STORIES OF TRANSFORMATIVE COMMUNITY

BUILDING:
THE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE AND RACIAL
HEALING IN GREENSBORO, NORTH
CAROLINA
___________________________
Rev. Dr. Nelson N. Johnson
Mrs. Joyce Hobson Johnson

November 3, 1979
The Greensboro Massacre

Bill
Sampson

Ceasar
Cauce

Sandy
Smith

Jim Waller

Mike
Nathan

FIVE FALLEN
COMMUNITY AND

The Kmart Struggle for

Justice

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING

1. Basic beliefs and anchoring

assumptions:

We are called to stand for the dignity,

worth and enormous unrealized potential
of every person and of all peoples.
The concept of community as we use it
encompasses place, race, nationality,
faith, profession, etc. Yet, it is not
reducible to any of these catagorities.
Community is an inclusive concept, as in
the beloved community.

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING
Strong families, living within economically
vibrant, safe, nurturing communities, are
essential for well-developed children. In the
absence of these features, children especially
children of color need helpful interventions to
overcome and correct flaws in the structures,
systems, and neighborhoods in which children
live.
A clear vision is necessary to guide, focus and
crystallize specific plans of action, as well as to
capture the aspirations of people and to inspire
and motivate them toward action and/or change.

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING

2. Strategic Focus and Tactical

Flexibility

Strategy refers to the primary approach

or main line of march pursued
(including what category(ies) of people
to focus on) in order to achieve a
particular goal.
Tactics are always subordinate and in
service to the strategy. Tactics must be
flexible and responsive to shifting
circumstances.

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING
3. Framing and Naming:
Framing establishes a context or a lens through which
a particular plan, project, or activity is viewed.
Without proper framing, our endeavors can be easily
taken out of context and, therefore, misunderstood,
even by those with and for whom we work.
Properly naming reinforces framing and is often a part
of framing. For example, whether personal
assistance received is called supplementary
compensation to inadequate income or a welfare
check and/or food stamp hand out makes a lot of
difference in how that support is understood.

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING

4. Doing the Daily Work (Creative

Engagement):
There is a specific body of work that
grows from strategy and tactics
designed to achieve a particular goal.
Once a strategy and necessary tactics
are worked out, then actually carrying
out and properly coordinating the work
become primary.

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING

5. Appreciating Creative Tension

as a Necessary Part of Social
Change:
In most processes of social change, a
level of tension (in many cases external
and internalized racism or some other
form of domination) is both necessary
and inevitable.
The challenge is to transform the
tension into a positive creative force and
to not allow it to become a negative,

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING

6. Persistence and Perseverance:

The quality of change we seek is often
stubbornly entrenched, difficult, and
long-standing. Typically, transformative
change will not result quickly.
Therefore, it is absolutely necessary to
have an orientation towards measuring
and affirming our progress based on our
ability to persevere and to persist in our
efforts, even when statistical, or
quantitative, change is not readily
apparent.

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING
It might be helpful to remember the old adage that:
the race does not (always) go to the swiftest, but to
those who endure to the end.

7. Healing and Reconciliation:

Healing is a process of overcoming the internal scars
and pain inflicted upon us, sometimes as a result of
our own actions but often by others. Healing is about
achieving a certain healthy, balanced view of our own
dignity and worth that is sufficient to withstand and/or
repel the hurtful things hurled our way. Healing is
about internal renewal, freedom from oppressive
thoughts and behaviors, and a spiritual striving toward
becoming fully human.

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING

Although closely related, reconciliation

is somewhat different. Reconciliation
involves making right previous wrongs
in such a way that both parties can
move forward in a healthy way. This
may involve material gestures such as
restitutions and reparations or legal,
institutional and structural adjustments,
as well as mental/spiritual gestures such
as acknowledgment, apologies,
forgiveness, ceremonies, etc.

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING

8. Acknowledging and Celebrating

Victories:
Celebrating victories, however small, is
a way of encouraging ourselves. There
are small victories, and there are large
victories in the course of carrying out
our work. Learning to appropriately
celebrate all of our work is an important
part of transformative community
building.

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING

9. Harvesting Lessons and Reaping

Fruit:
Learning is an ongoing part of life and
certainly in transformative organizing.
We should not rush so quickly from our
victories to simply more and more
engagement without properly
appreciating the lessons and learnings
of previous efforts. We need to make
sure that we learn and share the lessons
from our work the apparent successes

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING

If our victories have placed us into a

new space, we must know what the new
space actually is and what it represents
in order to step into the new space in
such as way that it advances our
strategic objectives. We need to
acknowledge our past but appreciate
our movement toward the possibility of
a new future thats reaping the fruit.

SOME ELEMENTS OF TRANSFORMATIVE

COMMUNITY BUILDING

Finally, it is important to see that a

victory, or actually achieving a specific
goal, usually positions us to continue the
struggle on a higher level. In that spirit
the old black spiritual which says every
round goes higher, higher shows great
wisdom about the nature of humanitys
growth.