Saul Alinsky Lives: Populist Groups Go Back to Basics, Revive Poverty War

As California gears up for the 1990 gubernatorial election, a neo-populist, grass-roots network in Southern California linked to a national organization formed to mobilize the poor for political action is becoming one of the state’s more important political factors.

Founded nearly half a century ago in Chicago by the late Saul Alinsky, the godfather of community action, the Industrial Areas Foundation and its offshoots have come into their own, ironically, in large part because of the demise of the anti-poverty program.

“Major changes are not going to come from the political parties,” said Larry McNeil, Western director of the IAF. “There is a lack of creativity on the part of the political leadership,”

The framers of the War on Poverty in 1965 attempted to bring Alinksky’s concepts to fruition on a national scale. In truth, however, by legislating programs from the top down and controlling them locally through funding, the federal government turned community-action agencies that were an integral part of the anti-poverty program into the obverse of Alinsky’s political philosophy--developing poor people’s power through self-organization.

The community-action agencies, it turned out, contained the seeds of their own destruction. They were immediately arrayed against far more powerful and entrenched antagonists: traditional political organizations, fiscal and social conservatives and disadvantaged whites left largely out of the equation.

When the War on Poverty lapsed during the Nixon Adminstration, there was, by and large, a return to the status quo. But the unmet needs of the disadvantaged in the 1970s and 1980s were no less compelling than in the 1960s and before.

In effect, there was a need to replace the War on Poverty with a return to basics. This involved a solid anchor in the self-interest of the organizations’ constituencies and self-funding not subject to arbitrary highs and lows. Such an approach, by its very nature, takes time. In Southern California, the cornerstone was laid in 1976, and it was 10 years before the organizations began to make a major impact on the political consciousness.

The United Neighborhood Organization (UNO), centered in East Los Angeles and southeast Los Angeles County and primarily Latino, was the original Southern California group. It was joined by the South-Central Organizing Committee (SCOC) in 1981. The East Valleys Organization (EVO) of the Pomona and San Gabriel valleys was established in 1987, and the Valley Organized in Community Efforts (VOICE) of the San Fernando Valley followed in late 1988.

Reflecting the growing diversity and interest of issues, EVO and VOICE represent a mixture of ethnic and religious backgrounds. What is perhaps surprising--and unique, according to McNeil-- is that the seed money for the primarily black SCOC was provided by UNO, and for the mixed-membership EVO and VOICE by UNO and SCOC. “If I’d said all you blacks and Latinos have to come together, we’d have gotten nowhere,” observed McNeil. The new togetherness is derived from recognition of the fact that parochial, limited-issues organizations have limited influence, and that power is derived from growth and unity.

Together the four organizations represent 88 churches and synagogues and 246,000 families. Most of the basic units are churches and synagogues, providing stability, organization, communications and funding. Dues are assessed according to church membership--$10 per family--and if the assessment is not paid, the unit church is dropped.

Such numbers are enough to make politicians take note, especially when they are mobilized in a vocal lobby on a specific issue. The 1987 campaign to raise the minimum wage provided a watershed for the IAF network. With more than one-third of heads of households in some areas working for the minimum wage ($3.35 an hour at the time), this was literally a bread-and-butter issue. “A lot of members have full-time jobs and are on welfare,” said Lou Negrete of the Chicano-studies faculty at Cal State L.A.

By turning out up to 7,000 people at rallies and judiciously lobbying the swing vote on the state’s Industrial Welfare Commission, the community activists succeeded in raising the minimum wage to $4.25 an hour--the highest in the nation. It represented an annual increase of $1,800 for each of the state’s nearly 1 million low-wage workers.

The IAF network has a clear advantage over the traditional political organizations. Because of its community roots and issues-oriented nature, IAF groups perceive problems and tackle them at an earlier stage than orthodox groups can.

One example is the phenomenon of “black flight,” a serious problem for South-Central Los Angeles and such nearby communities as Compton. The white flight of the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s to the suburbs is being replicated by a middle-class black exodus of the 1980s. With the loss of blue-collar jobs and industry shifting to high technology, the black middle class “began to move out to Moreno Valley and Ontario,” said Marie Krajcy, a school psychologist involved in EVO. “What’s left in the inner city is more and more poor people hard to motivate.” Some have two jobs, but still haven’t been able to escape poverty.

With only the underclass left behind, these areas continue to deteriorate. One answer is the Nehemiah West townhouse project in Compton. Patterned after the successful Nehemiah project in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, N.Y., the local development is an attempt to help stabilize South-Central Los Angeles and Compton by reseeding it with lower-middle-class families: The $60,000 starter homes, for which UNO and SCOC have applied for $15 million in Century Freeway housing funds, are geared to families with incomes in the $20,000 range.

Spurred by its success in mobilizing the vote on the housing, education and environmental initiatives on the 1988 ballot, the IAF is now in the midst of a three-year “sign-up-and-take-charge” campaign to play a major role in the 1990 and 1992 elections.

“When elections are about real issues, not phony TV issues, people get involved,” said Negrete, adding that organizers can’t appeal to people anymore as Democrats or Republicans, but must “involve them in issues that affect their daily lives--the same issues keep emerging: jobs, child care, education.”

It is issues--and a lack of confidence in the traditional political parties’ ability to respond to them adequately--that are the IAF’s driving force. “We will define the issues, and the candidates will have to respond, rather than vice versa,” said Fran James, a single-parent organizer with a teen-aged son.

Issues, McNeil observed, cut across local, state and political boundaries and bring a “need for different power configuration.” Often, he said, although issues may seem to be local, “decisions are not made locally. If you want to change the school system you have to go to Sacramento.” In 1988, the IAF organizations had more than 1,000 workers out and delivered about 43,000 “occasional” voters--large numbers of whom would ordinarily not have voted--to the polls. The goal for next year is 100,000.

By establishing a record of turning out voters and organizing lobbying caravans to Sacramento on such issues as the minimum wage, assault-rifle control, education and housing, the IAF is commanding growing respect from politicians. More than that, it is likely to be a new force in the initiative process, which has come under more and more fire as a tool of special interests. Initiatives are tailor-made for the kind of political action represented by the IAF--for promoting people’s issues, rather than those of politicians.

If the IAF succeeds in broadening its base, it could bring a new vitality to the political arena. Lawmakers may even be induced to spend more time listening to voters, rather than telling them what the politicians think they want to hear.