(x-posted at Social Science Lite)
It’s not wholly surprising, given the current political climate, that Ted Kennedy’s legacy has been framed by the mass media in relation to healthcare reform. But Kennedy’s political and public impact reached far beyond bipartisan policy legislation. For me at least, Kennedy’s most powerful (and, successful) leadership came in the form of support for service and collective social change.
Following his death, Be The Change founder/City Year co-founder/potential candidate for Kennedy’s vacant senate seat Alan Khazei offered a moving tribute that highlighted Kennedy’s influence on nationwide opportunities for service and civic engagement. In part, Khazei wrote:
Senator Kennedy is the true godfather of the service movement. Without his tireless commitment, this movement as it thrives today never would have come about. He indelibly changed the fabric of America by not just inspiring, but personally enabling millions of citizens to give their time and skills to improve their communities and country. Through his visionary and bipartisan leadership in authoring the National and Community Service Act of 1990, the legislation that created AmeriCorps in 1993, and most recently with his good friend Senator Orrin Hatch, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act of 2009, he created the infrastructure that empowers people all across our nation to put their energy and idealism to work addressing critical social needs.
While Kennedy’s service-oriented community development legislation continues to empower and invigorate communities across the country, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the personal impact these organizations had on my own life.
In the summer of 2006, I received a community-based research fellowship through the University of Michigan. The fellowship paired me with a non-profit community development corporation in Detroit, where I created and administered a neighborhood-wide survey. But the non-profit didn’t foot the bill for my services. Nor did Michigan. Instead, my research was subsidized by funds from AmeriCorps. In fact, two other Michigan students also worked at this particular non-profit for the summer, and both were funded by AmeriCorps. One was a graduate student in urban planning, and catalogued the non-profit’s real estate holdings. The other, an undergraduate student in Michigan’s business school, created and organized the Northwest Detroit Farmer’s Market, now in its third year of operation. If you know anything about Detroit, you know how monumental it is to offer fresh produce to the city’s residents. And all this work was made possible by AmeriCorps funding.
My research with the non-profit later became my research on the non-profit, forming the basis for my senior Honors thesis. That research became the basis for my applications to graduate school, which led me to Harvard where I study inequality and public policy. So in a Kevin Bacon-esque “six degrees of social justice separation,” Ted Kennedy helped me get into Harvard.
On a larger sociological level, Kennedy’s commitment to government-funded service organizations and legislation influences two related, critical components of urban poverty: civic engagement and social organization. When work disappears from central cities, as Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson has so brilliantly argued, the rhythm and pulse of neighborhoods are disrupted. A lack of employment opportunities not only influences neighborhood economic stability, but it also removes valuable role models from day-to-day urban life. Social organization—the kind of informal rules and regulations that act as social control mechanisms and structure interpersonal interactions—is undermined when men and women don’t work regular, consistent hours.
Moreover neighborhood poverty, in part influenced by the aforementioned lack of employment opportunities, often reduces levels of civic engagement. Low levels of civic engagement often means less community cohesion and cooperation, which suppresses political power and places formidable barriers against paths to upward mobility. But organizations like AmeriCorps and other service groups empower impoverished neighborhoods and encourage active civic engagement—powerful mechanisms that help reduce inequality.
To be sure, service organizations like AmeriCorps are not without their conservative critics. But that’s probably just a testament to their continued relevance and effectiveness in bringing about social change. It’s also a testament to Ted Kennedy’s lasting legacy, one that stretches far beyond the fight for healthcare reform.
This bit kind of rubs me the wrong way: “Social organization…is undermined when men and women don’t work regular, consistent hours.”
I’m not exactly sure what you mean by that, but in my mind it evokes a “cogs in a machine” kind of picture. The 9to5 type of everyday grueling labor is not what I want for my fam and my city. I’m from Detroit and I’ve always felt that everyone in my community was working too damn much with no actual opportunity for *living.* For me, the destabilization of my community is caused by state violence and a colonialist/capitalist system that just keeps taking and taking everything we have. And a huge part of this resource-draining system is the “regular, consistent” work that makes my parents, grandparents, aunts, & uncles sacrifice their health (and the health of their environment) to support their families. So yeah, we need a regular source of income. But a lack of nine-to-fives is not anywhere NEAR the heart of the problem. We need to be able to survive and heal our communities at the same time. AmeriCorp is great for folks like me who are looking for a way to pay off student loans while building up a resume. But it’s not such a viable option for women with families who are working-class and don’t have a formal education. How can they do full-time, life-affirming work for their themselves and their communities while still paying the bills and feeding their kids? Because *that’s* what I want for my community.
And we can’t talk about a lack of community involvement among poor people of color without acknowledging that civic engagement and social organization is flat out dangerous for us. Organizing has cost people their lives–especially in cities like Detroit. The government does not react kindly to black people coming together and organizing to build better lives for themselves. The long and continuing history of domestic terrorism, assassinations, and imprisonment has made that *very* clear.
This is an interesting take on the social organization of urban communities. I’d be interested to here more on exactly what you mean by “state violence” and a “colonialist system” as applied to urban America–because if anything, decentralization and deindustrialization represents the retreat from “urban colonialism.”
To your specific concerns: The idea of the rhythm and pulse of a neighborhood does not suggest that everyone works the same hours, everyday. Rather, it implies that community viability and sustainability requires organization (read: not political or labor organization, but *social* organization, in which residents are cohesively intertwined in a residential system) and routine. Some residents work nights, some days, and some don’t work much at all. But when the majority of residents fail to work at all, it undermines the living energy of a neighborhood.
Also, civic engagement does not necessarily mean political protests or mobilizing, as you seem to suggest. It just means participation in voluntary associations, social clubs, community gatherings, etc. “The government” (do you mean local? state? national?) really has no objections to people coming together socially. And this is a vital component of collective efficacy–having each other’s back, so to speak–in a neighborhood, which translates, statistically, into greater access to resources and power.
As a sidenote, I spent 2 years working in/on Detroit, so I’d be curious what neighborhood you grew up in.
By state violence I mean institutional violence ie. police brutality, state-sanctioned sexual assault (cavity searches, prison rape), unnecessary sterilizations, the War on Drugs, taking people’s children for crimes like being poor or not speaking english, poverty in and of itself, etc
I don’t think there’s any specific level or section of government that always discourages people of color organizing– It’s just the general practice of those with power to quell descent and maintain their power. I’m a little taken aback that you think I mean just political protests…or that community organizing can be separate from protests… or that state violence against “protesters” is less noteworthy than violence against other types of community organizers.
When I say it’s dangerous for us to organize and be involved in our communities, I mean just that. Being in the community. Going outside. It’s dangerous. How much community involvement can you have when people can’t stand around on the street corner without fear of being arrested or beaten? And have you *seen* those town halls? Why on EARTH would the majority of non-white people feel safe engaging in that mess?! Especially when we know that that same hatred is prevalent EVERYWHERE all the time. We *know,* very intimately, that we risk violence whenever we go to school, go to work, go to vote, go outside to play ball–and we ALSO know that the government will not defend or protect us when this violence occurs. I mean, just historically the US government has violently suppressed or villified organizations that wanted scary, radical things like health care and education, or they just happened to get too “uppity” (ie. the assassinations of Black Panthers, Civil Rights activists, members of the American Indian Movement, the bombing of Black Wall Street, jailing members of the Young Lords, public school teachers getting fired for teaching non-white history….)
We just can’t talk about community involvement without talking about the ways in which our country, our government, makes our communities unsafe.
I have a lot of trouble holding Kennedy up as a hero, a role model, or even an inspiration. The bastard let a woman die because he didn’t want to take the rap for being a drunk driver. Can’t really scrub that kind of stain off a legacy. Also, its easy to make a call for service when you know you’ll never have to worry about bills to pay due to a father’s shady fortune and lifetime employment guaranteed by a nation’s collective guilt over your dead siblings.
What nonprofit was it that you worked at? I live in Detroit and I’m curious! Also, thanks for the farmer’s market. The more the better!
Anna, I worked for the Grandmont/Rosedale Development Corporation (GRDC) on the northwest side of the city. Specifically, my work was focused on a couple streets within North Rosedale Park.
Forgot to explain what I feel is part of colonialist structures: The various institutions/programs that make it easier for privileged outsiders, not the actual underprivileged people in the community, to do community-building work. You were able to advance your career by studying people from a community you don’t belong to for two years. My grandparents, who’ve lived in Detroit for most of their lives, never had a fraction of the resources to analyze, critique, and enhance the structures of their own existence. Hell, my parents don’t even have the resources for that. It’s colonialist when the status-quo of volunteer work is to make oppressed populations the “subjects” and continuously deny them agency.
**And even though I’m black and from the city, I don’t exclude myself from “privileged outsider” status. I’m still middle to upper middle class with a college education. And just to make it clear, I don’t think people should just not join AmeriCorp or take fellowship positions in urban communities– I just think all of us in the social justice arena need to acknowledge the ways institutional oppression creeps into absolutely everything we do.
Let me address some of your slightly misleading philosophical points, then to the specifics. In regards to this abstract notion of “state violence and a colonialist/capitalist system” in reference to my discussion of civic engagement: Look, I’ve been going to civic association meetings, block clubs, social gastherings, and community picnics for years in multiple cities, including your own. No one’s coming through with guns blasting trying to break up the black bodies. This is just factually misleading, and if anything, completely unrelated to the topic at hand. Moreover, “state violence” is misplaced here. The term is intended for application to things like overpolicing and hyper incarceration…but the problem with your usage is that police officers and state officials are, in fact, residents of communities, and participate in civic events. Plenty of cops that live in Detroit attend their local block clubs. I know, because I was there with them.
To your specific insistence on stretching this vague idea of “colonialism”: Let me be clear. I worked for a non-profit, resident-led community development corporation that aquires state and local grants for neighborhood beautification, affordable housing construction, and local business development. My survey results (from my sumemr job as “research assistant”) were used by the non-profit to apply for a $500,000 grant to be used for these efforts, in a concerted community-led approach–since, of course, the entire organization was resident-led. I took my experiences from that initial job to learn more about the neighborhood, and used the final chapter of my thesis to critique their strategies and offer a more democratic model for community development. Colonialism? Hardly.
Moreover, you exhibit very little understanding of who, exactly, recieves AmeriCorps funding. I was part of the Detroit area AmeriCorps members, in which half were Detroit residents above the age of 40. They, like the rest of us, recieved a stipend that essentially transfer state resources to local communities. There was no studying of “subjects,” nor, for that matter, did I use such terminology in this post or the comments.
The fact of the matter is that service organization like City Year and AmeriCorps bridge the gap between state resource and local communities. We can discuss the topic at hand (the social organization of urban communities and federally funded service programs), but we shouldn’t get caught up in vague abstractions that detract from the content that I wrote about.
I apologize for jumping to conclusions about your work. I’m sorry I came off as saying that I don’t think the work you did/do was important or beneficial. I tried to say that in the last paragraph of what I wrote, but I failed.
But see the thing is, it’s not really even about you individually. Which is why I steamrolled over your work, and I really regret that. When I was responding to your post, I was responding to the past 22 years of having to listen to white people tell me what’s wrong with Detroit– what’s wrong with Black people. And also the past 300 or so years of being the “white man’s burden.” It was wrong of me to imply that stuff about you, but can you understand how I might be defensive about this stuff?
And like I said, I look at institutional oppression. Structures. Not individual people or projects. We are all a part of colonialism because this is a nation founded on colonialism. I don’t have time to respond completely right now, but please respect the fact that while colonialism may be vague to you…it’s an every-day realist for me.
ugh. should be *reality
Wow. Okay, sorry but I had only skimmed your response before making my last comment. I just went back and read the first paragraph of what you wrote and I’m a bit at a loss for words. I’ll just let this article speak for me right now: http://www.racialicious.com/2009/09/15/idealize-this-solidarity-tipsheet/
(Sorry, I’m terrible at html and kind of in a hurry right now)
All fair points. I will say that, at least in my experience, service organizations like AmeriCorps are far removed from charitable organizations, and instead are predicated on empowerment rather than exploitation. In a crude marxist sense, you can probably theorize that this is merely state intervention that is perpetuating existing structures of inequality, and fails to actually afford these communities self-sufficiency. I guess I just don’t subscribe to this philosophy. It’s good that you think in terms of structures and institutional oppression, but these phrases don’t cleanly apply to the federally-funded service organizations that are referenced here.
This debate spawned from an initial comment noting that regular working hours suck the life (presumably, in an exploitative manner) from the residents who work them–implying, by extension, that the root of community despair is the capitalist enterprise. I mean, I could very easily cite the pages from Das Kapital where your points are coming from. Problem is, “the state” or “state intervention” isn’t uniform in its actions, nor is it merely a reflection of capitalist interests (uniformly). It just isn’t. This isn’t a question about who knows Detroit better, or who has the better solutions for urban communities (though I’d venture we both have important insights). Our difference in interpreting service organizations and the social organization of urban neighborhoods is, unfortunately, centering more on disagreements on the role of exploitation as compared to access to steady employment, rather than on the actual merits of actual organizations and actual actions. But feel free to continue this more with me via email; I’d rather not hijack the comments section here with this debate.
This…
“In a crude marxist sense, you can probably theorize that this is merely state intervention that is perpetuating existing structures of inequality, and fails to actually afford these communities self-sufficiency.”
And this…
“This debate spawned from an initial comment noting that regular working hours suck the life (presumably, in an exploitative manner) from the residents who work them–implying, by extension, that the root of community despair is the capitalist enterprise.”
Have solidified my decision to end this conversation. Colonialism and capitalism are pretty standard concepts in anti-racist work, but you make it sound like I pulled this shit out the air with my tinfoil hat. I mean…really? You’re going to paint what I’ve said as being some uber-radical, can’t possibly have anything to do with “real” issues, mumbo jumbo? I know it’s been a few years since you were at Michigan but it seems every other class I take here has “Effects of Colonialism” in the title. Even the blow-off Psych seminar I took had a whole section on institutional racism. I feel like all I’ve really said here is “Shit’s complicated and good intentions can fuck things up. Be careful, please.” But I guess me and my crude marxist sense and the actual lived experience of being a woman of color in Detroit is waaaaay too crazy to be reasonably engaged with here. So yeah…I’m out.
You know, I’d been working on a response, Jeremy, but I’m not sure its worth it now. I’ll just say that you need to check your privilege and re-read Shelby’s posts.
Please keep criticisms of the guest bloggers and their responders topical and not personal, per the commenting guidelines. Thanks.
“I know it’s been a few years since you were at Michigan but it seems every other class I take here has “Effects of Colonialism” in the title. Even the blow-off Psych seminar I took had a whole section on institutional racism.”
Blech, just re-read this and it sounds super classist and just…icky. What I was trying to get across is that the stuff I’ve said here isn’t at all new and I didn’t come up with it on my own. What I *don’t* mean to say is “I learned these things in a UNIVERSITY which therefore makes my views more valid than yours. Muahaha!” Yeah…I really, really don’t want to say that.