Community-Based Strategies
for Change
The current upsurge of grassroots activity
could well transform our society
by Rob Young and Grant Power
One of the articles in We Can Do It! (IC#33)
Fall 1992, Page 10
Copyright (c)1992, 1996 by Context Institute
| To order this issue ...
Rob Young is president of American Soils, Inc., a composting company
based in Freehold, New Jersey. Rob has a masters degree in city and regional
planning, with a minor in ecology and systematics from Cornell University.
He is a co-founder of the Council of Sustainable Industries of New York
and New Jersey.
Grant Power is a community-based economic development consultant who works
with, among others, the Union Rescue Mission in Los Angeles. Grant has what
he describes as an MBA with a social purpose, from Eastern College, in Pennsylvania.
Community-based change is fast becoming the key to America's future. More
and more, local communities across the country are mobilizing their own
resources in sustainable and creative ways to meet the needs of their members.
From affordable housing and neighborhood enterprises to recreation and recycling,
communities are finding that the best way to seek change is to organize.
These initially scattered efforts have grown into a nationwide movement
that is fundamentally reshaping American society. What we are seeing is
the early stage of a large-scale shift toward a society that is more authentically
democratic, ecologically sound, and economically just.
The burgeoning preference in America for community-based approaches to change
stems partly from the public's disillusionment with the nation's central
institutions. There has also been a rediscovery of the virtues of a back-to-basics
lifestyle centered on creating healthful communities.
This change in perspective is a clean departure from the American habit
of looking to public policy, social services, and the market system for
solutions to endemic problems like homelessness, unemployment, and pollution.
Citizens all over are realizing that they must take the lead in addressing
these problems instead of waiting for the country's leaders to take the
initiative.
COMMUNITY-BASED SOLUTIONS
This discovery has come not as a disappointment, but as a pleasant surprise.
In mobilizing one community at a time, many people are astonished by the
many new, creative possibilities for change they missed when they confronted
large-scale institutions through, for example, shareholder resolutions or
citizen referenda.
Some have struggled just to create a modest sense of community in transitory
urban neighborhoods. Others have carved out bold alternative economic structures,
such as worker-owned cooperatives and local barter systems.
Some communities have responded to the ecology movement by collectively
abandoning the consumption sickness of advanced industrial society for a
modest, more sustainable lifestyle. Some have etched whole eco-villages
into large modern cities.
Whatever their particular pursuits, community-based change strategies have
awakened many people to their own power to be self-supporting and self-managing.
In many cases, communities have been more effective in meeting their own
needs - at lower cost - than any government or private-sector service provider.
POPULIST ROOTS
A widespread movement for community-based change is not unique to the present.
Today's movement is similar to the populist uprisings of the 1890s, 1930s,
and 1960s and, in some respects, is simply the latest expression of a populist
impulse that has endured throughout American history.
Populist movements reach their peaks whenever the nation's core institutions
(large corporations as well as federal government) consolidate vast powers,
but break down at their core due to corruption or collusion among policy
and business elites. Real issues that affect the American people are either
ignored or limply addressed through a series of political charades. Urgent,
far-reaching reforms are needed, and, in an atmosphere of crisis, local
communities find they must sprout their own solutions.
After gaining momentum and influence, these movements historically were
co-opted through a mixture of legislated payoffs and empty reforms. In the
end, the concentration of economic assets and decision-making power remained
essentially unchanged.
A CRISIS IN CONFIDENCE
Conditions in America today are not unlike those that spawned popular uprisings
in the past. We face a crisis of confidence in the nation's leadership and
in its ongoing capacity to provide just and credible governance or to respond
adequately to the problems of the present. The stirrings of a crisis are
also evident in the public's loss of faith in our core institutions. Increasingly,
the government is not enforcing laws, the medical establishment is not healing,
the economy is not providing enough jobs or income, and banks are not protecting
their depositors.
In the face of this diagnosis, the typical reaction of most government and
business leaders to bold action programs is unyielding skepticism or feigned
agreement. Candidates for elected office label their proposals as "bold"
but have in mind only tinkering with the status quo. The public knows that
these leaders have the most to lose from genuine systemic change and cannot
be trusted to author or enforce such change. Our society has all the appearances
of a major crisis in the making.
We do not know whether or when such a crisis will occur. If we are hit by
a national crisis, such as a 1930s-style depression, some argue that populist
elements will again be co-opted through a new round of federal and corporate
payoffs, and history will repeat itself. This argument assumes that the
present-day movement for community-based change is essentially the same
as its forebears.
WHAT'S DIFFERENT NOW
That argument falls flat in view of today's facts. While quite similar in
its historical context to earlier populist movements, today's movement shows
signs of resilience and unbreakability that are unique in our history.
First, the movement is broader, deeper, older, and more sophisticated. Sloganeering
and mass rallies have given way to complex strategizing and technical savvy.
Experimentation in social and ecological change, such as community land
trusts and loan funds, biointensive organic agriculture, communal forestry,
renewable energy, tenant and worker buyouts, community self-insurance, and
local exchange currencies, have been tested and proven across a range of
socioeconomic contexts.
Second, movement leaders show greater maturity and ability to discern and
fend off co-optation. They cannot be bought off so easily. They have sacrificed
a great deal for their causes and are in the movement for the long haul.
Third, an entire infrastructure has developed over the last 15 years to
support community-based change, such as community development corporations
and neighborhood anti-drug coalitions. These have given the movement the
capacity to carry forward its missions year after year.
Neighborhood organizations have begun networking with community groups in
other locations, creating a larger and deeper layer of support and education.
In some cases, these networks - formed along sectoral lines, such as housing,
ecology, or demilitarization - have converged to form broader people's movements
with enough information, technology, and leadership to accomplish multiple
objectives across the country while resisting federal policies that undermine
community autonomy.
This movement has ongoing contact with sister movements in other countries.
The collective experience of international movements is an important source
of instruction and inspiration to community activists in the US.
Fourth, core institutions in the US do not just suffer from a poverty of
confidence, but from a shortage of resources that have traditionally been
used to co-opt social movements. Ironically, the growing deficits of federal
and state governments, the declining profits of large corporations, and
the shrinking ability of banks to lend money (over the last 50 years) have
actually served to protect the growth of grassroots alternatives.
The growth and proliferation of self-directed communities signal that the
democratic impulse is still very much alive in America, even though most
citizens may have given up on democracy in Washington, DC. But in the 1990s,
the explosive growth of community-based change may shift the powers of governance
away from both state and federal governments.
As a political force, this movement goes virtually unnoticed by business
and government elites and receives only fleeting and sporadic attention
from the media. But its behind-the-scenes character does not diminish its
potency on the American political landscape. Indeed, its invisibility is
its strength. Movements that become highly visible often are quickly squelched
or co-opted by an uneasy power elite.
WHO YOU GONNA' CALL ...
We are convinced that community-based change strategies will proliferate
quietly while the corruption and breakdown at the core of American society
continue.
Some parts of the financial and business community (as well as government
agencies) may form partnerships with community-based institutions and promote
the movement. Others will probably attempt to block its progress, and the
affected communities will have to call on their colleagues for assistance,
at times, to avoid being shut down. Some participants will aim for community
autonomy from the core and interdependence across the movement, while in
other cases, core institutions will be transformed, and become part of the
solution. Both types of change will be part of creating a new society for
the next century.
We anticipate that, just as people of the former Soviet Union are experiencing
convulsive political change, one day we may reach the point of an economic
mega-crisis in which our core economic and political institutions collapse.
If this does happen, communities that have built strong community-based
organizations will stand out as leading examples of a hopeful alternative.
Even if no collapse occurs, the on-going example of these communities will
continue to provide a way out of the growing chaos and tribulation that
plague our society.
Please support
this web site ... and thanks if you already are!
All contents copyright (c)1992, 1996 by Context
Institute | To order this issue ...
Please send comments to webmaster
Last Updated 29 June 2000.
URL: http://www.context.org/ICLIB/IC33/Young.htm
Home | Search | Index of Issues
| Table of Contents
|
