By Nick O’Connor
The Portland Upside
August 2009
The Portland Upside
August 2009
MACG participants, left to right, Nick O’Connor, Muriel Wentzien and Rev. Bill Gates put their leadership training to work when they lobbied at the Oregon state capitol in April. (photo provided by Nick O'Connor)On a warm Wednesday evening I’m listening to Christi, a young mother of two boys, whom I’ve just met. She tells me about the icy Portland winter her family moved into a camper parked on the street while their house was being remodeled. When a promised bank loan failed to materialize, the contractor wouldn’t agree to new payment terms and walked off the job, leaving the house without plumbing or heat. The camper became the family’s bedroom.
"
In turn, I tell Christi about my struggle with unemployment and the looming foreclosure on my family’s home mortgage.
We’re sharing these stories as part of an intensive 12-hour, four-week training, called Leadership Institute for Public Life, sponsored by The Metropolitan Alliance for the Common Good (MACG).
MACG describes itself as “broad-based,” and indeed, draws members from a wide range of backgrounds. We’ve gathered in Gladstone at the Operating Engineers 701 Union Hall with 25 others from churches, synagogues, labor unions and community service organizations. We’re here to learn the elementary skills of community organizing.
According to John Schwiebert, pastor at Metanoia Peace Church, “A primary task of broad-based organizing is to dis-organize the cultural isolation that has turned us into little more than consumers. We get people to talk to each other at some meaningful depth, about their pain, pressures, and unrealized dreams.”
Good idea. But how?
MACG’s basic tool is the “relational meeting” or “one-to-one,” the kind of thing Christi and I are practicing. It’s a heart-to-heart telling of personal stories, exactly the kind of honest talk that happens in well-functioning families and between trusted friends. In this setting we’re doing it as concerned citizens. We want to unearth common pressures and problems so we can face them together, publicly, politically, and most important, powerfully.
One of MACG’s member organizations is Phoenix Rising Transitions, a successful prison-to-community program. Phoenix has developed a “relational culture” that forges bonds between prisoners and community leaders.
Harry Olsen, a leader in MACG and founder of Phoenix, says, “When I got out in 1991, there was nothing like a prison-to-community transition program in Portland. I’d attended the Native American Sweat Lodge, led by a volunteer, at Oregon State Prison. I called him the day I got out and that saved my life. Still, I longed for social connection. I searched for that link for others, too. In the Lodge I envisioned Phoenix, an organization of and for people that were in and had been to prison. In 1999, I found MACG. Its freethinking leaders answered my prayer. No longer need parolees starve for normal human and social connections. No longer need they exist as outcasts, pariahs without an avenue to approach, to participate in community.”
Another Phoenix member, Willy Smith, tells his story.
“Volunteers from Phoenix and MACG came to the prison to attend and facilitate classes. These classes gave me a new beginning and taught me leadership skills that I immediately began to use upon my release. The support and mentorship gained through these gave me strength to believe in myself enough that at the age of 54 I returned to college. I’m now in my second year at PCC with a 4.0 GPA, a member of Phi Theta Kappa honor society, and just received Student of the Year in the Alcohol & Drug Counselor program.”
One MACG credo, embodied by Phoenix, is that leadership is not a single inborn trait, like eye color, bred only in peppy college kids running Student Council or shrewd and driven entrepreneurs. It turns out there are practices and strategies, like the relational meeting, available to the average person. Such strategies create a context for leaders to emerge.
Practices developed in the 1930’s based on the research of University of Chicago sociologist Saul Alinsky, brought together groups as diverse as labor unions, the Catholic Church, ethnic minorities, business owners and government. Eventually the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) arose, an international umbrella entity that now has 59 affiliates. As a budding community organizer, I learn I’ve joined a lineage of thousands of IAF trainees who have included such luminaries as United Farmworkers founders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, as well as Barack Obama.
At the Gladstone Union Hall we get plenty of theory and history under our belts, yet for three weeks there’s scant mention of MACG’s current role in the political arena. More than one participant asks what MACG is doing in the real world right now.
Mike, a labor organizer, likes the training but I can tell it all seems a little soft to him. He’s used to hardball negotiations over contract terms and wages and it’s not clear how relational meetings will translate to the union setting. During the workshop’s last night, we hear more details about MACG’s political actions.
One story catches my attention.
Lois Jordahl, MACG leader with Redeemer Lutheran Church, tells how a recent MACG action cleaned up a meth lab in her neighborhood. Police had busted the meth house in the glare of TV cameras, yet the boarded-up house languished, a contaminated eyesore. Lois notified her Redeemer “core team,” a small group of leaders acting as a liaison with MACG.
“[My team] met with neighbors, city officials, bureaucrats, housing inspectors who told us they couldn’t do anything under the current laws and ordinances. We invited recovering addicts from Recovery Association Project to join with us, and several did, including a former meth cook. Folks from labor got involved. We met individually with City Council members. We were instrumental in writing a resolution that allows the city to force cleanup even when the owners are uncooperative, and provides funding methods for cooperative owners who can’t pay the cost of decontamination.”
Bottom line, the house was cleaned up.
Toward the end of our last meeting, we try an exercise at odds with the familiar talking heads format. We’re asked to figure out how to rearrange a stack of chairs to represent “power over” and another to represent “power among.” Our group of a dozen sits around a table, uncertain how to do this. There’s disagreement as people talk out their own concepts. Discussion stalls and we’re struggling for a handle, when Christi stands up.
“Let’s do the best we can. We want a tall pile over here, right? And a circle for the ‘power among’?”
Christi’s decisive move breaks the deadlock and provides a powerful demonstration of true leadership. In no time we’ve got a teetering hierarchy of metal and plastic—“power over,” and next to it we’re sitting in a circle—“power among.”
Our final activity is to declare our next steps. Some of us aim to establish or strengthen core teams at our institutions. Others, like me, promise more one-to-one meetings. Everyone pledges something. As we leave, the night air is refreshingly cool. Organizing for power? We can do it!
_____
For more information about community organizing, visit the following websites: www.macg.org, www.rap-nw.org & www.phoenix-rising-transitions.org
Nick O’Connor contributes to Free Fun Guides at www.freefunguides.com He has rejected the motto “Keeping Weird and Just Doing It In the Rose City That Works.”
"
In turn, I tell Christi about my struggle with unemployment and the looming foreclosure on my family’s home mortgage.
We’re sharing these stories as part of an intensive 12-hour, four-week training, called Leadership Institute for Public Life, sponsored by The Metropolitan Alliance for the Common Good (MACG).
MACG describes itself as “broad-based,” and indeed, draws members from a wide range of backgrounds. We’ve gathered in Gladstone at the Operating Engineers 701 Union Hall with 25 others from churches, synagogues, labor unions and community service organizations. We’re here to learn the elementary skills of community organizing.
According to John Schwiebert, pastor at Metanoia Peace Church, “A primary task of broad-based organizing is to dis-organize the cultural isolation that has turned us into little more than consumers. We get people to talk to each other at some meaningful depth, about their pain, pressures, and unrealized dreams.”
Good idea. But how?
MACG’s basic tool is the “relational meeting” or “one-to-one,” the kind of thing Christi and I are practicing. It’s a heart-to-heart telling of personal stories, exactly the kind of honest talk that happens in well-functioning families and between trusted friends. In this setting we’re doing it as concerned citizens. We want to unearth common pressures and problems so we can face them together, publicly, politically, and most important, powerfully.
One of MACG’s member organizations is Phoenix Rising Transitions, a successful prison-to-community program. Phoenix has developed a “relational culture” that forges bonds between prisoners and community leaders.
Harry Olsen, a leader in MACG and founder of Phoenix, says, “When I got out in 1991, there was nothing like a prison-to-community transition program in Portland. I’d attended the Native American Sweat Lodge, led by a volunteer, at Oregon State Prison. I called him the day I got out and that saved my life. Still, I longed for social connection. I searched for that link for others, too. In the Lodge I envisioned Phoenix, an organization of and for people that were in and had been to prison. In 1999, I found MACG. Its freethinking leaders answered my prayer. No longer need parolees starve for normal human and social connections. No longer need they exist as outcasts, pariahs without an avenue to approach, to participate in community.”
Another Phoenix member, Willy Smith, tells his story.
“Volunteers from Phoenix and MACG came to the prison to attend and facilitate classes. These classes gave me a new beginning and taught me leadership skills that I immediately began to use upon my release. The support and mentorship gained through these gave me strength to believe in myself enough that at the age of 54 I returned to college. I’m now in my second year at PCC with a 4.0 GPA, a member of Phi Theta Kappa honor society, and just received Student of the Year in the Alcohol & Drug Counselor program.”
One MACG credo, embodied by Phoenix, is that leadership is not a single inborn trait, like eye color, bred only in peppy college kids running Student Council or shrewd and driven entrepreneurs. It turns out there are practices and strategies, like the relational meeting, available to the average person. Such strategies create a context for leaders to emerge.
Practices developed in the 1930’s based on the research of University of Chicago sociologist Saul Alinsky, brought together groups as diverse as labor unions, the Catholic Church, ethnic minorities, business owners and government. Eventually the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) arose, an international umbrella entity that now has 59 affiliates. As a budding community organizer, I learn I’ve joined a lineage of thousands of IAF trainees who have included such luminaries as United Farmworkers founders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, as well as Barack Obama.
At the Gladstone Union Hall we get plenty of theory and history under our belts, yet for three weeks there’s scant mention of MACG’s current role in the political arena. More than one participant asks what MACG is doing in the real world right now.
Mike, a labor organizer, likes the training but I can tell it all seems a little soft to him. He’s used to hardball negotiations over contract terms and wages and it’s not clear how relational meetings will translate to the union setting. During the workshop’s last night, we hear more details about MACG’s political actions.
One story catches my attention.
Lois Jordahl, MACG leader with Redeemer Lutheran Church, tells how a recent MACG action cleaned up a meth lab in her neighborhood. Police had busted the meth house in the glare of TV cameras, yet the boarded-up house languished, a contaminated eyesore. Lois notified her Redeemer “core team,” a small group of leaders acting as a liaison with MACG.
“[My team] met with neighbors, city officials, bureaucrats, housing inspectors who told us they couldn’t do anything under the current laws and ordinances. We invited recovering addicts from Recovery Association Project to join with us, and several did, including a former meth cook. Folks from labor got involved. We met individually with City Council members. We were instrumental in writing a resolution that allows the city to force cleanup even when the owners are uncooperative, and provides funding methods for cooperative owners who can’t pay the cost of decontamination.”
Bottom line, the house was cleaned up.
Toward the end of our last meeting, we try an exercise at odds with the familiar talking heads format. We’re asked to figure out how to rearrange a stack of chairs to represent “power over” and another to represent “power among.” Our group of a dozen sits around a table, uncertain how to do this. There’s disagreement as people talk out their own concepts. Discussion stalls and we’re struggling for a handle, when Christi stands up.
“Let’s do the best we can. We want a tall pile over here, right? And a circle for the ‘power among’?”
Christi’s decisive move breaks the deadlock and provides a powerful demonstration of true leadership. In no time we’ve got a teetering hierarchy of metal and plastic—“power over,” and next to it we’re sitting in a circle—“power among.”
Our final activity is to declare our next steps. Some of us aim to establish or strengthen core teams at our institutions. Others, like me, promise more one-to-one meetings. Everyone pledges something. As we leave, the night air is refreshingly cool. Organizing for power? We can do it!
_____
For more information about community organizing, visit the following websites: www.macg.org, www.rap-nw.org & www.phoenix-rising-transitions.org
Nick O’Connor contributes to Free Fun Guides at www.freefunguides.com He has rejected the motto “Keeping Weird and Just Doing It In the Rose City That Works.”
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