photo credit, America Speaks
A good friend of mine was very involved in the local contingent of the national deliberative process around the federal budget, earlier this year, through the organization America Speaks. A couple of days after the town hall, she and I were waiting for our kids to finish swimming lessons, and, as we often do, talking about democracy and public policy and social change, instead of…whatever else we might talk about?
And, while I don’t remember exactly, I can imagine that I might have rolled my eyes a bit. Because the truth is, as many of those who had social work classes with me, or those who have shared a table with me at any sort of deliberative process function know, I have this major ambivalence about the whole “consensus-building” process.
I’m totally pro-citizen engagement, as you know–but that’s citizen engagement with those in power, vying for power themselves, making a mark on the policymaking process, making their voices heard by those with the authority to do something about it.
And that’s where the disconnect has often been for me with these facilitated ‘conversations’ about critical social issues: they can give sitting around with people who have absolutely no intention nor ability to change anything the appearance of being real democracy, which, I believe, can actually do significant harm. People who feel that things should have changed because they spent 4 hours (or, in this case, 8!) talking about them (and, in fact, are given the impression that they will) can lose heart and disengage from the tactics that would be more likely to bring results.
There are few things more disempowering than false empowerment.
So, I probably said something about how I’m less interested in consensus and more interested in building the power that will enable me to win (my most infamous example of this frustration with process comes after a painful seminar on consensus organizing, when I admittedly told the woman who had illustrated the philosophy behind the approach with a “tiny fire of smoldering embers” that, “sometimes, what we need is a big ass bonfire to really burn some stuff up.”)
So that gives you a sense of how I struggle with this stuff.
Still, when some of my students brought up the America Speaks: Our Budget, Our Economy session during class discussion on the federal budget last week, I resolved to sit down and really go through their work. Because, to a large extent, something that can get people worked up enough about reasonable strategies for deficit reduction is doing something very, very right.
And, I’ll say it.
I was wrong. Okay, partially.
Because there is really a lot to get excited about, at least in the way that this particular organization approaches the whole deliberative democracy idea, even if I still have a lot of caveats to my enthusiasm.
What I love:
But, still, I have a few worries. I’m not sure, really, that these are avoidable in this whole deliberative exercise, but they still concern me:
When we were talking about the local event, my friend lamented the protestors outside who were criticizing America Speaks for (in their opinion) including options that would threaten Social Security and ignored the potential of single-payer health care. I, on the other hand, was delighted. Because the truth is that we need that, too–people who will stand outside and scream, until the conversation happening inside has to shift, somewhat, to accommodate them.
But, still, I stand largely corrected. And, Brandi, I promise, next time I’ll let you watch your kid swim.
I call it organizing: “network weaving” and your nonprofit
Remember, all comments on this week’s posts about The Networked Nonprofit will enter you in the running to win a free copy of the book!
Yesterday, I wrote about some of the attributes that drive organizations towards social media parallel those that create the conditions for effective advocacy. Today, I’m thinking more about those overlaps, here in the context of “old-fashioned organizing” as compared to what Kanter and Fine refer to as “network weaving”.
Both concepts have the same fundamental goals:
I share with the authors, as do almost all of the (many) grassroots organizers I know or have known in my career, a belief that organizations are stronger when they have a solid connection to those they serve, and that individuals’ lives are enriched by participation in something larger than themselves.
And I don’t really care whether they call that network weaving, in language that perhaps feels more familiar to those figuring out social media will add to their nonprofit organization’s quest for justice, however they define it, or organizing, which, albeit in online form, it really is.
But it does, for me, raise some real questions about where the points of divergence are. In other words, if networking weaving, as described here, is so much like community organizing, how is it different, not in technical ways (like the media used) but fundamental ones? Are online social networks, for example, more likely to be composed on homogenous groups, thus denying people one of the most enriching parts of organizing: joining forces with those different than ourselves? Are the relationships forged online significantly different (more shallow? more lasting?) than those built face-to-face? Is the role played by a network weaver substantially different than that of an organizer? Do the boundaries of expertise fade away more fluidly online?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, and they are most likely only answerable by work with a relatively small number of individuals–those engaged in authentic online AND in-person networking weaving/grassroots organizing efforts. Because so many of the former organizations have little to no experience in grassroots organizing campaigns (having adopted the strategies specifically to advance their online efforts) and so many of the latter are working with populations that (correctly or not) they assume to prefer face-to-face work, definitive answers may elude us, at least for awhile.
But, maybe, that’s okay. Maybe, for now, our challenge is to really contemplate the questions: to think about how (and when) network weaving complements how we engage people “offline”, and vice versa, and to prompt conversations with our constituents about the multiple ways in which they want to connect to each other, and to our shared work.
Those of you who organize online and/or in-person, where do you see overlap and where do you see significant differences? How can practitioners committed to empowering participation use both strategies? What cross-learning do we need to advance these fields? And does language, how we talk about what we do, matter?
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Posted in Analysis and Commentary
Tagged community organizing, empowerment, reviews, technology