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Since the founding of Midwest Academy in 1973, Associate Director and Lead Trainer Steve Max has been teaching students and organizations the in's and out's of Direct Action Organizing.
Now is your opportunity to send Steve any questions you may have about direct action organizing. Steve will post the question and his reply on this page. Use the form below.
Dear Steve
How do you "deal" with a new member who is very helpful, but has a specific negative attitude to the President of the organization (me). He is willing to do a lot of the organizing (although he volunteers to do too many things and they often are not completed) and when a suggestion is made by him to do something a specific way, if I do not completely agree, or if I disagree because of past experience, he forms cliques to oppose my opinion. We are all non-paid volunteers. I am an elected official in the organization and a woman (which I think is relevant.)
JA
Dear JA,
Members who burst on the scene and create problems for the leadership are often motivated by some major recent change in their lives. Some examples: the person just got divorced, just got fired, just retired, just graduated from school or a their child just got an apartment and moved out. There is some gap in their lives they are trying to fill. In these situations, many such people will often move on to something else if they feel that the organization isn't letting them fulfill whatever need they have. The exception, sometimes, is older people who live close by and who just get a kick out of being quarrelsome (I'm 66, I know about this.) Perhaps you can wait this out.
Another possibility is that the person has valuable experience in another field that doesn't quite fit with what you are doing, a union or a church or citizen action organization for example. On the other hand, don't just rule out the possibility that the new member may be right about some things. If you hear yourself saying, "But we always did it this way," watch out. Times and technology do change.
The main thing is that this isn't your personal problem, it is a problem for the organization. Discuss it with others in the leadership. Break it down into very specific situations such as: the person spent $50.00 of the organization's money (or $500.00) without authorization. The person made a statement to the media or an elected official that did not represent the organization's real position. The person made a commitment to cooperate with another group without leadership approval, etc. Then, decide who in the leadership is in the best position to speak with the new member about correcting the specific situation. Make sure that the new member understands that there is a formal decision making process and that new ideas must come first to a committee or to the board, also that specific people have been put in charge of certain areas, including you, and that what they say goes unless the organization formally decides to change it.
Next, put this person in charge of some activity, preferably a additional project where it won't matter too much if it gets messed up. Make it necessary for the person to actually follow through and produce something quantifiable. If it doesn't work, your members will see that the person is all talk. If it does work, tell the person he has a great future with the organization, but that he just has to be a team player.
I would be happy to discuss this further but I need more information. What kind of organization is it? How big is it. Is it neighborhood, student, senior citizen, union, civil rights, etc? What is the program and activities in which the new member is involved? What is this person's age and occupation. What do you know about him?
Let me know.
Steve
Dear Steve
We have a project that is establishing cross disability coalitions in communities around the state. The project currently has 2 staff that work in the field doing training and organizing. While the lead staff person has considerable experience in CO we are looking to improve the impact. How can the Academy best address this situation?
Paul Shankland
Dear Paul,
The key to successful cross-anything coalitions is having a common issue. I am using the word issue in the strict Midwest Academy sense, meaning a solution to a problem. The issue is not the problem itself. Noncompliance with the Disabilities Act is a problem. Getting the city to issue citations to noncompliant restaurants is an issue.
The difficulty in disabilities' organizing is that most of the common issues are related to either civil rights or funding of services and consequently they are rarely local. More often they are statewide. Local coalitions are usually most successful when they are part of a statewide campaign and are responsible for building local pressure on legislators to vote for or against a particular measure.
There is often a conception that cross-anything coalition organizing means that people in different kinds of organizations trade support for each other's issues. For example, Jobs With Justice organizes cross union coalitions of members who support each others strikes and organizing drives. For this to work, the individuals need to have a conception of themselves as part of a larger movement, a larger whole in which an injury to one is an injury to all, or the enemy of one is the enemy of all. In other words ideology can, to some degree, substitute for a common issue in bringing people together across organizational lines. I have seen the same principal at work in many types of organizations and certainly in disability organizations. Unfortunately, in both unions and disability organizations, the percentage of people who will respond on this basis is not as high as we would hope to see.
The key then remains finding common issues. I am currently working with a cross disability-group that is trying to get the Governor to sign an executive order requiring state agencies to emphasize providing community services for the disabled as an alternative to nursing homes. While this issue won't have universal appeal among people with disabilities and their families, it will cut very widely.
Steve
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