago's diverse, energetic and vastly underrated south suburbs. He tells of efforts by the Chicago Area Project — founded in the 1930s by Alinsky's mentor and rival, Clifford Shaw — to create a better environment for youth. But these neighborhoods are so ravaged by deindustrialization, family dissolution and crime that there are few institutions left for organizers to build on. Kemp asks if organizing can help communities that seem to lack everything, including the two fundamentals: family support and jobs.
 

    In "Bedrock Democracy: Community Organizations and Washington's Civic Legacy" Christopher Robert Reed speaks of a plurality of empower­ments: civic, political and economic. Reversing Obama's equation, he points out that community organizing alone does not create true empow­erment. There must also be full participation in the "political economy." He says that for Mayor Harold Washington "bedrock democracy" meant using his power as mayor to make community groups and their constitu­ents "partners in the process of economic development." Thus inclusive-ness becomes the bedrock on which to rebuild a city — or a nation.
 

    An axiom emerges from the stories and discussions in this book: Building civic, economic and political participation requires long-term commitment. New options are also apparent: Community organizing is capable of breaking up what Obama calls "ideological gridlock" by appealing to the concerns of both liberals and conservatives. But participa­tion in general and community organizing in particular are, by nature, full of conflicts. Power, as Alinsky said, is what is being dealt with here.
 

    Along this line of thought, I have listed several books by Harry Boyte in the bibliography. I have done this, first of all, because he retrieves so many of the nation's and Illinois' democratic traditions — an antidote to the "cultural weightlessness" that Norman Birnbaum describes so convinc­ingly in Radical Renewal But Boyte also outlines the unresolved conflict in these traditions, in particular in a collection of essays he edited with Frank Riessman enititled The New Populism. In one of the essays, for example, Cornel West, an African-American socialist, points out that he does not share the populist faith in the good will of the American people since both the Emancipation Proclamation and the Brown vs. Board of Education decision were "far removed" from popular approval and would have lost if put to a referendum. And feminist Elizabeth Kasmarck Minnich warns that populism must not only affirm diversity "but concen­trate on differences," avoiding in its effort to be inclusive the superficial pluralism that says — "we can all be in this together because really we are all alike despite all our apparent differences." Respecting even concentrat­ing on differences in order to foster a democratic polity may be what the authors of After Alinsky are talking about as they puzzle over the relationships between Illinois' community organizations and its political movements, between race and ethnicity, and among the various forms of empowerment — civic, political and economic.
 

    From a journalist's point of view, the excitement of working on this book was that the stories never stopped breaking. Updates would require another volume, but a few are needed to fill in some gaps. Currently, the major organizing story in Chicago is school reform, perhaps the most inclusive civic action the city has ever undertaken. And one that began in the city's homes and neighborhoods. Among the neighborhoods whose stories are not told in this book are Chicago's Asian communities, yet their task in school reform is particularly complex and epitomizes the long-term, all-encompassing commitment that school reform requires. More will be heard from these communities in the coming decade.
 

    Another concern is housing. As of the spring of 1990, the Buena case, whose Uptown beginnings  are recounted by Thorn Clark, was on appeal. The tenants' organizations had won the first round in their efforts to uphold a congressional moratorium on prepaying FHA-financed mort­gages, and Housing and Urban Development Secy. Jack Kemp was backing Congress rather than the landlords on the moratorium issue. Kemp had also approved the purchase and tenant management of another FHA-financed Uptown apartment building, and community organizations across the city were talking to each other about evictions, gentrification and ways to finance affordable housing. The Statewide Housing Coalition, composed of Chicago, suburban and downstate groups, was monitoring implementation of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which it helped pass in 1989, and working on other statewide problems, such as tenants' rights. According to Clark: "Housing will be the key issue of the 1990s. If there is such a thing as an omnibus housing bill out of Congress, all the groups will get behind it."
 

    Meanwhile, a new financing opportunity for nonprofit housing develop­ment corporations throughout the U.S was provided by 1989 amendments to the federal savings and loans bailout. Besides making it easier for community groups to monitor whether banks and savings and loans are investing in poor and working-class neighborhoods, the amendments give the nonprofits access to low-interest mortgage rates on properties fore­closed on by failed savings and loans. The amendments had the backing of U.S. Rep. Henry Gonzalez (D-20, Texas), Rev. Jesse Jackson and of an organization with Alinsky roots that is mentioned but not covered at length in this book: American Communities Organized for Reform Now (ACORN). Organizing locally and working for social change nationally, ACORN has Chicago branches in Englewood and North Lawndale. Affordable housing, school reform and campaigns for better law enforce­ment and tougher prosecution of rape cases have been its issues in Chicago. The latter campaign brought together women from all parts of the city.
 

    In troubled East St. Louis, the Metro East Church and Community Organization (MECCO) was working this spring on the city's garbage crisis and its drug problems. Founded in 1988, the Alinsky-style organiza­tion consists of 16 churches and seven church-related organizations. Developing an educated citizenry that can shape its own destiny is MECCO's goal.
 

    Some updates on organizations covered in the book: In Chicago a reorganized United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) with Danny Solis at the helm "wants to play a leading role on a range of quality-of-life issues," according to UNO organizer Phil Mullins. The issues are afforda­ble housing, school reform and health care. UNO will try to use what it learned in Chicago school reform as a model for restructuring health care. Mary Gonzales, who left UNO and is now executive director of Pilsen Neighbors Community Council, says that both the council and the community are deeply involved in school reform. But Pilsen also feels targeted by gentrification. Currently 75 percent of the homes there are owner-occupied; the council wants to keep them that way and to help people from the community become home owners. It has formed its own housing development corporation to build affordable housing on vacant land.
 

    Developing Communities Project (DCP) in Chicago's Greater Rose-land Area has grown from seven to 14 churches. With a grant from the Illinois Department of Alcohol and Substance Abuse it is taking an "ecological" approach in its efforts to prevent drug and alcohol abuse. This includes organizing to halt the granting of liquor licenses, better enforcement against drug houses and alternative programs for youth to understand the dangers of drugs and to improve their self-esteem. DCP's effort can stand for many in Illinois and across the nation — a frontline, grass-roots initiative to prevent both drug abuse and the wholesale criminalization and imprisonment of minority and low-income youth.
 

    Heather Booth, now heading Citizen Action in Washington, D.C., says her organization has targeted five additional states in its direct mail campaign. Global warming and the environment, universal health care and insurance reform are the issues she sees looming in the 1990s. Back in Chicago, National People's Action director Gale Cincotta says she's "hot to trot" on the peace bonus. Money that would have gone to military spending should go for housing and jobs, she says.
 

    In the south suburbs, Chicago Area Project's new youth center in Ford Heights was scheduled to open in April, and in Elgin its new program for Cambodian youth was underway with help from local and state agencies. The South Suburban Action Conference (SSAC), now 30 churches strong with an African-American, white and Hispanic membership, got an agreement in January from the Southwest Board of Realtors and the Greater South Suburban Board of Realtors to create joint access and multiple listing services and not to engage in the "steering" of minorities to certain areas. SSAC and the realtors had been negotiating since 1987.
 

    Downstate, the Pembroke Area Concerned Citizens and the farmers using irrigation systems negotiated with each other after four years of confrontation and came up with a compromise legislative proposal for adequate wells in Pembroke. The legislation was vetoed twice by Gov. James R. Thompson, but $100,000 for Pembroke's wells was included in the governor's fiscal 1991 budget under Lt. Gov. George Ryan's rural development program.
 

    The Champaign County Health Care Consumers joined with other community groups to create a statewide Campaign for Better Health Care. Chicago and downstate organizations were meeting regularly on local health concerns and backing proposed state legislation for universal health care, modeled on the Canadian system. The Illinois Stewardship Alliance, formerly Illinois South, was backing federal family farm legislation and expressing increased concern over the environmental effects of long-wall coal mining. And the low-watt radio station, owned and operated by Springfield tenants' rights activist Dewayne Readus, had become a national First Amendment issue. For an update, see the articles by Rich Shereikis cited in the bibliography.
 

    Finally, beyond all these events and actions there is another, deeper aspect to organizing. Call it values, culture, spirit — whatever you want. You can see it in the stories in this book. In Cruz's account of the changes UNO brings to participants' lives and to their estimation of themselves. In Green's story of SON/SOC trying to define and negotiate its true self interest. In Hank De Zutter's story, cited in the bibliography, of Mary Johnson Volpe and the Northeast Austin Organization. In Reed's descrip­tion of the network of block clubs and the years of commitment and struggle on Chicago's south and west sides. There is hope here and hard work. Obama probably sums it up best when he describes how organizing enriches the organizer and how it moves marginalized people into the mainstream, causing that mainstream "to get rich and examine and remake itself."
 

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