Faith in Action: Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America

by Richard L. Wood

Overview

Over the past fifteen years, associations throughout the U.S. have organized citizens around issues of equality and social justice, often through local churches. But in contrast to President Bush's vision of faith-based activism, in which groups deliver social services to the needy, these associations do something greater. Drawing on institutions of faith, they reshape public policies that neglect the disadvantaged.

To find out how this faith-based form of community organizing succeeds, Richard L. Wood spent several years working with two local groups in Oakland, California—the faith-based Pacific Institute for Community Organization and the race-based Center for Third World Organizing. Comparing their activist techniques and achievements, Wood argues that the alternative cultures and strategies of these two groups give them radically different access to community ties and social capital.

Creative and insightful, Faith in Action shows how community activism and religious organizations can help build a more just and democratic future for all Americans.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226905952
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	09/15/2002
Series:	Morality and Society Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Richard L. Wood is an associate professor of sociology at the University of New Mexico.

Read an Excerpt

Faith in Action
Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America

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By Richard L. Wood
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2002 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-90595-2

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Chapter One
Faith-Based Organizing in Action: The Local Organizing Committee at Saint Elizabeth Catholic Church

From 1985 to 2000, the Pacific Institute for Community Organization grew from four federations in California to a network of twenty-eight federations in metropolitan areas around the country (see appendix 2). Paralleled by growth in other faith-based organizing networks, this has placed faith-based organizing among the most influential movements for social justice among low-income residents of urban America today.

Faith-based organizing begins in local organizing committees, most of which are associated with individual religious congregations. These committees make decisions about what issues to address, run the political actions sponsored by their congregation, build the networks of relationships through which congregation members are invited to those actions, and link these local efforts to broader citywide organizing projects. Through such efforts, religious culture and religious institutions-along with political strategy and organizing techniques-help generate the political dynamism and ethical leverage needed to reorient public life toward more human and democratic ends. Later chapters will consider how such congregation-based efforts are coordinated and multiplied to produce the citywide political power exerted in larger public actions. During the research for this book, such larger actions included twenty-five hundred leaders from around California urging a Republican governor to fund after-school programs; five thousand Louisiana residents gathering to urge gubernatorial candidates to support a diverse agenda regarding schools, police corruption, and other issues; fifteen hundred Denver residents pushing for greater and more equitable funding for public schools; and eighteen hundred San Diegans working in coordination with the local teachers union to reduce class sizes in public elementary schools. Through such gatherings and the gradual organizing work leading up to them, faith-based organizing strives to exert sufficient leverage to influence public policy in a world of distant government and unfettered corporate capital flows. Faith-based organizing has generated its greatest successes through these kinds of metropolitan (as well as statewide) organizing efforts, which will be the focus of chapter 2. But gaining this degree of political clout depends greatly on the organizing dynamics within individual congregations.

So we first explore faith-based organizing by describing PICO's work in its fundamental building block: the "local organizing committee" within a sponsoring religious congregation. This chapter focuses on a strong example of a local organizing committee: Saint Elizabeth Catholic Church, of the PICO-affiliated Oakland Community Organizations (OCO). While OCO participants overall are evenly divided among African American, Latino, and white residents, with a smattering of southeast Asian immigrants, Saint Elizabeth is heavily Latino. It incorporates Mexican-Americans, immigrants from Mexico and Central America, and smaller numbers of white non-Latinos. The chapter shows religious culture in action by following local PICO participants through the organizing process. The following extended narrative typifies the organizing dynamics through which PICO has gained high-profile political leverage: the incorporation of religious cultural elements within the organizing process; the role of professional organizers; a focus on developing participants' democratic skills; and the flow of respect and conflict between elected officials and the faith-based organizing participants.

The Organizing Process: Politics on the Ground, Religion in the World

Saint Elizabeth Catholic Church lies a block off East Fourteenth Street, the main thoroughfare through a crowded, low-income, largely Latino district of Oakland, California. By the 1990s, this part of the city had been hard hit by fifteen years of global economic restructuring and the disappearance of unionized blue-collar jobs that once provided stable incomes for thousands of Oakland workers. The street's lively but grim commercial district held a multitude of small retail stores, fast-food chains, and family-owned taco-and-burrito restaurants, outnumbered only by run-down and boarded-up storefronts. The skyline of the area was dominated by the huge hulk of the former Montgomery Ward retail outlet. That building, abandoned for over ten years, occupied a full block along East Fourteenth, casting a visual and economic shadow over the whole area.

On an October evening in 1994, members of the Saint Elizabeth organizing committee of PICO's Oakland federation met at the church to do something about the abandoned building. They had been working on the Montgomery Ward issue for several months, after extensive one-to-one meetings with church members and neighbors had revealed that lack of job opportunities and Fourteenth Street's run-down atmosphere were among residents' prime concerns. The initiative was also informed by a broader PICO campaign focused on generating jobs and economic development in Oakland and other cities.

For this meeting, seven lay leaders from Saint Elizabeth gathered in a meeting room at the parish school. Three were men, four were women, and six were Latino. Two spoke primarily English, two were bilingual, and three were immigrants from Mexico who spoke primarily Spanish. Also present were a female PICO organizer working with this committee and a woman representing a local developer seeking to redevelop the Montgomery Ward site. The meeting began with a prayer, led by lay leader Lucy Nevarez:

Lord, we gather in your name as friends, as family, as concerned citizens. We ask you to help us continue your work, to build a better city, to transform this place that has been so abandoned. We know that you never abandon us, that you walk with us as we do your will.

The first part of the evening was designated a research meeting: the developer's representative updated the group on the state of plans to redevelop the abandoned building site. Following some questions and discussion, the focus shifted to the other key players in the redevelopment effort: city government and the local city council representative, Ignacio De la Fuente. He had been spearheading this issue within the city government, but a leader who had tried to set up a meeting with him reported that he was unwilling to meet personally and wanted instead to send an aide, yet appeared to want to take all the credit for the redevelopment effort. In the ensuing discussion, some leaders were angry at being snubbed, others wanted to "just go with it." The organizer (Denise Collazo, then new to PICO, today the director of its San Francisco Organizing Project), stepped in, speaking both Spanish and English:

Do you think it will help us move this forward to just meet with an aide? [Discussion: "not really."] How many people have you met with one-to-one about this issue just in the last couple months? ["Altogether, more than fifty, and lots more before that."] So you've put a lot of work into this already; all that to end up not even meeting with him? ["De la Fuente promised to support this, but now he's going backwards."] Well, he's done some work, but not as much as he has for Kmart [another redevelopment project]. The question here is, does he have the right to refuse to meet with the people he represents?

With this discussion framing the issue, the group soon agreed to pursue a meeting with De la Fuente himself. Roberto Montalvo summarized the group's sentiment: "Let's get a meeting with him to make sure this project happens. I don't care who runs it or gets the credit for it, as long as it gets done." They agreed to write a letter to De la Fuente, with their own signatures and that of the parish priest, who had strongly supported OCO's organizing.

The last part of the meeting was dedicated to a group discussion of a significant problem: they felt that the pastor of Saint Elizabeth, Father Ignatius de Groot, had become less supportive of their work than in the past. Though his credentials in social action were strong, after years of involvement with the farm workers' movement and more recently strong advocacy of faith-based organizing, he had not attended recent meetings and was resisting the group's desire to do a written congregational survey during masses.

Some leaders expressed frustration with the priest and wanted to confront him on these issues; others urged patience and "understanding his position." Collazo moved the group toward a decision by simply asking, "So shall we wait for next week? Or meet with Father Ignatius about this now?" Manuel Arias initiated the group's final position: "I think we should meet with him now. It's a problem. We're fighting De la Fuente and Father Ignatius. We can't do that, we need the pastor's support and can't work around him." This persuaded the group, and Arias was asked to set up the meeting and act as chairperson, but his respect for religious authority made this assignment difficult. Ultimately-and it appeared reluctantly-he accepted both roles.

Before ending the meeting, the group pieced together an agenda for the meeting with de Groot. Collazo asked, "What do we want to get out of this meeting?," to which leader Lucy Nevarez responded: "What we'd like is a commitment to back us up"-clarified to mean a willingness to write the letter to De la Fuente, freedom to make announcements at Mass, and preferably to do the Mass survey. Estela Cerda, a Spanish-speaking immigrant woman and the one person who had not previously spoken during the meeting, noted: "We need to understand why he's opposed to this. He never used to be. He's always supported us before." The organizer encouraged her to ask this question "directly to the padre" at the coming meeting. The meeting concluded with a short prayer led in Spanish by one of the lay leaders: "Lord, be with us as we go out tonight. Help us to have courage, to have faith as we work together to make our city a better place for everyone. May we not be afraid, but trust that you work through us if we work for what is right." They then prayed together the traditional Lord's Prayer in both languages and exited into the night air, set to confront two significant authority figures in different ways: a fairly assertive challenge to a political leader from their community who had been a valuable ally but now seemed to be shunning them, and a more gentle but still heartfelt challenge to a respected and supportive religious leader whose support now appeared to be wavering.

The denouement of the latter challenge was somewhat anticlimactic: the group met with de Groot and expressed their concerns; he reiterated his full support for their work and willingness to give them access to make announcements and survey parish members, but insisted that this happen in a way that would not take too long or disrupt the worship experience of the community. He also began to attend meetings more often, while making clear he would not always be present for what he said should always be "a lay-led ministry." Thus, some mild conflict led to a recommitment on the part of the religious authority in this congregation. A letter signed by him was sent to initiate the group's challenge to De la Fuente:

I am writing on behalf of the Saint Elizabeth parish and the Oakland Community Organizations to express my concern that you have been unwilling to meet with us regarding our work on the K-Mart and Montgomery Ward's projects. Our parish has done hundreds of 1-1s [one-to-one meetings] with families throughout the district about these two projects and we would like to meet with you to tell you what we have learned .... [W]e feel it is urgent that we meet with you, Councilman De la Fuente, as soon as possible. Please contact me in order to set up a meeting with us.

At the next meeting, de Groot was present and reported that De la Fuente had contacted him saying he was willing to meet. Three dynamics were evident in the ensuing dialogue. First, the organizer worked hard to develop the group's interpretive resources, the "lens" through which they observe the political world. She pushed the participants to be aware of how the councilman might have been manipulating them politically; invited them to return constantly to "what we know" rather than speculation and hearsay; and encouraged them to be flexible regarding minor issues, not to stake out unbending positions on details like dates for meetings. Second, the pastor urged the group to understand the complexities of an elected official's role, and thus not to caricature the councilman's position. Third, the more experienced Saint Elizabeth lay leaders drew on this political and ethical input as they positioned themselves pragmatically "to make sure De la Fuente's accountable even while we collaborate with him." Longtime leader Fran Matarrese articulated the group's final position:

You're right, Father Ignatius, we should work with De la Fuente and understand his position. But we don't want to kowtow to him either. We want him to prioritize his time, make time for us if he wants our support. ... This is about accountability. We want a representative who shares our priorities, who isn't too busy to meet with us.

This meeting concluded with the group setting a time line for the next four months.

These ensuing months of the nuts-and-bolts of community organizing were quite eventful. The group continued to wrestle with the nature of its collaboration with De la Fuente. Being a nonpartisan community group working in partnership with an ambitious political leader raised a host of issues, around which the group gradually defined the limits as well as the possibilities of the collaboration. At different points, the organizer, the pastor, and the more experienced leaders sometimes pushed the group forward into confrontation with a recalcitrant political system and sometimes encouraged the group to pursue constructive collaboration with that system. Within a few months, De la Fuente committed himself explicitly to working with the Saint Elizabeth OCO group "to make the Montgomery Ward project work." He also tried to convince the group to be part of an employment service he was establishing. The group refused to participate in selecting individual candidates; they later described this as "patronage politics."

Significant tensions arose at a meeting in January 1995 as OCO and De la Fuente negotiated their roles in the Montgomery Ward project, a potential apprenticeship program in local labor unions, and several other projects. Ultimately, however, the meeting ended on quite amicable terms: the council member asked OCO's help in pushing forward several initiatives, and OCO elicited his commitment to having a senior staff member meet with them monthly for several months. Before leaving, in response to the latter request, De la Fuente noted: "Yes, we need communication, but we also need the confidence to disagree sometimes. We won't agree on everything -but I'll tell you, when I commit to something, I'll do it. I did not back off on street lighting for this part of town like some council members did."

In preparation for the planned action, the leaders met with a variety of groups within Saint Elizabeth to outline the potential issues for the action and solicit their input. These groups included choirs, charismatic prayer groups, a youth group, liturgical readers, ushers, women's groups, and others. This recruitment via preexisting associational ties is a standard key to social movement success. Three factors at Saint Elizabeth allowed this to be pursued especially successfully there: the dense network of such ties, the strategic outreach to literally all parish groups by the organizing committee, and the level of trust provided by shared membership in the worship community of this church. These complemented and reinforced another approach used by the committee for larger actions, asking the pastor to invite people to attend. As one leader noted, "We know from experience that everyone listens to Father Ignatius." Saint Elizabeth has been especially effective because it combined strong commitment to lay organizing with strong pastoral support.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Faith in Action by Richard L. Wood Copyright © 2002 by The University of Chicago. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures
Preface
Introduction: Democratic Renewal in America
Part One: Dynamics of Contention in Faith-Based and Multiracial Organizing
1. Faith-Based Organizing in Action: The Local Organizing Committee at Saint Elizabeth Catholic Church
2. Higher Power: The Symbiosis of Religion and Politics
3. Race-Based Organizing in Action
4. Reweaving the Social Fabric: Social Capital and Political Power
Part Two: Thinking Culturally about Politics
5. The Political Culture of Faith-Based Organizing: Practices, Beliefs, Ethos
6. Cultural Dynamics and Political Action
7. The Limitations of Religious Culture: Moralistic and Therapeutic Faith
8. Making Democracy Work in America
Appendix 1: Organizations Sponsoring Multiracial Organizing and Faith-Based Organizing
Appendix 2: History and Development of PICO
Notes
References
Index