In this post I’d like to look introduce broad-based community organizing (BBCO) to those unfamiliar with it.
I understand that BBCOs may not be familiar to everyone. Most of us are familiar with organizing for power via political parties, and perhaps within organizations, but we are much less familiar with organizing that functions outside those systems in order to influence them (other than how with Citizens United the opportunity for the wealthy and corporations to be their own organizing power(s) untethered from the interests of the people).
Except in some unique urban contexts, we are very unfamiliar with organizing that seeks to bring together many organizations (non-profits and communities of faith) in order to identify and work on shared concerns.
I do not think we have stretched the “church and organizing as counter-public” much.
Here in Northwest Arkansas, we now have one group working to develop a BBCO under the auspices of the Industrial Areas Foundation. When I mention that I’m heading to an IAF meeting, I understandably receive some quizzical looks. What is IAF? When I explain that it’s a national organization that develops BBCOs in local communities, the looks do not become less quizzical.
So let’s try to define a BBCO…
I think BBCO is unfamiliar to many of us as a concept because it isn’t issue-based organizing. Many of us are more familiar with organizing centered around issues, what is sometimes called social movement organizing. If there is a wildly-felt community concern (immigrant rights, housing, etc.) sometimes that results in communities building power to address the concern.
But what gathers the social movement is the felt concern, the issue.
With broad-based community organizing, the difference is that relationships and alliances are formed first, before moving toward a specific issue. They say, “Power before purpose.” So broad-based community organizing is a widely successful type of local political organizing supported by U.S. churches that builds commitment to work together through an organization of organizations long before taking action on a particular community concern.
BBCO is slow work, and relational. It is based out of many, many one-on-one conversations and relational meetings that eventually facilitate organizations coming together as an organization of organizations, only then to move toward the issues.
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I will confess to you here in this blog post that for at least the last decade, I have tended strongly toward issued-based advocacy as my go-to for faith-based organizing. I’ve tended to use social media to call out particular issues very loudly and work to gather short-term power around the issue.
This has at times been very effective. Other times it has involved a lot of work, sometimes even pain, with little or no outcome because we lacked the power to move the needle.
This past spring and summer, our church council gathered to vision and think about our strategic plan post-pandemic. What emerged was a commitment to community organizing. We developed a statement of rationale as well as a plan-of-work for the next couple of years (I’ve provided the whole thing in a footnote1).
As I commit to organizing more along the lines of BBCO, I’m finding it life-giving. It’s been challenging me, because I prefer to move fast and I prefer bite-sized interventions to the longer and tedious work of ongoing engagement, but overall it’s giving me life. It’s giving me a chance to relate to others as friends and neighbors and not simply as temporary allies on this or that cause… As Aaron Stauffer points out in his new Listening to the Spirit: The Radical Social Gospel, Sacred Value, and Broad-Based Community Organizing, the core practices of such organizing are deeply spiritual practices… in particular the one-on-one relational meetings.2
Stauffer defines a relational meeting as “a public, value-directed conversation between two people on what they care most about in their community and what they are willing to do to fight for and protect those values, goods, and people.”
We’ve invited our whole church council to lean into learning from BBCO and thinking about church AS an organizing counterpublic. I dropped a note to them earlier this week outlining some plans for the fall of 2024, which include attending an IAF training3 and meeting and participating in some one-on-ones. You kind of have to see BBCO to really start to get it. Which I guess is like most friendships and relationships.
Organizing as a church doesn’t just sound effective to me—it also sounds fun because it’s organizing together with people I consider friends. I want to spend more time with friends.
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If you’re interested in digging deeper into your own understanding of BBCO, there are a few resources I can recommend.
First, read a good book on community-organizing. There is of course the class from Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals.
But there are some more recent works I recommend that will give you a sense of how faith-based community organizing can work. Chief among these include: Faith-Rooted Organizing by Alexia Salvatierra; Doing Justice: Congregations and Community Organizing by Dennis Jacobsen; and a case-study of the work of IAF in Texas, Hope for Justice.
I highly recommend following all the work of adrienne maree brown and their Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute.
For other organizations doing BBCO, look at the Micah Global Network or Faith In Action.
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Finally, a few notes on why you may not have heard that much about BBCO.
I live at what very well may be the epicenter of capitalism’s efforts to crush organizing, labor in particular. Arkansas is a “right-to-work” state (Arkansas and Florida were the first right-to-work states, establishing their laws in 1944), which is a euphemism for union-breaking, because it disestablishes employer contracts that protect unions and union jobs.
Some of the largest employers in the state (Walmart, the largest corporation in the world, and Tyson, the largest protein distributor in the world) are highly resistant to organized labor, both with long histories of (often illegally) breaking organized labor movements within their companies.
As a result, state law and corporate power conspire to divide workers and deny their rights. The majority of jobs at both companies (on the lines at Tyson, in the stores at Walmart) pay less than what is needed to live and work in our region, even with two in a household employed.
Companies like Walmart and Tyson are often lauded when they rake in corporate profits, but I wonder if many people think about the straight line you can draw from those profits (which are primarily distributed to shareholders and the wealthy corporate executives) and the workers on the lines and in the stores, whose daily labor is the reason the corporation profits in the first place.
Wealth generation by corporations is skimming. It’s extracting wealth from the labor of the poor in order to pad the pockets of the already wealthy. In many instances communities like ours benefit from the foundation dollars and other donations these corporations give to the local community, which makes it even more difficult to call out the skimming, because the foundation dollars are redistributed from the skimmed dollars themselves.
Broad-based community organizing and organized labor would both, in different ways, stand as a threat to the current power structures. They make the people the power instead of foundation monies the power.
Building relationships and power to then ultimately identify community needs and call for change could actually change labor laws, minimum wage laws, and more. Because such laws are not in the self-interest of corporations, corporations have conspired together with billionaires over the last decades taking every measure necessary to disassemble unions and organized power, and atomize people as individual consumers and vulnerable laborers.
It’s no wonder you may not have heard of BBCOs. Those in power don’t want you to think in those ways, or build such relationships.
I also wonder if some faith communities are reluctant to move in the direction of political organizing because of their distaste for Christian nationalism. Christian nationalism shortcuts the “people power” aspect of community organizing and instead just takes power, especially in surreptitious partnership with wealth, and seeks to enforce their notions of Christian values regardless of what people want. I’d argue the existence of Christian nationalism, and it’s widespread influence today, is precisely why we need to reclaim broad-based community organizing as a spiritual practice, and also as a way to further social justice.
This has been a rather long post. I’d love to field questions or insights from readers. How is organizing going where you are? Can you tell us some success stories? Do you have challenges you currently face? What would you like to learn?
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Strategic Plan (2024-2026) Rationale: We live in a profoundly changed landscape. Religious life in America has shifted. Church life is in decline while Christian nationalism is on the rise. It’s a wise time for us to evaluate what life is like for our neighbors. You look to GSLC as a resource for advocacy, but advocacy is best done when we know the actual landscape well. In a staunchly conservative political state and a culturally conservative region, progressives are looking for friends, community, support, ideas, organizing capacity, and wins. A wide spectrum of progressives seek out GSLC because of its impact. One reason to focus our strategic plan around organizing is simple: it’s what our neighbors and members are hoping from us. Organizing itself has many meanings. For the sake of this strategic plan, the focus is quite unapologetically on theo-political organizing, that is, organizing impacting the “polis” in ways that are theologically informed. Whether it’s joining existing organizing efforts and following the leadership of others, or leading in those efforts where we are best positioned to lead, committing to best organizing practices (always in conversation with religious resources that enhance organizing) will strengthen our congregational life. Imagine: young progressives in our community (more and more young people come to the university and then stay in our city, this is a growing population) can discover an organized progressive community of faith; families with children can raise their kids in relationship to progressive values, and find support as they step out in effective ways impacting organizing efforts in the region; groups most in need of allies will discover in GSLC a church committed to standing with them; partner organizations will know we are with them and committed to organizing for the common good. Even for those less passionate about organizing, the base practices of organizing, like listening and relationship building, should be appealing to anyone who loves being a part of church. Vision: Faith communities prioritize efforts that lead to thriving in the commons. Mission: To serve as an organizing force in Northwest Arkansas, promoting progressive Christian values, and providing a resourceful and supportive community for families and individuals. --- Year 1: Listening and Building Foundations Summer-Fall 2024: Listening Sessions Objectives: - Engage with various constituent groups to understand their needs and aspirations. - Build relationships and trust within the community. Action Items: - Staff: - Organize and schedule listening sessions with young adults, neighborhood communities, church members, and other key groups. - Provide childcare during sessions to ensure inclusivity. - Compile feedback and identify common themes and priorities. - Council: - Participate in some of the listening sessions to understand community needs firsthand. - Support staff in organizing and facilitating sessions. - Members: - Attend and actively participate in listening sessions. - Share insights from their lives/lived experience, opportunities and barriers to engagement. Key Milestone (January 2025): - Complete a comprehensive report summarizing feedback from listening sessions. --- Spring 2025: Strategic Planning and Initial Implementation Objectives: - Synthesize data, examine in light of wider trends - Translate listening session insights into actionable strategies. - Begin implementing high-priority initiatives. Action Items: - Staff: - Engage a period of study for synthesizing with wider trends. Create report. - Start low-key collaborations with appropriate organizing efforts already in existence. - Pilot childcare support for organizing activities. - Council: - Review and approve the strategic plan. - Allocate resources and budget for initial projects. - Members: - Volunteer for pilot projects and support initiatives. - Promote church activities and invite community members to participate. Key Milestone: - Spring report and connection to one organizing effort. --- Year 2: Expansion and Deepening Impact Summer-Fall 2025: Community Engagement and Growth Objectives: - Increase church membership and engagement in community organizing. - Foster mutuality in race relations and broader social justice initiatives. Action Items: - Staff: - Invite POC partner organizations to assign us actionables. - Develop outreach programs to attract new members. - Strengthen partnerships with local organizations. - Council: - Support staff in organizing, conduct stewardship appeal. - Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of outreach programs. - Members: - Participate in and promote workshops and events or complete a report about continuing barriers. - Actively invite friends and neighbors to join the church and its activities. Key Milestone: - Increase membership by 10% and establish at least three new partnerships by fall-2025. Every person at GSLC participates in one thing and reports out their participation. --- Spring 2026: Institutionalizing Organizing Effort Objectives: - Embed organizing activities into the church's regular functions. - Continue to grow the church and its influence in the community. Action Items: - Staff: - Replace some worship services with organizing sessions as needed. - Offer ongoing childcare for organizing activities. - Document and share successes and learnings from organizing efforts. - Council: - Ensure ongoing support and resources for organizing activities. - Review and refine strategic goals based on progress. - Members: - Engage in organizing sessions and provide feedback for improvement. - Continue to support and promote the church's mission and activities. Key Milestone: - Institutionalize organizing sessions into the church calendar and maintain active community engagement. --- Continuous Evaluation and Adaptation: Objectives: - Regularly assess the progress of initiatives. - Adapt strategies to meet evolving community needs. Action Items: - Staff: - Conduct quarterly reviews of all initiatives. - Adjust plans and programs based on feedback and outcomes. - Council: - Oversee the strategic review process and support necessary changes. - Members: - Provide ongoing feedback and participate in evaluations. Key Milestone: - Ensure all initiatives are continuously aligned with community needs and church goals. --- This strategic plan sets a clear path for Good Shepherd Lutheran Church to become a central organizing force in Northwest Arkansas, focusing on listening, building relationships, and progressively embedding social justice and community organizing into its core activities.
See Susan Engh’s spectular short summary of one-on-ones and relational meetings and their use in congregational life, https://download.elca.org/ELCA%20Resource%20Repository/Adaptations_Of_1_To_1s.pdf
If you are in Northwest Arkansas you or your organization would be welcome to send a team to the training, you can sign up here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSexmjy4otb9UlCiUUusK6lZV4zbsYTk2JtJqVhZQH6dIf3Jgg/viewform?usp=pp_url
I don’t know about these acronyms but…
Have you read of the organizer Myles Horton?
He was organizing & training workers/unions thru to civil rights from the 30-60s. I he’s been one of the most inspirational insightful voices from that era that I’ve come across.
There’s a great PBS doc on him you can find on YouTube and he’s got a good book documenting his life & work.
The IAF affiliate in Tulsa is ACTION Tulsa. Three of the the ELCA congregations have joined together to participate as Lutherans in ACTION. ACTION has had some success over the years. This year, we've gained a lot of attention through accountability sessions for school board and mayoral elections. Through many conversations, ACTION developed issues that are important to its members. The format of the accountability sessions is that a person tells their personal story the relates to an issue, then each candidate is asked if they will support ACTION's position on the issue. Each candidate has less than a minute to answer. No campaigning is allowed. ACTION was getting calls after the school board election accountability session from organizations that previously wouldn't speak with ACTION. Over 500 people attended the mayoral election session, which was held at an Episcopal Church. ACTION Tulsa has done other good things for the community. The accountability sessions are the most well known.