Going Public — This Week's Insight
“We were taught that merit mattered. If we just presented the facts in a full and fair manner, if we got the words right, the slogan right, the tone right, the photo-op right, then others would realize the errors of their ways and move in our direction. We learned a great deal about what ought to be—how to describe it, communicate it, promote it, and defend it—and very little about the dangerous undertows and cross currents of individual and institutional interests....We constantly run across situations in our organizing where merit doesn’t matter and where a different kind of response is called for."
- Mike Gecan, Going Public: An Organizer's Guide to to Citizen Action (pages 54 to 55)
Civic Reflections
Jyl: Role play story
One key aspect of the kind of organizing that Jersey City Together does is that it provides ongoing training for organization leaders. Leaders learn how to do the work of organizing through local, regional, and national training, as well as through carrying out the ongoing work of the organization, reflecting on that work, and strategizing about how to be effective on the issues that we care about.
One training exercise that I frequently use in my class on organizing is a role play scenario where leaders/students need to negotiate with one another in teams in a situation where the power is very unequal between the two groups, and the stakes are high especially for the group with less power. At the beginning of the role play, students are given the scenario, and are told that there is only one rule, and the rule is that I can interrupt them.
This exercise always surprises students a bit, partly because they are not used to this kind of interaction in the classroom. But one thing that I have observed over the years of teaching this role play is that people have rather fixed expectations about how to interact with one another in situations of unequal power, and often have trouble being creative or breaking out of these expectations. The point of there being only one rule is to help people think beyond their existing ideas about politics. It is hard to do, especially among people who don’t know each other very well.
The stories in chapter five are about ways to create your own systems of accountability when the existing systems just aren’t working for you. Gecan tells the story of East Brooklyn Congregations’ members trying to improve the quality of food offered by the grocery stories in their neighborhood. The existing, official, food inspection system was clearly not working, and leaders determined that it would be more effective to create their own “inspection” system in order to get the change that they wanted.
This action required a lot of planning, including the research needed to understand the rules of food safety and quality that the grocery stores should have been following but were not. Instead of targeting the public officials who were not effectively enforcing these rules, EBC went directly to the stores, putting direct pressure on the store owners. Crucially, they did inform the local police precinct, in case store owners decided to call the police on the EBC inspectors, who were, after all, just exercising their rights to shop in their local stores.
Running an effective public action such as this takes a lot of planning and preparation, as well as effective follow through. And it takes some creative thinking, to try to get the kind of reaction that you want. As Gecan reports, seven out of ten of the store owners responded immediately, signing an agreement with EBC to improve the quality and safety of food available in their stores. For the other three, it took more work, but eventually they saw their own self-interest and signed the agreements as well. And the leaders had some fun while making things just a little bit better for people in their neighborhood.
Organizing often calls for thinking outside of the ordinary paths of our assumptions about political life and how things are done. But exercising the collective power of organized people really can get results, in tangible improvements in the life of our communities.
Because Civic Parent is rooted in the idea of "the merits of an argument," this chapter made me think of so many lessons learned over the years; of how much I had to un-learn and re-learn when it comes to the merits of an argument - and the limits of that work unless and until you get serious about organizing for impact.
I began writing about abatements on Civic Parent in 2013. In 2013 and 2014 I did a building-block series about what they are, how they are used. In 2014 I wrote about how then-Mayor Fulop’s “buy up policy” was flawed. In 2015 I used public data to show how abatements siphon money from the school district.
My efforts were rooted in data, data, data. The merits of an argument. What I was doing, unbeknownst at the time, was building building a library of resources for others in community to learn. What I was not doing, however, was changing public officials’ stance on abatements. Because, as Gecan points out, merit means (almost) nothing when it comes to power organizing.
This crystalized for me when I partook in a mock Abatement Cake party at City Hall that included an actual cake we brought into 280 Grove Street, giant balloons, and the press (Jersey City abatement vote met with mock party - nj.com). I co-sponsored the party and was able to lend the credentials and seriousness of my research that I had - until then - built up on Civic Parent. So all of my research and effort to date had a role to play, once I was given an opportunity to channel it. And I learned an important lesson: merit means (almost) nothing when you want to compel action from those in power.
The Abatement Cake party was on March 10, 2017. Fulop's 70th abatement was up for a vote (note for clarity: it was a combination of short- and long-term abatements under Fulop's term that we were pointing out). We did not bring the cake or giant balloons into the Council chambers, out of respect for the public meeting. But we did use the civic space outside - in front of City Hall, in the rotunda.
The mock party was action. The following month, Mayor Fulop reacted. The following month, the Hudson County View reported that Fulop signs order giving 10% of future abatement revenue to Jersey City Public Schools - Hudson County View.
To be clear: it was a superficial reaction because the "10% of future abatement revenue" was not retroactive and the ten percent number looks and sounds like more than it truly is (I wrote about that, too, here).
But...the point is that our mock abatement party - action - forced a public concession that the municipality had for years refused to make:
(1) city-driven policy with abatements was an issue that needed to be acknowledged and
(2) city officials could take action on abatements as it related to school funding (which, until then, had been cloaked in a “we are limited in what we can do” stance on the part of the city).
What I learned in a small way with the Abatement Cake party, but then much more impactfully through training with Jersey CIty Together, is that the civic arena is a much more imaginative and powerful place to flex democratic muscles; but for maximum impact, you must organize.
This Week's Action
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