Don’t Dismiss Grass-Roots’ Reach

Every political campaign has its buzz words, slogans and catch phrases. In the race for mayor of Los Angeles, which ends Tuesday when city voters choose between incumbent Richard Riordan and state Sen. Tom Hayden, one oft-repeated phrase is “neighborhood empowerment.” Another is “community organizing.”

But as often happens in campaigns, these phrases are being used so glibly and imprecisely that their real meaning has been diluted. Both candidates are equally to blame for this, as was evident in the lengthy interviews with them published on this page Wednesday.

Hayden talked about the good that “elected neighborhood councils” can do. Riordan was effusive about “more and more communities that have organized” in the city. And that’s about as specific as they got.

Yet, to be fair, both men do have an idea of what they are talking about when they use a phrase like “community organizing.” And for both, to their credit, it is an idea rooted in personal experience.

For Hayden, a longtime political activist who has mellowed with age, it is memories of his work organizing in the slums of Newark, N.J., in the 1960s. For Riordan, a wealthy businessman with an interest in progressive Roman Catholic activism, it is his experience working with grass-roots organizations spawned here with the backing of the local Catholic Church.

I’ve reported on the evolution of those Los Angeles-area groups since they began in 1976, with the formation of the United Neighborhoods Organization of East Los Angeles. UNO focused strictly on the Eastside at first, using a dozen Roman Catholic parishes and one Protestant congregation as its chief organizing units.

Eventually UNO spun off sister organizations in South Central Los Angeles (SCOC), the San Gabriel Valley (EVO) and the San Fernando Valley (VOICE). While still heavily Catholic, the groups now include more Protestants and some Jewish congregations. And all were formed with the aid of professional organizers from the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation, founded in the 1940s by the late radical Saul Alinsky.

It is because both Hayden and Riordan have firsthand experience at watching real community groups grow that I am disappointed at how their campaigns have reduced the idea of community organizing to a safe, almost mushy ideal, akin to saluting the flag or praising motherhood.

For when they work, community organizations are anything but mushy, especially when they use the tactics for which Alinsky became downright notorious. Groups like UNO can be pushy, abrasive and even downright rude when they confront a politician or business leader.

Their aim, after all, is to empower people--regardless of race, age or social class--to bargain with politicians like Hayden and wealthy businessmen like Riordan in order to protect the interests of their families and neighborhoods.

Both mayoral candidates were reminded of that last Thursday evening at a “candidate accountability night” co-sponsored by the three IAF organizations based in the city. More than 500 people attended the meeting at a Catholic church in Lincoln Heights.

As always, representatives of UNO, SCOC and VOICE were direct, even brusque, in questioning the candidates. They also kept the meeting tightly focused on their agenda, allowing the two men only brief campaign speeches.

Both Hayden and Riordan clearly felt awkward at times--powerful men are never completely at ease when someone else is controlling the agenda. But they handled it better than other politicians, bureaucrats and businessmen I’ve seen face a UNO or SCOC meeting. They didn’t filibuster or, worse, storm out in anger.

Riordan and Hayden clearly understood that the main goal of real community organizing is to train and prepare (or, if you prefer, empower) average people to bargain on an equal footing with powerful people.

It’s too bad the two candidates haven’t done a better job of explaining their genuine understanding of community organizing. By diluting an honorable concept like neighborhood empowerment into mere campaign rhetoric, they have allowed political factions with other agendas to hijack it. Some are now using it to push simplistic and potentially divisive schemes to break up the Los Angeles Unified School District or to have the San Fernando Valley secede from the rest of Los Angeles.

Controversial proposals like those need to be debated. But they should succeed or fail on their own merits rather than because they seem to advance a vague concept like neighborhood empowerment.

One reason I am confident they will be thoroughly debated is because there are real community groups out there--like UNO, SCOC and VOICE--to help keep the proponents of such schemes honest. Even if they have to be a little pushy to do it.