(en) France, Alternative Libertaire AL dossier spécial sur
l'éducation populaire: Community organizing: the overseas pragmatism
(fr, it, pt) [machine translation]
Like the Occupy movements or Black Lives Matter have recently reminded, social movements
are alive in the United States. Many of them practice a method and philosophy of action
called community organizing. ---- This article is from a special folder on popular
education ---- Editorial: Everywhere, popular education ---- History: 200 years of
voluntarism and domestication attempts ---- When the hostels were subversive ---- Theory:
What is popular education, exactly? ---- Practices: In our shared anger, learn together
---- Wage: activist Dedication: the scam station ---- Institutional Sector: Approved by
the State, subject to market ---- In the margins: the new wave ---- Class Struggle: When
the union is school ---- International: International Exchanges: Tourists we? never ----
United States: From hobos to organizers ---- Community organizing: The overseas pragmatism
Brazil: The educational work of the landless
Education: The sand in the gears
Popular areas: Social workers between conscience and political action
Reclaiming the MJC, possible
Policies of the city must show their credentials!
Grenoble-La Villeneuve: street-precious fighteuse
Concrete army Editions: Yes, the paper may decide
Feminism: A health "by women and for women"
Education of all kinds
In the Chicago of the 1930s, a curious sociologist and activist Saul Alinsky referred
conceived of community organizing ("CBO"). Its ambition: self-emancipation of the working
classes. His golden rule, which is reminiscent of the motto of the First International:
"Never do for others what they can do by themselves. "
Contrary to what its name might suggest, the community organizing is not the
"communitarianism". It certainly aims to bring together religious, very different racial
and social, but to bring together around shared class interests. Far from any spontaneity,
he proposes, for this precise methods.
Natural leaders and "loud-mouthed"
The popular classes uniennes states are, as in France, defiant against militancy, as
community organizations have developed highly offensive tools to get people out of their
homes and themselves. This principle of "to go" is available in two ways.
In alinskienne tradition, it builds on the existing aggregation spaces and common
solidarity networks in popular areas: schools, informal collectives, places of worship,
community centers, etc. This is to identify natural leaders or "strong (and strong) in
mouth" and then convince them to enter into a more logical political commitment in order
to drive after them their "community."
In the second tradition, the "unorganized es" seeking to mobilize. The associations then
spend considerable time to plow the field, going door to door, house meetings and general
meetings to identify shared anger from which to campaign. And it works: around half of the
members of these organizations have incomes below the poverty line. A public that barely
mobilize in France.
The goal is to get people out of their homes and themselves, but also to politicize.
Community organizations have developed for this highly effective public education methods,
particularly vis-à-vis young people, who show a surprising class consciousness for their
age. Teenagers come for homework help provided in the afternoon, but mostly for the local,
which is to them as a refuge.
Captive audience, they are therefore subject to patient awareness of work-based
role-playing games, courses on social movements or scenarios. The lessons are always
policies to query the "marginalization of minorities," the "myth of meritocracy" or the
notion of "system". If one is sometimes close to indoctrination, given the little room
left to contradiction, the goal seems to be fulfilled: to train activists politicized es.
But it is especially in the struggles to acquire knowledge and know-how. Generally, this
is the balance of power and confrontation - demonstrations, occupations, sit-ins - that
campaigns get their way.
Attempts to adapt in France
These methods are in the service of social transformation objective: to improve here and
now the fate of the inhabitants and inhabitants. Campaigns can involve very local issues -
opening of new classes in the local school, access to public transport or to safe food -
and more ambitious - regulation of banking activities in Southern California following the
subprime crisis, Police fight against discriminatory practices, increasing taxes on the
rich, etc.
Despite the divisions that traverse the neighborhoods, associations practicing community
organizing looking to build symbolically united group. The pragmatism that characterizes
them, however sometimes derives towards the "community development", in a logic of
cooperation with institutions and public-private partnership.
This logic of pressure group in popular neighborhoods-uniens states is quite far from the
French militant tradition. Yet it is on track to import in France, for example around the
Citizens Alliance in Grenoble, associations and collectives in the Paris suburbs. If this
import community organizing require adaptation to the French context, some key principles
- the balance of power, the move towards - will remain central. They draw the contours of
a radical democracy in which the popular classes will be the actors in their own emancipation.
Julien Talpin
CNRS researcher Julien Talpin working on the sense of injustice and collective
organization in the popular neighborhoods.
http://www.alternativelibertaire.org/?Community-organizing-le
