Reading Ostermans Overcoming Oligarchy and Sen’s Stir It Up really had me thinking about how different organizing and leadership looks based on individual personalities and dynamics. The description of the ‘core cultural content’ of the IAF, which was supposed to enable organizations to prevent oligarchy, was slightly unnerving.While the two example exercises seemed like effective starting points for discussion and learning, the concepts of ‘tough love,’ excessive evaluation, and public/private separation seemed like they could become more harmful than productive for organizing a community.
Sen’s discussion of antiracist and feminist criticism of Alinskyist organization resonated with my own intuitions. Thinking about existing power dynamics between people in organizations is critical- there could be huge differences between a male organizer and a female member/trainee, or between two organizers of different racial or ethnic backgrounds. Unless members are homogenous, or there is an extremely high level of awareness and commitment to the ‘culture’, an evaluation of a one on one conversation between people in socially unequal positions of power will be unproductive and inaccurate or will reinforce the power structure.
The separation of private and public is complicated for us as planners because urban communities cannot be separated this way. Your neighbors are your family members/are your committee leaders/are your children’s’ teachers – we have different public and private relationships with different people. Ignoring this reality and insisting that we should not trust those that we have public relationships with, ignores the reality of living in a community and having human relationships. Public and private are terms defined differently in every community and culture, and often it is within private relationships that connections are made and cultures and ideas are transferred.
I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with assertiveness and skepticism toward authority, but I do think that we should strive to instill these qualities in ways that are mutually fulfilling and engender trust between members.
What is the goal of organizing? In “What is Organizing?” Ganz includes leadership development, community power building, development of relationships and understanding as part of the role of organizers. Organizers connect the dots, and then support the dots as individual points and as points of connection. Its important for pieces in that web to hold each other and the organizers accountable, to question and understand them, but its just as important for these points to feel trust and security in their connections. Is the end goal of a SMO to not become oligarchical? Has it failed if it adopts this structure? And on the other side, is it possible for an organization to resist oligarchy without relying on ‘tough love’ and other seemingly unnatural or unintuitive methods?