Organizing Isn’t All That Progressive Community Groups Do

To the Editor:

I was amused to see my name mentioned in the recent opinion piece by Michael Shuman (“‘Progressive Philanthropy’ Should Cast a Wider Net,” My View, November 5). I especially appreciated his generous paraphrasing of my comments at the recent National Network of Grantmakers Conference, in which he afforded me the quotation, “Yes” (quoted in full).

Then again, I am not surprised, since the “progressive” think tanks which Mr. Shuman promotes have a long and sordid history of paraphrasing, interpreting, and speaking for people of color and community organizations.

Mr. Shuman has made a mini-career, in this journal and others, of promoting the concept that progressive foundations are misappropriating their funds by overemphasizing community organizing and ignoring think tanks, litigation, and other social-change strategies. In his recent opinion piece, he argues that “It is short-sighted to automatically brand those proven social-change strategies — which the right has used so effectively — as elitist, top-down, white-dominated, undemocratic, and irrelevant, as some of those on the left often do.”

Well, Mr. Shuman, welcome to our world. For people of color in community-based organizations, think tanks, litigation, and other non-community-based initiatives have historically been elitist, top-down, white-dominated, undemocratic, and largely irrelevant. Our experience is that groups like the ones Mr. Shuman promotes never ask for our input in the creation of policy initiatives, then call us only when they need a testimonial or a witness. And then to top it all off, his organizations end up cutting a deal in some Washington office that ends up hurting us back home, where we are forced to clean up their mess and try to survive the results that they so progressively created.

If Mr. Shuman is so enthusiastic about think tanks and research institutes, then I encourage him to do some more thinking and some more research. He urges us to “commit [ourselves] to building a movement that knows not only how to organize the grassroots but also how to frame national policy debates, communicate in the mass media, influence legislation and court decisions, and back candidates for political office, among other things.”

Well, if Mr. Shuman could take a break from his letter-writing and spend some time in local communities, he would find that those are exactly the things we are doing. At the Petroglyph Coalition, where I am a community organizer, and at numerous environmental-justice organizations around the country, we are framing national policy debates and impacting legislation. And we are primarily people of color and working-class people, doing it on our own terms.

Let’s get real. What we’re all talking about is building power to change our society for the better over the long haul — and, oh, yeah, along the way fight to make our democracy work. For us, that means that regular, everyday people — not policy makers, not think tankers, not lobbyists — have equal access to information, a forum to engage in meaningful political debate, and democratic decision-making processes. And then we take these things and focus them into strategic campaigns that win concrete victories, influence local, national, and international policies, and better our society.

If we are to build lasting, progressive social justice at the national level and create a working democracy — the glue that keeps it all together — then we must begin by building power and creating democracy within our local communities first.

In a letter to The Chronicle several months ago, Mr. Shuman wrote, “I believe that once a grassroots group receives more than a tiny portion of its budget from out of town, it loses its grassroots character.” Setting aside for a minute his patronizing, over-romanticized, Norman Rockwell perspective, if Mr. Shuman truly believes his own words, then let’s apply the same standards to the organizations he endorses. Perhaps their fund raising should be limited to inside the Beltway, since for us, that is often the extent of their influence.

There is no question that we need a combination of community organizing, research, analysis, litigation, and the whole gamut of social-change strategies if we are to win. But let’s create justice in a way that reflects justice — with those most affected having a seat at the decision-making tables.

Eli Il Yong Lee
Community Organizer
Petroglyph Monument Protection Coalition
Albuquerque, N.M.