Development With Dignity

The complete results of the community economic development assessment, Development with Dignity, are compiled in a report published by the Institute for Southern Studies. To receive a copy, see the coupon in the magazine, or send $20 (which includes postage) to the Institute for Southern Studies, P.O. Box 531, Durham, NC 27702.

 

Quitman County, Mississippi, in the heart of the Delta, has a population of slightly under 10,000. It is one of the poorest counties in the state with a 59 percent black population and a very high black unemployment rate. Almost one-third of the families and more than a half the children live in poverty with 22 percent of the residents receiving some form of public assistance. The semi-feudal plantation tradition of the surrounding Mississippi Delta continues to cast a debilitating cloud of apathy and dependency over Quitman County.

There have been some changes, though. Prior to 1987, the town of Marks, Mississippi, in Quitman County, was governed exclusively by whites, although African Americans made up almost 60 percent of the population. Today, as a result of the settlement of a lawsuit in 1987 challenging the single-district electoral setup, Marks has a black mayor and two blacks on the five-member board of aldermen.

Economically, Marks and Quitman County are typical of rural communities throughout the South especially in Black Belt and mountain areas. They are the areas largely bypassed by the Sunbelt economic development boom of the 1960s and 1970s.

Throughout its history, much of the South has pursued economic development policies that sacrificed long-term prosperity to exploitative business interests by guaranteeing free or cheap supplies of labor and land, a largely nonunionized work force, relaxed environmental regulations, low taxes, and various kinds of business subsidies at public expense. As a result of this legacy, the South continues to be the poorest region in the nation with a per-capita income that is 88 percent of the national average. Of the 12 states with the lowest manufacturing wages, eight were in the South. During the past three decades, Southern workers have suffered a massive and sustained assault. Low-paying service jobs replaced good-paying manufacturing jobs with medical and pension benefits. Between 1969 and 1989, high-wage manufacturing jobs in the South fell from 27.5 percent of the total work force to 18 percent, while lower-paying service jobs increased from 14.3 percent to 22.6 percent.

The economic downturn in the South reflects a long-term depression of the national and global economy in which large-scale industrial employers cut costs, downsized, closed up shop, relocated to Third World countries, and turned massive numbers of employees permanently out to pasture. As a New York Times story put it, corporate America “facing stiff competition and disappearing profits . . . has been throwing workers overboard by the millions.”

The Markses and Quitman Counties of the South are still being left behind in the economic development race as Southern states continue chasing after the rainbow of large industrial plants overflowing with jobs.

Southern political leaders have been aware of this fact for more than a decade. While some states have undertaken scattered local economic development enterprises, none has implemented holistic, bottom-up, community-based economic revitalization strategies.

Quitman County Development Organization shows how community economic development can work. QCDO evolved out of a local social service organization associated with the Mississippi Action for Community Education (MACE). It was created in 1977 as a community-based economic development organization committed to helping local citizens help themselves. QCDO now operates a community credit union which has made loans totaling more than $4 million, a housing development corporation engaged in extensive housing rehabilitation throughout the county, a rural transportation program, a laundromat, thrift store, printing service, and an industrial foundation which recruited three industries to the county creating 225 jobs. QCDO itself has 18 employees.

Like many other communities throughout the South, the real economic development story of Quitman County is not told in its persistent poverty. That only reveals the cumulative impact of mechanization and long-term deindustrialization. Such a focus does not take into account the countervailing bottom-up, community-based economic development work of QCDO and similar community economic development enterprises across the South.

 

The Assessment

Amidst escalating anxiety about the South’s stagnant economy and increasing interest in community-based economic revitalization alternatives, the Institute for Southern Studies undertook a large-scale assessment of community-based economic enterprise in the South in 1991. The objectives of the study were to document the lessons and achievements of the community economic development movement and examine implications for strengthening work. Documentation covered the period from the Office of Economic Opportunity’s anti-poverty programs of the 1960s to the present.

After conferring with numerous practitioners, we decided to use a broad definition of community economic development including human and social development strategies as well as traditional business development activities. We surveyed community action agencies, community development corporations, community development financial institutions, crafts projects, and micro-enterprise programs. We also included church-based initiatives, farm worker organizations, mutual help associations, rural health projects, small businesses and business support programs, small and minority farm projects, cooperatives, and worker-owned businesses.

Fifty community-based economic enterprises from Virginia to Louisiana responded to the survey. While much of the community economic development activity we documented is still at an emerging level, on the whole the survey paints a much more hopeful picture of Southern economic development than suggested by the economy’s chronically depressed trends.

Our assessment documents several accomplishments — and shortfalls — of the Southern community economic development movement over the past 30 years. The full assessment report will be published by the Institute in early 1995. What follows are some of the key findings. They include (a) achievements — material achievements; (b) strategic policies; and (c) long-range guiding principles — goals and objectives.

 

Achievements

From farm worker communities in Dade City, Florida, to black inner-city residents of Jackson, Mississippi, from the Lumbee Indians of North Carolina to poor mountain communities in southern West Virginia, people generally believed to be hopelessly impoverished can come together and create community-based ventures that improve their material circumstances. These programs provide affordable housing for the homeless and ill-housed, create business ventures to employ the unemployed, establish health clinics to meet the needs of the medically unserved, and create crafts cooperatives to provide income opportunities for unemployed rural residents.

 

Successful models

Quitman County Development Organization is an initiative that has made an impact. Because of its work over the past seven years, Quitman County is far less racially divided and economically depressed than it would be if QCDO did not exist. The majority black population is far less politically isolated and materially vulnerable than it would be. Due to QCDO’s emphasis on local leadership development and black political empowerment, the number of African-American public officeholders in the county has increased from none in 1987 to 12 (out of 42) today. Robert Jackson, who heads QCDO, is a member of the county board of supervisors. He credits political education and empowerment work of QCDO with significantly increasing support by local white leadership for community-based development work.

A similarly impressive initiative is the Human/Economic Appalachian Development (HEAD) Corporation. HEAD is a church-related regional community development cooperative in Berea, Kentucky. Formally established in 1973, HEAD promotes community-based economic development in rural central Appalachia through a variety of business, housing, and consumer development services and initiatives. Today HEAD operates the largest regional housing consortium and community development bank in the region with assets of $11,400,000 and more than 400 employees.

Other successful community economic development initiatives abound in the South. The construction of a shopping center by Durham’s Hayti Development Corporation has instilled in local residents a tremendous sense of pride. The Federation of Southern Cooperatives and Watermark Association of Artisans market their community-based products abroad. The Center for Community Self-Help has achieved national recognition as a model community development financial institution. Mid Delta Home Health, North Carolina Association of Community Development Corporations, Mountain Association of Community Economic Development, Business Innovation Center, Mayhaw Tree, and Voice of Calvary Ministries are all examples of successful community economic development ventures which have greatly benefited their communities and engendered community ownership and support.

 

Facilitators of revitalization

The assessment finds that the most helpful sources of technical assistance for community economic development organizations are “groups like us” and “face-to-face networks.” Such assistance is usually very inexpensive or free of charge. Out of the 50 participants, these two responses account for 38 percent of all forms of “most helpful technical assistance.”

This finding confirms the existence of an extensive corps of effective and resourceful community developers throughout the South engaged in a range of productive community economic development activities. The abundance of proven community development capacity provides an avenue of long-term economic hope amidst generally discouraging material circumstances. These exceptional development skills and achievements have not yet captured the attention of most mainstream state economic development leaders.

 

Strategic Policies

The assessment documents a consensus among the participants concerning a number of important strategic policies calculated to minimize programmatic failure and maximize programmatic success.

 

Community organizing

The assessment refutes the claim that community organizing is not an essential component of effective community economic development work; “organizing the community to pressure back” is cited as the second most frequently used strategy to overcome obstacles to community economic development work. On the other hand, banks and chambers of commerce are given 34 percent of the weight as the local institutions causing the most harm to community activity. Racism and political opposition are cited as the most detrimental external impediments to community economic development, receiving 38 percent of the total responses.

The findings indicate that community organizing is a vital ingredient in the entire community economic development soup. According to Harry G. Boyte in Dissent, community organizing — of the kind embraced by most community developers — is about teaching people the “craft of cooperative public problem-solving.”

 

Flexible and diverse strategies

The study shows that the most successful community economic development practitioners are those who can work with a broad spectrum of diverse (and sometimes contradictory) elements both within and outside the community. The main strategies employed by the respondents to overcome “external obstacles” range from “building relationships with people in power” (21.6 percent) to “organizing the community to fight back” (21.6 percent).

Practitioners who are most effective in implementing a holistic, community-driven agenda engage in constant collaboration, innovation, and experimentation. Operational flexibility is their keynote. Elements essential to success in the sea islands of South Carolina are not necessarily as effective in inner-city Birmingham or rural East Tennessee. The study reveals significant variations in operational approaches between different types of community economic development projects and the race or gender of the leaders. Cooperatives and rural development groups are inclined to be far more political than their urban counterparts. White-led projects are two times more likely to “build relationships with powerful people” than “organize the community to pressure back.” Conversely, black-led organizations are almost two times more inclined to “organize the community to pressure back” than “build relationships with powerful people.” Consistently effective community developers devise resourceful ways of affirming diversity without fighting about differences.

 

Guiding Principles

While the strategic policies necessary to maximize the success and minimize the failure of community economic development ventures may vary greatly among projects, we documented some matters of principle that are applicable to all community economic development work.

 

Human and community resources

Thirty-four percent of the survey respondents cite “developing human and community resources” as a preeminent objective of their community economic development work. This involves strengthening the confidence, capacity, and ownership in local residents and organizations to enable them to initiate and implement community development ventures on their own behalf. It explains why “moral encouragement” is cited as the most important form of “technical assistance” received by the respondents. There is skepticism on the part of many community economic development practitioners of the potentially subversive impact which external resources can have on serious bottom-up community empowerment. One participant cited a development assistance organization that was so linked to funders that its ability to empower the community group was seriously impaired.

The Voice of Calvary Ministries’ human development work in an economically depressed section of Jackson, Mississippi, illustrates how basic human development work (e.g. community education, home ownership training, parent education, job readiness training, tutoring) lays a solid foundation for physical development. Through their work with community residents, the Ministries’ staff nurtures and strengthens local community leadership, increases home ownership, reduces crime and drug trafficking, improves relations with the city government, the police department, and the school system, and increased safety and well-being in the neighborhood. “Our goal is to develop the capacity of folk in the community. We address poverty by creating equity in neighborhoods — a sense of personal ownership and investment in the community,” says Voice of Calvary’s C.J. Jones.

Robert Giloth, executive director of Southeast Community Organization in Baltimore, affirms that creating wealth is a better criterion of community development than job creation. “More appropriate outcome measures might be wealth creation . . . business start-ups, or regional-based indicators of economic performance,” says Giloth in Neighborhood Works (emphasis added). He stresses “mak[ing] jobs available to the job-needy and preparing] the job-needy for available jobs” as preeminent goals of economic development.

This finding supports the recent call by the research organization MDC for reexamination by Southern policy makers of “job creation and dollars invested” as adequate measures of economic development activity. In its 1992 report, Coming Out of the Shadows, MDC states, “Job creation and dollars invested are no longer adequate goals for development. In rural areas, issues of jobs are linked to those of infrastructure, social support systems, education, and protection of natural resources. Job creation is only a piece of the economic development puzzle in a changing, competitive economy.” Many current economic development strategies designed to revitalize persistently impoverished areas focus almost entirely on business development and job creation goals without giving sufficient consideration to economic development taught by the participants in the assessment.

 

Building local capacity

A common myth is that the main ingredient for community economic development work is infusion of external resources (e.g. capital, technical support, and guidance). This is contradicted by the assessment, which finds that building human and institutional capacity contributes more to community economic development work than abundant external resources.

A commitment to institutionalizing bottom-up community economic development capacity is especially strong among mountain and Deep South participants. Human/Economic Appalachian Development Corporation (HEAD) and Mountain Association of Community Economic Development (MACED) are mountain groups that institutionalized a broad range of support. This strengthened their ability to counteract hostile forces and win the support and assistance of others.

Stella Marshall of Workers of Rural Kentucky says, “The creation of meaningful jobs by the formation of small locally owned businesses . . . helps keep families off of support systems that keep them in a state of dependency.”

Abdul Rasheed of the North Carolina Association of Community Development Corporations says that building organizational development capacity as a guiding principle has to do with “building institutions that will outlive me.”

Lorna Bourg captures the importance of institution building: “Basic human needs are not met in a sustained way without attention to increasing resources and building permanent bottom-up human and institutional capacity.”

Many participants point out the incompatibility of the faddish nature of much government and foundation support with the need for long-term institutional development.

 

Democratic empowerment

The participants in the assessment cite democratic decision-making and ownership as the third most important principle of their work. This affirms local control as a guiding principle. Cooperatives, small business support, and rural groups agree with Irvin Henderson, formerly with Gateway Community Development Corporation: “Anytime you are trying to do something that affects someone’s quality of life, you don’t want to impose it on them.”

Lillie Webb of the Center for Community Development of Hancock, Georgia, stresses that local community responsibility is essential to our governmental scheme: “The government needs to be returned to the people. And the people need to accept the responsibility of government. The people are the government We need to take the full responsibility for what’s happening to us, and not just give that responsibility to somebody else.”

If an economic development venture is primarily dependent on support and resources from outside the community it serves, it is not community economic development. As Jim Sessions of the Highlander Center points out, “There can be no sustainable development without sustainable democracy.”

“Economic imposition,” says another respondent, “is not community development, but colonialism.”

Some grassroots community economic development practitioners argue that democratic principles are not embraced by all community economic development practitioners. They insist that many of the groups receiving the lion’s share of funding support operate in a “top-down” manner which negates democracy and subverts development. This is probably rooted in systemic hostility to genuine community-based economic development.

 

Effective leadership

In the balance between the business and human sides of community economic development enterprise, champions of community development argue that the human element is the more fundamental and critical aspect. This is because the human community is both the end to be served by community economic development activity and the means by which that end is achieved. The bulk of this article has been about how community economic development relates to the human community as its end. But the human community is the means of community economic development as well, as the assessment reveals.

The community economic development leaders we interviewed can be grouped into three categories: (a) those who possess the capacity to inspire the poor to undertake initiatives of community revitalization but who lack the self discipline to translate their vision into sustained programmatic activity; (b) those who possess exceptional practical discipline but who are unable to mobilize the impoverished communities; and (c) those who possess both the capacity to inspire the poor with a vision of community transformation and the ability to lead a disciplined and structured business enterprise.

The community economic development projects which impressed us the most were headed by those whose leadership skills place them in the third category. Among the leadership qualities most broadly evident among them are:

▼ Balanced competencies. They are perceptive community leaders and disciplined business managers. ▼ Sense of vocation. They come to their work with a strong calling. They do not see what they do as a job or temporary activity. They are in it for the long haul.

▼ Personal integrity. They tend to operate aboveboard with a sense of personal integrity and respect for the contributions of others.

▼ Determination to succeed. They consistently make seemingly unworkable projects work because of a stubborn unwillingness to throw in the towel. Sam Dillard, owner of Dillard’s Barbeque in Durham, North Carolina, says, “Winners don’t quit and quitters don’t win.”

▼ Collaborative work. They stress working collaboratively and cooperatively with others in their organization and community.

▼ Eye for winners. They recognize an excellent product or human or material resource when they see it.

▼ Results oriented. They focus on finding solutions to problems rather than complaining about difficulties. In shopping for resources, they are more interested in building-blocks than blueprints — in concrete tools than abstract models.

 

It would be misleading to discuss the attributes of effective leaders without stating how emphatic the assessment is concerning the impact of the broader political and economic environment on the ultimate achievement of community economic development ventures — regardless of the leaders’ personal qualities.

U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich makes the same point when he notes a 15-year trend toward increasing economic inequality in the United States. In The Washington Post he says, “Unless we turn this [unequal distribution of income] around, we’re going to have a two-tier society; we can’t be a prosperous or stable society with a huge gap between the very rich and everyone else.”

The best leaders of community-based enterprise — no matter how thoroughly competent, committed, and resourceful they are — cannot compensate for woefully ineffective leadership at the highest levels of society. Leaders of community economic development ventures who are most adept at balancing books and mobilizing the poor are powerless to preserve peace and stability in a society which has resigned itself to the existence of an ever-expanding army of permanently unemployed and unemployable people who have no stake in it at all. At best, such leaders can only keep the chairs neatly arranged on the deck of a sinking Titanic.