Teaching “From Below” How the World Works

Teaching “From Below” How the World Works – Part I

Written by Mike Miller

Editor’s Note: This valuable how-to piece from a veteran organizer is presented in two parts with the second coming in 55.2. Make notes and stay tuned.

Introduction

For the past forty-plus years, I have been a community organizer, working with religious, labor, interest/identity/and issue organizations, (and teaching in universities). As my work continued, I sought to systematize a way to introduce community people to aspects of political and sociological theory—i.e. how do citizens, potential citizens, residents of a place, workers, unemployed people, welfare recipients, pastors and lay leaders, and others answer the question, “How do I understand the world in which I am living?” I used a highly interactive workshop in which I asked a lot of questions, and workshop participants supplied the answers. The sequence of the questions is connected with what workshop participants are doing in their community (or labor) organizations, and builds on scenarios that are familiar to them in their own organizational work.

The necessity of this workshop was first made crystal clear to me when a member of the firefighters’ union wondered in one of my workshops why a councilman in his city didn’t honor a promise he’d made to the union during his election campaign. I raised several questions, none of which undid his wonderment. Finally, I said, “What if a rival firefighters association, controlled by the politicians, defeated you in a recognition election, so that you were no longer the collective bargaining agent for firefighters?” That moved him a little bit, but not very far. He was stuck on the fact that a promise made is a promise that should be kept. He was looking at the world through a lens of individual morality, rather than a social morality that takes power relationships into account.

The workshop evolved. This is what became my question to myself on how to deal with the firefighter: “How do people who range on a tactical spectrum from moderates-to-militants and on an ideological or political spectrum from conservatives to radicals, with liberals and independents in the middle, work together to achieve significant change?” (I use the word “radical” to mean getting at the root of things.)

The roots of the things dealt with in the workshop are, on the one hand, the power of dominant political, economic and cultural institutions, and the ideology of individualism that pervades American thought, and, on the other hand, the present personal and community powerlessness felt by many, combined with the potential for powerful action “from below” that exists in everyday people and their communal institutions—if they organize.

Theory

The first step in this workshop session is to ask, “What are the problems you want to address in your organization?” All kinds of things are said in response, ranging from “overcrowding at ‘X’ elementary School,” “a $100 a month rent increase in my building,” to “people in my church don’t earn enough at their jobs to make ends meet,” “people in my neighborhood are unemployed,” or even more general, like “unemployment,” “poor quality education,” “affordable housing.” Some people will identify things like “racism,” “sexism,” “discrimination” and “prejudice.” Others will say things like “rent control,” “community control of schools,” a “job training and motivation programs.” These are all written on a chalkboard or easel pad.

I then draw lines around the lists so they are in four groupings:

Group 1: $100 rent increase in my building; overcrowding at the school; the burned-out building on my block.

Group 2: unemployment; quality education; affordable housing.

Group 3: racism, sexism, classism, powerlessness.

Group 4: rent control, community control, job training.

I ask, “What do the items in each group share in common, and what distinguishes them from the other three groups?” This discussion takes a while, perhaps ten to twenty minutes. I want it to do so. I then add the following to each of the groups as headings or words to categorize what is in the list and ask participants if the categories are acceptable:

Group 1	Group 2	Group 3	Group 4
“problems”	“topics”	“analyses”	“solutions/possible solutions”

Typically, these words have already been used by workshop participants. After some discussion, in all but one (see below) of the many workshops I’ve done, there is agreement on these categories and brief definitions or explanations I propose for each:

A problem is specific; it is something people experience.
A topic is general.
Analyses seek to explain why things are as they are.
Solutions or proposed solutions seek to diminish or eliminate problems.

“If you want to get people who feel powerless to a meeting, where do you start?” There is agreement that you have to start with their problems, not general topics or analyses. Put in organizing terms, “start with where people are, not where you’d like them to be.”

“Why do people have these problems?” This question also leads to lots of responses: “the power structure,” “racism” (or any of the other isms), “unemployed people are lazy” (or lack motivation, or are untrained), “politicians don’t care or lie” (or are owned by the people who pay for their campaigns), “the school district is incompetent,” “teachers are inadequate,” “the people downtown are screw-ups,” “some people just don’t care,” “it’s always been this way, and always will be this way,” “landlords just want to make a buck,” and the list continues.

I similarly group ideas on my working space, and ask people to give me words to categorize the groups.

Group 1: the power structure; politicians; school boards; corporations.

Group 2: unemployed are lazy or untrained; students aren’t motivated; parents don't care; incompetence.

Group 3: it’s always been this way and always will be;

I write what they say on the workspace.

I then ask if these categories (some of which they may already have come up with) include everything they’ve said:

Group 1: Fault of the system

Group 2: Fault of the person with the problem

Group 3: In the nature of things; ordained by God.

Whenever I’ve done this, people agree that the problems exist or persist either because of the “fault of the people” with the problems, or the “fault of the system” that has the authority and resources to solve the problems, or a combination of the two. A simple example might be that unemployed people are lazy or unemployment is caused by the system.

Sometimes people say the problems are inevitable, to which I respond, “if you think these problems can’t be solved, that they are in the nature of things or ordained by God, then you are in the wrong workshop.” That always brings a laugh. (That kind of fatalism isn’t common in the United States; there are places in the world where it is.)

“Do we agree that to the extent a problem is the “fault” of the system, then the system has to change, and to the extent it is the “fault” of the person experiencing it, then the person has to change?” Again, my experience has been that workshop participants agree that to the extent a problem is the fault of the people experiencing it, then the people have to change, and to the extent it is the fault of the system, then the system has to change. Changing the people includes things like training, counseling, motivation, education or even psychotherapy. And, participants acknowledge the source of at least some part of some problems is “the system,” in which case it has to change.

I then ask, “Can we agree that by ‘the system’ we mean a combination of values and interests, institutions that embody or put into practice these values and interests, and decision-makers who occupy key positions in these institutions?”

I then say, “We’re now going to look at that portion of a problem or problems that results from something “the system” is or isn’t doing, (no one doubts that at least some portion of some problems is systemic in nature) and ask, “Why don’t the decision-makers fix the problems?” After discussion and categorizing ideas there is agreement that if the system isn’t solving a problem, it could be because:

it doesn’t know about it,
it is incompetent, or
it has different interests.

I then ask questions designed to determine what strategy follows from each of these explanations for why the system doesn’t solve problems. “If the system doesn’t know, what do you do?” Agreement emerges that if the system doesn’t know about the problem, then the strategy for change is to educate or inform the system (specifically, its decision-makers or the voters who can inform the decision-makers). If the system is incompetent, then the strategy that follows is to train the system’s personnel, restructure it or replace it. If the system isn’t solving problems because it is guided by different interests, then the strategy for change would be to change its interests, change the system or create an alternative system.

We agree that at least in some instances, and to some extent, some problems exist because something we have agreed to call “the system” or “the power structure” has an interest in keeping things the way they are, in preserving the status quo. That interest might have to do with money, status, power or some combination of all of these.

In all my 40+ years of doing this workshop, I only once had the experience of a participant refusing to accept this framework. In this case, an African-American woman insisted that racism was a problem that was experienced, not simply an analysis that explained things like discrimination in employment, red-lining of neighborhoods, overcrowded schools in inner cities and so forth. In that case, I said “o.k. we’re going to stipulate that you disagree with the definitions given to words here. Is it o.k. if the rest of us go on with our agreements?” She let us proceed. She and I later had a long conversation during a break and she stuck by her guns. I still don’t understand why, but I know she didn’t do much organizing or providing leadership in a low-income Black neighborhood or church. She was working on a PhD at the time.

In a few circumstances, I’ve had workshop participants say the system is so hopelessly inadequate that all that can be done is to create alternatives to it. For the most part, those who deal with the day-to-day experiences of tenants with bad landlords, parents whose kids are in poorly performing schools, people without health care, un- or under-employed people, or people with bad employers, and the myriads of other problems confronting everyday people simply aren’t persuaded that you can walk away from these problems and build alternatives. Nor, on the grander scale of discussion, do they want to leave the present system in the hands of people who could bring about global war or ecological disaster. It is not that alternative institutions shouldn’t be part of the arsenal of change. Rather, they can’t be the only arrow in the quiver.

Conservatives, libertarians, moderates, centrists, liberals, progressives and radicals who participated in these workshops agreed on this step-by-step approach to how to understand the world. The conservatives thought “the fault of the people” was generally the reason for problems. The radicals thought “the fault of the system.”

To the extent that a problem was the fault of the system, people on the center-to-right end of the political spectrum emphasized that it was because the system didn’t know about the problem; others, now including some liberals, acknowledged that possibility but emphasized the incompetence of the system; some liberals and the radicals acknowledged what had already been said but emphasized different self-interests of the system. Some of them thought you could change the interests of the system; others thought you had to change the system as a whole or create an alternative system—which in this context meant new or parallel institutions such as alternative schools or cooperatives, or using “state power” to, for example, expropriate a business or create a new system. This would sometimes become the subject of heated debates that I would let continue for a while before taking the workshop participants to a next step.

Role-playing is an extraordinarily powerful teaching tool, one that I always use in teaching this material. The workshop would agree to use a specific problem as an example to illustrate what we were discussing. Often, we would use the example of a landlord who had raised the rent $100 in his building with no changes in maintenance, repair or other costs. We would stipulate that he had good tenants because we were illustrating changing the system, not changing the people. I would then tell the group that I was going to play the landlord and would give them time to prepare themselves to negotiate with me. (When I wore my hat, I was the landlord; when I removed it, I was me.)

Two kinds of lessons are learned in this role playing. One set of lessons had to do with how you organize yourselves to present a proposed change to a decision-maker; that’s not what I want to talk about here. There are also important political theory lessons to be teased out of this role-play.

The radicals and liberals agree that it is logically possible that the landlord didn’t know the hardships being caused by a $100 increase in rent, and that since there are conservatives and centrists among the tenants with whom they wanted to remain united they would go along with “the landlord doesn’t know” as a beginning assumption. That meant telling stories about the hardship such a rent increase imposed on otherwise good tenants, or that the landlord’s long-term interests were better met by keeping good tenants. But those who were skeptical of this theory said, in effect, “if it turns out that after we tell the landlord the hardships and he doesn’t budge an inch then you centrists and conservatives have to be willing to look at a different explanation for his behavior.” The conservatives and centrists had to agree.

I then played the role of an affluent landlord who simply wanted to maximize short-term profit from his building, saying things like, “I’m sure you can find cheaper housing if you move out of San Francisco,” or “you don’t have to live here, if you don’t want to. I know there are people who would pay the additional $100 for these apartments.” At some point it was evident to everyone in the room that I wasn’t going to budge and that my interest was maximizing the profit I could make from my building. I was increasing the rent not because I didn’t know the problem the rent hike posed for my good tenants, but because I had a different interest—maximizing the immediate income I could generate. If self-interest was guiding why the landlord was acting this way and saying these things, a different approach was required. And a different strategy followed.

The catalyst for radical (i.e. going to the root) education in this situation is what landlords say and do. Many of the people who’ve been in the workshops come from a church, mosque, temple or synagogue, and don’t think in self-interest terms. They think that if people in positions of power or authority just knew the harm they caused, they would change, or that they were incompetent and that’s where the problem originated. In the role-play, it becomes apparent to all that this landlord wants to make as much money in the short term as he can from his building, no matter what the consequences for the tenants. For the most part, such landlords were indifferent to, or didn’t care about, what the consequences for their tenants were—if the tenants couldn’t pay, they could move. Other tenants would quickly replace them. Landlords who cared preferred stable, good tenants to short term profit maximization; other landlords had actual relationships with their tenants that were important to them. Conservatives and centrists who cared about these tenants (as distinct from those for whom facts couldn’t budge ideology) had to look at the self-interest explanation. Their minds were opened to thinking differently in this situation about why the world is the way it is and what has to be done to change it in order to make it more just.

(Here’s an example of this theory writ large: when the American colonialists were battling with the British empire they thought, “If only we could meet with King George, he would fix this.” They operated on “the system doesn’t know” theory. Finally, they got a meeting with the king. He was even more heavy-handed in his rejection of their proposals than were his underlings. From that point on, the need for revolution became apparent.)

However, another circumstance also arises. In some cases, landlords don’t make repairs because they can’t get home improvement loans. “Radicals” learned that you couldn’t paint all landlords with the same brush. In these cases, a landlord could become an ally in a visit to a bank or savings and loan association that might be red-lining (denying loans, insurance, public services, etc. to an area in order to “turn it over”—replace one group with another). At this point, I tell a story that demonstrated the collusion of city regulatory and service agencies, lenders, insurers, investors, developers and realtors who together wanted to “turn over” a neighborhood through red-lining.

In the four-day workshop, participants see how to create alliances of renters, homeowners, small landlords, neighborhood merchants and local institutions to fight such a power-structure complex of interests that threatens to destroy a neighborhood.

Beginning with relatively small issues—like single-building landlord-tenant disputes, tearing down a boarded-up house, getting a traffic control device at a dangerous intersection, transferring an unresponsive principal from a neighborhood elementary school, changing pricing and quality of product practices at a local store, getting rid of a local source of pollution, and similar issues are part of building a multi-issue people power organization that is based on the principle of a “lowest significant common denominator.” The organization is rooted in the morality and economic and social justice values of the world’s great religions and the small “d” democratic tradition.

There was another side of the learning. To the extent that people didn’t want to organize themselves to develop the people power to address their circumstances, then just to that extent conservatives were right: if people were unwilling to organize to bring about change when a real possibility for such organizing presented itself, then it became the fault of the people that they were in their circumstances.

Indeed, there are circumstances in which people prefer being victims to taking the risk of becoming change agents. But there was now an important change in the idea “fault of the people.” It was now the job of leaders and organizers to challenge people to act on their values and interests. To deny people the possibility for action when believable action proposals are made is to deny them the freedom to choose to become participants in a struggle for their own liberation, and to argue that only some other agent can accomplish that liberation.

Part II: forthcoming….

Mike Miller is a longtime community organizer, based in San Francisco, who can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..