Contents of Winter 2007 Collaborative Solutions Newsletter:
In this issue:
Addressing Issues of Social Change and Power.
Addressing Issues
of Social Change and Power
In developing collaborative solutions, we encourage groups to take actions that
address issues of social change and power and that are based on a common vision.
In our last newsletter, we discussed the imperative for a collaborative to act
and not just talk. In this issue, we want to illustrate how these actions must
address issues of social change and power. Collaboratives, coalitions, and partnerships
are often composed of people who provide services that solve problems. Although
these services can be critical components in people's lives, they are by no means
the only solutions to all community issues. Instead, residents need to have the
power to change the conditions of their lives by changing the systems and institutions
that affect them.
Here’s a typical scenario that demonstrates how the available solutions
may not match a community’s most serious problems. Imagine that a group
of helpers goes into a community and asks residents to identify the major problems
they are facing. The people say, “There aren’t many jobs, and the
jobs that are available have no benefits. The area is in economic decline and
families are hurting.” Imagine that the helpers respond by saying, ”Well,
we hear you, but we have a teen-pregnancy prevention grant, so how
can we help you?”
Too often providers dance away from the larger social determinants, from matters
of social justice and social economics, because these issues cannot be dealt
with by providing remedial services and because, very honestly, they feel that
they don't know how to deal with these bigger concerns. Ultimately, we need to
help communities, individuals, and families learn to do more than adapt to difficult
circumstances. In the long run, we want them to develop the skills to change
those difficult circumstances.
For example, we want to do more than just provide good medical services to families
in inner cities experiencing asthma. We also want to help these people mobilize
and organize to change the environmental triggers that can cause asthma, including
environmental hazards located in their neighborhoods and unhealthy conditions
in local public housing and public schools.
To create healthy communities, we must be willing to address issues
of power. Judith Kurland, one of the founders of the Healthy Communities
movement in America, has stated that our work “is not just about projects, programs or policies.
Healthy Communities is about power. Unless we change the way power is distributed
in this country, so that people in communities have the power to change the conditions
of their lives, we will never have sustainable change” (Healthy Communities:
America's Best Kept Secret, on video; see http://www.tomwolff.com/healthy-communities-tools-and-resources.html).
Page Top
Community examples
Obesity: For
example, community responses to obesity need to move beyond remedial health
solutions that simply intend to change individuals’ eating habits.
Addressing the problem of obesity at a community level means mobilizing
people to consider issues like food selection in the public schools,
the presence in the community of grocery stores that sell fresh vegetables,
and access to safe exercise options, including places to walk and bike.
North Quabbin Community Coalition: The North
Quabbin area faced a transportation crisis. Low-income families were unable
to go back and forth between the two largest communities to access such vital
services as the hospital, the health center, and grocery stores. So the community
mobilized. Led by the students in the North Quabbin Adult Literacy Program,
the residents, along with the local coalition, first came up with a volunteer
transportation system. Then they started advocating for change by persistently
working with their state and federal representatives. Ultimately a new public
transportation system was developed. In this case, a group of the people most
affected by the problem--the low-income residents who were part of the adult
literacy program--led the charge for change. Through the literacy program,
these residents learned skills to become advocates and problem-solvers and
then went on to develop strategies that produced substantial, positive changes
in the transportation system that significantly benefited the whole community.
Page Top
Collaborative empowerment versus collaborative betterment
Arthur
Himmelman (1996) has contributed to our understanding of the dilemmas
in coalitions and collaborative efforts by distinguishing between collaborative
betterment and collaborative empowerment. I will quote somewhat extensively
from his excellent writings on this topic.
Himmelman
suggests that in order “to expand and enhance self-governance and democracy,
collaborative strategies must transform existing power relations and must challenge
existing practices of power, wealth, and control that substantially contribute
to our growing political and economic social inequities.” Himmelman sees
how useful collaborative strategies are in addressing these fundamental issues
of social justice.
As someone who works with many collaborative efforts, he notes "that
closer examination of existing coalitions most often reveals continuing
domination and control by elites and their gatekeepers, sometimes by
accident but usually by design. At their best, many collaborative efforts
produce positive service changes in institutions and communities that
deserve both praise and replication. Nevertheless, they generally leave
the status quo in power relations untouched, because transforming power
relations is viewed by most public and private funders of collaboration
as outside the boundaries of de-politicized change (change that does
not raise questions about or take action to transform power inequities).
Indeed, government and philanthropy strongly imply that those receiving
service contracts or charity need to abandon political advocacy that
could challenge or fundamentally alter the status quo.”
For Himmelman, power is not defined in terms of dominance but “as
the capacity to produce intended results. This definition of power
is related to feminist theories that describe power in terms of capacity,
competence, and energy in contrast to traditional masculine views of
power that define it as the ability to dominate or control (Hartstock
1985). Collaborative strategies should attempt to move the holders
of power from domination to democratically shared power.” For
this to happen in collaboratives, Himmelman suggests that they need
to focus on:
- The importance of the quality, inclusiveness, and clarity of this
vision for change.
- The need for better understanding and skilled practice of community
organizing, which can unite diverse interests with a common vision
and purpose.
- The need to continually expand the base of support for initiatives
with new people, especially those who have not been
included as decision-makers and leaders.
Himmelman notes that localized efforts must also be coupled with “substantial
policy changes and new funding for human needs at all levels of government,
particularly the federal level if such initiatives are to succeed
on the scale necessary. No matter how much services are integrated
or improved, government is reinvented, or corporations reengineered,
a focus on services, programs or profits will never be sufficient
to address fundamental social issues of race, class and gender oppression
and discrimination. Those using collaborative strategies to resolve
these issues must recruit holders and gatekeepers of power in the
processes that move them from domination and control to greatly increased
democratic power sharing."
He argues that this transformation can happen “in the collaborative
process among community-based organizations and elite dominated institutions,
if such processes are specifically designed to do so. Transformational
collaboration must be highly creative, strategically planned, skillfully
implemented and continually assessed for lessons learned.”
Page Top
So how do we address issues of social change in our collaborative
efforts?
What is required for coalitions to begin to think
about social change as a core function of their work? What kinds
of skills will the coalition need to develop to be effective at
social change? What kinds of approaches can a coalition use to
effect social change?
In many ways it's ironic that I am now raising these questions.
When I first began to do community coalition-building more than
thirty years ago, the basic definitions associated with the concept
of coalitions concerned building alliances among groups for short-term
political change. The entire idea of coalition-building centered
at that time on social change. However, coalition-building later
expanded in the U.S. around issues such as the prevention of substance
abuse, tobacco use, and teen pregnancies. As it did this, it came
under the influence of the health and human services sector. That
sector’s dominant
mode involves remedial treatment and service delivery, which in turn
became the dominant mode in coalitions.
When coalitions intend to address issues of social change and power,
they need to state this intention clearly in their vision, mission,
and goals. If their mission is to improve the quality of life for
all those living in the community, then a goal can be to build the
community members’ capacity to advocate for needed changes.
As the coalition proceeds, its members will need to do an environmental
scan and look at each issue from an ecological perspective and understand
the systems and institutions that will need to change in order for
the coalition to achieve its goals (see Summer 2006 Collaborative
Solutions Newsletter, link - http://www.tomwolff.com/collaborative-solutions-newsletter-summer-06.htm).
Page Top
Coalition Empowerment Self-Assessment Tool
This
tool, which was originally published in From the Ground Up:
A Workbook on Coalition Building and Community Development (Wolff
and Kaye, 1995 http://www.tomwolff.com/coalition-empowerment-self-assessment-tool.htm),
helps a coalition examine empowerment as an aspect of all its work:
goals and objectives, membership, communication, decision-making,
leadership and leadership development, use of resources, coalition
activities, and coalition outcomes.
Advocacy
Coalitions often become involved with some
form of social change and with power issues when they begin to advocate
for resources or policy changes in their community.
Community examples
The Worcester
Latino Coalition was committed to increasing
access to high-quality medical interpreter services in health facilities
in its city. At one point, coalition members met with the CEO of a
large hospital to explain that pulling Spanish-speaking cafeteria workers
into the emergency room to translate did not constitute the provision
of quality medical interpreter services. After a pleasant discussion,
the CEO smiled and indicated that he had no intention of changing the
hospital’s practices. However, a few years later, when this coalition
joined up with others across the state and created the Babel Coalition,
the larger group was able to effectively advocate for legislation that
mandated the provision of appropriate interpreter services in hospitals
across the state.
Tobacco Advocacy: Lawsuits against tobacco companies
have also been used as a social-change strategy. When the suits were
successful, some of the settlement money was spread to community coalitions
across the country that were working to prevent tobacco use. Many of
these coalitions had clear social-change agendas and worked to pass
local ordinances that banned the use of tobacco in restaurants, public
buildings, and workplaces. These coalitions became powerful forces
for social change. And their efforts were effective. The coalitions
working to limit tobacco-use in America have made a comprehensive social
change in our culture that is easy to take for granted until travel
reminds us of how things used to be. On a recent trip to Europe, our
family was amazed at what it was like to be in environments that were
smoked-filled--including restaurants, stores, and even schools.
Page Top
Organizing and social action techniques
Saul Alinsky,
(1971) a founder of community organizing in this country, employed
social-change strategies that stressed conflict and confrontation.
His approach to the organization of social action addressed power imbalances
by having outside change-agents work to create dissatisfaction with
the status quo among the people most affected by an issue. The outside
organizers would then build community-wide engagement with the problem
and with identification of the issues. Finally, the organizers would
assist community members in bringing about change by devising winnable
goals and nonviolent conflict strategies (Minkler, 2002).
A community
example
The Greater Boston
Interfaith Organization (GBIO,
description adapted from www.gbio.org)
is a broad-based organization that works to coalesce, train, and organize
the communities of Greater Boston across all religious, racial, ethnic,
class, and neighborhood lines for the public good. The organization’s
primary goal is to develop local leadership and organized power to
fight for social justice. It strives to make holders of both public
and private power accountable for their public responsibilities, as
well as to initiate actions and programs of its own to solve community
and economic problems. GBIO focuses on multiple issues. The issues
the coalition works on come from within its participating institutions,
from the concerns of the people. GBIO is affiliated with the Industrial
Areas Foundation (IAF, the organization originally created by Saul
Alinsky) and is inspired by the 65 other IAF-affiliated organizations
working in cities and metropolitan areas across the U.S.
Key achievements for GBIO have included: leading a state-wide campaign
that won passage of the State of Massachusetts’ $100 million
Housing Trust Fund; working successfully for a $30 million annual increase
in the state capital budget for housing; and organizing with the Justice
for Janitors campaign to win significant pay and benefit increases
for area janitors. Most recently, as part of a comprehensive health-coverage
bill passed in Massachusetts, GBIO has taken the lead in shaping a
public debate about what is truly affordable for Massachusetts residents
when it comes to health-care costs. More than 350 members of GBIO congregations
participated in small-group "affordability workshops," in
which each workshop participant constructed a detailed monthly budget
and subtracted all non-discretionary, non-health-care expenses from
their income in order to identify how much was left over with which
to purchase health insurance.
Page Top
Getting involved in the political system
Coalitions
often shy away from getting involved with the political system. It
is true that 501(c) 3 organizations are legally unable to endorse candidates
or campaign for candidates. However, it is extremely appropriate, and
generally entirely legal, for coalitions to be involved in educating
state and federal legislators about key issues that are occurring in
their communities(Arons,1999). There is a difference between educating
one's legislators and lobbying them. How can we expect legislators
to know about what's really happening in a community without talking
to the people who live there? It is clearly legitimate for a coalition
to provide forums where legislators can hear about critical issues.
It is also appropriate for a coalition to inform legislators about
the consequences for their constituents of various pieces of legislation
and funding decisions.
So when we think about coalitions or collaboratives and their role in
social change, we need to think about how they can build solid, ongoing relationships
with their local political representatives. At the same time, we cannot rely
on the political system alone to produce solutions.
Although becoming acquainted
with your local elected officials may seem like a basic and obvious action
to take, it is not common practice. In one project, the Health Access Networks
(Outreach Works: Strategies for Expanding Health Access to Communities http://www.tomwolff.com/healthy-communities-tools-and-resources.html),
we were involved in running sixty meetings a year across the state
to examine issues of health access. Every month, we held five meetings
in different locations. At these meetings, we would bring together
a group that consisted of health-access outreach workers, representatives
of the area’s hospitals, health centers, Medicaid offices, and
people from the statewide health-advocacy group. Together we would
discuss what was happening around health access: what the barriers
were, and what was working to get people who did not have health insurance
enrolled in coverage.
At the meetings, we would often
encourage attendees to call their legislators about a specific bill or funding
issue. After many months of doing this, we checked in and asked how many people
were actually calling their legislators. Only a few hands went up. We then asked
who in the room had ever spoken to a legislator. Again, only a few hands went
up.
At that point, we redesigned the next month's meeting. We began it
with a role-playing exercise in which everybody practiced calling a
state legislator. In Massachusetts, the process of connecting with
a legislator often involves speaking first with a young person who
answers the phone and takes messages. The role playing helped demonstrate
to the members of this coalition that calling one’s legislator
was not a threatening experience. It got them engaged for the first
time in that part of the political and social-change system. It also
reminded me not to assume that our colleagues in the health and human
service system have had experience with calling their elected officials.
Page Top
Community examples
The East Bay Public
Safety Corridor Partnership: Uniting Against Violence
(Excerpt
taken from a case study written by The Institute for Community Peace,
www.peacebeyondviolence.org/ICP_PDFs/case_studies/east_bay.pdf).
"You can improve the health of your community,” asserts Deane Calhoun,
executive director of Youth Alive! She, along with many others, is an active
participant in the East Bay Public Safety Corridor Partnership, a vast public
and private coalition involving individuals, community and nonprofit groups,
city and county governments, school districts, and law enforcement agencies,
located in the San Francisco Bay area in northern California. The coalition’s
goal: to build healthy communities by uniting against violence.
In response
to spiraling numbers of cases of homicide involving guns, the partnership
was formed in 1993, initially to "reduce crime
and violence in order to promote a safer, healthier and more economically
viable environment." Its work originally emphasized violence prevention.
The successful partnership has become the nation's largest anti-violence
collaboration. In 1999, the group changed its mission and endorsed
the public-health approach to violence prevention. The partnership
now exists "to promote a safer, healthier and more economically
viable environment by reducing crime and violence." This change
in intention may be subtle, but it stresses the overarching positive
goal of work toward "healthy communities."
"Things are different now," says youth advocate Calhoun. "People
used to think, ‘There is nothing we can do about violent crime.’ Now
we know there is. We have created a very genuine and substantial message
of hope that is spreading to other communities across the nation."
Thanks to successful efforts by the East Bay Public Safety Corridor
Partnership, laws that strictly regulate and restrict access to guns
have led to a steep decline in violence that involves guns throughout
the urban East Bay region. “In one year, 28 cities and counties,
including some outside the region, had passed laws against junk guns.
The partnership had taken an approach that involved changing the laws
and successfully managed campaigns against handguns in community after
community. The coalition’s full youth-violence prevention initiative
included many other, more traditional approaches to violence prevention,
but the partnership became known nationwide for its gun-restricting
legislative component.
Page Top
Cleghorn Neighborhood Center (CNC)
The
Cleghorn Neighborhood Center (CNC) is located in a low-income Latino
community in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, an economically struggling small
city. The CNC shifted from a model of delivering services to the community
to a model of community building, community development, and community
organizing. As they made this change, the residents talked in their
biweekly community group meetings about their hopes for better opportunities
in this country. Many thought that helping people earn their GEDs would
be a smart first step. As part of their commitment to a community-building
model, the Cleghorn Neighborhood Center staff paired the GED training
with training in community leadership and community organizing.
When the students had completed their GED course, one group decided
to take its GED exams in Spanish at a local community college and another
group took its exams in a larger urban city. Those who took the test
at the local college reported that instructions were given in English
and had to be translated by the CNC staff. They said that they did
not feel very well respected or well treated by the people who administered
the exam. The group that went to the large urban area had a totally
different experience. They felt welcomed and supported, in part because
instructions were given in both Spanish and English.
Area residents were outraged
by the GED testing experience at the local college. They formed an action group,
the Adult Education Committee, to work on adult education. With the help of the
CNC staff, they arranged a meeting with the college's vice president. At this
meeting, the local residents presented their experience and their demands. Seven
residents spoke and another 20 attended the meeting. The vice president was impressed
and passed on the impressions of these Latino residents to the president of the
college, along with recommendations for change. These changes are now slowly
being implemented. The residents continue to be involved in their Adult Education
Committee and in discussions with the college.
Page Top
Power-based versus relationship-based social change
In
the search for collaborative solutions, a conflict seems to exist between
those who focus on power-based social change (community organizing)
and relationship-based social change (community building). Those who
use the power-based approach believe that in order to effect change
citizens must form organizations that aim to transform and redistribute
power. The relationship-based approach works for change by building
strong, caring, and respectful relationships among all members. Extremists
from both sides feel that the two approaches are incompatible. They
find fault with the other side. Power-based organizing is criticized
for its inability to build relationships. Relationship-based community
organizing is said to discourage individuals from becoming engaged
in political action and power-broking for fear of violating established
relationships. This conflict arises frequently and is a challenge for
all of us who know how much good work collaborative solutions can accomplish.
In fact, social change requires a mix of advocacy and relationship
building. Jack Rothman’s categorization of community organizing
has been the standard for many decades (Rothman and Tropman, 1987).
Originally Rothman talked about three distinct models of practice:
locality development, social planning, and social action. More recently,
Rothman has suggested that many professionals are using a “mixing
and phasing” of the three models.
So, facing these differences in our approaches, how do we proceed?
Inspiration came to me during a weekly Jewish meditation I attend.
There I found this quote: "To be holy is for power and beauty
to be in perfect harmony." The words grabbed me immediately. It
seems to me that they speak to the significant issues in the world
and to the strategy dilemmas described above. The quote suggested to
me that there may be a way to find harmony while simultaneously building
relationships and dealing with power issues. This harmony may be the
future of collaborative solutions.
When we think of building a community, either of the two approaches
will not work as effectively alone as the combination of the two works
together. I have seen confrontational community-organizing techniques
damage relationships. I have also experienced times when, despite excellent
personal relationships, the people in power still say, “Sorry.
We won't change the system no matter how much we like you."
I have also seen situations
in which these two approaches have worked together very well:
Page Top
Community
Example:
Lower Outer
Cape Community Coalition: In this community, our
coalition ended up in conflict with the local hospital. The coalition
was working on community benefits, as designated by the attorney general.
The hospital’s
community benefits committee was made up of 22 members, 18 of whom
were hospital employees or affiliates. The coalition wanted more real
community representation on the committee and protested. Coalition
representatives went to the media and pushed hard for committee membership
to be opened up. The hospital was not happy. The coalition’s
vision was that ultimately it wanted to partner with the hospital,
not to back it into an impossible corner. Yet its participants would
not leave this issue.
Later, as leadership changed at the hospital, coalition members were
invited to join the search committee for a new CEO. Since the arrival
of the new leader, the coalition has been in partnership with the hospital and
is moving forward on healthy-community issues. The membership of the hospital’s
community benefits committee has shifted in the direction desired by
the coalition. In this case, the coalition used power-oriented community
organizing tactics at the same time that it held onto its ultimate
goal of creating a respectful partnership with the hospital
I suggest that we look at our work in a new way, by creating new theories
and a new collection of anecdotes that match the needs of social change
for this period of history in which we are living. We cannot ignore
power issues in a country where the separation between rich and poor
has become extreme, where for-profit hospitals and health care providers
are becoming more prevalent, where dollars dominate elections, where
the media are controlled by a handful of individuals, and where black
and Hispanic young men are incarcerated at alarming rates. We will
sometimes need power organizing to address these issues.
At the same time, we have seen a decline in civic engagement and volunteerism
and a decreased sense of neighborhood and community. This shows that
we cannot ignore relationship building; community building is still
a critical process.
We need both approaches, and we need models that will allow us to integrate
power organizing and relationship building as we work toward social
change, using the method that matches the situation and that maximizes our capacity
to reach our goals.
Page Top
Resources and References
References
Alinsky, S. Rules for Radicals,
Vintage Books, New York , 1971
Aron, D. Oh yes,nonprofits can and do advocate for legislation! A
quick primer on lobbying.The New England NonProfit
Quarterly ,Fall
1999 p 52-55.
DeChiara,M., Unruh,E., Wolff,T., and Rosen,A. Outreach Works:
Strategies for Expanding Health Access in Communities,
AHEC Community Partners,2001.
Greater Boston Interfaith Organization www.gbio.org
Hartstock, N. Money, Sex and Power: Toward A Feminist Historical
Materialism Boston, MA. Northeastern University Press 1985
Institute for Community Peace: http://www.peacebeyondviolence.org/ICP_PDFs/case_studies/east_bay.pdf
Himmelman, A. On the theory and practice of transformational collaboration:
From social service to social justice. In Creating Collaborative
Advantage Ed. Chris Huxham Sage Publications, London 1996
McKnight, J. Do no harm: policy options that meet human needs. Social
Policy, Summer 1989 p 5-15.
Minkler, M. (Ed) Community Organizing and Community Building for
Health, Rutgers University Press, New Jersey 2002
Rothman, J. and J.E. Tropman Models of community organization and
macropractice: Their mixing and phasing. Strategies of
Community Organization ed. F.M. Cox, J.L. Erlich, J. Rothman,
J.E. Tropman. Itasca, Ill :Peacock 1987
Wolff, T., and Kaye, G. (eds). From
the Ground Up: A
Workbook on CoalitionBuilding and Community
Development, AHEC Community Partners, Spring
1995.
Page Top
Resource: Real Clout and Real Clout
Workbook
Real Clout by Judy Meredith and Cathy Dunham is an excellent
how-to manual for community activists who want to change public policy.
Although the focus is on health-care policy at the state and county
levels, these materials are generic enough to apply to almost all
policy arenas. This extremely smart and practical manual walks you
through the steps.
Among the chapter titles are these:
What Is Public Policy? And Who Makes It?
Public Policymaking in the Administrative Branch
Making Public Policy in the Legislative Branch
How to Influence a Public Policy
Practical Applications: Campaign Implementation Tools
Real Clout is available for free download online at www.realclout.org.
Also online is the recent The Real Clout Workbook, written
for both grassroots leaders and professional advocates.
Tom Wolff & Associates Recent Clients 2004-2006
Arts Extension Service, Univ. Mass.
Boston U. Sch. Public Health, Campus Community Partnership Program
Connect to Protect, HIV Prevention
CDC Rape Prevention Education
CDC Project Escape, Violence Prevention
CDC Division on Oral Health
Centers for Medicaid & Medicare Services, End Stage Renal Disease
Program
Champions for Progress, Utah
Cleghorn Neighborhood Center
Council on Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Hudson Falls, NY
Dept Psychology Wichita State Univ
Dept Psychology Georgia State University
Enlace, Holyoke MA
Health Communities Access Program, HRSA
Holyoke Planning Network
Institute for Non Profit Development Mt.Wachusett Community College
Kansas Health Foundation
Meharry Medical College
MetroWest Community Health Care Foundation
Mary Black Foundation Spartanburg SC
Mass. SABES (System for Adult Basic Education Support)
Meriden and Wallingford Substance Abuse Council, CT
MATCH, Tobacco Coalition
National Parkinson Foundation,
North Quabbin Community Coalition
Nevada Oral Health Coalition
North Central Massachusetts Minority Coalition
Prevent Institute. School of Public Health U North Carolina
Reach 2010 Coalition Boston Public Health Coalition
SAMHSA, Community Coalitions, Rockville, MD
State Solutions Rutgers NJ
Tennessee Dept of Health
US Breast Feeding Coalition
West Central Initiative Community Change Fergus Falls, MN
Vermont Conference on Addictive Disorders
