Human Relations Organizing: Introducing Community Organizing Skills to Human Relations Professionals
by Tony Massengale, Director of the Center for Civic Capacity Building, and Rusty Kennedy, Executive Director of Orange County Human Relations Commission

HOW EFFECTIVE ARE WE?

Tom Hayden characterized human relations commissions as groups that believe the injustice that exists in our society is fundamentally a misunderstanding.  Although this sweeping indictment belies a subjective judgment, there is some truth to it.  Too many times human relations commissions are more concerned with Roberts Rules of Order than effectiveness.  Too many times we take stands on complex issues without any significant understanding of the underlying causes of the injustice.  Too many times we serve as window dressing [for cities and counties] without even being invited to the table where the tough issues are being discussed.  Too many times we speak out without the forethought of collaboration and the afterthought of follow-through.  It is time for human relations organizations to examine some new methods of engaging diverse constituencies and addressing issues.

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING PRACTICES CAN PRODUCE LASTING RESULTS

Some of the grass roots community organizing projects of the '60s have survived into the new millennium and are making a difference in the lives of thousands of formerly disenfranchised people in California.  The congregation-based community organizations of Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) have made incredible achievements in the Los Angeles area and throughout the nation.  IAF's HOPE in Youth program prodded local government to balance gang policing with prevention strategies; the Nehemiah Affordable Housing campaign made new home ownership available to working and poor families; and the Kids First campaign organized the school reform initiative known as LEARN.  The Pacific Institute for Community Organizing (PICO) has numerous successful projects addressing small issues like drug houses and large ones such as health care and education.  Cesar Chavez used renowned organizer, Fred Ross Sr., to teach community organizing skills to the United Farm Workers (UFW) boycott staff and labor organizers.  This community organizing approach catapulted the farm labor movement onto the national scene and created lasting change.  A new generation of community organizing networks-AGENDA, Bus Riders Union, Coalition L.A., Community Coalition, L.A. Metropolitan Churches, and others-have made a place for themselves alongside veteran networks such as IAF, PICO ACORN and UFW.

COMMUNITY ORGANIZING [PRACTICES] APPLIED TO HUMAN RELATIONS WORK

The Orange County Human Relations Commission made a decision to utilize community organizing skills as a major methodology in 1976.  Since then, the Commission has experimented with different applications of organizing skills to human relations work.  For example:

• One on one relational meetings.  The Commissioners and staff developed a campaign of going out and engaging key leaders in various diverse communities in meaningful conversations to identify common interests and possible collaborative issues.
• Focus on relationship building.  The OCHRC started to recognize that confrontation without consultation and research felt good, but rarely won the day.  Developing and maintaining relationships with diverse people is a challenging and time consuming thing to do, but it is the foundation of effective collaboration.
• Planning, Execution and Evaluation.  It is easy to be stampeded into reactionary posturing, fill your time with activity without the guidance of planning, mission or vision, and perform programs that have no measure of effectiveness.  OCHRC spends quality time each year away from the office to reflect on the year's accomplishments, identify successes and failures, strategically narrow our activities to the most effective and productive and set in place a system of measuring our progress towards those goals.  Based on the public evaluation process of good community organizing, OCHRC also takes time after every action to gauge what worked and what did not, and identify the lessons learned.
• Issues are not as important as relationships and structures. We can all get focused on one key issue or another, but one fundamental of community organizing is that issues are not what is most  important.  Developing accountable, effective, diverse and multi-tiered leadership and organization is the objective.  OCHRC does not weigh in on every issue that is relevant to human relations.  Before we proceed, we carefully consider what role we can play, whether we can make a difference, and whether we have the staff and volunteer resources to devote, given all of our commitments and strategic plans.   We look at how our intervention will support long-term institutional change.
• Think out the drama and staging aspects of action.  There are times when how you present an issue - the timing, staging, unique perspectives, unusual partners and unpredictability - are more important to success than logic or temporary justice.  OCHRC operates outside the experience of targets of action, seizes the opportunities presented when you are focused and analytical, and thinks through the various audiences that may hear our message in order to communicate with them more effectively.
  
  Personal discipline and reflection are essential.  Organizing your calendar, being on-time, being reliable, keeping your personal life separate, taking time to read, study and reflect are all essential disciplines for an effective organizer.   When you start on-time you are respecting the time of those who show up on time.  When you show up late for an appointment you are sending the message that  your time is more important than the person you are meeting.  At OCHRC, we have an orientation towards life-long learning.  We promote reflection, discussion, education, research and sharing.  We encourage personal discipline and a focus on effectiveness.

CIVIC ORGANIZING APPROACH

Tony Massengale, of the Center for Civic Capacity Building, has been      fashioning a new approach to civic engagement he calls "Civic Organizing".  Massengale, who was trained as a traditional community organizer by the IAF, has been developing an integrated organizing approach into workplace and neighborhood environments that teaches civic leadership and political competence in our knowledge-driven, service-based, global economy.  OC Human Relations and Los Angeles City Human Relations Commission have both engaged Massengale to train their staffs. 

He says Civic Organizing seeks to create or reclaim a civic mission for the institution, so that it becomes a transforming institution in which staff and constituents empower themselves and work across lines of difference for social and economic justice.  Civic Organizing equips organizations to become more effective, publicly accountable and able to produce sustainable developmental outcomes on behalf of children, youth, families and neighborhoods.  Civic Organizing integrates strategies and practices (adapted from community organizing) into professional service and social practice, yet places emphasis on:

• The structural or institutional composition of community and society, believing that structures can be mapped and reorganized;
• Reorganization of institutions and neighborhoods by conducting institutional "in-reach" (developing staff leadership, along with internal assets, standards and capacity) before outreach (external recruitment and engagement);
• Active citizenship in the workplace and other fundamental associational environments;
• Creating sustainable outcomes rather than sustainable services and structures, especially those which invest in youth, families, neighborhoods and mediating institutions.

Massengale outlines the objectives of Civic Organizing in California as:

• New political inventions and democratic governance strategies that operate out of a moral imperative to address ethical uses of power.
• Relational power/power sharing for non-violent action and public problem solving.
• Establishing intentional and mutually obligated public relationships among individuals and institutions, transforming them through civic capacity building, power sharing and accountability.
• Building developmental and empowering organizations and networks; investing in human capital through on-going leadership development that observes and addresses the spiritual dimension of human development.
• Collaboration across lines of difference--class, ethnic, generational, gender, institution, neighborhood, profession, religious/faith--and constructing purposeful structures and infrastructure to carry out the work.
• Educating through engagement; teaching off of the action, to produce a new generation of competent  leader-organizers.
• Involving stakeholders and constituents as partners; who help to define the problems/select the issues, craft, implement and evaluate solutions.
• Renewing democracy in each new generation; expansion and inclusion of who governs, how we govern and to what end; i.e. to develop children, youth, families and neighborhoods.

CAHRO CONFERENCE WILL FEATURE CIVIC ORGANIZING

Tony Massengale, Director of the Center for Civic Capacity Building, and Rusty Kennedy, Executive Director of the Orange County Human Relations Commission, will collaborate on a workshop at the CAHRO conference in March 2001 to review the application of organizing skills to human relations issues and the "New Civic Organizing".