Urban Affairs Review

http://uar.sagepub.com/ Book Review: Roots for Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action, and Justice
Dennis Shirley Urban Affairs Review 2005 40: 566 DOI: 10.1177/1078087404268965 The online version of this article can be found at: http://uar.sagepub.com/content/40/4/566

Published by:
http://www.sagepublications.com

On behalf of:

The Urban Politics Section, American Political Science Association

Additional services and information for Urban Affairs Review can be found at: Email Alerts: http://uar.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://uar.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Citations: http://uar.sagepub.com/content/40/4/566.refs.html

>> Version of Record - Jan 25, 2005 What is This?

Downloaded from uar.sagepub.com by Babak Davar on October 26, 2011

566

URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW / March 2005

and responsibilities, if any, does it have to its citizens and residents? Under what circumstances should the state increase or decrease the scope and depth of its obligations and its capacity for democratic decision making? Although not providing answers to all these questions, Floress book persuades the reader to more closely examine the relationships among the democratic state, its liberal foundations, and the implications thereof for urban communities of color.

Jessica Perez-Monforti University of TexasPan American REFERENCE

Beard, C. 1962. An economic interpretation of the Constitution. New York: MacMillan.

Edward T. Chambers, Roots for Radicals: Organizing for Power, Action, and Justice (New York: Continuum, 2003), 152 pp., $18.95 (cloth).
DOI: 10.1177/1078087404268965

Over 30 years ago, student activists inspired by the social movements of the 1960s found inspiration in Saul Alinskys Rules for Radicals (1971). In terse, engaging prose, Alinsky narrated David-and-Goliathstyle case studies of political confrontation in which poor and working-class Americans built grassroots organizations and wrested concessions from political and economic elites. Despising easy compromises, wickedly flamboyant, and relentlessly graphic in his exposure of social injustices, Alinsky embodied a joyous, nondoctrinaire style of political activism that made Rules for Radicals a classic of its genre. If the Old Left was a bore and the New Left was a rant, Alinsky promised something refreshingly different: a vision of social activism that could be irreverent, confrontational, and efficacious at the same time. Alinsky died in 1972, just one year after Rules for Radicals appeared. It fell to his close friend and collaborator, Ed Chambers, to continue and expand the community groups that Alinsky founded under the auspices of an umbrella organization, the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). Roots for Radicals, many decades in the making, now provides a long-awaited update on community organizing in the nations urban centers. What has happened to Alinsky-style community organizing? A great deal, according to Chambers. Community organizingand radicalism in Alinsky organizationshas little, if anything, to do with the Left as it exists today. There are no references here to cultural studies, postmodernism, environmentalism, and gay rights; Chambers wants his readers to think about jobs that pay a living wage, the creation of safe and stable neighborhoods, affordable housing, and health care for all. Although

Downloaded from uar.sagepub.com by Babak Davar on October 26, 2011

BOOK REVIEWS

567

the value of social justice is still at the front and center of IAF organizing, Chambers has little but contempt for the academic Left. Avoid Ph.D.s, he advises. They cant act. They get lost in writing books for one another (110). Chambers views the constituents of the IAF as ordinary Americans who work hard, pay taxes, and send their kids to the public schools. In his account, organizers in the IAF tradition must be committed to stay with and build on the moderate middle (139). He catalogues cases in which IAF organizations in cities like Baltimore, San Antonio, and New York have organized job training programs, developed networks of inner-city schools with strong parent-engagement components, and built affordable, owner-occupied public housing for the residents of working-class communities who otherwise would be forced out of these cities. In Chambers account, these actions are important not only in terms of their outcomes but also for their development of grassroots leadership. The IAFs famous iron ruleto never, ever do for others what they can do for themselvesmeans that community organizers should never provide services; rather, they should be in the business of building power and changing the nature of politics in a city. Reading Chamberss case studiesand there are many scattered throughout the more analytical sections about community organizing principles provides exposure to the accomplishments of the IAF. The organization has developed a veritable catechism of strategies ranging from individual conversations to house meetings, research actions, and large public accountability sessions targeted at wresting concessions from political and business leaders. There is much to admire in Chambers description of the IAF in its new incarnation. Its organizers and indigenous community leaders have formed groups like Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD), East Brooklyn Congregations (of Reverend Johnny Youngblood fame), and the Triangle Interfaith Project in the hardscrabble cities of Port Arthur, Orange, and Beaumont in East Texas. The groups are pragmatic and focus on winnable battles; they do not patronize citizens but insist that individuals share responsibility for the conditions in their communities, regardless of the nefarious machinations of banks that redline and corporations that profit from the public but evade contributions to the public good. Unlike Alinsky, whose ego always seemed to be front and center, Chambers keeps his own personality in the background and instead emphasizes the importance of developing political leadership among working people, families, and congregations for real social transformation. There are some problems with Roots for Radicals. IAF organizations have been successful in many settings, but they are better known in local communities by their various names; few individuals, beyond the organizers and their hardcore academic hangers-on, have articulated a broader national strategy for promoting community organizing. Going after the moderate middle appears to have benefits in terms of reaching out to the many Americans turned off by politics as usual, but can one really promote social justice in the United States today with only a centrist approach to critical social problems? At some point, one surely needs to develop a more comprehensive theory of social change, and one that directly engages the electoral dimensions of the political process. Yet the IAF studiously avoids endorsing candidatesa strategy

Downloaded from uar.sagepub.com by Babak Davar on October 26, 2011

568

URBAN AFFAIRS REVIEW / March 2005

that keeps a broad-based constituency intact but extracts a cost in terms of developing a finely honed agenda for social and economic transformation. Roots for Radicals does not have the answers to these questionsnor does it pretend tobut it does articulate an innovative, tenaciously grassroots strategy for addressing social injustices. By doing so, Chambers provides an intriguing third way of conceptualizing politics, which will appeal to all readers interested in the capacity of ordinary people to revitalize democracy, even (or especially) in the least promising of circumstances.

Dennis Shirley Boston College REFERENCE

Alinsky, Saul. 1971. Rules for radicals: A practical primer for realistic radicals. New York: Vintage.

Downloaded from uar.sagepub.com by Babak Davar on October 26, 2011