CongregationBased Community Organizing: A Force Against Structural Injustice

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Congregation-Based Community Organizing A Force
Against Structural Injustice

• Professor john a. powell
• February 2, 2005

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Presentation Overview

• Spirituality and Social Justice
• The Meaning of Self
• Suffering- Ontological and Surplus
• Structural and Institutional Inequities
• Designing a Collective Agenda
• Conclusion

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• We are all caught up in an inescapable network
  of mutuality, tied in a single garment of
  destiny. Whatever effects one directly effects
  all indirectly.
• -The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Spirituality and Social Justice

• What is the relationship between spirituality and
  social justice?
• We usually focus on how spirituality inspires
  social justice work, but not on how working for
  social justice informs spirituality.
• Spirituality ??Social Justice

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The Meaning of Self

• What is the self? What is our relation between
  selves (the unified self)?
• Hobbsian view of self
• Egoistic, possessive, separate, isolated,
  rational
• The unified self
• This perspective is at the heart of spirituality
• Interconnected, interbeing, not egoistically
  separate

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The Meaning of Self

• "I" cannot reach fulfillment without "thou." 
  The self cannot be self without other selves. 
  Self-concern without other-concern is like a
  tributary that has no outward flow to the ocean. 
  
• Martin Luther King, Jr., 1967
• Where Do We Go from Here Chaos or Community?

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Suffering

• Suffering is a central concern of both
  spirituality and social justice
• Existential/ontological (Spiritual Suffering)
• Sense of lack
• Disillusionment
• Separation from each other, the whole that is our
  unified selves
• Inherent in existence
• Surplus (Social suffering)
• The result of social and institutional
  arrangements/structures
• Visited on people and groups unequally

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• The need to face and understand our suffering,
  and to change toward new values, is perhaps the
  basic spiritual narrative-the common core of
  world spirituality.
• -Roger Gottlieb

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Personal vs Social

• Were constantly in the process of not just
  making a world to inhabit, but were constantly
  in the process of making ourselves.
• Relieving social suffering to move beyond our
  self
• Must reject structures that limit our ways to
  embrace love and hope in all out interpersonal
  interaction to come home
• Love calls the ego beyond itself

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Personal vs Social

• What does this understanding of the unified self
  mean for spirituality/religion?
• If one of the foci of spirituality is to engage
  suffering and its causes, spirituality must also
  be concerned with how institutions and structures
  function in society.
• Structural racism causes suffering, and animates
  a call to spirituality to engage those
  structures.

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Structural and Institutional Inequities

• What do we mean by structural racism?
• The system in which public policies, interrelated
  institutional practices, cultural
  representations, and other norms work in various,
  often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group
  inequity.

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The Source of Disparities

• What are our assumptions surrounding disparities?
  How do we understand these disparities if they
  are not explained by personal discrimination or
  explicit laws and policies?
• When do disparities matter?
• Three sources
• Biology The common 19th century theory of
  racial, ethnic, and gender inferiority. Much less
  prevalent today.
• Individuals Culture Idea that individuals
  alone can (and should) rise above their
  conditions of poverty, and the idea of a
  defective culture of poverty.
• Structures Institutions States that even
  within neutral arrangements and without racist
  actors, disparities can still exist.

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The Source of Disparities

• Disparities exist across the US and the world.
• These disparities were historically established
  and reinforced through inscription in the laws
  and practices along lines of gender, race, class,
  religion, etc.
• Todays policies and laws are facially neutral,
  and racial attitudes are improving, yet
  disparities persist

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Structural and Institutional Inequities

• Theoretically neutral policies and practices can
  disempower communities of color and distribute
  burdens unevenly
• Legal racism and personal prejudice now a racial
  hierarchy enforced through institutional/structura
  l means
• Racial hierarchy without racist actors

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Model for Disparate Outcomes
Historically
Today
Biased Structures
De Jure Neutral Structures
What is occurring here to replicate the outcomes
today?
Disparate Outcomes
Disparate Outcomes
Individuals/ Culture
Structures/ Opportunity
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Durable Inequalities

• A structural racism view is suspicious of single
  problems cause, solution, or goal.
• Durable inequalities are not only
  multidimensional, but interact across time and
  space as well.
• For example, in the largest asset accumulation
  policy in the U.S., land was provided for white
  families during colonial times and into the
  nineteenth century, but not for people of color.
  
• What affect does this have on racial disparities
  today?
• What should be done?

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Durable Inequalities

• The typical Black family had 60 as much income
  as a white family in 1968, but only 58 as much
  in 2002.
• Black infants are almost two-and-a-half-times as
  likely as white infants to die before age one a
  greater gap than in 1970.
• At the slow rate that the Black-white poverty gap
  has been narrowing since 1968, it would take
  until 2152 to close.
• African Americans had 55 cents in 1968 and only
  57 cents in 2001. At this pace, it would take
  Blacks 581 years to get the remaining 43 cents.
• While white homeownership has jumped from 65 to
  75 since 1970, Black homeownership has only
  risen from 42 to 48. At this rate, it would
  take 1,664 years to close the homeownership gap
  about 55 generations.

Source State Of The Dream 2004 (United for a
Fair Economy)
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Median Net Worth by Race/Ethnicity in 2000
In 2000, the median net worth for Non-Hispanic
White households was 10.5 times the value for
African American households.
Source Net Worth and Asset Ownership
1998-2000. Household Economic Studies. U.S.
Census Bureau (2003)
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Opportunity Structures

• Opportunity structures are the institutional
  arrangements, policies and practices that
  contribute to the meaning and distribution of
  benefits and burdens.
• Opportunities exist in a complex web of
  interdependent factors.

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Opportunity Structures

• Fiscal Policies

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Opportunity Structures

• Housing is a component of a larger set of
  interrelated structures that are both affected by
  housing and have impacts for the attainment of
  safe, stable housing.
• Parents who have access to affordable housing
  have more money to spend on transportation.
• More money spent on transportation provides them
  with access to a broader range of jobs.
• A better job provides more money, which provides
  their children with better educational
  opportunities.
• Well-fed children with stable housing will do
  better in school.
• Having access to greater educational
  opportunities and doing better in school allows
  these children to achieve regular employment.

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Opportunity Structures

• For low-income households and families of color,
  fair access to opportunity structures is limited
  by segregation, concentrated poverty,
  fragmentation, and sprawl in our regions.

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The face of racism looks different today than it
did thirty years ago. Overt racism is easily
condemned, but the sin is often with us in more
subtle formsof spatial racismSpatial racism
refers to patterns of metropolitan development in
which some affluent whites create racially and
economically segregated suburbs or gentrified
areas of cities, leaving the poor -- mainly
African Americans, Hispanics and some newly
arrived immigrants -- isolated in deteriorating
areas of the cities and older suburbs.
Francis Cardinal George, OMI Archbishop of Chicago
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Segregation

• The government plays a central role in the
  arrangement of space and opportunities.
• Federal housing and lending policies spurred
  white flight and segregation
• If a neighborhood is to retain stability, it is
  necessary that properties shall continue to be
  occupied by the same social and racial classes.
  A change in social or racial occupancy generally
  contributes to instability and a decline in
  values.
• Excerpt from the 1947 FHA underwriting manual.

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Racial/Ethnic Characteristics of High Poverty
Neighborhoods

• Over 3.1 million African Americans lived in High
  Poverty Neighborhoods in 2000
• Hispanics and African Americans made up almost
  70 of people living in high poverty
  neighborhoods in 2000

Source Stunning Progress, Hidden Problems The
Dramatic Decline of Concentrated Poverty in the
1990s. The Brookings Institute (2003)
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Housing and Job Mismatch

• Blacks moved to cities for opportunities, while
  employment opportunities left the cities to the
  suburbs
• Same patterns beginning to repeat in first-ring
  suburbs today.
• This movement of jobs away from the labor pool
  has made it challenging to connect job-seekers
  with jobs
• 58 of all welfare participants in the nation
  live in central cities.
• 70 of all new jobs are in the suburbs.
• 40 of all suburban jobs cannot be reached by
  public transportation.

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Median Household Incomes of Racial and Ethnic
Groups (National)
Source Lewis Mumford Center 1990, 2000 Census
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Segregation

• Segregation persists at very high levels for
  African-Americans
• At 65 (75 in many major metropolitan areas)
• Improving at an extremely slow pace
• People of color in segregated areas own homes on
  average with lower values
• Municipalities rely on the tax base to provide
  essential services, and the tax base is tied to
  home values

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Educational Inequity

• Education is one such essential service that is
  tied to property values.
• Racial segregation in schools strongly
  corresponds to economic isolation in schools
• The more fragmented a region is, the more
  racially segregated are the public schools,
  according to research by David Rusk

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Educational Inequity

• There is a large gap between the resources
  available to districts with a majority of
  students of color and districts where white
  students constitute the majority.1
• In 86 of states, school districts with the
  greatest numbers of poor children have less money
  to spend per pupil than districts with the fewest
  poor children.2

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Educational Inequity

• SES of the school is one of the greatest
  predictors of student success.

• A middle-class school is twenty-four times as
  likely to be consistently high performing as a
  high-poverty school.

Source The Century Foundation (2004). Can
Separate Be Equal? www.tcf.org
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Equity-Centered Approach

• Because opportunity structures exist as a web,
  a multi-faceted, equity-centered approach is
  needed.
• What is equity?
• Equity is not equality or treating each person
  in exactly the same way.
• Equity brings society into balance.
• Equity requires investment in all our human and
  communal resources to maximize our potential as
  individuals, families, communities and a nation.

Ford Foundations Initiative on Race, Equity,
Community Philanthropy in the American South
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Defining Equity

• Including people where they were once excluded is
  a step in the right direction, but it is not
  enough.
• Equity requires us to consider the larger
  relationship between opportunity structures and
  durable inequalities
• We must acknowledge the interconnecting
  relational web within which individuals live and
  act.

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A Collective Equity Agenda

• Understanding structural racism as mutually
  reinforcing constraints leads us to believe that
  changing one of those constraints will bring down
  the house of cards.
• Historically antimiscegenation laws
• were thought to be the key
• leverage point.
• The civil rights movement
  pursued equity in education
• Yet when one of the cards is removed,
  the house remains standing.

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A Collective Equity Agenda

• How do we pursue strategic interventions to
  interrupt these mutually reinforcing constraints
  in light of the interrelated and pervasive nature
  of inequities?

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Developing an Equity Agenda

• Often our work is transactional, we seek to make
  small changes- incremental gains within existing
  arrangements.
• Strategic transactional change can be
  transformative
• However, because of the multidimensional nature
  of our laws and policies, progress in one area
  can cause retrenchment in another.

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A Collective Equity Agenda

• We need transformative thinking
• We need to formulate a COLLECTIVE approach.
• We must identify a leverage point from which to
  design a strategic intervention. An area where a
  targeted, unified pursuit of equity can
  positively impact several other structures.

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A Collective Equity Agenda

• Space as a leverage point.
• Space impacts our employment, health, wealth,
  education, access to transportation, childcare
  and institutions that facilitate civic and
  political activity.
• We know space is racialized fair access to
  opportunity structures is limited by segregation,
  concentration of poverty, fragmentation, and
  sprawl in our regions for low-income households
  and families of color
• Studies such as Gautreauxs housing relocation
  program show that moving to opportunity rich
  areas produces dramatic social, educational, and
  economic improvements.

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The Spatial Distribution of Opportunity in
Chicago
Index of Opportunity The following map
illustrates opportunity mapping in Chicago.
Communities in blue contain the highest
concentration of opportunity, areas in red the
lowest. Note that opportunity is highly
clustered in the northern suburbs.
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The Spatial Distribution of African American
Population Growth
(High growth areas in dark blue). The following
map shows that the largest movement of African
Americans in Chicago (to the south side suburbs)
is in the opposite direction of opportunity in
Chicago (previous map).
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Next Steps

• Our focus should be outcome-oriented,
• We must identify our goals, then align our
  institutional arrangements to produce those
  desired outcomes while maintaining a human face.
• We have and can make progress.

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Progress

• Several states are modifying their approach to
  subsidized housing to target more opportunity
  rich areas.
• Wisconsin Illinois
• Prioritizing LIHTC projects based on location in
  employment growth areas.
• Illinois/Chicago
• Determining areas of opportunity in Chicago
  suburbs
• Agreement with business community to consider
  workforce housing or transit access for future
  investments
• Inclusionary zoning.
• Minnesota
• Prioritize LIHTC housing proposals in areas of
  both high job growth and high population growth.

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Faith Based Organizations

• Faith Based Organizations offer a great
  opportunity

for building coalitions because many
congregations are already diverse racially,
economically, and politically.
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Faith Based Organizations

• BREAD (Building Responsibility Equality and
  Dignity)
• Columbus, OH
• Education Worked with Columbus Public Schools to
  implement a research-based reading program. Made
  dramatic gains in the number of children reading
  at or above grade level.
• Housing Initiated and maintained a campaign to
  address the shortage of affordable housing in
  Central Ohio. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund
  was created, targeting at least half of its
  resources to low-income families. In 2001 and
  2002, 6.2 million was invested in the AHTF .
• Jobs Pushed to increase the access of center
  city neighborhoods to outer belt jobs by
  increasing public transportation opportunities.
  COTA added 38,000 hours of new bus service in
  1998 and received a 684,000 grant to expand the
  work under the federal Access to Jobs initiative.

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Faith Based Organizations

• PACT (People Acting for Community Together)
• Miami, FL
• Education Worked with 26 elementary schools to
  implement a research-based reading program
  (Direct Instruction) and improve reading scores.
  Helped organize and mobilize parents to address
  school-based issues.
• Public Transportation In 2002, PACT helped pass
  the "People's Transportation Plan to bring
  massive improvements in the public transit
  system, including a doubling of the bus fleet.

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Faith Based Organizations

• MCU (Metropolitan Congregations United for St.
  Louis)
• St. Louis, MO
• An interfaith, multi-racial community
  organization of 76 member congregations impacting
  more than 700,000 people.
• Healthcare Helped pave the way for 90,000
  children in Missouri to gain access to health
  care through passage of presumptive
  eligibility.
• Jobs Was actively involved in economic
  development plans for the St. Louis Lambert
  Airport buyout land, which will result in 18,000
  new jobs.

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Power Analysis
A power analysis can help identify key pressure
points, non-traditional allies, and possible
points of friction and tension.

• What is our goal?
• Who shares our concerns?
• What is the best strategy for creating change?
  (grassroots organizing, litigation, policy
  changes, a combination?)
• What are potential obstacles?
• What tensions need to be addressed between
  allies?

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Next Steps

• How can congregations bring a specific structural
  focus to the table and still maintain an attitude
  of open listening to the diverse needs being
  expressed?
• How are the core values deeply beneficial to
  coalition work and working for radical social
  change?

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• I have walked that long road to freedom. I have
  tried not to falter I have made missteps along
  the way. But I have discovered the secret that
  after climbing a great hill, one only finds that
  there are many more hills to climb. I have taken
  a moment here to rest, to steal a view of the
  glorious vista that surrounds me, to look back on
  the distance I have come. But I can rest only
  for a moment, for with freedom come
  responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my
  long walk is not yet ended.
• - Nelson Mandela (1994) 1993 Nobel Peace Prize
  Laureate

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www.KirwanInstitute.org