Community Organizing

New Challenges in Our Area

William Sundwick

Let’s start with some assumptions about 21^st century American politics. Assumption #1: many, many people are poorly served by their local governments; assumption #2: virtually all communities have some people who are quite content, but most others much less so; assumption #3: those who are most content are that way because they have a voice in the political process.

Assumption #4: the political power imbalance requires extra-governmental activity, or organization, to move it. That’s what community organizing is all about. Those who are discontented because they lack access to their local governments can gain more access through these organizing intermediaries.

How is this done? All local jurisdictions in the United States, like state governments, and the federal government itself, have popularly elected representatives and executives. Yet, some elections are less democratic than others, because of voter interference by political parties, or incomplete (or inaccurate?) information made available to voters.

Since community organizing entities are usually 501(c)(3) organizations – they cannot support partisan actors, or lobby on their behalf – they must limit themselves to non-partisan voter information and registration.  Nevertheless, community organizers can easily advocate for ballot initiatives, economic plans (including allocations in public budgets), and even changes to law, without running afoul of those 501-c restrictions.

How do they accomplish this advocacy? Elected bodies in local jurisdictions must at least appear to be working for their constituents if they intend to stand for re-election, so they have an incentive to be responsive to organizations that present public clout, through media exposure and support from influential community leaders – often the pulpits of religious institutions. Advocacy is carried out in these venues, sometimes even including street demonstrations and marches. It often comes down to sheer numbers of bodies – “seat-warmers” at a local county board meeting, or marchers gathered outside with placards (and reported by local media). That’s my usual role!

There is some risk in these tactics. Arrests can be made at demonstrations, and media exposure can be negative from some outlets. Community organizers should always expect that their actions will cause, at the very least, increased tension with those forces who support and benefit from the status quo. A poorly planned campaign for some social good may experience blowback from the targeted groups, which can dull community momentum. And the interests of the marginalized community members must always be paramount -- they must be the final arbiters of any actions.

Fifty years ago, when Saul Alinsky wrote his book Rules for Radicals, he laid out the principles of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), concluding that the strongest community organizations were religious institutions. An interfaith alliance of churches and synagogues could pool their efforts at community betterment around local umbrella organizations. These were the IAF chapters around the country.

VOICE (Virginians Organized for Interfaith Community Engagement) is the Northern Virginia IAF affiliate, founded in 2008. VOICE includes an active cadre of Muslim places of worship, along with traditional Catholic, Protestant, Unitarian, and Jewish congregations. But our region, like others, has recently seen a decrease in concentrations of affected communities. Churches in the area have been losing members. Their budgets have been strained. Some of the old congregations have been dropping their VOICE partnership, mostly due to their changing demographics, and consequent challenges keeping up their dues. New clergy and new congregations can be approached. Some new ones are being added (an established Presbyterian church in my neighborhood just joined).

But many marginalized groups leave the area, or at least move farther out – where they can afford to live. Arlington and Alexandria, especially, are becoming more affluent (and white) as gentrification inexorably pushes the less privileged out of the community. The coming of Amazon to Arlington will only exacerbate an already untenable situation for much of the local service sector of lower income families. “The rent is too damn high!”

This has led VOICE to alter its strategy for 2020 and beyond. Expanding on the model proposed by Alinsky, it now seems that religious institutions need to be supplemented by other community allies. Organized labor, shunned by Alinsky as too parochial in its interests, now may be a potential target for outreach. Likewise, teachers (by law in Virginia, non-unionized) have professional associations; these, too, could be VOICE partners. In addition, tenants’ associations for housing issues, and PTAs for school issues.

While the tactics for advocacy remain unchanged – get local politicians to listen because they fear electoral reprisal if they don’t – the changing demographics in the “inside-the-beltway” communities like Arlington and Alexandria make that somewhat harder. Wealthier citizens are now beginning to outnumber the marginalized in these places.

Arlington and Alexandria do have an important service sector, however, including teachers, police, firefighters. Increasingly, these public servants cannot afford to live in (or even near) the communities where they work. Hence, affordable housing remains a goal of VOICE organizing, both locally and in Richmond (the General Assembly will be voting on funding for housing this session). Localities and Richmond also share responsibility for zoning (yes, the Dillon Rule in Virginia, gives the General Assembly potential influence over city and county zoning authority!). “Upzoning” for multi-family development in single family neighborhoods is an important tool for increasing affordable housing availability.

Criminal justice reform and education resources for school counselors and pre-K are also on VOICE’s docket for 2020. Suspension of drivers licenses for non-payment of court costs is an issue in Richmond, as is state funding for more guidance counselors (current rate: 500:1 ratio of students to counselors – VOICE advocates halving it to 250:1).

Whether the venue is the Arlington County Board meeting or the General Assembly in Richmond, the basic principle is still to show up! Numbers are what politicians, and the media, can see and report.

The original Saul Alinsky theory remains valid. Voiceless people need numbers to be heard; numbers have power for elected officials. But the IAF “Iron Rule” still applies: Never do for people what they can do for themselves. It’s about giving voice to the voiceless, not amplifying the voice of those who are already heard!

City Cousins and Country Cousins

What Makes Them Different?

William Sundwick

The Neolithic Revolution occurred approximately 12.500 years ago. It was followed immediately by the urban/rural political divide. As soon as hunter-gatherers coalesced into agricultural settlements, and stopped being nomadic, they established villages, then cities. Yet, the food to feed the population in those cities was grown by the farmers. It was their surplus that sustained the city.

In time, however, the farmers’ natural advantage over the city dwellers became inverted. Farmers became indentured to the lords of the manor (the “city”) under feudalism. Power flowed upward – the cities became creditors and the manor, or vassals, were debtors.

The eternal conflict between debtors and creditors intensified. Mercantilism was about more than international trade. Any power center (e.g., an estate, corporation, or nation) sought to maximize profit by keeping costs (imports) to a minimum while getting maximum price for its products (exports).

As agricultural workers lost their bargaining power, since they had only one buyer (the city), workers in the city found more favorable economic conditions. If they could produce goods and services only a few skilled individuals could provide, like luxury goods for the nobility, they could demand whatever price they wanted, provided there was a market.

The activities of marketing and money lending became concentrated in cities. Other rent-seeking economic behavior followed. And, the emigration from the countryside to the cities began. That’s where the jobs were. Industrialization only aggravated this. Education also became available mostly in the city – to provide the skills necessary for even more specialized production. Capital, both human and material, became the currency of a new age.

But the farmers stayed the same. Indeed, they found they also needed access to capital in order to maximize their surplus. Family farms became businesses -- or sold out to businesses.

And, the emigration of the young to the city continued. The cities began to grow outside of their previous boundaries – they spawned suburbs! So, even the land area devoted to farming shrunk.

This happened throughout the developed world as, first industrialization, then cosmopolitanism with its diverse poly-cultural richness and higher educational levels, drew ever larger populations, magnetically, to urban areas.

But what about those who either couldn’t or wouldn’t leave? The old, the less educated, the poor. Might they not be resentful of all their talented youth abandoning their traditional way of life for the city? In the United States, and some research indicates in Europe as well, there has now developed a political ideology around the “forgotten ones” status. It often takes on racial animus, “us” (white people) versus “them” (immigrants and non-white others). Religious affiliations can exacerbate the feelings – provincialism and tribalism are frequently promoted by religious denominations. Only some of us are God’s chosen, and fewer of us live in cities.

And those suburbs? That’s where city cousins and country cousins can be neighbors! Suburban development is not unique to the United States. European cities have their own suburbs, with similar characteristics. There are poly-cultural, cosmopolitan suburban communities and multi-cultural communities which experience tension between their constituent cultures. Relatively few suburbs are mono-cultural like small towns or rural areas (very wealthy suburbs may be the exception).

Political sensibilities in the poly-cultural suburbs tend to skew left, or liberal, but multi-cultural communities with their tensions might exaggerate political allegiances across the cultural divide. Sometimes multi-cultural tension is not racial, but class based. It could be between “old-timers” who have been there since the community was a mono-cultural small town and the “newcomers” who have moved there from the city, perhaps victims of gentrification in the city center, or to raise a family in more space.

In the United States today, we are currently engaged in a discussion about the urban/rural divide as it relates to legislative districting. There are severe constitutional constraints on how apportionment is handled from state to state. Recently, the Supreme Court decided federal courts must stay away from partisan redistricting. But the fact remains: if state legislatures decide on the boundaries of the districts, they will always draw the maps so that the dominant party’s position is perpetuated, if they are able. Individual states may come up with alternatives (perhaps even proportional representation), but not all have constitutional provisions for ballot initiatives.

Unless you can make a convincing economic case to farmers and small town mono-cultural voters that their life is made much better by immigrants or free trade, it’s not likely that the present contour of rural right-populism can be replaced any time soon by a more urban poly-culturalism. Some folks simply prefer to live around fewer people, and more empty land. They skew conservative in their values.

Cosmopolitanism is seen by many country cousins as the ideology of the elites – for the winners in society, not them! Likewise, many poorer urban residents see rural provincialism as a strategy for protecting what’s theirs from “theft” by non-whites, especially. Perhaps heightened awareness of their privilege might be prudent for both city cousins and country cousins in this debate.

  Cognitive Revolution to Homo Deus

Yuval Harari’s View of History

William Sundwick

Inspired by Jared Diamond’s 1997 best seller Guns, Germs, and Steel, 35-year-old Israeli history professor Yuval Noah Harari published his first book, Sapiens, a brief history of Humankind (2011 in Hebrew, English edition 2014). He, like Diamond, takes a long view of human history – starting his story with the event which occurred about 70,000 years ago. He dubs it the “cognitive revolution.”  It resulted in the replacement of Homo Neanderthalis by the species Homo Sapiens. Harari maintains Sapiens possessed the unique ability to use imagination, to depict abstract ideas, and to create a narrative (not the same as signaling, common to many animal species). Notwithstanding recent dating of some cave “art” (mostly orderly lines and hash marks) as coming from Neanderthals, only Sapiens could sit around a fire and relate stories to family or hunter-gatherer band, says Harari.

The ability to create a narrative, in turn, facilitated cooperation in much larger groups, ultimately leading to settlements, villages, and agriculture. Villages grew into tribes, then kingdoms, then empires. Gods were invented to give order to the world, priests were created to enforce the rules made by those gods.

In his second book, Homo Deus, a Brief History of Tomorrow, Harari focuses more on what we have come to know as “civilization.” He recounts mankind’s journey from God-and-Nation centrism to the triumph in the late 20^th century of “liberal humanism” (or simply, “liberalism”) nearly everywhere. Humanism itself was a creation of the old order, as God was taken as the facilitator of human empowerment. It was really technology, in Harari’s view, that enabled this development. The modern age, the age of science, has now replaced the God of the old order with the notion of progress. In the 21^st century, Harari claims, not only God, but nation-states, and even capitalism, will gradually succumb to a world controlled by algorithms – smarter than any humans, yet created by them. Including bioengineering (CRISPR), Harari thinks these technological advances will, by century’s end, mean the beginning of the end of Homo Sapiens, much as the cognitive revolution 70,000 years ago spelled doom to Neanderthals. Meanwhile, though, we’ve had a good run. He calls our replacement “homo deus,” man with godlike powers.

Harari is a vegan, he cares as much about animal consciousness as human -- and believes that industrial animal farming is essentially a holocaust. His realization that there is no accepted scientific definition of “consciousness” is what led him to the animal rights position. He believes that animals cannot be dismissed as less-than-conscious beings, leading directly to his doubts about the durability of humanism. If you accept the principle that God and religion were invented by man, and religious authority always has been interpreted by humans to advance their own agenda, it is not difficult to understand his position.

Enter the algorithm. Harari posits that there are organic and inorganic algorithms. Biological entities are organic algorithms, machines are inorganic. But, they are all algorithmic -- they follow mathematical and physical laws. The universe, in the scientific world view, is composed of algorithms.

What about morality? Ethical principles can survive in a world controlled by algorithms, says Harari. But, we do not yet know how to design an algorithm that would allow a driverless car to swerve to avoid hitting pedestrians, even though it would kill its occupant. Is its occupant the “owner?” That may be the critical question. Does ownership of the algorithm convey property rights which supersede the right-to-life and happiness of any conscious beings using the algorithm? We’re stuck with the humanist dilemma.

Right to happiness, of course, is nothing that Sapiens has been especially vigilant at protecting – even in the modern age. Harari claims that there is no evidence that modern humans are any “happier” than primitive hunter-gatherers. They may live longer, they certainly have more stuff, but are they happier? Like consciousness, happiness is without scientific definition. As to the triumph of liberal humanism, it has created a more peaceful world. Fewer humans die violent deaths than in times past. And, Harari claims there is much evidence to support that modern man is less oppressed than in earlier ages, due largely to humanism. But, for all we know, pre-agricultural societies may still have the edge in “happiness.” 

Looking to the future, Harari foresees the creation of a “useless class” who are not only unemployed, but unemployable. He expects this group to be very large by mid-century. The culprit is mostly artificial intelligence, which will become so advanced as to reverse the history of technological change. Whereas in the past, technology always created more new opportunities for employment than jobs lost, the story of the 21^st century may be different. Unlike the loom, the steam engine, or even the computer, AI will ultimately render the entire human race redundant. First to go will be human labor as an economic engine. Already, our growing inequality speaks to the declining value of human labor in the formation of capital. This economic truth is what has led to the downfall of socialist humanism, as opposed to liberal humanism.  Workers, even collectively, can’t compete with other means of creating capital – economists call what happens on Wall Street “rent-seeking” – not production in the classic Marxian sense.

Only religious and political enforcement of “individual liberty” (the foundation of liberalism) continues to work in the interests of human beings. What happens when we lose our sense of “self” to the all-powerful algorithm? Individuals become completely predictable. They may continue to be customers, but their consumer behavior, and voting patterns, will be precisely manipulated by the algorithm. No more mysterious “self,” no more “soul.” The species then dies. It will be replaced by a partially organic, partially inorganic, algorithm, which can be sentient, or not, depending on the needs of evolutionary design and the environment.

“Techno-humanism” may be the path forward. If we sapiens can successfully harness the new technology so it remains the servant, rather than master, of our species. A strong ethical imperative may still undergird it. But, more likely, and more ominous, claims Harari, is a new religion he calls “Dataism.” This will replace humanism with belief in the data stream, a supra-conscious entity of which we are all part -- cogs in the eternal flow, as it were. His final question: where are ethics and morality in such a religion?