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Meet Molly, Bob, Grace, Tom, and JoAnn

Molly Jones, a single parent with an infant son, has lived in her three-room apartment for four months. This morning, she looked out her kitchen window and saw two young men in the alley. One gave the other a small plastic bag in exchange for a handful of cash. "Drug deal," thought Molly. What Molly doesn't know is that three of her neighbors saw the deal going down from their windows, too.Bob Smith, fishing pole in hand, walked along the creek behind his rural home. He got to his favorite spot and noticed an orange tinge in the water, then saw a dead frog at his feet on the bank. "Chemical spill?" wondered Bob, thinking of a chemical plant in a small town upstream. What Bob doesn't know yet is that his well water is polluted, too.

Grace Brown, an African-American woman, opened her mail and read a notice from her employer that she had been turned down for a promotion in her department. Grace has been with the company for six years, and for the last three years has noticed that African-Americans who apply for promotions above the level of team supervisor are consistently turned down. The company prides itself on having a diverse workforce, and uses photographs of racially diverse groups of people in its employee recruitment materials. But the fact is that no matter how hard Grace works to meet the expectations of her supervisor and receive high evaluations of her skills and work performance, she hits an invisible wall whenever she tries to move up in the company.

Tom Marcus went to see his daughter Lisa's third-grade teacher. Lisa is struggling in school, having trouble reading smoothly, and feeling lost in math class. The teacher said that maybe because of all the problems in Tom's home - he is out of work and his wife sick with a heart condition - their daughter just can't concentrate. Tom said he and his wife read to their daughter every day, play math games with her, help her with her homework and make sure she finishes it every night. "That's good," said the teacher. "Maybe you should just keep trying." "She's saying Lisa can't read because I'm unemployed and my wife's an invalid," thought Tom. What Tom doesn't know is that almost half the children in Lisa's class are reading below grade level.

JoAnn Cosby is Lisa's teacher. JoAnn has a class of 34 children, about 15 more than she can really handle at one time. A handful of the children cause discipline problems in the classroom that consume most of JoAnn's energy and patience. With so many children not meeting grade-level expectations, Lisa is the least of JoAnn's worries. Lisa is nice child who is just a little slow at catching on to things. JoAnn is glad Lisa's parents are so willing to help her, and wishes all the parents would spend more time helping their kids.

Individuals with problems?

All of these people see themselves as individuals with problems. While this is true, they are also members of communities, and the problems they have effect other people around them. Their problems also have something to do with large public and private institutions-police departments, corporations, school systems. Let's take Molly, for example. Molly saw a drug deal in progress, and you might say that it is her civic duty to call the police. The fact is, Molly has called the police when she has seen drug dealing in the past. The police arrived each time between 10 and 20 minutes after she called. They were very professional and courteous toward her, took down the descriptions of the drug dealers and buyers, thanked her, asked her to call anytime she saw suspicious behavior, and left. Each time, the drug dealers were back a short time later.

Molly didn't call the police this time because her baby is crying and she doesn't have time. Deep down, Molly is also afraid. The police car has pulled up in front of her house so many times that it is obvious to the drug dealers that she is reporting on them to the police. She worries that the dealers will do something to her or her son in retaliation. Molly's neighbors are afraid, too. Some of them called the police in the past, but they stopped because it didn't seem to make a difference. Instead, they avoid going into the alley. They avoid going out at night. They aren't sure if some of their neighbors are drug dealers or not.

Most people assume that if an individual has a problem, it is the responsibility of the individual to do something about it. Another way to look at it though, is that there are some problems that individuals cannot solve alone. Molly is not in a position to arrest the drug dealers or talk the purchasers into going into drug treatment. She cannot move to a drug-free neighborhood, if such a place exists, because she has little money and needs to stay in a low-rent apartment. There is an extreme shortage of low-rent housing available in her community, and she feels lucky to have a roof over her head.

Molly can't solve the problem herself, and has already taken the step of calling the police. That hasn't worked either and has made her personal problem worse because now she is afraid the drug dealers might retaliate. Molly's problem is not the type of problem that can be solved with individual initiative, and the police, the public agency with the authority to arrest drug dealers, doesn't seem to be able to solve the problem, either.

Molly, Bob, Grace, Tom, and JoAnn all have problems that are pretty much impossible to solve as individuals acting alone. The next step, of contacting another person with authority and expertise in their problems, might not solve the problems, either.

Bob might report the chemical spill to a pollution control agency, or file a lawsuit against whatever company polluted his well, if he can prove who did it. Grace could set up a meeting with her supervisor to go over the reasons her promotion was denied, but she has done that for the last two years, and has heard she just needs to try harder. Grace suspects racial discrimination, but is sure the company will deny it if she brings it up, and attack her work record in some way as an excuse. She could file a complaint with a public agency that investigates racial discrimination in employment practices, but is afraid that might hurt her chances of finding another job in the future. She could look for another job with a more racially-fair company, if she can find one.

Tom might try to find a tutor for his daughter Lisa, but it seems he and his wife have been tutoring Lisa quite a bit already. And no amount of tutoring will address Lisa's classroom environment. Sending Lisa to a private school is out of the question financially, and her low grades would make it hard to find a scholarship. JoAnn could approach the teachers' association about ideas for handling a class with almost half the students performing below grade level. But even if she gets some new ideas, JoAnn will still be on her own with a large class, discipline problems, and many poor readers.

Why not?

Rather than ask the question, "Why organize?" it makes a lot more sense in the five examples above to ask,"Why not?"

In Molly's case, talking to her neighbors might at least help her feel less isolated. If she suspects that some of her neighbors are dealing drugs, she can avoid talking to them until she has found a few neighbors to check things out with. The older woman she has passed on her way to the grocery store, for example, says hello when she passes and looks as frightened as Molly does when she leaves her apartment. Molly could stop and introduce herself the next time they pass on the street. If Molly does this, she might learn that her neighbor's name is Gladys, that Gladys has lived in her apartment for four years, and she knows a few of the other neighbors.

The most basic reason to organize is to make connections with the people around you, to listen and talk about the things you care about, to have an opportunity to develop informed opinions about others in your community. Making an effort to get to know the other people around us, rather than assuming that our problems are merely the result of our own life circumstances, bad luck, or failings, is the first step in breaking the feelings of isolation, frustration, and failure that prevent us from seeing the opportunities we have to change institutions and make life better, not only for ourselves, but for the communities in which we live as well.

Experts are not always effective

There is nothing wrong with contacting experts and authorities for help with our problems. Molly did the right thing in calling the police when she saw drug deals going down. But when the police response didn't solve the problem, it became clear that just being a good citizen doesn't work in this situation. In fact, Molly continuing to act alone as a good citizen may have put her in even more danger than if she had ignored the problem.

Tom did the right thing in talking directly with Lisa's teacher, too. But focusing only on Lisa's problem without a clear picture of the classroom situation resulted in the same kind of outcome Molly experienced. Just as the police told Molly to keep calling them, Lisa's teacher told Tom to keep doing what he has been doing. Tom already feels bad that he doesn't have a job, and worries about his wife's health. Now he is worried that these problems are the cause of Lisa's problems, too. The teacher's suggestion that Tom just keep doing what he is already doing places the reponsibility for Lisa's school performance on Tom's shoulders. The question of the responsibility of the classroom teacher, school, teacher's association, other parents, and the school district as a whole never comes up.

Often, focusing on individuals with problems becomes an effort to fix individuals rather than fix the institutions that are not meeting individual or community needs. For example, if 100 students in Lisa's school cannot read at grade level, the school administration, teachers, and even parents may call for an extensive volunteer tutoring program to help the childern improve their reading ability. This might do some good, but it does not address the issue of what is wrong with the school itself. It does not change the discipline system in the school, it does not change the large number of students per teacher, it does not even change how reading is being taught in the classroom. All of these institutional factors, rather than the individual failings of individual students, may need to be changed in order to improve the outcome for students. Organizing seeks to change institutions for the common good rather than fix individual problems one at a time.

It takes organization

Even if Molly and Gladys talk to each other and feel a little less isolated by doing so, they probably won't get very far in resolving the drug problem in the alley unless they continue to reach out to more people in their neighborhood, analyze their problem together, and take steps to do something about it. Even as few as a dozen neighbors working together have a much better chance of getting results than they would working as 12 individuals. The second reason to organize, beyond breaking through frustration, fear, and isolation, is to put enough heads, hands, eyes, ears, and feet together as a group to actually get something done. Working together in an organized way gives people more power than they have alone.

Personal problems are transformed into public issues

Banding together in groups creates the opportunity to analyze a situation from many angles and sort out strategies to address it in a public way. It also spreads the work around to a number of people. Molly and Gladys and a few more of their neighbors together might come up with a plan to meet with the police at a higher level in the police department than the partol officers who respond to individual calls. Some of the patrol officers might even support the neighbors in doing this and help them with information about the best person in the department to talk to. The group might be able to come up with a targeted plan for police patrols in the alley that would help deter drug dealing.

The group might also organize a pot luck supper or barbeque in the alley on Saturday nights to deter drug dealing at that time of day. It would provide an opportunity for people to get out of their apartments and get to know their neighbors a little better as well. The group might decide to work with local social service agencies and churches to provide street counselors and other programs to help drug users get into treatment. They might contact television and newpaper reporters to cover the story of what they are doing in order to get the word out to other neighborhoods in the city that there is something you can do about drug dealing besides locking your doors in fear. They might meet with the city council to target more resources for drug enforcement and treatment. All of these approaches stand a better chance of solving the problem than just continuing to act as individuals.

Rebuilding community and democracy

Getting organized not only turns personal problems into public issues, but increases the chances that the issues can actually be resolved at an institutional level. Getting organized brings people together, not as individual victims of a situation, but as citizens who can effectively build connections with one another and work to get the larger institutions and systems in their community to work effectively. Isolated individuals thus become effective groups with the power to bring about positive changes in community life through public action.

As people work together, they discover that other personal problems are public issues as well. For example, the group in Molly's and Gladys' neighborhood might discover that many parents in the group are not satisfied with the way their children are doing in school. The group may decide to reach out and organize even more people to analyze what is going on in the schools and develop an effective plan of action for improving these institutions. They might also decide to research the issue of the shortage in low-rent housing and develop a strategy for building or converting more housing units for low-income people. By keeping in touch with one another on a regular basis, the group can address any issue that comes up. The fabric of community life and the effectiveness of citizens to actively participate in the democratic system, rather than see themselves only as individual victims, are strengthened.

Building an organization, then, is an important ingredient in developing enough power to make changes in institutions. Some community groups focus so much on issues that they become little groups of experts themselves, and lose their potential for exercising power effectively. They try to solve problems for people rather than involve increasing numbers of people in the process of developing and acting on strategies for change in public. Other community groups focus too much on building the structure of their organizations, so that the real goal of bringing about changes in public and community life gets lost in endless organizational activity, like committee meetings, board meetings, fundraising events, and annual dinners. Still other community groups become corrupt over time, as their leaders use their public positions for selfish gain, just as corrupt politicians and corporate executives do.

Effective community groups need to focus on building their organizations and resolving public issues at the same time. Striking a balance between building an organization that is powerful enough to bring about real change and keeping the action focused on winning the issues requires deliberate effort and regular adjustments in plans and activities. Maintaining genuine democratic control, by which the members of the organization choose their leaders and set the agenda for action, helps community organizations avoid corruption and remain powerful and effective in making long-term changes for the common good.

What's your problem? Could it be a public issue?

Take a minute to look back at the other problems mentioned at the beginning of this article. What could Bob do about his water pollution problem beyond reporting it to a pollution control agency and hiring a lawyer to sue the chemical company for damaging his well water? Is there any way to transform Bob's personal problem into a public issue? What could Grace do to address her suspicion of racial discrimination in promotions in her company? What could Tom do to get a better picture of what is going on with the other students in Lisa's class? Where could JoAnn find allies for changing her over-crowded, unruly classroom with so many students performing below grade level ?

Like Molly, Bob, Grace, Tom, and JoAnn, do you have a personal problem that could be transformed into a public issue? If so, why not organize? If you need some help, call the Virginia Organizing Project. But remember that the Virginia Organizing Project is not an expert agency set up to solve your problems for you. It is a democratic organization of citizens working on local issues all over the state of Virginia. It helps people like you to organize community groups. Sometimes local groups work together to take on bigger issues as well, issues that cannot be resolved at the local level alone, like welfare reform, unfair taxes, racial discrimination, and workers' compensation policies.

If you are willing to take the first step in transforming what's bothering you into a public issue, and the first step is taking the time to go out and talk to a few people in your own community about it, then call and join the Virginia Organizing Project, or one of its many chapters and affiliates around the state.

We plan to be organizing for a long time, and we hope you'll join us.