Falling Apart/Coming Together

When I proposed writing about the efforts of Alternate ROOTS (Regional Organization of Theaters South) to overcome communications’ problems, executive director Kathie DeNobriga became alarmed. “We’re still in the process,” she said, and others in the organization echoed that concern. They are not alone. Though groups around the South have been exploring ways for people to work together despite differences in race, sex, religion, and sexual orientation, no one seems to have completed the process.

A North Carolina-based group, the Piedmont Peace Project, has been one of the organizations in our region struggling hardest to learn, and they agreed to put together this special section. They began with their own experiences and soul-searching — personally, and as an organization. They branched out to gather stories and lessons from other groups around the South — including Alternate ROOTS, whose members shared a difficult, but creative and meaningful history.

There aren’t enough of these conscientious, courageous groups exploring how to work in diverse groups — if there were, we’d have a whole lot of powerful coalitions fighting for social and economic democracy. But there are many more groups seriously grappling with the problems than could be covered in this overview. We hope to foster further discussion on these issues in Southern Exposure. We welcome your ideas.

— Pat Arnow, editor

The abolitionist movement was one of the great progressive reform efforts in United States history. As one of its most able speakers, Frederick Douglass was the answer to the abolitionists’ prayers. An escaped slave, self-taught, he was a brilliant writer and orator. He could attack slavery from the perspective of someone who had experienced it, dramatically challenging the racism that dominated American thinking. He was proud of his voice and his ability to affect people with his eloquence. Yet white abolitionists cautioned him to “keep a little plantation” in his voice, not to sound too smart, because otherwise people would never believe he had ever been a slave.

When Douglass attempted to become more than a speaker for the white abolitionist leaders, when he tried to move into a position of leadership himself, asserting his independence and challenging the unconscious racism he was experiencing among white abolitionists, his relationships with many of the movement’s leaders began to “fall apart.” Even though their expressed goals were the same, white abolitionists could neither understand what Douglass was experiencing nor accept him as an equal.

The “coming together and falling apart” that characterized the relationship between Frederick Douglass and the white abolitionist movement is a telling example of an experience that has been repeated over and over in progressive movements.

We have always known that we face often overwhelming external barriers in our fight for social justice. Powerful institutions and privileged groups don’t want to relinquish control of the laws, formal and informal procedures, and oppressive ways of doing business that serve their self-interests.

But in recent years, those of us who work for progressive social change have begun to recognize that we also face serious internal barriers within our own organizations and psyches — the wrenching and disorienting challenge of working together across barriers of race, gender, class, and sexual identity.

This realization has led many progressive organizations, the Piedmont Peace Project among them, to develop what we call an “anti-oppression” approach to social change. This model reflects our growing awareness that we must address these barriers, along with the recognition that oppression and privileges of all forms are interwoven and cannot be separated. The seeds of this model sprouted in the 1960s and ’70s when women, poor and working class people, and people of color began gaining greater access to academia, the media, and leadership of non-profit, social change organizations.

As new and different voices made themselves heard, white middle-class progressives were forced to take a hard look at themselves and their organizations. Predominantly white, male and middle-class, their organizations often tacitly or unconsciously accepted the racist, sexist, classist, and homophobic ways of doing business that define life in the United States. Like many of the abolitionists, they assumed they must be the ones to lead oppressed populations into a just society. In fact, the major working class reform movement in this country — the union movement — has also been led predominantly by white men through much of its history and has, with the exception perhaps of class, exploited many of the oppressive behaviors used so skillfully by the companies they are challenging.

The lesson for oppressed groups who joined, either directly or in coalition with these progressive organizations, was that it is dangerous to trust those who say they’re your allies but have a different racial, class, gender or sexual identity. The practical solution for oppressed people has been to create homogenous organizations dedicated to building power for their own constituency.

To break this cycle of separation, many organizations are taking actions to remove the barriers that divide us. Predominantly white middle-class organizations are taking workshops and doing strategic planning with a focus on how to build multi-racial, multi-class groups. Newly established groups are trying to create structures and practices that are inclusive. People from oppressed groups watch to see if real progress is being made. But most of us are very new to this. Our commitment often exceeds our understanding and skill level. We bump up against each other’s wounds and challenge each other’s privileged beliefs. We get angry and frustrated. Questions of how to set priorities, who to ally with, where to draw the line, become infinitely more complex and wrought with potential for conflict — for “falling apart.”

When it was formed 10 years ago, the Piedmont Peace Project created a structure to combat the dynamics of oppression. Internalized oppression — the acceptance of negative stereotypes about ourselves — often prevented women, people of color, poor and working-class people, and gays and lesbians from recognizing and acting on their potential. We believed that organizing for social change meant including and drawing leadership from voices that have been historically excluded from sharing power in our society. The by-laws require that at least two-thirds of the board must be low-income, women, and people of color. We evaluated community organizing campaigns in terms of how they dealt with issues of race, class, gender, and sexual identity. We built an unusual relationship with a donor community in Massachusetts who not only provided financial support, but also participated in one of our training programs to confront issues of class and white privilege. We built feminist principles of self-nurturance and personal growth into our methods of operation.

All of us — staff, board, members, donors, consultants — thought we were doing great work. We were doing great work in the external world — work that made a real difference in people’s lives and communities. We successfully registered and turned out thousands of voters and convinced our U.S. Congressional Representative Bill Hefner to dramatically change his voting record. We helped local residents in three rural neighborhoods win more than $2 million in community development block grants to rehabilitate housing, pave roads, and bring in running water and sewers. Other communities are now engaged in the same process of revitalization. We helped show the connections between local and national issues by interviewing local people and using their words to create pamphlets which were then circulated in the community. We put community building — the bringing together of allies across barriers of race, class, gender, and sexual identity — at the center of our organizing and training models.

Yet for all our organizing success, we found our approach much easier to describe than to live. For instance, many of our members come from religious backgrounds that teach that homosexuality is sinful. Yet, they had become part of an organization whose stated philosophy is that to deny rights to people because they are gay or lesbian is the same as denying rights to people because of the color of the skin or their gender. The struggle to resolve the contradictions between members’ religious teachings and the organization’s mission caused some folks to leave — but the great majority stayed and ended up accepting PPP’s position. Other issues created similar crises — men resisting shared leadership with women, people who were not Christian challenging the assumption that meetings should always open with a Christian prayer. The struggles were hard, but they strengthened the organization and helped clarify our purpose.

While these issues were dealt with openly and successfully among the board and membership, what crept up on us and then hit us hard was our failure to pay attention to how oppression was operating among the staff. While we would never support the idea of a hierarchy of oppression (a belief that one kind of oppression is more primary or important than another), we found that we were paying more attention to class issues and avoiding some of the painful issues of racism within the staff. Shared leadership and new definitions of “leaders” were cornerstones of our organizing strategy. Yet we found it difficult to break down traditional patterns of leadership that we thought we had rejected.

Over the years, resentments deepened, and the organization came close to falling apart. PPP did not fall apart. We took the time to look honestly at the roots of our problems and work together to solve them. This has been and continues to be a very difficult process. Still, we are more resolved than ever in our commitment to an anti-oppression community-building approach to organizing because our experience has made it very clear that without such an approach, a truly progressive agenda will not succeed.

The issues that brought PPP to the brink of falling apart are not unique. In this issue of Southern Exposure you will read about struggles to create bridges across the barriers that divide us. We include inspirational successes and painful setbacks. The stories raise many questions and promise no pat answers. Yet we know the work in our communities must continue whether we are organizers or writers or artists. We also know that to make the kind of commitment to each other that brings justice we must try to understand and value each other’s experiences.

So here we are — women and men of all races and classes and ages and abilities and sexual identities — in the fray. Our coming together will almost always involve some falling apart. What honest, meaningful, and equitable relationship doesn’t? The more we succeed in coming together, the better we can work in coalition and alliance — and beyond — to community, a community with real political, economic, and social democracy.