There may be great frustration when one cares deeply about a cause but does not know how to create any sort of change. Fortunately, Saul Alinsky, the infamous community organizer, developed a model for enacting social change and its effectiveness is attested to its adoption by virtually all modern community organizing. An example of the fruit of such organizing is the Orange County AIDS Walk, a culmination of the networking of various groups. The first case of HIV/AIDS in Orange County was reported in 1981 and 6,984 people have been diagnosed since then, with half having died from it (AIDS Walk Orange County). The lead organization responsible for organizing and promoting the walk is the AIDS Services Foundation Orange County, which was founded in 1985 by a small group of volunteers “because people were dying, had nowhere to turn, and desperately needed help” and today is the largest nonprofit HIV/AIDS service provider in Orange County. It states its mission is “to prevent the spread of HIV and improve the lives of the men, women and children affected by HIV/AIDS in Orange County” (ibid). It does this by soliciting corporate and foundation sponsorships (which explains the sighting of a team sporting Walgreens t-shirts), producing advertisements and materials, engaging with volunteers, managing of funds, and steering funds towards various recipient agencies including the AIDS Education Global information System (AEGiS), Mercy House, Public Law Center AIDS Legal Assistance Project, among many others. Accordingly, the organization helps more than 1,600 women, men, children living with HIV (along with their families) by providing food, transportation, housing, case management, emergency financial assistance, Latino outreach programs, support groups, and HIV testing, education, and prevention programs. To date they have raised $560,341 and numerous people attended the walk on May 1st, showing up at 6:00 AM to sign in. Parking was free, a digital prompter pointed to where the meet-up was taking place, and roads were lined with orange cones to make way for the walk, all illustrating the amount of organizing and planning that went into the event. Another side to the goal of the walk is to validate the worth of people living with HIV/AIDS, to raise awareness (by walking five kilometers around Disneyland Resort), to feel good about helping others, and to connect with other like-minded individuals.
In order to raise funds, participants in the walk must register and raise 50 dollars, which would be easier to do collectively in a group. Therefore, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Anaheim (UUCA) and Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church (OCUUC) invited their members to participate and pitch in. The UUCA claims to be a community of “seekers, skeptics, artists, musicians, young, old, gay, straight, from a variety of religious and ethnic backgrounds” (Green). They view diversity as strength and seek understanding, peace, justice, and the improvement of the state of humanity worldwide. They were formed in 1958 as the Unitarian Church of Orange County, merged with the Universalists in 1961, and changed their name to UUCA in 2005 as there were then five UU churches in Orange County. The Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church (in Costa Mesa) is also a welcoming community that encompasses diverse cultural backgrounds and works to seek truth, build just communities, and care for one another. It is also self-governed, giving its members a sense of democratic empowerment. Within the church is a group called Interweave which connects Queer individuals groups, and communities and raised money for the OC AIDS Walk and World AIDS Day. (There is also the AIDS Team Ministry which prepares and delivers frozen meals once every 1-2 weeks (160-240 meals per month) to people with HIV/AIDS and other debilitating illnesses.) The OCUUC was founded by Catherine L. Hofmann in 1950 when she couldn’t find a liberal church to attend in Orange County. She thus asked for the help of a Universalist pastor in Pasadena and invited people on the Univeralist mailing list to Sunday morning meetings. They came and it grew from there.
So how does all this fit into Alinsky’s model? First, Alinsky starts with the premise that power is not given but taken. One should consider how things are, not how one would like them to be. From there, the goal is democracy and empowerment. One achieves this by building social capital across similar as well as dissimilar groups. This is illustrated by how various organizations were brought together – e.g. the UUCA, OCUUC, and Walgreens (called bridging) – and how individuals within the groups are brought together, as in how UU churches bring together people from various backgrounds on Sunday mornings (bonding). There is power in numbers and what is formed through coalition-building is an organization of organizations. Leadership forms organically from this process as was seen by the teams having a leader by consensus (the leader of the UUCA team has been with the church for a long time and was most involved with it). This is also the result of the presence of the iron rule, that is, never do for people what they can do themselves. Hence, instead of a central authority dictating what to do, people are self-empowered and gain more control of their lives with the skills they develop, the information they acquire, and the connections they make. Also critical in organizing is appealing to people’s self-interest (one person interviewed said his uncle whom he was close to had AIDS and so it is personal to him), focusing on small, winnable goals (e.g. raising $50 and walking), maintaining frequent contact (such as meeting every Sunday), monitoring (e.g. a list of recipient agencies which provide accounting records of funds used), and an inclusive deliberatory process (as in how members of the church decide the budget). Thus the community becomes a site of power which can be used to address other issues.
In closing, activists and radicals need not despair with these tools and rules in mind. She or he simply needs to get involved in community organizations and educate others on how to become empowered.
REFERENCES
AIDS Walk Orange County. “About HIV/AIDS.”
http://www.aidswalkorangecounty.com/about-aids-walk/about
hiv-aids/
_____. “AIDS Services Foundation Orange County.”
http://www.aidswalkorangecounty.com/about-aids-
walk/presenting-agency/
Green, Kathleen. “Our 53rd Year in Orange County.”
http://uuchurchoc.org/
Orange Coast Unitarian Universalist Church. “A Welcoming
Congregation in Orange County, CA.” http://ocuuc.org/
