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Transformative learning in the public sphere: the educational dimensions of a broad-based community organizing movement

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Transformative learning in the public sphere: the educational dimensions of a broad-based community organizing movement

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TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE:
THE EDUCATIONAL DIMENSIONS OF A BROAD-BASED COMMUNITY
ORGANIZING MOVEMENT

by
Robert Arvid Filback

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(EDUCATION)

August 2007

Copyright 2007 Robert Arvid Filback

ii
Acknowledgments

I am indebted to many people for making the successful completion of this
dissertation possible.
I want to thank Nelly Stromquist, my dissertation advisor, for her extremely
helpful and competent guidance. I thank the other members of my dissertation
committee as well for their participation, encouragement, and feedback: William
Maxwell, Donald Miller, and Jefferey Sellers.
I am most grateful to the leaders and organizers of One LA who extended to
me their time and trust as I explored and sought to understand their learning
experiences in community organizing.
Thank you to my many friends, family members, and colleagues who lent
practical support, advice, and encouragement along the way.
I wish to recognize my dear late friend and mentor, Warren Thompson, who
displayed a sincere and persistent interest in my graduate studies from the moment I
floated the idea – and who prayed daily on my behalf for perseverance and clear
thinking.
My deepest thanks and appreciation I reserve for my family – Susanne, my
endlessly supportive and optimistic wife (I have been in graduate school six of our
almost eight years of marriage), and my children, Robert David (5 years), Anne Rose
(3 years), and Emma Grace (8 months) – they are ones who most helped to keep me
grounded and motivated throughout this endeavor.

iii
Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ..........................................................................................ii

List of Tables.................................................................................................vi

List of Figures...............................................................................................vii

Abstract........................................................................................................viii
CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY ....................................1
Problem Statement..........................................................................................4
Purpose of the Study.......................................................................................5
Significance of Study .....................................................................................5
Research Questions ........................................................................................6
Limitations of this Study ................................................................................6
Organization of Study.....................................................................................7
CHAPTER 2. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE ........................................8
Modalities of Education for Social Change..................................................10
Approaches to Education for Social Change................................................13
Historical Developments in Adult Education........................................15
Transformative Learning.......................................................................17
Popular Education .................................................................................20
Participatory Action Research...............................................................24
Comparison: Transformative Learning, Popular Education, PAR........27
Education for Social Change in a Contemporary Democratic Context........29
Liberal Representative Democratic Perspective ...................................31
Participatory Democratic Perspective ...................................................36
Contentious Pluralism ...........................................................................43
Broad-based Community Organizing as Education for Social Change .......47
Conclusions ..................................................................................................52
CHAPTER 3. CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND
METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................55
Conceptual Framework ................................................................................55
Educational Processes ...........................................................................56
Political Processes .................................................................................57
Case Study of One LA..................................................................................58
Influences from Ethnography................................................................60
Critical Social Phenomenology.............................................................61
Expanded Research Questions .....................................................................63
Research Process ..........................................................................................64
Data Collection......................................................................................65

iv
Credibility and Trustworthiness of Data ...............................................68
My Role as Researcher..........................................................................71
Data Analysis ........................................................................................73
Summary.......................................................................................................74
CHAPTER 4. BACKGROUND AND ORGANIZATIONAL
FEATURES OF ONE LA ............................................................................75
Sociopolitical Context ..................................................................................75
Organizing Los Angeles County ..................................................................79
Origins of One LA........................................................................................86
One LA’s Leadership Structure....................................................................89
Organizer Characteristics .............................................................................92
A Learning Culture.......................................................................................95
Political Philosophy......................................................................................99
Social Change Approach ............................................................................100
Mediating Institutions .........................................................................103
Relational Networks............................................................................105
Collective Action.................................................................................106
Opposition to the Movement ......................................................................108
Summary.....................................................................................................113
CHAPTER 5. THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION IN ONE LA...............115
Overview of Goals and Formative Objectives ...........................................118
Internal Formation: Preparation of Professional Organizers......................121
Formation of Others: Developing Community Leaders.............................128
Transmitting the Organizing Framework............................................128
Building “Political Friendships” .........................................................131
Developing Organizing Know-How ...................................................131
Development of Member Organizations ....................................................134
CHAPTER 6. ONE LA’S EDUCATIONAL METHODS ........................139
Praxis as One LA’s Learning Philosophy ..................................................142
Popular Education Framework...................................................................143
Experiential Learning Approach ................................................................145
Informal Education Methods......................................................................151
Collective Apprenticeship ...................................................................152
Agitation..............................................................................................156
Reading Practices ................................................................................158
Storytelling..........................................................................................159
Social Networking...............................................................................160
Nonformal Education .................................................................................161
Summary.....................................................................................................163

v
CHAPTER 7. ANALYSIS OF ONE LA’S EDUCATIONAL
OUTCOMES ............................................................................................165
Formation of Leaders .................................................................................167
Increased Political Agency..................................................................171
Social Capital Building .......................................................................173
Acquisition of Skills and Strategies for Collective Action .................176
Summary .............................................................................................181
Organizational Learning and Development................................................181
The Story of Glendale Methodist Church ...........................................183
The Story of Harmony Elementary School .........................................192
Summary .............................................................................................195
What Organizers Learn...............................................................................196
Critical Reflection, Self-Reflexivity, and “Ego”.................................201
Increased Agency ................................................................................204
Social Capital and the Art of Public Relationships .............................206
Strategic Political Know-How ............................................................208
Creative Externalization......................................................................210
Leadership Development.....................................................................213
Summary .............................................................................................217
Education for Social Change ......................................................................218
Social Change through Faith-Secular Partnership......................................226
Obstacles to Learning.................................................................................231
CHAPTER 8. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS .........................237
Conclusions ................................................................................................238
Contribution of Nonformal and Informal Education Modalities ........238
Moving from Tacit to Explicit Learning .............................................241
Connections between Informal Learning and Social Networks..........246
Challenges in Diversifying Participation in One LA ..........................253
Implications ................................................................................................259
Increasing the Scope of Broad-Based Organizing ..............................260
The Role of Religion in Building Social Capital ................................264
Learning in Social Movements ...........................................................268
Developing Socially Transformative Citizens ....................................279

References ..................................................................................................281

Appendices .................................................................................................291
A. Historical Developments in Adult Education……………………. 291
B. Comparison of Three Approaches to Education for
Social Change……………………………………………………. 292
C. Sample IAF National Training Bibliography……………….. 293-294

vi
List of Tables

1. Two Notions of Democracy and Their Implications for
Citizenship and Political Education 45

2. Public Activity of One LA Resulting from its Five-Prong
Agenda 84-85

3. One LA’s Typology of Leaders 91

4. One LA’s “Two Visions of the World” Framework 130

5. Educational Methods of One LA 141

6. Learning Outcomes in One LA as Facets of Knowledge in a
Community of Practice 219

7. One LA Educational Outcomes as Democratic Effects of
Association 223

8. Placement of One LA on Continuum of Organizational
Religiosity 227

9. Selected One LA Axioms and their Meanings 243

Appendices
A. Historical Developments in Adult Education 291

B. Comparison of Three Approaches to Education for Social
Change 292

C. Sample IAF National Training Bibliography 293-294

vii
List of Figures

1. Goals and Objectives Informing One LA’s Educational
Program 121

2. One LA’s Framework for Conceptualizing the Nature of
Power 129

3. Schematic of the Organizing Cycle 132

4. Results of a One LA Training Exercise: “Power Analysis”
of Los Angeles 137

5. One LA’s Organizing Cycle and Experiential Learning
Loop 147

6. Summary of One LA’s Educational Objectives and
Methods 166

7. Descriptive Framework Illustration 225

8. Relational Interaction as a Zone of Proximal Development 250

viii

Abstract

An acute need exists for innovative community-based educational models
which can successfully promote civic engagement and help people solve social
problems. One effective example of civic mobilization and training is broad-based
community organizing (BBCO). While BBCO’s effectiveness has been attributed to
its strong emphasis on participant education and political training, research on the
educational aspect of BBCO is sparse. This qualitative case study explored the work
of One LA, an affiliate of a national broad-based organizing network with a long
history, an established approach, and recognized political achievements. The purpose
of this study was to advance understanding of the educational dimensions of One LA
including its methods and outcomes and connections between these educative
processes and the movement’s political project of social transformation. Findings
illuminate a robust educational model which represents an important school for
socially transformative democratic citizenship. This study shows how One LA’s
educational program produces new political change agents, develops skills for
interacting and building relationships among diverse constituencies, and equips
leaders and organizations with specific competencies and practices to bring about
social change in a democratic context.

1
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY

Educational means are commonly put to use in many fields to solve problems
or achieve some aim. Business aggressively employs new educational ideas to raise
the bottom line through knowledge management, organizational learning, instructional
design, and learning communities. The technology industry is frenetically devising
new applications such as virtual classrooms, e-learning and m-learning (mobile
device) strategies, and ways to measure learning and map competencies (Learning
Technologies, 2007). The U.S. Army is currently engaging university engineers and
Hollywood film writers to create cutting edge virtual learning technologies to help
treat post-traumatic stress disorder and enhance leadership training (Lawlor, 2007;
Gordon, 2007, February 9).
Educational interventions in the social-political realm present a different
picture. Public schools have displayed a decreasing capacity to create effective
learning environments (Sarason, 2004; Torres, 2001). Gains in civic knowledge from
traditional civic education have also diminished over the last fifty years (Galston,
2001). Initiatives in the social services sector have largely been ineffectual and calls
are being made for new educational innovations (Isaac & Tempesta, 2004). Many
contemporary social movements and popular education efforts, moreover, are failing

2
to achieve their aims (Schugurensky, 2000). Growing consensus is that the
performance-driven and hegemonic global market is increasingly usurping the concept
and means of education and learning for the world of work and production (Manicom
& Walters, 1997; Editors, 2003).
The need for innovative educational models to address society’s problems and
help remedy “democracy’s troubles,” however, has seldom been higher (Boyte, 2004,
p. ix). Writers from a range of fields such as education, sociology, and political
science, consequently, are converging on the question of how to promote community
mobilization, civic engagement, and social change (Galston, 2001; Isaac & Tempesta,
2004; Sarason, 2004; Schugurensky, 2000). Social movements and community-based
initiatives are once again being looked to for answers and fortunately there are some
positive signs (Galston, 2001; Finger & Asun, 2001; Boyte, 2004; Gecan, 2002;
Osterman, 2002; Putnam, 2003; Rogers, 1990; Warren, M. R. & Wood, 2001; Oakes
& Rogers, 2006). Several contemporary experiments designed to promote
participatory politics and elicit civic engagement are resulting in empowered citizens
who are able to “get things accomplished” (Berry, Portney, & Thomson, 1993). Social
networks are revealing renewed relevance and potential for fostering inter-group
understanding and political capacity (Chalmers, Payes & Piester, 1997). Various other
types of community-based projects underway are also receiving initial positive
reviews (Fung & Wright, 2003).
The focus of this study is on one such promising experiment being carried out
in the urban expanse of Los Angeles County. The citizen’s organization called One

3
LA was founded in 2004 for the purpose of organizing and equipping
community members to build and exert grassroots political power. One LA is an
affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), an international community
organizing network with a long history and recognized achievements in areas such as
public education, employment, immigration, and housing. One LA and the IAF
represent a particular strand of community organizing known as “broad-based.”
Broad-based community organizing (BBCO) seeks to amass and assert democratic
power at the grassroots level by organizing and training entire civic organizations and
One LA currently has over 100 member organizations throughout Los Angeles County
including schools, religious groups, unions, and other non-profits and which represent
a variety of ethnic, religious, and economic strata.
BBCO is a growing movement that is drawing increased scholarly attention
and which observers see as potentially playing a significant role in the public sphere. It
has been credited with building social capital and political capacity in individuals and
communities and revitalizing grassroots democratic participation (Osterman, 2002;
Putnam, 2003; Smock, 2004; Rogers, 1990; Warren, M. R., 2001; Wood, 2002).
Central to this movement, but largely unaddressed, however, is its strongly
educational nature. Boyte (2004) has suggested that a strong emphasis on participant
education and political training is what makes BBCO one of the most effective models
of civic engagement and others have alluded to BBCO’s important educational
component as well (Jesson & Newman, 2004; Osterman, 2002; Wood, 2002).

4
Research on the educational aspect of BBCO, nevertheless, remains nascent
(Jacobs, 2003; Scott, 2003, 2003, July; Shirley, 1997, 2002). This study of One LA
aims to explore and understand the educational dimensions of this important
movement.

Problem Statement
Calls for research across multiple fields are focusing on the need for greater
understanding into the role of educational processes in social movements for bringing
about civic engagement and social change. BBCO represents a movement with a
documented record of political achievements and a recognized educational
component. It seeks to promote participatory democracy at the grassroots level in
urban communities largely through educational means: by teaching the art of citizen-
led politics and training community leaders. It reflects a strong reliance on nonformal
and informal learning activities and has been called a ‘learning laboratory’ and the
‘people’s university.’ This substantive educational and learning component of BBCO,
however, has escaped the focused attention of most analysts thus far. While an
emphasis on training and education has been linked to the movement’s success, little
work has been done to explain exactly how its educational processes operate. What are
the precise methods used? How and to what extent is learning achieved? And, how are
learning outcome linked to political outcomes? Such questions lie at the core of this
study and success in this exploration promises to illuminate an important social
change making strategy.

5
Purpose of the Study
This qualitative inquiry into One LA was designed to reveal this critical but
little understood educational component of the BBCO movement. One objective of
this study was to advance understanding of the educational features of One LA
including its educational methods and outcomes. Another objective was to identify
connections or linkages between these educative processes and the movement’s
political project of social transformation.

Significance of Study
This research promises to inform the broader field of education and social
change by responding to the call for general studies of the learning processes of social
movements (Foley, 1999; Schugurensky, 2002; Stromquist, 2000) and for specific
analyses into the “linkages between learning, power, and organizational change”
(Finger & Asun, 2001, p. 179) – a dynamic that is ostensibly central to BBCO.
Stromquist (2007) provides a recent instance of research into this dynamic, which
focuses on the work of feminist NGOs in Latin America. A key purpose of her study is
to “make visible” the educational action of feminist NGOs and illuminate the
educational nature of social change strategies – an area that has “not been sufficiently
recognized and thus examined” (Stromquist, 2007, p. 5). BBCO therefore represents
another vibrant arena in which to explore the nuances and possibilities of the role and
uses of education and learning in bringing about social and political transformation.

6
Approaching BBCO through an educational lens thus promises to
reveal an important aspect of a social movement with implications not only for
educators, but for social and political scientists as well. Social and political analyses
frequently focus on whether a social movement has reached its political goals or
brought change to a social system. An educational framework may offer another way
to understand and assess a movement’s effectiveness. By examining the nature and
efficacy of BBCO’s educational processes, I intend to advance our understanding of
how participants learn and change as a result of their participation in this movement
and how individual and organizational learning is connected to social and political
change.

Research Questions
The following two questions served to guide this study:
1) What are the educational and learning processes inherent in the activity of One
LA?
2) What are the connections between these education and learning processes and
One LA’s political objective of social change?

Limitations of this Study
The findings and conclusions derived from this research are limited to One LA
the case which was investigated. This study was unable to produce findings or
generate conclusions which may be confidently applied beyond the boundaries of One

7
LA itself (Merriam & Simpson, 1995). Another related limitation of this
research is the possible risk of subjective bias on the part of the researcher due to the
narrow range of observations associated with a single case study design.

Organization of Study
This chapter has presented a brief background to this study, including the
problem under investigation and the purpose of the study, the significance of this
research, and the questions to be answered. Chapter two reviews the pertinent
literature and highlights the areas in need of further inquiry. It addresses the following
topics: modalities of education typically found in education for social change projects;
main approaches to education for social change found within the broader adult
education landscape; a comparison of different conceptualizations of democracy and
their implications for the practice of education for social change; and an overview of
the BBCO movement. Chapter three presents the conceptual framework and
methodology used in this study, including a description of the research setting and
participants, the selection process and rationale, the research design, and the
procedures used. Chapters four through seven present the findings of the study.
Chapter four covers the background and organizational features of One LA, and
chapters five, six, and seven address One LA’s educational objectives, methods, and
outcomes, respectively. Chapter eight presents final conclusions and implications.

8
CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE

An area of educational study that reflects a long history and that is receiving
renewed scholarly attention concerns the use of education to bring about social change
(Finger & Asun, 2001; Foley, 2004; Jesson & Newman, 2004; Imel, 1999). Social
change proponents generally fault formal education structures for maintenance of the
status quo and instead pursue alternative sites for the “creation and transmission of
transformative knowledge” (Stromquist, 2004, p. 40). Alternative learning spaces can
be found in various types of social action and generally involve nonformal and
informal education methods and the use of social networks (Foley, 1999, 2004;
Schugurensky, 2000; Stromquist, 2000, 2004, 2007). Education for social change
stands in contrast to a more functional orientation which has historically dominated
the broader adult education landscape (Finger & Asun, 2001; Foley, 1999). Projects
employing education for social change are numerous nonetheless, but they typically
receive a variety of labels that obscure important differences. A closer look at some
main approaches, such as transformative learning, popular education, and participatory
action research, helps to clarify important distinctions in educational processes and
connections to social change (Allman, 1999; Kemmis, & McTaggart, 2000; Mayo,
1999; Mezirow, 1978; Paulo Freire, 1970). Different conceptualizations of democracy,
moreover, entail further different implications for the practice of education for social
change (Galston, 2001; Callan, 2004). A growing contemporary democratic

9

experiment is broad-based community organizing (BBCO), a social movement that
has been recognized as holding potential to increase our understanding of education
for social change in a democratic context (Boyte, 2004; Gecan, 2002; Osterman, 2002;
Putnam, 2003; Rogers, 1990; Warren, M. R. & Wood, 2001; Warren, M. R., 2001;
Wood, 2002). Finger and Asun (2001) point out that if adult education is to recover a
meaningful social change agenda, especially in today’s increasingly industrialized and
globalized world, researchers must clarify both what social change means today and
the appropriate educational means of getting there. The connections between social
change and individual and collective learning, they argue, must be better understood
both on conceptual and practical levels. The purpose of this literature review is to
consolidate what we know about the possibilities for, and uses of, education and
learning for democratic social change and to identify issues in need of further
elaboration.

10
Modalities of Education for Social Change
Social movements, such as political liberation struggles, environmental
campaigns, feminist movements, and other grassroots social and political activities,
are increasingly being recognized as important alternative educational means for the
creation and promotion of socially transformative knowledge (Foley, 2004;
Stromquist, 2004). The main forms or modalities of the education and learning
identified in movements such as these include nonformal education activities, informal
and incidental learning, and the promotion and use of social networks (Foley, 1999,
2004; Schugurensky, 2000; Stromquist, 2000, 2004, 2007).
Nonformal education can be defined as “any organized, systematic educational
activity carried on outside the framework of the formal system...” and thus
encompasses an extremely broad spectrum of programs (Coombs, 1985, p. 23).
Prevailing conceptions of nonformal adult education tend to emphasize “value-
neutral” educational programs such as leisure studies or skill acquisition. La Belle’s
(1976) typology of nonformal education activities included four categories: vocational
education; adult literacy and basic skills programs; agricultural or health extension
programs; and community development. A significant amount of nonformal education,
however, is put to use for social and/or political purposes that are “complex and
contested” (Foley, 1999, p. 2). Torres (1990) has divided nonformal education
activities according to their “underlying rationalities,” distinguishing functionalist
efforts which promote economic development and modernization from structuralist

11
approaches which seek political or social change. Stromquist (2007)
similarly distinguishes transformative nonformal education as those activities that
contain an explicit political component and are linked to collective mobilization
strategies.
Informal learning is defined as the accumulation of knowledge and skills from
one’s experience without the aid of formal or nonformal curricula or instruction. An
important subset of informal education involves incidental learning, which occurs in
the course of one’s activities but without learner intentionality and, therefore, is said to
involve a tacit component (Foley, 1999; Schugurensky 2000). Knowledge about
informal and incidental learning is sparse relative to the literature on nonformal
education activities, but research suggests that a substantial amount of learning
resulting from involvement in social action occurs informally and/or incidentally
(Foley, 1999, 2004; Schugurensky, 2002; Stromquist, 2007).
Foley (1999) has examined informal and incidental learning in a variety of
social action settings, such as a successful drive to preserve a rainforest, women’s
neighborhood centers, and resistance to workplace restructuring by workers in a coal
mine. Two related outcomes of “learning in struggle” emerge in his analysis. First,
informal and incidental learning led to the adoption of important new skills and
knowledge. Activists in a rainforest campaign, for example, gained significant
expertise in ecology, the workings of the political system and mass media, group
management, and strategic leadership. The learning also led to changes in participants’
worldviews, a process Foley relates to Freire’s (1970) conscientization and to what

12
Mezirow (2000) has termed perspective transformation. The rainforest
activists also replaced “faith in experts and authority” with an understanding of the
“ways in which expertise and authority are embedded in social interests, power
relations and epistemologies” (Foley, 1999, p. 39). New expertise of their own
combined with a realization of the contested nature of social space produced actions
that led to substantive change. Schugurensky’s (2001, 2003) research on participatory
democracy leads him to also conclude that experiments in political inclusion constitute
an important educational space in which most knowledge acquired is informal and
incidental. Such knowledge, he notes, is powerful but difficult to recognize and to
articulate – “that which we know but cannot tell” (Polanyi, 1967, p. 4) - and represents
a vital area that is largely unexplored. Schugurensky nevertheless describes learning
outcomes from the participatory budget of Porto Alegre, Brazil which include the
acquisition of political knowledge and skills, an increased sense of political efficacy,
greater political participation and concern for the common good, empowered
neighborhood associations, and a reduction in political Clientelism.
Stromquist (2000, 2004, 2007) has also uncovered the significant role that
informal learning and social networks play in creating transformative knowledge in
feminist NGOs in Latin America. Women gained management and leadership skills,
for instance, through the process of running organizations and mobilizing members for
actions. Participation in issue campaigns and demonstrations was found to create
spaces for the formation of a feminist identity and a sense of agency. Utilization of
mass media to convey feminist information offered marginalized women rich lessons

13
about various means of expression and the functioning of government.
These and other activities increased participants’ capacity for democratic participation,
social analysis, and the presentation of counter-hegemonic views. Social networks
were also identified as a critical link between nonformal and informal learning and the
feminist movement’s political objectives. Stromquist describes how feminists working
with low-income women have increasingly consolidated their efforts and found the
creation of formal organizational structures to be necessary. These structures then
serve important transformative functions assisting women to become active political
agents by combining “individual agency and organizational structure” (Stromquist,
2000, p. 50) and providing marginalized groups with vitally needed space in which to
practice new skills and gain access to social networks. Networks of like-minded
individuals from disparate fields and socioeconomic strata in turn contribute to the
creation of social capital and the means to collectively contest dominant societal
arrangements (Stromquist, 2007).

Approaches to Education for Social Change
Various projects employing the use of ‘education for social change’ have
received numerous labels, such as: popular, radical, emancipatory, liberatory,
transformative, counter hegemonic, and participatory; or, still other terms reflecting
programmatic foci, such as environmental education, feminist pedagogy, aboriginal
education, human rights education, and peace education (Schugurensky, 2000). Such
terms do not sufficiently distinguish important theoretical and methodological

14
differences. Susan Imel (1999), for example, in her effort to tease apart
various learning for social change approaches, asks “how emancipatory is the learning
which they produce?” What constitutes emancipatory learning, however, is a matter of
some debate. Cranton (1994) defines it broadly as a process marked by some new
action or behavior, leading to the removal of constraints which limit our control over
our lives. Thomas (as cited in Stromquist, 2004) offers other criteria, holding that
emancipatory projects must include a language of critique and an alternative view of
education, they must interrogate knowledge, promote agency, and critically examine
issues of gender, class, and race. Foley, on the other hand, proposes that satisfactory
accounts of emancipatory learning or “learning in struggle” address the social and
political dynamics of context, or the “connections between learning and education on
the one hand, and analysis of political economy, micro-politics, ideology and
discourse on the other” (1999, p. 9).
The following brief overview of historical developments in the broader field of
adult education demonstrates some of the connections between theoretical trends and
sociopolitical contexts. Both functionalist and more change oriented programs can be
seen in this broader context. It will be useful, following this brief review, to take a
more nuanced look at three specific approaches to the utilization of education for
social change: transformative learning, popular education, and participatory action
research. Such a comparison, while risking oversimplification, will add further clarity
to an important area of learning that is frequently obscured.

15
Historical Developments in Adult Education
Social and political contexts have strongly shaped the adult education
movement. One of the best surveys of this reality is by Finger and Asun (2001), who
lay out how the influences of traditions such as American pragmatism, psychology,
Marxist thought, and scientific humanism, have produced regional and theoretical
variations and distinctly different uses of adult education. A Marxist interpretation of
history and a humanistic vision, for example, can be associated with early European
adult education efforts to redress negative social impacts from the Industrial
Revolution, as portrayed by the Scandinavian folk high school movement. More recent
institutionalization of these and other influences in Europe, including pragmatist
thought, can be seen in UNESCO’s notion of “éducation permanente,” or lifelong
education, whereby adult education has been placed in the service of creating an
equitable and sustainable democratic society in which “everybody is learning all the
time” (Finger & Asun, 2001, p. 23). North American adult education projects, in
contrast to Europe’s emphasis on social and political outcomes, reflect greater focus
on the individual. Eduard Lindeman, the “father” of North American adult education,
shared Dewey’s pragmatism and emphasized non-vocational adult education as a
means of helping individuals solve problems and add meaning to their experience.
Experiential learning and symbolic interactionist approaches followed in the
pragmatist vein and have been occupied largely with organizational learning and self-
development, respectively. The notion of andragogy, on the other hand, melded
pragmatism and humanistic psychology and built on the autonomy and self-actualizing

16
capability of adults and their assumed intrinsic motivation to grow and learn.
Finger and Asun also point to forms of adult education linked with American
radicalism, such as the Highlander Center of Tennessee, union activism, and the
critical school of adult education theorists. Two approaches, for example, drawing on
critical theory are the concept of ‘transformative learning’ associated with Jack
Mezirow and feminist pedagogy (Elias & Merriam, 1995). Despite a social change
emphasis within American radicalism, Finger and Asun note its strong pragmatic
orientation and its relatively weak Marxist ties. Similarly, Elias and Merriam (1995)
distinguish between “liberatory” models and “gender” models of feminist pedagogy,
the former drawing on a neo-Marxist structural interpretation and the latter being more
concerned with individual relations in society. In the Southern context, however,
Marxism emerges as a predominate influence having informed the consciousness-
raising approach of Freire, numerous other struggles to which popular education has
been put to use, and, to a lesser degree, the more recent evolution of participatory
action research.
A brief survey of this sort begins to illuminate the “underlying rationalities” of
the different educational projects and the main regional and theoretical developments
within adult education (see Appendix A for visual overview). It highlights the
predominant focus on individual growth and development, while also illustrating how
some projects are a response to the effects of the modern economic development
paradigm. Still others can be seen as directly contesting oppressive political or
economic norms and institutions and/or aspiring to be agents of social change on a

17
deeper level (Elias & Merriam, 1995; Finger & Asun, 2001; Foley, 1999). It
is appropriate now to look more closely at three ‘education for social change’
approaches in particular: transformative learning, popular education, and participatory
action research. Comparing what we know about these three approaches, in terms of
their goals, targeted problems, educational features, and mechanism of social change,
will shed additional light on important distinctions in this educational domain.

Transformative Learning
Transformative learning theory emerged nearly three decades ago with the
publication of a study by Jack Mezirow (1978) on women reentering college through
programs linked to the feminist movement. Through this grounded theory study,
Mezirow identified a key shift in women’s views about themselves and society which
he termed a ‘perspective transformation.’ Now one of the most influential concepts in
adult learning, a perspective transformation involves enhancing one’s “meaning
perspective” (frame of reference or worldview), by discarding faulty psychological
assumptions derived from primary caregivers in childhood or from existing socio-
cultural paradigms later in life (Baumgartner, Lee, Birden, & Flowers, 2003; Mezirow,
2000). Because one’s worldview and self-concept are tightly bound, adult learning
typically consists of “efforts to add compatible ideas to elaborate our fixed frames of
reference” (Mezirow, 2000, p. 18). Transformative learning, on the other hand, which
is frequently “triggered” through a “disorienting dilemma,” disrupts the prevailing
mechanism and elicits a process leading to a modified, more dependable frame of

18
reference. A more dependable frame of reference, in turn, produces
interpretations of experience which are more justifiable, when subjected to discourse
and empirical assessment, and more “permeable” or open to other views and capable
of further change.
According to the theory, a perspective transformation is the culmination of a
multi-phase learning process
1
featuring critical reflection about one’s experience and
reflective discourse with others. This process, which may be sudden (“epochal”) or
incremental, can occur in any number of settings. Mezirow provides the example of a
“traditionally oriented” woman who enrolls in a late afternoon adult education class
and over time begins
to wonder why the other women in the class stick around to discuss interesting
issues when she has to rush home to make dinner for her husband…[By]
becoming critically reflective of her view on this topic…a related progression
of critically reflective questions about her assumptions…can lead to a
transformation in her habit of mind regarding her role as a woman. (2000, p.
21)

Mezirow also dismisses the notion of a neutral educator and instead sees their role as
facilitators, or creator of opportunities for transformative learning, preferring to
describe them as “cultural activists” (2000, p.30).

1
The phases include some variation of the following: a disorienting dilemma; self-examination
evoking an emotional response; critical assessment of assumptions; awareness that others share similar
transformations; exploration of options involving new roles, relationships, or actions; planning a new
strategy; acquiring knowledge and skills needed to carry out the new strategy; trying out new
roles/actions; increasing competence and confidence in new roles/relationships; and, integration of new
perspective into one’s life (Mezirow, 2000, p. 22).

19
Turning to the link between learning and social change,
transformative theory holds, in short, that individual perspective transformations will
lead to transformations in society. For example, the fostering of capacities for critical
reflection and rational discourse “creates understandings for participatory democracy”
(Mezirow, 2000, p. 30). Transformative learners, moreover, who share “social or
organizational change as objectives” may “form cells of resistance to unexamined
cultural norms in organizations, communities, families, and political life,” thereby
becoming “active agents of cultural change” (Mezirow, 2000, p. 30). While
transformative educators might be portrayed as cultural activists, the theory ultimately
defers to the objectives of learners, which may or may not contain a social change
component. A tentative connection between learning and social change, consequently,
is at the heart of much critique of transformative theory (Brookfield, 2000; Wiessner
& Mezirow, 2000). Finger and Asun (2001) are particularly critical, calling the
transformative learning view of social change “wishful thinking” (p. 60). They trace
the problem to Mezirow’s theoretical framework - his grounding in pragmatism and
symbolic interactionism and his selective reliance on Habermas and Freire, by which
he endorses critical reflection but fails to integrate associated political analyses.
Mezirow, it should also be stated, readily ascribes a limit to education in
bringing about social change and recognizes a need for broader political mobilization.
Here, as Brookfield comments, “Mezirow is in good radical company” (Brookfield,
2000, p. 144). Myles Horton (1990) and Paulo Freire (Shor & Freire, 1987), for

20
example, both emphasized the difference between education and political
organizing. They pointed out that, while educational practices might lead to greater
awareness of the nature of oppression and the means to combat it, it is collective
political power which provides a “lever” for actual political transformation (Shor &
Freire, 1987, p. 130).

Popular Education
Popular education is most commonly associated with the consciousness-raising
work of Paulo Freire (1970) (Mayo, 1999; Allman, 1999). Antecedents of the notion
of popular education, however, are widespread and have been attributed to a variety of
movements including the French Revolution (Kerka, 1997), British Owenite and
Chartist efforts (Jesson & Newman, 2004), and the American struggle for civil rights
(Ebert, Burford, & Brian, 2003). La Belle (1987) also recognized the contribution of a
long tradition of innovative educational strategies associated with popular struggle in
Latin America and the Caribbean by indigenous peoples, women, intellectuals,
peasants, and other subjugated groups. La Belle, moreover, points to a gap between
concepts attributed to Freire and those associated with popular education. Drawing on
the work of Latin American scholars, La Belle suggests that while consciousness-
raising represents a “means for understanding the mechanisms of oppression and for
exploring alternatives to make society more just,” it fails to promote actions required

21
to change society (La Belle, 1987, p. 204). Popular education, on the other
hand, can be distinguished by its association not only with greater political orientation
and an emphasis on learning, but also with an actual organized political effort to
transform societal institutions.
2

Popular education’s far reaching roots, however, are superseded by an even
wider range of contemporary projects which claim or are assigned the label
(Schugurensky, 2000). The growing number of movements which are attempting to
apply the popular education tradition to contemporary challenges begs the question:
How is popular education to be defined? Schugurensky’s (2000) outline of traits
characterizing popular education is helpful. In his view, popular education contains the
following:
a) A rejection of the neutrality of adult education, which implies
recognition of the relations between knowledge and power and between
structure and agency and acknowledges that education can play a role in not
only reinforcing but also challenging oppressive social relations.
b) An explicit political commitment to work with the poor and the
marginalized and to assist social movements in fostering progressive social and
economic change.

2
This distinction between consciousness raising and popular education does not necessarily
contradict Freire as his own acknowledgement attests, as cited in the previous paragraph. Nevertheless,
the precise nature of Freire’s contribution to the practice of popular education continues to be a matter
of some debate (Schugurensky, 2000).

22
c) A participatory pedagogy that focuses on the collective,
originates from people’s daily lived experience, and promotes a dialogue
between popular knowledge and systematized (scientific) knowledge.
d) An attempt to constantly relate education with social action, linking
critical reflection with and the use of mobilization and organizational
structures and strategies.
This conceptualization of social change embedded in popular education thus combines
consciousness-raising with political organizing and mobilization in order to target
oppressive social relations and systemic political or economic imbalances. This
process assumes participation of the oppressed in the analysis of problems,
identification of possible solutions, and development of means to acquire and exert
political power to bring change. Such an approach typically requires the presence or
development of alternative institutional forms, namely, social movements, grassroots
organizations, or other community based projects.
Paulston and LeRoy (1982) point to the residential adult education program of
the Scandinavian folk high schools as a “telling example” of a popular education
movement. These folk high schools, established by farmers and workers explicitly to
challenge the social norms of the dominant class, are credited with playing a key role
in the “peaceful reorientation and reconstruction of Scandinavian societies” (Paulston
& LeRoy, 1982, p. 352). Another more recent example is the Highlander Research and
Education Center, recognized for its long-time and effective work training grassroots
community leaders (Ebert, Burford, & Brian, 2003; Prajuli, 1986). Founded by Myles

23
Horton as a means of reaching groups that lacked access to traditional
education, Highlander’s workshops and classes are designed to bring about both
individual transformation and fundamental social change. The feminist movement in
Latin America represents another contemporary example of the notion of popular
education as presented here. This feminist “struggle for equality” and ultimately for a
“new social order” has combined consciousness-raising and empowerment activities
(utilizing nonformal and informal adult education) with external political actions
designed to put pressure on existing state structures (Stromquist, 2004, 2007). External
actions have included wide scale mobilizations and campaigns, the dissemination of
information through major media outlets, and the creation of formal structures in the
form of women-led NGOs. While not without challenges, the women’s movement in
Latin America has helped poor women become active political agents both
individually and collectively, bringing about tangible changes in legislation and
political representation.
Despite the prevalence of this approach, observers have identified several
obstacles that prevent popular education from being the transformative agent it is
intended to be. Historical evidence suggests that top-down approaches and outside
leadership have tended to dominate, diminishing popular education’s participatory
nature, and that cross-class linkages have been difficult to sustain (La Belle, 1987).
Popular educators have also faced challenges in addressing severe imbalances in
political knowledge, access to political mechanisms, and strategic know-how between
dominant and subjugated groups (La Belle, 1987). More recent analysis by Findlay

24
(1994) of new social movements targeting issues such as peace, the
environment, gender, disabled and prisoners rights, etc., with the goal of “progressive
social transformation,” has assessed their potential to affect real transformation.
Findlay concludes that while they do reflect an active challenge to the dominant
ideology, such movements exhibit a lack of coalitional power: “The preponderant
situation is that many of the separate movements remain at cross-purposes, if not often
mutually suspicious and occasionally antagonistic when presented with opportunities
for common action” (1994, p. 120). Contemporary popular education projects have
also been seen to fail in generating a unified agenda among progressives in the wake
of dominant neo-liberal policies, market driven solutions, and post-modern challenges
to notions such as “emancipation” (Schugurensky, 2000).

Participatory Action Research
A third useful approach to review is that of participatory action research (PAR)
– sometimes referred to as participatory research but distinct from other concepts such
as action research, or action learning. PAR generally can be distinguished by three of
its core attributes: the notion of a project’s “shared ownership” among local and
outside agents; an emphasis on community- or participant-based analyses and
interpretations of social problems; and, the formulation of some form of community-
based response (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000, p. 568). While aligned in some ways
with popular education and the consciousness-raising of Freire, PAR contains subtle
but important differences which make its inclusion here valuable. First, while PAR is

25
inspired by Marxism and liberation theology, its roots are more indigenous
to the South and less reflective of “northern concepts” upon which Freire draws, such
as critical theory and phenomenology (Finger & Asun, 2001). PAR also emerged
mainly in rural contexts and in several regions outside of Latin America, including
Africa, India, and Bangladesh, and was crafted primarily as a response to the
disillusionment with the UN’s development efforts in the 1960s. Some of the key
emphases of early proponents of PAR, therefore, included ‘self-reliance,’ ‘autonomy,’
‘auto-centered development, and ‘another development.’ PAR can therefore be said to
embody resistance top-down development efforts by which
peoples’ endogenous knowledge is being or has already been destroyed, and
replaced by Northern expert knowledge and corresponding Northern
technologies, world-views, power structures, and so on. (Finger & Asun, 2001,
p. 91)
PAR seeks to not only unveil the nature of oppression, but to help peoples
understand how Northern development processes undermine their endogenous
knowledge. Connected to this is a critique of the “belief in science as a privileged way
of knowing” (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000, p. 594). As a result, PAR places strong
emphasis on utilizing (or restoring) local means of economic production as well as
local means of knowledge production. PAR thus adds to the consciousness-raising of
Freire both an explicit critique of the modern development model and an
epistemological dimension (Finger & Asun, 2001).
PAR’s methodology typically involves some variation of a spiral of praxis
cycles incorporating the phases of planning, acting, and reflecting (Kemmis &
McTaggart, 2000, p. 595). Planning stages frequently involve identifying local or

26
traditional technologies or practices that sustain a community’s livelihood,
analyses of problems facing the community, and devising solutions that build on both
local and external knowledge (Finger & Asun, 2001). Acting involves the
implementation of solutions and is closely intertwined with reflection on the processes
themselves as well as on consequent outcomes. The stress in PAR is on “actual, not
abstract, practices” and on facilitating learning that elicits “real and material changes”
in what people do and how they interact with the world (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000,
p. 596). Some suggest that PAR is more “grounded” than other approaches, focusing
as it does on concrete affairs involving health, sanitation, food production, and so on
(Finger & Asun, 2001). Some of the additional features that must also be included in
an accurate characterization of PAR include the following: It is a community process
focusing on the relationship between the individual and social realms; it is
“emancipatory” in its aim to help people release themselves from irrational,
unproductive, unjust, and unsatisfying social structures; and, it is critical of dominant
descriptions or interpretations of the world (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000, pp. 597-
598).
Some argue that PAR, thus conceived, is a model with great potential for
helping developing communities in particular “learn their way out” of modern social
and economic dilemmas (Finger & Asun, 2001). Others also cast a bright future for
PAR, and place it within a larger movement of “action research” orientations that aim
to challenge orthodox research traditions (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000). PAR is not

27
left without critiques, however. Charges include that PAR does represent
rigorous science, that it can be deceptive and manipulative, and that it is “naïve” in
light of the magnitude of the global development picture (Kemmis & McTaggart,
2000; Finger & Asun, 2001).

Comparison: Transformative Learning, Popular Education, PAR
The approaches laid out above share certain similarities, for example, each
casts an alternative social vision to the status quo, utilizes consciousness-raising in the
learning process, and posits a role for outside agents or educators. It is instructive,
however, to consider areas in which these three approaches diverge. While each
approach promotes an alternative vision of society, for example, variations between
them spring from markedly different social contexts. Mezirow, writing from within an
advanced, liberal democracy, pragmatically deposits hope for social change in
transformed, but socially responsible, individual citizens. Contrasting this are the
vastly more concrete oppressions such as dictatorial regimes, colonial legacy, and
Western imposed development programs to which popular education and PAR are a
response. The link between participant change and structural change programs is
therefore stronger in popular education and PAR. Further distinctions between popular
education and PAR are evident. PAR contains an epistemological critique of Western
notions such as scientific rationalism, with a greater emphasis on preserving or

28
retrieving local forms of knowledge than is the case in popular education.
Whereas popular education has been defined by its use of explicit political
mobilization or alternative institutional forms, PAR’s reliance on such means is less
fixed. According to Kemmis and McTaggart, participants in PAR
explore ways in which their practices are shaped and constrained by wider
social structures and consider whether they can intervene to release themselves
from these constraints – or, if they can’t, how best to work within and around
them to minimize the extent to which they contribute to irrationality, lack of
productivity…injustice, and dissatisfactions. (2000, p. 598)

Finger and Asun (2001) call PAR’s resistance to Northern paradigms and its emphasis
on local forms of production and knowledge laudable, even if naïve in their view.
Conversely, they fault popular education for its frequent co-optation by Western
development efforts. On the other hand, various critiques of these sorts have been
directed at both popular education and PAR as well as at other permutations of these
approaches.
Each of these approaches might easily produce programs that could be called
‘education for social change,’ or that might be brought under the labels listed at the
outset of this section. They each reflect an attempt to some degree a desire to contest
oppressive arrangements and affect social change. These approaches, however, are by
no means the same, but instead reveal important differences in terms of vision,
definition of problems, view of the learning process, and their means of social change
(see Appendix B for summary of these contrasts). Such variations again are largely the
result of different sociopolitical contexts which produced variations in the constraints
which limit control over people’s lives from place to place. Also, different

29
sociopolitical contexts provide varying measures of support or space for
projects to engage in promoting agency or the critical examination of prevailing
knowledge, economic arrangements, or issues such as gender, class, and race. This
raises important questions concerning the modern democratic context: What goals,
constraints, and possibilities exist for education for social change movements within a
contemporary democratic state?

Education for Social Change in a Contemporary Democratic Context
The use of educational means to promote democratic engagement is an issue
receiving renewed attention among democratic theorists (Galston, 2001; Callan,
2004). A number of developments have pushed this topic back to the fore, including
increasing cultural heterogeneity and global interdependence as well as feminist,
communitarian, and other critiques of the dominant liberal notion of the
“unencumbered self” (Callan, 2004). Longstanding concerns, moreover, about the lack
of civic engagement among youth have intensified, as Galston (2001) states:
If the only significant differences [in civic engagement] were cross-sectional,
today’s heightened concern would be myopic, but there are also disturbing
trends over time. If we compare generations rather than cohorts – that is, if we
compare today’s young adults not with today’s older adults but with the young
generations of the past – we find evidence of diminished civic attachment. (p.
219)

Fundamental issues, consequently, are being addressed, including the proper role of
democratic citizens, the purpose of civic education, and types of educational processes
to be employed. While some consensus is emerging, different and sometimes
conflicting conceptions of democracy abound and often entail radically different

30
notions of citizenship and of the role of education in the political formation
and activity of citizens (Galston, 2001; Callan, 2004). I will illustrate this here by
comparing different conceptions of democracy with respect to factors such as their
underlying rationales, views of citizenship and citizenship formation, as well as
possible implications for the role of education in democratic social change. To avoid
some of the “conceptual disarray”
3
(Diamond, 1999, p. 7) attending the study of
democracy, I focus here on two quite different concepts of democracy which have
received considerable attention: liberal or representative democracy and participatory
democracy (Boyte, 2004; Fung, 2004; Held, 1993, 1996). While this may omit
important conceptual distinctions, it has been suggested that contestations about the
meaning of democracy are “often really disputes about how much democracy is
desirable or practicable” (Beetham, 1993, p. 55). Rather than parse the concept of
democracy, therefore, my purpose is to simply draw a helpful comparison between
two contrasting levels and means of democracy – or of the practice of popular control
over political decision-making – with respect to implications for the practice of

3
The literature is replete with contemporary efforts to categorize democracy. Held (1996)
identifies ten models of democracy from classical Athens to the present day. Lijphart (1999) organizes
thirty-six modern democracies along a continuum between to two prototypical forms: “consensus
democracy” and “majoritarian democracy.” A review by Collier and Levitsky (1997) finds that recent
attempts to differentiate emerging democracies have produced “hundreds” of subtypes including “male
democracy,” “military-dominated democracy,” and “proto-democracy.” A substantial portion of
literature has also been devoted to the matter of distinguishing democracy from non-democracy, some
arguing that a political system is a “bounded whole” which cannot be “half-democratic,” while others
hold that “democracy is always a matter of degree” (Collier & Adcock, 1999, p. 538).

31
education for social change. I conclude this section by drawing on a third
conceptualization of the democratic sphere as an ongoing site of “contentious
pluralism” (Guidry & Sawyer, 2003), which also has direct relevance to the aims of
this study.

Liberal Representative Democratic Perspective
Liberal democracy, while having ties to ancient and renaissance political
forms, is primarily rooted in the conditions and rise of liberal thought and can be
viewed as part of the “attempt to uphold the values of freedom of choice, reason and
toleration in the face of tyranny, the absolutist system and religious intolerance”
(Held, 1996, p. 74). In carving out a “uniquely private sphere” independent from the
church on the one side and absolutist power on the other, two liberal notions rose in
importance: the state as an “impersonal, legally circumscribed structure of power”;
and the “free and equal” individual with natural rights. The preeminent question
among political and social theorists then became how to reconcile the “sovereign
state” with the “sovereign people” (Held, 1996, pp. 74-75). Various responses
included Hobbes’ advocacy of a strong state to protect citizens from their own devices
and Locke’s charge that the state’s role be limited to the ‘preservation of life, liberty
and estate.’ These and subsequent elaborations - by the likes of Madison, Bentham,
James Mills, and others - all tended to converge on certain basic tenets which flowed
from liberal thought. Beetham (1993) lists five, for example: legal and constitutional
protection of specific rights and liberties; separation of state powers; a representative

32
system of government; emphasis on a limited state and an autonomous
sphere of private activity; and, an epistemological stance placing the determination of
societal good in the hands of the people rather than in special or divine revelation. The
early formulations of liberal democracy can be seen in the contours of the dominant
contemporary form of liberal democracy, what Held (1996) calls “legal democracy.”
Reflecting the influence of the New Right, legal democracy places special emphasis
on the centrality of a free-market, leading to charges of political bias toward ostensibly
powerless market forces.
Liberal democratic theory as described above holds distinct implications
concerning the concepts of citizenship and civil society. A citizen of a liberal
democratic state, for example, is above all an individual who is guaranteed “formal
equality (before the law) and formal freedom (from arbitrary treatment) in the form of
civil and political liberties or rights” (Held, 1996, p. 307). Liberty, for the citizen in a
liberal democracy, is therefore to be understood mainly in negative terms (‘negative
freedom’), as protection from unwarranted interventions (Boyte & Farr, 1997; Held,
1996). ‘Positive freedom,’ or the capacity to initiate action, is less developed in the
model, and largely associated with the act of voting, or with pressurizing the state on
occasion through lobbying or mobilization. The institution of representation, however,
whether deemed necessary due to time and spatial constraints or as the best means of
eliciting collective wisdom, establishes a clear boundary between political activity by
citizens and career politics, reinforcing the “notion that politics and public affairs are

33
what professionals do” (Boyte & Farr, 1997). Therefore, in a departure from
classical or renaissance traditions, liberal democracy largely confines the notion of the
political to activities of government, thereby limiting its focus on the civil sphere to
the matter of creating arrangements (legal, institutional) for the protection of the ‘free
and equal’ character its citizens (Held, 1996).
It is fairly simple to draw from the preceding a picture of the normative use of
political learning among citizens from a liberal democratic perspective. It consists,
generally, in the traditional notion of civic education. As Boyte and Farr explain, “if
the center of action in governance and public affairs is government, then the key
matter in terms of citizenship education is transmitting knowledge of what happens in
government: How a bill becomes a law; how professional lobbyists succeed; how
parties mobilize constituency interests” (1997, p. 3). This type of civic education
conventionally has been linked to formal education, involving both traditional
classroom learning and participation in extracurricular activities such as student
government, debate teams, and, occasionally, internships in local government offices.
Galston’s (2001) recent review of empirical work on formal civic education and
political socialization provides a helpful overview of this educational perspective.
First, Galston gleans from his review several reasons why it is said to matter “whether
young people can identify their senators or name the branches of government” (2001,
p. 223). The resulting list of rationales reinforces the notion of citizen as rights bearer
and voter, as well as the theme that what is important (politically) is “what happens in
government.” Reasons Galston cites include, for example: “political knowledge fosters

34
citizens’ ‘enlightened self-interest’”; “more knowledgeable voters display
much higher levels of ideological consistency”; without a basic level of civic
knowledge “especially concerning political institutions and processes, it is difficult for
them to understand political events”; “civic knowledge can alter our views on specific
public issues”; civic knowledge decreases “mistrust of…public life”; and, more
knowledgeable citizens are “more likely to support core democratic principles” (2001,
pp. 223-224). A final rationale that Galston found is that political knowledge affects
participation; participation, however, in keeping with liberal democratic theory, was
invariably defined as voting.
Given the apparent importance of civic knowledge, how has civic education
served as a distribution mechanism? Galston’s review found that the overall level of
civic knowledge has decreased at each level of formal schooling over the last fifty
years: “today’s high school graduates are roughly equivalent to the high school
dropouts of the late 1940s, and today’s college graduates are roughly equivalent to the
high school graduates of that earlier epoch” (2001, p. 222). The distribution of civic
knowledge is also strongly correlated to differences such as race and gender. In all,
Galston reviewed one study challenging the scholarly consensus that formal classroom
based civic education was ineffectual in increasing civic knowledge. In terms of
extracurricular high school activities and political socialization, the one pertinent study
Galston cites found students’ views of citizenship to be “dominated by a focus on

35
rights, thus creating a privately oriented, passive understanding” (2001, p.
227). In response, Galston and the researchers he reviews issue a call for improved
instruction in democratic theory, contemporary issues, and practical political skills
such as “the ability to decode simple charts and tables,” and a move away from rote
work (2001, p. 228).
Callan, on the other hand, writes from the perspective that a “normative theory
of civic education should do more than help…fix the boundaries of a minimally
adequate education. It should also furnish at least a partial conception of the best
[civic] education” (2004, p. 88). In Callan’s view, such a civic education would go
beyond some “guaranteed educational provision” and also promote the virtues of
‘autonomy’ – or the “skills and inclination to choose on the basis of critical thought” –
and of ‘widely diffused’ patriotism (2004, p. 81). (Patriotism here would not only
generate a sense of mutual interdependence, but also help children learn “to think of
their nation as an open venture of collective self-rule, in which the right and wrong we
do together is as much a matter of how we deal with those who are not compatriots as
of how we deal with those who are” [Callan, 2004, p. 80].) The concept of service
learning may represent one step in proceeding beyond traditional civic education.
Boyte and Farr advocate service learning which they define as the “creation and
sustenance of projects for which young people are…accountable serious creators and
producers,” requiring that young people be thought of as productive actors, citizens in
the present no citizens-in-the-making, who have serious public work to do” (1997, p.
7). Galston (2001) found that U.S. high schools using a service learning approach

36
increased from 9 percent in 1984 to 46 percent in 1998-1999. Despite a
burgeoning number of evaluative studies which show “mixed but encouraging
results,” it is still too early to draw conclusions concerning the influence of service
learning on civic knowledge and engagement (Galston, 2001, p. 230). Another
possible advancement toward the ‘best’ form of civic education involves, according to
Callan (2004), an appeal to the notion of social capital (particularly in its “bridging”
form) and consideration of how it might be elicited in the associational life of citizens.
This speculation that political ideals (in this case, liberal democratic ideals such as
plurality, principled compromise, and accommodation) are naturally supported
through participation in associational life provides an ideal point on which to turn and
consider an alternative view of how democratic governance might best be carried out.

Participatory Democratic Perspective
Openings for the application of education for social change from a liberal
democratic point of view are sparse. Another contrasting strain of democratic thought
places greater emphasis on the intrinsic value of political participation which leads to a
variety of possibilities for the use of education in democratic social change. While this
emphasis has been traced from Ancient Athenian democracy through the work of
writers Held (1996) labels ‘developmental’ theorists, such as Marsilius of Padua,
Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, and J. S. Mill, recent participation theory is generally
linked to New Left critiques of democracy in its dominant liberal form. The demands
made in the 1960s by various groups, notably students, to exercise their ‘rights of

37
participation’ elicited new questions about role of citizens in a modern
democracy (Pateman, 1970). Subsequent treatments have frequently offered a
preferred participative democratic form in contradistinction to the dominant tradition,
for example, Mansbridge’s (1980) ‘unitary’ versus ‘adversary’, Barber’s (1984)
‘strong’ versus ‘thin’, and Green’s (1999) ‘deep’ versus ‘formal’ democracies,
respectively. Participatory theory has also been incorporated in recent work on civic
engagement and secondary associations (e.g., Warren, M. E., 2001) and on
participatory governance schemes (e.g., Fung & Wright, 2003). While all of these
various projects contain their own important distinctions, I focus on principles they
share which can be reasonably grouped under the heading, ‘participatory democracy.’
A common starting point for contemporary participatory democratic thinking is
the criticism that the traditional liberal representational model of democracy leaves
important human and societal needs unfulfilled; needs which can uniquely be met
through a more participatory approach. One claimed advantage of participatory
democracy is its ability to build a sense of community, which, by promoting bonds of
friendship (Mansbridge, 1980), fostering a sense of ‘common humanity’ (Barber,
1984), or simply reducing estrangement from centers of power (Held, 1996), can
increase levels of mutual trust and tolerance. Participatory democracy, it is said, also
elicits greater responsiveness by government to the demands of citizens in general
(Berry, Portney, & Thomson, 1993; Fung, 2004). One of the most fundamental and
frequently cited claims, however, is that the educative nature of participatory
democracy inherently promotes citizenship formation (Mansbridge, 1980;

38
Schugurensky, 2002, 2003; Held, 1996). Whereas liberal theory accentuates
the right to liberty, participatory democracy highlights an equally important right: the
right to self-development. Self-development is that which results, in a Deweyan-
Freireian sense, from active engagement in the public sphere, whereby individuals
learn democracy by doing democracy, become more politically aware, and develop a
moral capacity to see the greater good (Schugurensky, 2002, 2003). Framing “self-
development” as a right leads to a powerful justification for a participatory democratic
model, since it is a right which can only be realized in a participatory society which
features the “direct and continuous involvement of citizens in the regulation of society
and state” (Held, 1996, p. 267). The formal extension of liberty in a liberal democracy,
in contrast, distorts the systemic discrimination that severely limits equality of
opportunities for political engagement. Further, the very real linkages between the
state and everyday affairs, associations and practices implicate it in the social
reproduction of inequalities. Therefore, because the state does not treat all citizens as
“‘free and equal’… [and] elections will always be insufficient as mechanisms to
ensure the accountability of the forces actually involved in the governing process”
(Held, 1996, p. 265), the maximization of participation and popular control becomes
crucial (Berry, Portney, & Thomson, 1993).

39
While proponents of participatory democracy vary in terms of the
scope of participation they advocate, recent discussions seem to coalesce around the
following two-pronged agenda: democratization of existing primary institutions
(constitutional state, representative system, economic arrangements) by making them
more open and accountable through participatory democratic efforts at both grassroots
and higher levels; and, encouragement and greater integration into public life of
secondary associations that feature participatory democratic practices (unions,
community associations, social movements) (Cohen & Rogers, 1995; Fung, 2004;
Held, 1996; Mansbridge, 2003; Schugurensky, 2003; Warren, M. E., 2001). This
approach acknowledges long-cited obstacles to the implementation of participatory
democracy in a large-scale society, but advocates continued ‘innovation’ and
‘experimentation’ in finding spaces for participatory democratic changes within the
prevailing system (Mansbridge, 2003).
Participatory democracy therefore presents several important contrasts to
liberal democracy beyond its definitive requirement of at least some degree of direct
participation and regulation by citizens in the public life of society. Public life in the
participatory view, for example, is seen more broadly as extending both to the state as
well as to the economic system and other central institutions of everyday society,
including workplaces and communities (Held, 1996). Politics in this conceptualization
is a citizen domain rather than a professionalized activity for a select few. Further, in
addition to ‘negative freedom’ from possible assaults on individual liberties,
participatory democracy also frames as equally important a citizen’s ‘positive

40
freedom’, or right, to initiate action in solving collective problems. Normal
political activity in this context, therefore, is considerably denser than in a liberal
democratic framework and necessitates a wider range of skills.
Citizenship education or political learning is fundamental in a participatory
democracy. It not something to be acquired in preparation for civic engagement, but is
rather elicited through political participation itself. Schugurensky (2002) describes the
reciprocity which exists between socially transformative learning and participatory
democracy, by drawing on the progressive educational thought of Habermas.
Schugurensky suggests that public deliberation in an ideal speech situation, for
example, may foster personal transformations involving increased communicative
competence. Such transformations, however, are likely to translate back into improved
democratic processes in the public sphere. Schugurensky (2003) also points to the
informal and incidental nature of learning through democratic participation based on
his work with the participatory budget of Porto Alegre, Brazil. While some
participants refer to the participatory budget as their “citizenship school,” for most
public officials and participants, the pedagogical dimension of the process largely goes
unperceived. Active engagement in the deliberation and decision making within the
participatory budget, however, invariably leads to the acquisition of democratic
competencies, including the abilities to critically reason, wait turns, listen carefully to
others, and facilitate a discussion.

41
The participatory and informal aspects of participatory learning also
imply a role for institutions that is quite distinct from liberal democracy’s primary
reliance on formal schools. As noted earlier, moreover, part of the justification for
participatory democracy stems from the state’s perceived role in the social
reproduction of inequalities, a process in which formal schooling systems are
frequently implicated. In the participatory democratic view, virtually all social
institutions are educative institutions (Schugurensky, 2002). Therefore, a variety of
secondary associations are looked to as spaces for political learning and for
experimentation with various participatory political forms (Held, 1996). Warren’s
work on the relationship between associational involvements and democratic “effects”
is representative of this line of thought (Warren, M. E., 2001). While he situates his
account within the broad confines of a liberal democratic society, he reveals a
normatively participatory democratic stance when he states that “a political system is
more democratic the more equally its institutions enhance individual self-rule and the
more equally it underwrites individual chances to influence collective judgments and
decisions” (Warren, M. E., 2000, p. 61). Warren shows how different associations
contribute in different ways, some enhancing individual political development, others
nurturing “public reasoning” and “collective judgment,” and still others which enable
collective action or other means of altering governing institutions.
Finally, it is necessary to review what empirical evidence suggests about how
well participatory democracy works. An analysis of exemplary citywide neighborhood
associations in five U.S. cities, for example, revealed that participatory politics

42
increased the responsiveness of public officials and empowered citizens by
increasing their sense of community, knowledge of the political system, and ability to
“get things accomplished” (Berry, Portney, & Thomson, 1993). Reporting on the
Latin American experience, researchers note that participation in “associative
networks” generates new understandings between competing groups and facilitates
acquisition of cognitive political skills such as debate, discussion, and policy analysis
(Chalmers, Payes, & Piester, 1997). Many other participatory experiments are
currently underway. A recent volume examines four participatory governance efforts
centering on public schools and community policing in Chicago, habitat conservation
throughout the U.S., decentralized planning in India, and, already noted, the
participatory budget of Porto Alegre, Brazil (Fung & Wright, 2003). The contributors
to this volume avoid definitive conclusions but present an overall positive review of
the approach, showing how it successfully channels the abilities of average citizens,
and often those from the lowest socioeconomic strata, into alternative solutions to real
problems. On the other hand, a number of issues needing further investigation are
raised. As one example, Mansbridge notes the “paradox of participatory democracy”;
that although participation may help to increase citizens’ capacities, “those who have
not yet had the experience of participation will sometimes not have sufficient capacity
to bring off a successful democracy” (2003, p. 177). More needs to be known,
therefore, about the role of “professionals” and “trainers” in facilitating successful
participatory arrangements, something that, as Mansbridge points out, is alluded to but
left largely unaddressed in the volume’s chapters.

43
Contentious Pluralism
Liberal and participatory approaches to democracy present an illuminating
contrast with respect to matters of citizenship and the use of education in democratic
practice (Table 1 below). Different underlying justifications prompt vastly different
educational possibilities. In one case, a focus on efficiency and on government as
protector of citizen rights generates a liberal democratic model that deposits politics
outside the range of everyday citizen behavior. Knowledge and skill requirements and
the means to attain them thus become external affairs to actual political practice and
engagement. Formal education systems become the natural site for learning as the
knowledge to attain is viewed as fixed and something to be “banked” during the
learning years for occasional later use. A participatory democratic approach, on the
other hand, evinces a more “process” oriented view of education and learning, by
which citizens are to learn politics by doing politics. As such, any number of
associational involvements may represent important sites of learning and democratic
practice. While this denotes a strongly educative dimension to participatory
democracy, the actual involvement of citizens is seen foremost as necessary for
adequate governance and citizenship. These two projects also reveal quite different
portrayals and means of learning for social change. Liberal democracy’s reliance on
formal educative means links it to an institution which many advocates of social

44
change implicate in the maintenance of the status quo. Participatory
democracy, on the other hand, situates the means of learning in various associations
and secondary institutions, exposing multiple opportunities for democratic social
change, including the use of nonformal and informal educational means frequently
associated with social movements.

45
Table 1. Two Notions of Democracy and Their Implications for Citizenship and Political Education
Liberal/Representative Participatory
Meaning of
democracy
Rule of law; representative system of collective
public choice-making
Maximization of direct popular control of
collective public decision-making
Principles of
justification
Preservation of liberty and equality of citizens;
most efficient means of popular control
Necessary to ensure adequate and accountable
governance; necessary for self-development
What is
“politics”?
What governmental branches and professional
politicians do; elections
Expected activity of citizens; at least some
degree of active deliberation/regulation of public
life
Role of
government
Protect ‘free and equal’ nature of citizens; ensure
free-market
Protect citizens’ freedoms, including right to
participate in collective problem solving
View of societal
domains
Clear boundaries between limited state, civil
society and autonomous private sphere
Public life comprised of state, market and
everyday spheres; public/private distinction
contested
What is a
citizen?
Individual with rights; voter Participant in public governance
Necessary
citizenship skills
Knowledge of government and contemporary
issues so as to be informed; virtues such as
autonomy, tolerance, ability to compromise
Political knowledge; critical reasoning; policy
analysis; public deliberation; ability to consider
broader good
What is civic
education?
Formal civic education; extracurricular activities;
service learning
Political development intrinsic to citizenship;
informal and incidental ‘learning by doing’
through a variety of associational involvements
Role of
secondary
institutions
Offer structures for formal civic education; vehicles
for interest groups; improvement of civil society
Provide spaces for participation; central to
democracy by fostering political learning/skills
among individuals and in public sphere
45

46
Such a comparison of these two conceptualizations of democracy,
while illustrative, may present too strong of a dichotomized view and thereby fail to
capture how socially transformative and participatory projects might be framed in a
truly modern liberal democratic context. A concept to help think about this is the
notion of “contentious pluralism,” provided by Guidry and Sawyer (2003), which
advocates a broader perspective that sees democratic development on a continuum, or
as “a journey rather than a destination” (p. 274). Guidry and Sawyer argue that in all
types of regimes, even developed liberal democracies, it is sustained popular political
struggle “aimed at subverting the means, mechanisms, and ideologies of political
exclusion” that is critical for building more inclusive and participatory systems. They
suggest that no democracy is a finished work, but instead every political sphere
involves contentious pluralism, “interacting groups…[with] different claims, interests,
and capacities in politics” seeking to “challenge a lack of democracy or the limitations
of existing democracy.” In this framework, the goal always remains the same, whereas
the means of contention may vary from context to context as groups seek to challenge
existing power relations. Groups may utilize procedural means or using the courts and
government institutions; rhetorical means or the use of discourse to challenge ideas;
and, demonstrative means “presenting and modeling alternatives to the existing order”
(Guidry & Sawyer, 2003, p. 277). Education for social change efforts may therefore be
seen in the framework of contested pluralism, reflecting a range of means of
contention which in turn vary according to contexts representing different points along

47
the journey toward truer democracy. Returning to the possibilities for
education for social change in a modern democratic context, it is appropriate to look
now at one specific effort to put educational means to use for social change within a
contemporary democratic context.

Broad-based Community Organizing as Education for Social Change
Broad-based community organizing (BBCO) is a growing North American
social movement with a clear social change imperative. It has attracted increased
scholarly attention primarily from sociological and political science perspectives
(Boyte, 2004; Gecan, 2002; Osterman, 2002; Putnam, 2003; Rogers, 1990; Warren,
M. R. & Wood, 2001; Warren, M. R., 2001; Wood, 2002), but researchers are
beginning to hone in on its educational aspects (Scott, 2003; Shirley, 1997). The few
studies directly addressing the educational components of this movement provide
some initial direction concerning BBCO’s implications for understanding education
for social change in a democratic context.
BBCO practices exhibit a reliance on nonformal and informal educational
means. Dennis Shirley (1997) speaks of a “web of educational activities” for
developing political capacity which makes organizing “unusually reflective and
theoretically sophisticated” (Shirley, 1997, p. 91). The organization Shirley examined,
the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), employs a nonformal education strategy
involving three main activities: weekend leadership retreats, national training sessions,
and seminars with leading intellectuals. Weekend leadership retreats are typically held
in churches or seminaries and are led by local organizers. National ten-day training

48
sessions, held three times a year and led by regional IAF directors, provide
space for organizers and leaders to reflect on organizing practices and build
relationships. National training, according to Shirley, is “the educational vehicle
through which IAF organizers articulate the philosophy and method of organizing that
they have developed” (Shirley, 1997, p. 87). Seminars, finally, provide leaders and
organizers the opportunity to study and interact with intellectuals such as Cornel West,
Theda Skocpol, Robert Putnam, and Mary Ann Glendon. Held three to four times a
year, seminars are seen as “exchanges,” serving to both expand the intellectual
understanding of organizers and leaders and “teach the public intellectuals about the
concerns of the working class…and about the IAF’s philosophy and method” (Shirley,
1997, p. 89).
The practices of community organizers also reveal use of informal education.
Isaac and Tempesta (2004) describe the work of BBCO as a “learning laboratory”
facilitated by educational features such as mentoring, action, and reflection. Mentoring
relationships among activists provide encouragement and support for experimentation
and personal growth. For example, the tactic of “agitation,” or openly challenging
another person’s thinking or behavior, is used to promote greater self-awareness.
Action is also a prevailing source of new thinking as engagement around issues offers
opportunities to practice leadership skills and incentives to pursue new knowledge.
Also, regular evaluation sessions after actions and events facilitates a culture of

49
reflection in which critique is a normal occurrence and lessons are readily
drawn. Isaac and Tempesta’s findings closely mirror the “four habits” Gecan (2002)
cites as routinely practiced within BBCO culture: relating, acting, organizing, and
reflecting. Gecan also touches on the learning embedded in these habits when
describing how organizers
spend untold hours mastering and using the full range of public arts and skills.
They learn how to listen to others, to teach and train their members and
followers, to think and reflect on the issues and pressures of the day, to
confront those in power who obstruct or abuse them, and to build lasting
relationships with allies (Gecan, 2002, p. 5).

Another important question concerns the movement’s underlying rationale.
Does it exhibit mainly functionalist concerns, or does BBCO share the goal of tangible
social transformation? The picture of BBCO that we can extract from the literature is
mixed. Alinsky, for example, who developed the community organizing model upon
which BBCO is based, was a self-described “urban populist” of the American radical
tradition (Shirley, 1997, p. 36). Despite having a militant style, he did not seek
revolution but rather to teach the disenfranchised how to develop and utilize political
power so as to demand inclusion in the existing system (Warren, M. R., 2001). Factors
in the 1970s, however, led key organizers away from Alinsky’s “inflammatory protest
politics” (Shirley, 1997, p. 270) and toward the development of a “broad-based”
approach. The new program, based on nurturing a wider constituency, tackling
multiple issues, and strengthening ties with religious institutions, has become the
leading framework for modern BBCO efforts (Osterman, 2002; Warren, M. R., 2001).
While organizing has excelled under the broad-based model, critics fault the approach
for its close ties to conservative institutions, its inability to address divisive issues such

50
as discrimination based on sexual orientation, and its poor appeal among
secular progressives (Osterman, 2002; Warren, M. R., 2001; Wood, 2002). BBCO also
leaves capitalism largely uncontested, leading to charges that it diverts energy away
from root causes of economic inequality (Osterman, 2002; Shirley, 1997).
Proponents of BBCO, on the other hand, claim that while Alinsky sought to
build unilateral power, or power over others, the new strategy generates “relational
power,” or the power to act collaboratively (Loomer, 1976; Warren, M. R., 2001). It is
also suggested that the faith-based character of BBCO “agitates the emancipatory
currents of the Judeo-Christian tradition” (Shirley, 1997, p. 90), providing a
substantial basis for action around issues of social justice (Osterman, 2002).
Participants, for example, who initially possess charity-oriented conceptions of social
action, such as a conviction that “God commands us to do good works,” report that
involvement in the movement elicits a “conceptual transformation” toward a more
justice-oriented view (Osterman, 2002, p. 102). A justice perspective holds that “God
also commands us to try to change the underlying political and economic system that
creates the need for good works in the first place” (p. 102). Scott similarly concludes
from her study of the IAF that changes in “personal psychic” as well as societal
structures result through hermeneutic dialogue and participative action (2003, July, p.
4). The strategy’s strong ties to religious institutions, lastly, is also credited with
mobilizing new pools of leaders, especially women, among lay church members,
providing renewed “moral energy and commitment” to organizing efforts, and
enabling more durable community organizations to be built (Osterman, 2002; Warren,
M. R., 2001).

51
BBCO thus contains a tension between transformative and
conservative forces, which individuals within the movement acknowledge. Michael
Gecan, a senior IAF organizer, explains that leaders and organizers “face a tough
challenge: maintaining a conservative’s belief in the value and necessity of stable
institutions, along with a radical’s understanding of the need for persistent agitation
and reorganization” (Gecan, 2002, p. xix). Ed Chambers, leader of the national IAF
network, situates the work of community organizers “in-between” the “world as it is
and the world as it should be” and suggests that the dialectic of these worlds is the
“root of radical action for justice and democracy” (2004, p. 22-23). Wood has
observed this tension in the work of the Pacific Institute of Community Organizing
(PICO) and cites as a limitation of broad-based organizing the “tendency to collapse
organizing into a pure technique of confronting the world as it is” (2002, p. 314, n. 4).
BBCO presents a contemporary movement with potential to increase our
understanding of education for social change in a democratic context. A substantive
education for social change component can be detected, including clear use of
nonformal and informal learning and a complex framework of social change.
Characteristics within BBCO potentially link it to other education for social change
projects such as popular education and transformative learning. Still, much about the
educational dimension of BBCO remains to be understood. Elaboration is needed
concerning exactly how a movement like this combines the use of education with an
explicit social change effort. The many nonformal and informal learning spaces, for
example, which comprise the “learning laboratory” or “mini-university” of community
organizing, beckon further analysis and systematization. Special attention, in

52
particular, should be given to the informal forms of learning that occur, an
area in which recent calls for scholarly analysis have been made (Schugurensky, 2003;
Stromquist, 2004). The link, moreover, between learning processes in community
organizing and democratic social and political change need to be explored, including
deeper analysis into precise linkages between learning, leadership development, social
networks, and institutional change. Related to this is a need for insight into the role of
BBCO’s social agenda as a melding of “conservative,” “liberal,” and “radical”
commitments (Shirley, 1997). An inquiry into the educational dimension of BBCO
could also possibly fill gaps concerning how to address persistent impediments to
popular education efforts such as a lack of strategic political know-how and the
inability to build effective coalitions.

Conclusions
The purpose of this chapter was to review existing knowledge about the use of
education for democratic social change and to identify issues in need of further
elaboration. What we have seen is that social movements and other grassroots political
activities are increasingly viewed as holding important alternative educational means
for the creation of socially transformative knowledge. While certain modalities of this
type of educational use have been identified, such as nonformal, informal, and
incidental learning, as well as a reliance on social networks, an extremely wide variety
of projects claiming to use education for social change exists. Important
methodological differences and variation in rationales, furthermore, remain in need of
disambiguation. Comparison of approaches which have a stated aim of contesting

53
oppressive arrangements, for example, reveals important differences along
the lines of social vision, problem definition, conceptualization of the learning
process, and the appropriate method of social change. Such variation results from
different sociopolitical contexts which produce different constraints over people’s
lives and varying levels of openness for social change efforts.
An important question then becomes, what are the possible avenues for
education for social change efforts in a modern democratic context? The answer, it is
discovered, depends on sometimes conflicting interpretations of democracy. In the
liberal representative formulation, alternative educational sites are deemphasized and
reliance is placed on formal education to produce necessary political knowledge for
proper democratic functioning. Critics cite that reliance on formal educational
methods promotes maintenance of the status quo and empirical studies confirm that
traditional civic education has done little to increase civic knowledge or address
imbalances in political knowledge along various lines such as race. One alternative, a
participatory democratic framework, posits a broader view of learning and holds that
important democratic skills must be acquired through actual democratic engagement,
including participation in secondary associations and social change movements.
Studies of participatory experiments have provided initial evidence that the approach
is effective in developing average citizens into political agents. More needs to be
known, however, about what is needed to facilitate successful participatory programs
and about the connection between social capital building and participation in
associational life by citizens.

54
The question before us ultimately consists of finding alternative
means of political development and formation of citizens so that democratic change
might be more effectively carried out. Specific attention to the role of education in
creating socially transformative knowledge is needed, especially in a contemporary
democratic context. One contemporary movement with potential to increase our
understanding of education for social change in a democratic context is BBCO. BBCO
has made observable political achievements and contains a clear educational
component that potentially links it to other projects such as popular education and
transformative learning. Still, much about the educational dimension of BBCO
remains to be understood, including exactly how a movement like this uses education,
supports a participatory approach, and ultimately combines participant formation with
an explicit political agenda. As stated earlier, recovery of a social change agenda in
today’s increasingly industrialized and globalized world largely depends on figuring
out the appropriate educational means of bringing about social transformation (Finger
& Asun, 2001). Thus the notion and practice of education for social change is in great
need of further theorizing and practical understanding.

55

CHAPTER 3
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND METHODOLOGY

The purpose of this study was to further understanding of the concept and
practices of education for social change in a democratic context. The case in which
this issue was examined is One LA, an organization that represents the growing
movement known as broad-based community organizing (BBCO). Two main
questions drove this inquiry: What are the educational and learning dimensions of One
LA? And, what are the connections between the education and learning processes
evident in One LA and its social change objectives? The results of this study have
practical and theoretical implications for those concerned with the intersection of
learning and democratic social change and for others engaged in “finding workable
remedies for democracy’s troubles” (Boyte, 2004, p. ix). This chapter presents the
conceptual lenses through which this study was approached and a description of the
study design, including the use of case study and other approaches, the research
setting, the research questions, and the procedures employed for data collection and
analysis.

Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework of this study hinges on the linkages between
educational processes and broader political processes. This nexus between the political
and the educational, which rests at the center of this exploration, touches on a
56

longstanding tension between organizing and education (Horton & Freire, 1990;
Mezirow, 1990; Shor & Freire, 1987). Societal transformations, it has been said,
require political mobilization and collective action. Education for social change alone
may result in personal empowerment yet still fail to bring about structural
transformations. Political mobilization, on the other hand, can be disempowering if
education and formation are not attended to. An important question remains in terms
of how and to what degree these two dimensions can be merged. The stated goals of
broad-based community organizers include the reframing of politics and the building
of political movements. Political scientists have also singled out the educational
component of broad-based community organizing as an important key to its success.
This study thus seeks to address this conceptual dynamic between education and social
change in the context of organizing.

Educational Processes
The main theoretical lens through which this study will view the educational
work of community organizing draws on the popular education tradition. Popular
educators and community organizers can be seen as sharing essential features: both are
focused on assisting marginalized groups acquire power; both utilize a pedagogical
approach; and, both use mobilization and organizational structures (La Belle, 1987;
Schugurensky, 2000). Further untangling the educational “web” found in community
organizing, however, requires additional theoretical tools. Of help in extending the
analysis is the notion of transformative adult education in its Gramcsian-Freirean
57

formulation (Mayo, 1999). Mayo outlines criteria to help assess how well an
educational project embodies socially transformative ideals. Does this project critique
mainstream educational practices, posit itself as an alternative approach, or
acknowledge the political nature of its practices? Another key question is with whom
does agency lie? Other issues raised by a popular-transformative education framework
include the relationship of the effort to other institutional entities, the degree to which
its pedagogy is democratic, and how it employs social relations and multiple learning
contexts and processes to further its transformative goals.

Political Processes
The concept of “contentious pluralism” provides a contextual frame for this
study by emphasizing the possibilities for contestation within even advanced liberal
democratic states (Guidry and Sawyer, 2003). A social capital framework (Lin, 2001;
Putnam, 2003) also provides direction for studying a movement which possesses a
goal of rebuilding the “lost networks of relationships” (Putnam, 2003, p. 16). This
study acknowledges, however, the recognized need to move beyond a straight social
capital – or “more is better” – analysis of civic participation or political association
and to also critically disaggregate civic engagement (Stone, Henig, Jones, &
Pierannunzi, 2001; Cleary & Stokes, 2006, Warren, 2001). Warren’s (2001) work on
the democratic effects of associational involvements is also therefore useful for
assessing how civic engagement builds requisite democratic capacities, including
individual autonomy and political skills, deliberative or public sphere skills, and
58

institutional support for political change efforts. One LA’s goal of mobilizing groups
and organizations, moreover, and of affecting larger governance issues entails another
concept of inter-group collaboration called civic capacity (Stone, Henig, Jones, &
Pierannunzi, 2001). A final area used to approach One LA’s political objectives is that
of social network theory. Political scientists writing about Latin America describe
“associative networks” as a vital new form of popular representation (Chalmers,
Payes, & Piester, 1997). Such non-hierarchical social structures are increasingly being
used to inform public policy and can be seen as representing intermediary institutions
between state and society which serve other important functions such as generating
new understandings between groups with competing interests and facilitating
resources for debate, discussion, and social analysis (Chalmers, Payes, & Piester,
1997).

Case Study of One LA
To advance our understanding of the utilization of education for social change
in a democratic context, this study concentrated on the efforts of One LA, the Los
Angeles County organization of the long established national BBCO network, the
Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). A single case study design was chosen as a logical
and promising means of investigating this organization as a “bounded system”
(Creswell, 1998). By focusing on One LA as a single case, this study generated an in-
depth look at factors which characterize the educational and learning processes within
One LA (Merriam & Simpson, 1995). A case study approach also afforded the
59

combination of an “embedded” analysis of the learning phenomena within One LA
with a “holistic” analysis of the broader organization and its context (Creswell, 1998).
This was particularly suited for this study in which the phenomenon under
investigation – education for social change – and the context – a social change
movement – were tightly linked (Yin, 2004). The utility of case study in exploring
areas that are not well researched was also applicable here and the findings of this
study hold promise for informing additional studies (Merriam and Simpson, 1995).
Other possible designs did not lend themselves as well to the questions taken up by
this study. A biographical approach, for example, might have provided a detailed
picture of one participant’s experiences over time, but still failed to capture important
organizational themes. Consideration was made, for instance, as to whether a focus on
individual and organizational dynamics was too much. However, One LA’s own
emphasis on the organization as a unit made it a critical component to address. The
broader analysis that a multi-case study may have allowed for, on the other hand,
would have precluded the opportunity to gain insights from a deep examination of One
LA. Other research approaches beyond case study tradition, however, did inform this
study’s design.
Selection of the case of One LA-IAF involved an intrinsic interest in the
recognized educational component within BBCO and an instrumental interest in
producing findings which could have broader application concerning the use of
education for democratic social change by other social movements (Stake, 2000). The
primary intention of this study remained, however, not to “represent the world,” but to
60

“represent the case” of One LA (Stake, 2000, p. 448). As such, the use of purposive
sampling was deemed appropriate and One LA was chosen as a case which
represented a rich opportunity to learn concerning the questions that were put forth in
this study (Creswell, 1998; Merriam, 1991; Stake, 2000). The IAF, of which One LA
is a part, is exceptional among BBCO institutions (Boyte, 2004; Osterman 2002;
Shirley, 1997; Warren, M. R., 2001). Founded in 1940, the IAF’s innovations in
organizing strategy have produced a model of BBCO upon which most other similar
organizing networks are now based. The IAF’s strategy involves not only a strong
educational component but an explicit political agenda. Observers of the BBCO
movement credit the IAF in particular with achieving substantial success in
community leadership development, political mobilization, and tangible public policy
changes, for example, in securing living wage legislation, bringing substantive
changes to entire school districts, improving infrastructures, shifting development
patterns, and altering the arrangements of local governing regimes. One LA is one of
the most recent organizations to emerge from the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF).

Influences from Ethnography
Creswell (1998) cites an inherent overlap between ethnography and case study
in that both focus on a bounded system and often share similar data gathering
methods, such as observation and interviews. Ethnography, however, typically seeks
to understand an entire cultural system or subsystem (a culture-sharing group) using
insights from sociology and anthropology. Case study, in contrast, usually explores a
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particular social unit from any number of frameworks, “only one of which might be
cultural behavior, language, or artifacts” (Creswell, 1998, p. 66). Approaching a place
of learning from a cultural standpoint, however, can be very productive. Bruner (1996)
notes that formal schooling systems can only be understood in terms of the broader
culture in which they are embedded. Bruner’s view that “culture shapes mind” casts
education processes as less a matter of applying learning theories and techniques and
more as a “complex pursuit of fitting a culture to the needs of its members” and of
“fitting its members and their ways of knowing to the needs of the culture” (1996, p.
43). Bruner concludes that a schooling system must also be interpreted as a culture in
and of itself. This study drew on these ideas and included an ethnographic perspective
in order to recognize the cultural nature of One LA – both as a cultural system itself
and as a component in a larger culture. Learning outcomes, for example, were partly
looked at in terms of cultural expectations, and organizational changes, or resistance to
change, were considered in light of existing organizational cultural norms.

Critical Social Phenomenology
Two other approaches also informed this study. Foley’s “social
phenomenology of adult learning” was useful in this study to document how adults
learn through social action (1999, p. 12). This approach seeks not only to understand
“lived experience and the sense people make of it” but also to “make explanatory
connections between this micro activity and broader cultural, political, and economic
processes” (Foley, 1999, p. 12). Two implications from this approach stand out. First,
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it supported the dual focus on the phenomenon of learning and the broader
sociopolitical dynamics, prompting a view of education as a contested social activity
as opposed to simply a personal cognitive process. Second, drawing on this approach
reinforced the importance of reporting in a style that gives the reader a sense of “being
there” in order to provide some understanding of what the educational experience
within One LA was like. In order to help achieve this second aim, the use of narrative
vignettes is interspersed throughout the presentation of this study’s findings in the
chapters that follow (Erickson, 1986). Such vignettes are literal accounts which are
presented in order to illustrate points or help the reader understand what led to the
author’s interpretations. It should also be noted at this point that pseudonyms were
used in two instances: for those participants who requested that their names not be
used; and, in cases where an individual other than a recognized public figure was
referenced in a participant’s account but was not a direct participant in this study.
The inclusion of a critical perspective, finally, was also instrumental here. It
kept me alert to the need to maintain a critical posture when seeking to understand the
socio-cultural context of participants in this study as both grounded in social and
political relations and ideologically situated (Kinchloe & McLaren, 2000). It helped in
interpreting the educational dimensions of One LA not only as learning processes but
as an effort to produce new identities and discourses in response to dominant ideas and
power arrangements (Stromquist, 2000).

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Expanded Research Questions
This study aims to address the following research questions which are
organized according to four main areas of inquiry:
1. What is the background and nature of One LA?
• How and why did One LA originate?
• What are its structure and ethos?
• What are its political philosophy and approach to social change?
• What has One LA achieved as a movement?
2. What are the educational dimensions of the activity of One LA?
• What are its educational goals and methods?
• What are the outcomes of its educational program?
3. How are One LA’s educational processes connected to its political
objectives?
• What are the linkages between One LA’s educational outcomes
and its political goals?
• How, and to what degree, does One LA’s educational program
contribute to democratic social transformation?
4. How do One LA’s educational practices potentially inform the broader
field of education for social change?
• What does One LA’s program tell us about learning for social
change processes?
• How does One LA’s model apply to other social movements?
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Research Process
Some contend that a case study is really a choice about “what is to be studied”
and less a choice about “methods” (Stake, 2000, p. 435). Intentional effort was made
in this study, however, to distinguish between the “case” of One LA as a set of real-
life events to be investigated and “case study” as a distinct form of inquiry (Yin,
2004). A particularistic focus on the case of One LA reflects the ontological position
that reality is subjective and uniquely constructed by the individuals and context being
studied. Emphasis on a qualitative case study approach meant a commitment to
understanding the case through extended time spent on site and personal contact with
the “activities and operations of the case,” gathering data from a variety of sources and
through multiple methods, and an ongoing, recursive process of reflecting on the
“meanings of what was going on” (Stake, 2000, p. 445). Consequently, this study
involved prolonged engagement in the field, with formal interviews and observations
starting in the fall of 2004 and ending at the end of 2005. An effort was also made to
immerse myself in the case while acknowledging my role as outsider. This effort
resulted from both an epistemological desire to lessen the “distance” between myself
as researcher and the participants in this study and an axiological appreciation for the
role of values in shaping conclusions, both of which called for pursuit of emic as well
as etic understandings (Denzin & Lincoln, 2000; Guba & Lincoln as cited in Creswell,
1998, p. 76). Input from a broad range of voices was gathered by engaging both
leaders and organizers inside the movement as well as outside perspectives. Like many
other qualitative case studies, this study culminated in a descriptive narrative in an
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attempt to bring the reader into the case through an in-depth and accurate account of
One LA (Creswell, 1998; Patton as cited in Merriam & Simpson, 1995). In the
following, I describe in more detail specific procedures that were used in this study for
data collection, insuring validity and reliability, and data analysis. All of the activities
below were carried out with approval from One LA. I received standing permission to
attend any and all events and to use a tape recorder or video camera for data collection
purposes. Access to meetings was denied in only one or two instances involving
closed door gatherings of One LA’s top leadership.

Data Collection
Three procedures were use to elicit learning about One LA and to answer the
research questions presented above: individual interviews, non-participant
observation, and document analysis. Interviews consisted of two formats: semi-
structured and unstructured (Macias, 1987). Semi-structured interviews were focused,
one to two hours long, and used to elicit specific information from study participants
but to also allow for meaningful diversions, especially in the initial stages of the data
gathering period. Close to 40 of these interviews, totaling approximately 60 hours,
were conducted with 25 participants (approximately nine of these people were
interviewed more than once), comprised of eight organizers and 12 leaders from One
LA as well as three key outside stakeholders. These interviews were taped with
permission and generally transcribed within a few days. I also took notes during these
interviews, and the notes and transcriptions often generated issues or questions that
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become part of the substance of future interviews with others or with the same person.
Unstructured interviews were also heavily relied upon. These were casual and
frequently spontaneous conversations with a wide variety of participants which
occurred “along the edges” of the various meetings or activities in which I participated
(Tipton, 1982). Conversations of this sort ranged from few-minute-exchanges to more
extended discussions during breaks of coffee or lunch. I interviewed approximately 25
people in this way (mostly insiders, but occasional outsiders such as a police officer
working a public action and a brief exchange with a public official at another event)
and usually followed-up by recording comments in my field-notes afterwards. These
conversations provided opportunities to capture brief but important thoughts and
perspectives that helped construct an overall sense of the research context.
Non-participant observations were also an integral part of this research study.
By being present and closely observing, I learned a great deal about the day-to-day
activities, behaviors, emotions, and concerns of One LA participants. The insights into
the on-the-ground experience and the contextual understanding that I gained by
witnessing One LA procedures and practices firsthand proved to be a great asset in
interpreting and analyzing the data that was collected (Lofland & Lofland, 1995). My
observations took two forms. First, there was the never ending hum of One LA
activities to attend. I quickly became tuned in to the large number of meetings and
actions taking place over any given period, which offered a challenge in terms of
discerning where to most productively spend my time, especially at the beginning of
my fieldwork. I attended and observed numerous public actions, evaluation sessions,
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house meetings, and planning meetings. I also attended one three-day-training in its
entirety and parts of another and observed two of One LA’s intellectual seminars with
featured academics. In addition to these events, there were several cluster meetings,
half-day leader assemblies, and a few research actions which I observed as well. I
conservatively estimate having spent a total of 150 hours conducting observations of
this sort. A second form of observation in which I engaged required somewhat less
time but proved to be a rich source of data. This was what One LA describes as the
practice of “running with” someone. It involves shadowing a leader or organizer as
they go about their work and then reflectively discussing it with them afterward and is
a technique that is generally used by organizers to mentor and learn from others. On a
few occasions, I was able to shadow an organizer as they carried out some aspect of
their work and then follow up with them later for a brief discussion of what I
observed. I also began adapting this approach in my observations of participants in
general, jotting notes about a particular decision or behavior and then finding time to
question them at some point later on. Field notes were recorded regularly to document
my observations and ongoing reflections (Emerson, Fritz, & Shaw, 2000). Some of my
field notes were transcribed and formally coded along with interview transcriptions,
but most remained in hand-written form in spiral notebooks. Notes from my
observations proved to be an invaluable source of data, including descriptions of
events and vignettes, and analytical insights during the data analysis and writing
periods.
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Another measure I employed in this study is document analysis. Here I drew
on Prior (2003) who encourages expanding our view of documents in social research.
She emphasizes the role of documents as a social actor and suggests raising questions
concerning their production, function, and consumption. I therefore kept an alert eye
for the possible significance of documents, both in their conventional form as fixed
texts as well as in their larger conceptualization as “multi-modal” forms. This meant
paying attention to decorations, pictures, agendas, maps, and even the arrangement of
physical space, in addition to reviewing and analyzing the extensive literature that has
been produced by One LA or its affiliates, including working papers, published
articles, books, and essays.

Credibility and Trustworthiness of Data
An important measure of a qualitative research study is whether or not the
portraits it produces are evocative and true-to-life (Sandelowski, 1993). This measure
alone is insufficient, however, and a more pressing question is whether or not the
study bears sufficient methodological breadth to assure that its findings are
trustworthy (Lincoln, 2001). The question here is: “What is it about this inquiry which
would render it…faithful enough to enable me to act upon its findings?” (Lincoln,
2001, p. 25); or, more succinctly, “Did we get it right?” (Stake, 1995, p. 107). A
researcher conducting a single case study, in particular, must address the threat of
subjective bias and an unwarranted sense of confidence in data due to the relatively
narrow scope of observations (Best & Kahn, 1998). Whittemore, Chase, and Mandle
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(2001) propose additional criteria to help assure sufficient rigor in a qualitative
inquiry. They suggest assessing the degree to which a study is credible: does its
methodology offer fundamental assurance that its portrayal accurately reflects the
experience and interpretation of the participants? Has there been an attempt to capture
subtle differences in perspectives among participants? They also recognize the
interpretive role of the researcher and consequent need for interpretations to be well
substantiated and grounded in the data. Two additional features of a sound interpretive
inquiry are therefore the exhibition of dedication and consistency (“integrity”) in
considering alternative explanations and possible biases or other distortions in the data
(“criticality”) (Whittemore, Chase, & Mandle, 2001, p. 529).
Three procedural means were adopted in order to ensure that the data and
resulting findings of this case study are credible and trustworthy and can be considered
an authentic representation of One LA and the issues explored (Whittemore, Chase, &
Mandle, 2001, Creswell, 1998; Lincoln, 2001; Stake, 1995, 2000). These procedures
similarly reflect the attempt to insure integrity and criticality in the interpretation of
data that was collected in this study. First, my observations emerged over a prolonged
period of engagement in the field, which allowed me to build trust and rapport with
many of this study’s participants and enhanced my ability to learn the culture and
unique organizational characteristics of One LA. Prolonged fieldwork also made me
more aware over time of subtle but important nuances of the study context (Creswell,
1998). For example, IAF organizers typically rotate through different organizations
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like One LA on approximately two to three year cycles. While I was aware of this fact,
it was only by staying with the study for some time that I was able to witness several
organizer turnovers and observe their actual effects on the ground among leaders.
The other two key procedures employed in this study to ensure credible data
were triangulation of information and member checking (Creswell, 1998; Stake,
1995). Triangulation first involved making a regular effort to corroborate the
information that I was eliciting by cross-checking data between the various
participants that I interviewed and by comparing interview data with what I was
learning through observation. I also carried out interviews with stakeholders who
could offer alternative or contrasting perspectives – these were “outsiders” to One LA
and in two cases people who could be considered adversarial. I carried out member
checking, finally, by soliciting input from key informants from time to time on my
findings and interpretations. This took three forms. At the simplest level, it involved
casually but intentionally prompting input from participants on a particular aspect of
my evolving findings. It also involved sharing my actual data and findings with both
informants as well as knowledgeable outside stakeholders on several occasions and
soliciting their feedback to help me judge the accuracy of my reporting. A final step
involved sharing my final draft manuscript with two senior One LA organizers and
three experienced One LA leaders for their perusal and critical review.

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My Role as Researcher
My exposure to One LA began roughly a year before this study commenced
when I was assigned to a video project focusing on One LA as a research assistant at
USC’s Center for Religion and Civic Culture. That project resulted in a half-hour
documentary style video presenting the work of One LA. My involvement on the
project as writer and co-producer gave me a firsthand glimpse at the educational
nature of One LA’s organizing practice and alerted me to the potential of researching
One LA from an educational perspective. I subsequently proposed this study of One
LA which was endorsed both by my advisor and by the leadership of One LA. One LA
granted me access to their activities and a liaison with whom to discuss and coordinate
the project, and agreed to host me at One LA at symposiums and trainings I would
attend for the study. For my part, I agreed to share my findings with One LA at the
study’s conclusion in a form of their preference, such as a summary paper,
presentation, or some other tool that would be useful for the organization’s purposes.
I approached this study aware that spending time to earn trust with One LA
and its participants would be important. I had witnessed during the video project One
LA’s “gatekeeper” approach and general strategy of allotting outsiders measured
access to the organization. While that project had provided a head start on establishing
rapport with the organization, I understood that the research I was proposing would

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require a deeper level of access. A durable commitment to the study context allowed
me to gain that access over time, indicated, for example, by increasing receptiveness
to my presence among some organizers and leaders who initially appeared wary of the
nature of my research.
As my acceptance within One LA became more secure, however, I became
cognizant of the necessity to safeguard my perspective as an outside researcher. Some
ways I tried to do this included pursuing regular interaction with outsiders to the
movement, including individuals who would be considered critics of the movement or
at those skeptical of its approach or efficacy. I also found that presenting my incipient
results at academic conferences offered excellent contexts to receive helpful and
relatively objective feedback and interpretations. I also consciously resisted the
occasional pull to shift from non-participant observer to more of a participant
observer. I was regularly invited, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, or had
opportunities to participate on some level, in various activities. In some instances I
found it appropriate to participate, whether sharing my thoughts in a meeting or taking
part in an activity at a training or action. Toward the end of the study period, I
experienced tension with respect to resisting more formal participation when the work
of One LA came much closer to my home, literally, and One LA began tackling issues
surrounding the public schools in my city. As my utilitarian interest spiked, as a parent
of three pre-school age children, I found it important to remind myself of my role as
an outside researcher and of the necessity to retain a detached posture.
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My experience analyzing One LA and the attendant tensions described here
constructively enhanced my understanding of the need to remain vigilant in
safeguarding neutrality as a researcher. It is in doing so that one can durably apply
what Stake (2000) describes as “perhaps the simplest rule for method in qualitative
casework…: place your best intellect into the thick of what is going on” (p. 445).

Data Analysis
This study spanned nearly two years, from November of 2004 through June of
2006. Data analysis was approached both as a recursive process that began with the
commencement of fieldwork and as a discrete phase that followed the data gathering
period, which ended in December of 2005. The textual analytical modes adopted in
this study included philosophical hermeneutics, phenomenology, and socio-political
analysis. Recordings of interviews were transcribed shortly after being taken, as were
many of the field notes from observations and informal unstructured interviews, and
documents were routinely collected and analyzed throughout the data gathering
period. Preliminary categories were drawn from the conceptual framework and
research questions and used to approach the study context and make sense of initial
data. It was quickly apparent, however, that exact synonymy between the central
concepts about which I sought to learn and the many people and activities I
encountered would be difficult to find (Stake, 2000; Yin, 2004). Data analysis thus
involved a narrowing process in order to produce the best information about the key
issues being analyzed in this study. New categories were also added as they became
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identified in the data that was collected through observations, interviews, and
document analysis. Coding and sorting of data began in the spring of 2006 using
ATLASti software program. ATLASti was found to be helpful mainly in storing and
organizing data documents, assigning codes to text segments, and retrieving specific
texts according to codes during the initial writing stage. Coding was carried out
inductively according to existing and emerging themes which related to the research
questions (Creswell, 1995; Merriam & Simpson, 1995). Through this process of data
collection, coding, and sorting, a detailed description of the case emerged, which
allowed for both an embedded analysis of the questions being studies as well as a
holistic analysis of the broader organizational context of One LA (Yin, 1989).
Emerging findings were also continually compared against the relevant literature. In
the final phase, the developed findings were organized, formatted, and presented in
their present form in this document.

Summary
This study was designed to examine a visible learning component of a vibrant
social movement to which little direct attention had been paid. The description
provided in this chapter highlights both the potential of this design for illuminating the
issues broadly and deeply, as well as the critical necessity for attention to
methodological detail.
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CHAPTER 4
BACKGROUND AND ORGANIZATIONAL FEATURES OF ONE LA

Innovative uses of education are again being looked to for their role in the
democratic regeneration of communities and public life (Finger & Asun, 2001;
Editors, 2003; Boyte, 2004). More productive educational interventions are needed
that can help “urban learners” develop the internal resources and social capital needed
to bring long-term changes to their communities (Manicom & Walters, 1997, p. 59).
This study investigates the potential for this type of education for social change as
embodied in the broad-based community organizing movement. This chapter lays out
the background and context of the organization under focus in this study: One LA, the
Los Angeles area affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). This chapter
begins with a look at the sociopolitical context of Los Angeles and then goes on to
present the origins of One LA, its activity to date, its organizational characteristics and
philosophies, and resistance it has incurred.

Sociopolitical Context
On September 4, 1781, a group of eleven pobladores, or settlers, and their
families, recruited by Spanish authorities in Mexico, established a new pueblo in the
heart of what is now Los Angeles County. The purpose of the new pueblo was to
provide an agricultural village to help supply food for the missions and presidios
established by the Spanish crown throughout the region, which were largely dependent
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on shipments of food from Mexico. The settlement’s first given name – El Pueblo de
Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río de Porciúncula, or Town of Our Lady
the Queen of the Angels on the River Porciúncula – reflected its agricultural purpose,
having been sited on the banks of one of three main waterways in the area
(Gumprecht, 2001). In just under two centuries that waterway would be transformed
into the “fifty-one-mile storm drain that is still flatteringly called the Los Angeles
River” (Gumprecht, 2001, p. 173) and flow through the most populous county in the
United States. Today, Los Angeles County’s ten million people and eighty-eight cities
span an area larger than the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined and
comprise nearly a third of California’s population.
Several themes arose in the intervening years which provide a glimpse into the
variegated story of the emergence of one of the world’s leading metropolitan areas.
There is the rise of corporate Los Angeles beginning in the late nineteenth century. As
the stream of people moved from East to West, Los Angeles grew from around ten
thousand inhabitants to “the American West’s leading financial, entertainment, and
industrial center, with 2,000,000 residents” by 1932 (Davis, 2000, p. 2). Early
corporations capitalized on the discovery of oil or “black gold,” on the supply of
federal money directed toward the defense industry, expanding utility needs, and other
large scale business opportunities. Los Angeles’ burgeoning corporate climate bore
marks of a second prescient theme. While notable in its high percentage of white-
collar, small business, and professional positions compared to corporate cultures of
other cities, “from the outset,” Davis tells us, “white men dominated this story” (2000,
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p. 5). People of color and immigrants were largely absent from white-collar life in Los
Angeles, despite the city having the second highest proportion of non-Anglos among
large U.S. cities, including Americans of Mexican, Asian, and African descent. Los
Angeles’ “Anglo-American elite” exacerbated the situation by making ethnicity,
including distinctions between northern and southern and eastern Europeans, “a
central issue in labor strategies. They ultimately racialized the region’s workforce and
carved out a near Anglo-Saxon monopoly on white-collar jobs” (Davis, 2000, p. 15).
The mix of races, however, also derived a third theme – an unusually high level of
plurality in the religious life of early Los Angeles that was marked by relatively
extensive inter-religious cooperation, diminished influence of Roman Catholicism,
and greater latitude in roles for religious women (Davis, 2000).
The prevailing ethnic schisms, however, led Fogelson (1967) to argue shortly
after the Watts riots of the mid-sixties that the racial conflicts being witnessed should
not have come as a surprise. He pointed back to the “fragmented” nature of Los
Angeles’ social fabric and how its ethnic politics had long reflected a dominant white
majority and a subjugated mix of ethnic minorities. The swells of racial polarization
unleashed in the 1960s combined with other influences to dramatically change the
shape of Los Angeles County up to the present day. One of the most vivid portrayals
of the contemporary everyday “working class suburbs” of Los Angeles County is
provided by Becky Nicolaides in her book, My Blue Heaven (2002). She notes the
ethnic transformation beginning with “white flight” and the particularly sharp increase
in the Latino population, for example from four percent in South Gate in 1960 to
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nearly half of the total by 1980, and to 83.1 percent by 1990, statistics mirrored in
many other cities (Nicolaides, 2002, p. 328). Nicolaides highlights how by the 1970s
deindustrialization began to bring economic erosion to many of Los Angeles’ southern
suburbs in particular, where “Fordist industry” was concentrated (2002, p. 329). While
many whites were able to retire or move to the suburbs, non-whites found themselves
restricted to contracting local economies. Worse, a new sweatshop economy stepped
in and “turned the clock backward about 100 years” in terms of wages and working
conditions (Nicolaides, 2002, p. 329).
The economic and cultural restructuring taking place in many Los Angeles
County cities is resulting in significant impacts on daily life, such as deteriorating
services, lower mobility, and decreased community safety. Drawing on her
observations of South Gate again, Nicolaides describes what she finds is
the most poetic symbol of that change…the garage. The edifice that once acted
as temporary shelter to homebuilding families of the 1920s and 1930s has
made a comeback as a dwelling unit… Immigrant families crowd into these
cramped, windowless living spaces… Many dwellers use backyard ditches as
toilets. Single extension cords strung across tree branches…supply electric
power… many of these garage inhabitants grow home gardens… The
landlords who rent them violate sanitation, zoning, and safety laws… but most
evade arrest by concealing the dwellings, which are typically detached
structures tucked away in backyards. (2002, p. 331)

This widespread practice – approximately 42,000 garages housing roughly 200,000
persons in the county in 1987 – is apparently a phenomenon somewhat unique to Los
Angeles (Nicolaides, 2002, p. 332). Exorbitant housing prices in Los Angeles have left
homeownership an unreachable goal, and often, unable even to rent apartments,
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garage dwellers represent people on the verge of homelessness. Together factors such
as these have altered the landscape of Los Angeles County and have turned the “good
life” for its modern day working class residents into a very different proposition.

Organizing Los Angeles County
Over twelve thousand people - representing more than 125 religious
congregations, schools, unions, and nonprofits throughout Los Angeles County -
convened at the Los Angeles Convention Center on July 11
th
, 2004 for the founding of
“One LA,” a county-wide, non-partisan political organization designed to bring people
together to work for long-term social change. They ratified an agenda named
“Building Standing for Families” to address the issues of housing, education, health
care, safety, and workers’ rights. They told stories around these five issues and made
challenges to and got commitments from officials such as the Los Angeles city mayor,
county supervisors, and chief of police; and before the day ended committed
themselves publicly to further action, to go “back to their neighborhoods” and
continue the work.
Since that day, evidence of the work of One LA has begun to increasingly dot
the Los Angeles County landscape. One LA leaders in Pomona recently won a
commitment from that city to install over 1500 street lights in unlit and underserved
neighborhoods. The leaders also worked with the Pomona City Council to change the
parental engagement policy of their school district, reversing a requirement that only
parents with a valid driver’s license could volunteer in the classroom. One LA leaders
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in Sun Valley, on the other hand, are organizing a growing effort to contain the
expansion of the Bradley landfill which has been polluting their neighborhoods and
has been linked to higher rates of asthma among school children in that city. They
recently turned out more than a thousand people in a public action which drew support
from three Los Angeles mayoral candidates, including now sitting Mayor Villaraigosa.
In South Central Los Angeles, One LA leaders in Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran,
Black, and Hispanic churches are collaborating on creating an alternative sentencing
strategy for the youth in their communities. Leaders in Mid-city Los Angeles have
responded to accumulating stories of forced evictions by working with local city
officials to win the first eviction prevention ban from the City of Los Angeles. Efforts
such as these are a sampling of the growing presence and level of activity of One LA
throughout the county. Why, however, was this movement deemed necessary? What
precipitated the formation of One LA?
A key theme motivating One LA is the contention that Los Angles is marked
by socio-political disconnection and that its communities are desperately in need of
being put back together. One LA organizers frequently refer to a “culture of isolation”
which is rooted in part in Los Angeles’ historical spatial arrangement. They draw on
the urban biographers who point out that in contrast to most cities which logically
have grown outward from a common center, Los Angeles is the unlikely result of a
conglomeration of many different centers. Fulton (2001), as a result, has called it the
“reluctant metropolis” and Fogelson (1967) was one of the first to carefully document
its disconnected social and political landscape. Ernesto Cortés Jr., One LA’s lead
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organizer, argues that because of this fragmentation, Los Angeles has been
“remarkably effective at dividing people…making people feel like one neighborhood
does not connect to another,” and that this has limited peoples’ effectiveness
“politically, personally, socially.” Sister Judy Donovan, an experienced organizer who
is new to Los Angeles also recalls coming to realize that the “good life” in Los
Angeles has come to mean being left alone and shunning obligations or encumbrances.
One LA also lodges critiques concerning the efficacy to date of Los Angeles’
various social movements. One senior organizer refers to a “culture of reenactments”
witnessed in endless marches, vigils, and town hall meetings that produce little in the
way of new ideas or actionable solutions. Another organizer suggested that Los
Angeles is the “land of coalitions,” also referring to a certain level of “activity” around
social issues but a concomitant lack of identifiable long-term outcomes. Other One LA
leaders illustrate this theme by noting that while one of Los Angeles County’s 88
cities, Pasadena, houses the greatest number of non-profits per capita in the nation, it
has never witnessed a collaborative citywide social movement. One LA also
recognizes that identify-based movements and racially defined efforts largely
dominate Los Angeles and acknowledges that meaningful progress on many issues
such as education and housing will require renewed collaboration across various
ethnic and racial cleavages.
Some key underlying objectives – each reflected in the name “One LA” – flow
from these perspectives on the situation in Los Angeles County. First, One LA bears a
desire to counter the socio-political disconnection that it perceives in Los Angeles by
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attempting to build a network of institutions across the county that are “in relationship
with each other” and learning how to “work together” to address social realities that
are putting pressure on families. One LA also intends to create a “power organization”
with a geographic scope and an ability to leverage change in a way not seen before in
Los Angeles County. This requires in part trying to bridge disparate efforts already in
existence. Such bridging also includes addressing what One LA depicts as an all too
common decoupling of talk and action. As one organizer explained:
There are two ways that people typically think about [responding to] a
situation: Taking action around an issue or having a day of dialogue about it.
We’re trying to have both: sustained dialogue around what we’re having
actions around. We’re trying to remove the schism.

One LA, finally, hopes to engage a group of institutions representing a variety
of ethnic groups as well as religious traditions and economic strata. One picture that
emerges from talking to One LA organizers is that Los Angeles offers the ultimate
challenge from a broad-based organizing perspective. One senior organizer quipped,
“If it can be done here, it can be done anywhere.” She then elaborated that what One
LA is attempting to do is “radically counter-cultural…trying to bring together
hundreds of institutions and thousands of people who want to…reject the politics of
isolation and individualism and want to build something collective.”
One LA’s organizing effort has resulted in burgeoning activities around the
county as well as in some concrete policy outcomes at local and county-wide levels.
These activities parallel the five areas outlined in One LA’s “Building Standing for
Families” agenda which include housing, education, health, safety, and workers’ rights
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and employment. Table 2 provides an overview of the specific issues associated with
this agenda and some of its corresponding activities.
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Table 2. Public Activity of One LA Resulting from its Five-Prong Agenda
Area Issues Activities
Housing Critical shortage of affordable
housing throughout Los Angeles
County - partial cause of
approximately 250,000 new
homeless persons annually
including increasing numbers of
women and children.
o Won a commitment from City Council members to order housing
code inspections
o Helped establish the LA City’s $100 million Housing Trust Fund
o Secured the first “Eviction Protection Plan” from LA City officials
o Organizing housing clinics to educate for eviction prevention
o Working to assist passage of an inclusionary zoning policy
requiring affordable units in new developments
Education Overcrowded schools and
colleges; budget shortfalls leading
to teacher layoffs, increased class
sizes, and reduced instructional
time.
o Worked to pass bond measures to build new schools in LAUSD
and insure timely construction
o Secured release of intervention funds for over 20,000 LAUSD
students overlooked due to multi-track system
o Organizing “achievement academies” to build relationships and
create collaboration between parents, teachers, and administrators
o Organizing approximately 25 schools in Los Angeles, Pasadena,
Glendale, Pomona, and Inglewood districts
Health Lack of access and affordability of
healthcare - two million people
without health insurance coverage;
environmental hazards.
o Worked to pass Measure B to bring additional $250 million for
trauma care
o Created an innovative pilot project, Vida, to address barriers to
access in Los Angeles County healthcare system
o Working to save King-Drew hospital, open additional county
outpatient clinics, and increase staffing levels in county healthcare
system
o Fighting expansion of the Bradley Dump in Sun Valley and the
building of other urban landfill

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Table 2, Continued. Public Activity of One LA Resulting from its Five-Prong Agenda
Safety Lack of safety and freedom from
harassment in neighborhoods.
o Worked with the Los Angeles County Sheriff to enforce public
drunkenness laws and increase patrols in South East and East Los
Angeles
o Worked with the LAPD to increase patrols and determent of drug
and gang activities and close drug and prostitution sites in high
activity divisions
o Conducting community walks in South Los Angeles to recruit
leaders and institutions to support a strategy to “reclaim” their
neighborhoods
o Working for eligibility of all Californians to apply for a driver’s
license
Worker’s
rights and
employment
Instability in families and
communities due to infringement
on basic workers’ rights
o Supporting union jobs with benefits and stopping the expansion
of low wage jobs
o Helped to defeat Wal-Mart initiatives in Inglewood and
Rosemead
o Organizing Workers’ Associations to protect the rights of low-
wage non-union workers
o Ended practice of weekly driver checkpoints and 30-day impound
period targeted at immigrant workers in city of Maywood
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Origins of One LA
One LA is an affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation – an organization
founded more than 50 years ago by the late Saul Alinsky, the “father” of American
community organizing. Alinsky began organizing in response to the poor living and
working conditions in the meat-packing yards of 1940s Chicago - conditions Upton
Sinclair depicted in his book, The Jungle. Alinsky pioneered methods which enabled
this disenfranchised community to develop and exert the political power needed to
bring about needed changes. By the 1950s, the IAF was organizing and training other
communities to solve their problems throughout Chicago, New York State, and
California. Today the IAF network is comprised of 56 affiliate organizations
functioning throughout 21 states in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, and
Germany.
The IAF’s initial foray in California began in 1948 when the Community
Service Organization (CSO) of Los Angeles requested its training assistance. The IAF
assigned Fred Ross to the task and throughout the 1950s Ross helped leaders such as
Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta organize nationally recognized anti-housing
discrimination campaigns and establish community organizations in over 30 cities
throughout California. The CSO eventually disbanded when key staff left to form the
United Farm Workers Association.

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The IAF resumed work in California in the mid-1970s when a young organizer
from Texas by the name of Ernesto Cortés Jr., Jr. founded the United Neighborhoods
Organization (UNO) in East Los Angeles. Cortés had gained experience building what
would become one of the nation’s most powerful citizen organizations, Communities
Organized for Public Service, or COPS, of San Antonio. A Catholic Sister working in
San Antonio at the time who would go on to become an IAF leader recalls when
COPS “burst onto the scene” using an innovative organizing approach that melded
faith traditions with Alinsky’s protest politics:
Mexican Americans were demanding some justice…and they were there with
their priests and…their congregations and they were saying, “For years you
[city leaders] have done nothing for our communities”… [and] COPS was able
- just by…holding the city accountable and by beginning to get the voting
numbers up…to turn the city on its ear…it sent shockwaves through the
religious communities all over…

Whereas Alinsky had sought to build unilateral power, or power over others, the
strategy Cortés brought to Los Angeles in the mid-1970s focused on building
relational power – the ability to create change through collaboration with a wide range
of constituencies. UNO reflected the move beyond a neighborhood focus and an
attempt to build a citywide civic organization comprised of diverse institutions. The
success of UNO led to similar organizations being built in South Central, the San
Gabriel Valley, and the East Valley. For several years, these four organizations tallied
important policy victories, including an increase in the statewide minimum wage. By
the nineties, however, the IAF’s approach of having four distinct organizations in Los
Angeles was becoming less effective. Bound to particular geographies, the
organizations became decreasingly representative of their communities in light of
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significant demographic shifts and thus less able to impact the changing power bases
throughout the Los Angeles metropolitan area. To evaluate the situation in LA, local
organizers sought the help of Ernesto Cortés Jr. once again, inviting him back out
from Texas in 1999.
Cortés assessed that there was not sufficient “critical mass” in any one of the
organizations to build the power required to influence the new governing regimes in
Los Angeles County. Back in the seventies, Cortés explains,
there was a group of 25-40 CEOs who basically ran things for Los Angeles.
[But] power is much more diffuse now in Los Angeles, and it’s harder to get
hold of…We didn’t have a 12 billion dollar pornography industry in
1978…and the kind of power center that that represents. We didn’t have the
“ring of fire” of gun manufacturers then that we do now.

Cortés also found that neighborhoods that had been traditionally African American
had by then become largely Latino, and Latino areas had become Korean. IAF leaders
decided that to adequately address the complexity, scope, and changing nature of the
Los Angeles context, a more regional strategy was warranted. This led to a landmark
decision to reorganize the four separate IAF organizations into one county-wide
organizing effort. The result was the LA Metropolitan Strategy, an organization that
officially began in 1999 to oversee the rebuilding process. Reorganizing consisted of
“slow patient work” of going back to institutions that had been part of the original
organizing effort and helping them understand the change and determining whether
they had an appetite for going forward. Cortés’ estimate of 3 to 5 years to complete the
reorganization was accurate and in July of 2004 leaders held the founding convention
of One LA, the new county-wide organization.
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One LA’s Leadership Structure
One LA employs about a dozen full-time organizers to help build and guide the
organization. These include a lead organizer with nearly 40 years experience and who
bears overall oversight of the organizing work and two senior organizers, each with
roughly 15 to 25 years of experience. The remaining organizers consist of
“supervising” organizers and those that are newest to the field. One LA organizers
reflect a variety of backgrounds but share a commitment to organizing as a profession
that they take seriously and in some instances consider their life’s work. One senior
organizer who was a former engineer, for example, talks about his career shift “from
civil engineering to civic engineering.” Another organizer emphasized that organizing
was not “some missionary thing you do in your twenties,” but rather something that
grows into a vocation. Organizer turnover in One LA is low. Some four organizers left
One LA during the roughly two year period of my study. All, however, stayed within
the IAF network or within the broader field of organizing. At least three new
organizers were recruited and hired during that two year period as well.
It is important to note, however, that organizers do not comprise the
organization, but rather work for it and technically remain outside of One LA’s
authority structure. The roughly thirty-five member Central Leadership Team, for
example, One LA’s main guiding body, is made up entirely of leaders from dues-
paying member institutions. Each year One LA regional clusters nominate people to
serve as their Cluster Co-Chairs and At Large Conveners - positions which comprise
the membership of the Central Leadership Team. A Nominating Committee then
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proposes a final slate of leaders giving attention to “diversity and balance” and this
proposal is discussed and ratified at a Delegates’ Assembly. Members of the Central
Leadership Team then meet monthly and serve two year staggered terms. Those in the
position of At Large Conveners also comprise One LA’s Board of Directors for legal
and fiscal purposes. Some of the stated responsibilities of the Central Leadership
Team include hiring the Lead Organizer, recruiting more members to the organization,
carrying out decisions made at Delegate Assemblies or Conventions, insuring the
organization remains true to its declared mission, and bearing the role of official
spokesperson on behalf of the organization.
The main constituency of One LA is its base of leaders. One LA’s definition of
a leader in its simplest form is “someone who has a following.” One LA makes
distinctions, however, between different types or degrees of leadership. Member
organizations each have a core team, for example, which is typically comprised of the
most committed leaders in that institution. These are what One LA calls “primary
leaders.” Beyond the core team, however, there are “secondary” and “tertiary” leaders,
each reflecting a different level of interest and activity in the work. This leadership
typology, which One LA has developed and which it explicitly refers to and teaches
throughout its practice, is presented in Table 3.

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Table 3. One LA’s Typology of Leaders
Tertiary Leader Secondary Leader Primary Leader
Scope of
leadership
Has a following and
is able to deliver that
following when
needed

Can deliver a
following and is
interested in finding
and developing other
leaders
Can deliver a
following and is
interested in finding
and developing other
leaders; also interest
in developing self as
a leader
Scope of
interest in
issues and/or
One LA
movement
Mainly surrounds
local institution;
often single-issue
focus
Extends beyond local
institution; single or
multiple issue focus;
interested in building
recognition and
power of larger
movement
County- or One LA-
wide or larger;
multiple issue focus;
interested in building
One LA by recruiting
new member
institutions and
funding

All of these leaders are organized first by member institution and then by geographic
cluster. Clusters meet about two times per year and often more when they are engaged
around an issue together. Clusters can also be institutional, such as the cluster of One
LA’s union members. Three major assemblies of One LA leaders generally occur.
There is a semi-annual Leaders’ Assembly where Core Teams from each member
institution convene, a Delegates’ Assembly involving both Core Teams and other
selected leaders who are invited, and a Convention which is convened roughly every
four years (in place of a Delegates’ Assembly) and involves all of the above in
addition to as many other leaders or potential leaders that can be turned out.

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Organizer Characteristics
One LA organizers, despite their official placement outside the leadership
structure, are very much insiders from an organizational culture perspective. They
largely set the ethos of the One LA community and often give it a face. Non-
participants of One LA, for example, often identify the organization with one
organizer or another with statements such as, “Oh, One LA? Yeah, I know Carmella,
one of their organizers, and she is just wonderful”; or, “I don’t know much about One
LA, but I did meet Ken…” and so on. One LA leaders frequently describe the
organization in terms of their organizer as opposed to identifying it with themselves or
with other leaders or member institutions. The impression organizers make on leaders
and others, therefore, is an important part of the perception of One LA as a whole.
Here is a composite description of an organizer built around three of the main themes I
encountered:
1. Relational: She is a good listener and she’s concerned about my
development as a leader. She is definitely somebody I can learn from…
2. Serious: She’s focused. She doesn’t mess around with chatter, but likes to
get right to business…
3. Agitational: She isn’t afraid to challenge me. At first, I was a bit
intimidated by her, but now I know she’s just trying to push me and get me
to think, and it’s always done in a spirit of respect…
One LA organizers are in fact generally likable and engaging individuals with
well-honed people skills. This is a necessary and logical asset since their medium is
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people and relationships. A strong focus on developing relationships and engaging
people informs other aspects of the organizing culture as well, such as an emphasis on
“effectiveness over efficiency.” There is a distinct preference, for example, for face to
face conversation as opposed to other communication forms. One organizer bemoaned
the convenience of telephones, for instance, saying that often when you talk to
someone over the phone, “you think you had a conversation when you really didn’t.”
Email is generally de-emphasized within the One LA community as an ineffective tool
in terms of providing a means for authentic conversation and relationship building.
Some organizers avoid email altogether and on several occasions I observed
newcomers to the movement propose mass emailing or website development as a
strategy and One LA organizers and leaders respond by suggesting more one-on-one,
face to face, contact instead.
A ubiquitous practice of organizers that is also deeply reflective of the
relational emphasis is the one-on-one – defined as a “conversation with a public
purpose.’ One-on-ones are viewed as the primary vehicle for building “trust and
reciprocity” and means of sustaining public relationships. These “relational meetings”
vary in scope and substance depending on the participants and context as one might
expect. However, with potential or new leaders, the goal of an organizer in a one-on-
one is generally to elicit “what makes a person tick” - or “what is this person's story?”
An important thing organizers must ultimately help new leaders discern, for example,
is whether they have sufficient appetite to sustain them in the hard work of organizing.
A good relational meeting is, finally, a two-way exchange – a “conversation” rather
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than an “interview” or “interrogation.” At the same time, one-on-ones are often judged
based on whether or not they lead to some sort of action – thus, again, they are not
conversation for conversation’s sake, but for a “public purpose.” A senior organizer
described his approach for instigating movement through a one-on-one:
Part of what you want to get a sense of is, “Is this somebody who wants to
make something happen?” So…I [might] propose something…make a
challenge…offer a way to think about something… And then see if they do
something with it. So that could be something as simple as, “Well, could we
meet again, are you willing to do that?” Or, “Could you pull together a small
group so we could have a conversation about your neighborhood?” “Could you
set up a meeting with your teacher and invite me to that?” It could be any
number of things to see if they're willing to take it to another level. And that
doesn't always happen in one conversation…sometimes…three or four
conversations.

The intensity or “seriousness” attributed to One LA organizers is mainly
spoken of in terms of a perception that they carry a heavy workload and that they like
to “get things done.” One LA organizers are, in fact, strongly expected – even required
– to maintain a healthy private life and to limit their weekly work week to around 50
hours. At the same time, it is true that they are present at a remarkable number of
activities and events at a variety of times, including early mornings, weeknights, and
weekends. Organizers also display remarkable diligence when it comes to building
relationships and recruiting new leaders. A One LA organizer will hold in a typical
week anywhere from 20 to 30 individual meetings or one-on-ones. About half of these
meetings are with potential or new leaders, of which only a few usually indicate any
kind of “appetite” for the work or display a desire to “think about themselves, and be
reflective, and think about power.” Not a high percentage. Other meetings are held
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with core leaders where the focus is ongoing mentoring or more on the work at hand.
Remaining meetings are generally with people outside of organization, such as with
officials or other stakeholders, for the purpose of researching issues or building
contacts.
Organizers also use one-on-ones to “agitate” or “stir up” peoples’ imaginations
- this being central to their task of helping people think differently about themselves or
about an issue. Throughout most interactions, in fact, One LA organizers typically
model a rather direct and occasionally probing – agitational – style of communication.
This style of communication also flows from an effort to model a political
counterculture where discussion as well as debate and confrontation are part of routine
public discourse – to contrast prevailing norms in many local political cultures which,
One LA argues, are often “polite,” but ineffectual. Relational, serious, and agitational
are therefore aspects of the image of One LA organizers which often re-emerge. There
is another key characteristic which One LA organizers embody; a facet which
permeates the ethos of One LA. This is their strong and consistent appetite for
intellectual inquiry and learning, which I will next examine, beginning with a brief
vignette.
A Learning Culture
Daniel is a new organizer. It is Monday morning and he is
attending his first staff meeting at the One LA office. Organizers and other
staff begin covering business on the agenda. About half-way into the
meeting, Ernesto Cortés Jr., the Lead Organizer, elicits a discussion about
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a chapter from Arendt’s Men in Dark Times – the reading for the day. A
rigorous forty-five minute conversation ensues. Cortés encourages the
organizers to reflect on how the chapter makes them think differently
about their work. There much back-and-forth and lots of energy in the
room. Daniel is captivated by what he is witnessing. It’s like he has finally
found what he had always imagined possible, but never really experienced
– activists who are also intellectuals. All of the activist movements he has
been a part have tended to be anti-intellectual. And among the
intellectuals he knows, many are anti-activist, even apolitical. Here was
an incredible positive blending of these two.

My observations reinforce the assertion of Boyte (2004) who says One LA
distinguishes itself by its strong emphasis on learning and intellectual inquiry. This is
often grist for surprise among many newcomers to the organization, as illustrated in
the preceding vignette. Daniel talks animatedly about the incident above and about the
excitement he felt during his introduction to One LA - how he “fell in love” with the
One LA culture and how his visible enthusiasm made him the object of friendly jokes
among the other organizers. He also recounts, however, how the initial high of that
period eventually subsided and he came to have critiques about the way One LA
operated. This did not lead to disillusionment, however, as he might have expected.
Instead, as he established the trust to raise his questions and concerns, he discovered
that One LA represented a culture that welcomed scrutiny. Daniel found it difficult,
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consequently, to play the role of “outside critic,” something he had often resorted to in
previous contexts. He found himself in an environment where there was a desire to
“learn,” to “welcome challenges rather than diffuse challenges,” and not avoid
difficult questions. One LA’s desire to build a community of learners is explicit and
intentional and not reserved just for organizers - it implicates everyone involved in the
movement. Cynthia, a church administrator and long-time One LA leader, shared her
perspective, for example:
In the past when I've been involved in political movements there's been the
thought that only people with advanced degrees are capable of understanding
political theory…[One LA’s] assumption…carries over into the way they
approach educational issues in general…every child is a potential learner and
so is every adult. It's about life long learning. I think that's really helped me.

“Learning culture” for One LA also entails the expectation that the
organization itself will display a marked capacity for innovate and change. One term
One LA uses for the type of organizational environment they wish to promote is
“entrepreneurial,” denoting a propensity for taking initiative and assuming some risk
in order to “create something new.” They are not speaking of business ventures or
profit-making, however, but rather of social innovations or new enterprises -
“experiments” – that advance the work of organizing or promote the public good. One
experiment referred to in this context, for example, is One LA’s recent hiring of a
Korean organizer in an attempt to more effectively engage the Korean community and
its plans to try out organizers who speak the languages of other major ethnic groups in
Los Angeles County. Another new initiative underway is One LA’s “synagogue
strategy” involving an attempt to adjust the organizing model in a way that engages
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the Jewish religious community. Part of this effort involves rethinking a notion that
rests at the very heart of One LA’s framework – the idea that there is only one truly
durable motivator for organizing: self-interest around personal injustices. One LA is
beginning to uncover signs that the synagogue communities have motivations to
engage in the work not only out of self-interest but also from a desire to genuinely
interact with people that are different from them and to learn to relate more effectively
internal to their own community. A couple of organizers are also at work further
developing a new model of training called “achievement academies” which creates
space for parents, teachers, and administrators to come together and discuss what it
means to create an effective learning environment for students. New initiatives such as
these are a result of One LA’s desire to be constantly “re-organizing” itself and to be
responsive to challenges and opportunities – to make strategic change “part of its
DNA.” One LA’s lead organizer reminds his team often to think of their organization
as “always 1/3 built.” One organizer explained: “So we now have 100 institutions. We
ought to be thinking about five years from now, when we want 200. If you’re not
thinking like that then you’re not really organizing, you’re servicing.”
Related to this culture of learning, finally, is the deeply held notion among One
LA organizers of the importance of critical reflection, whereby successful
development as a public person, community leader, or organizer is viewed as
inseparable from ongoing evaluation and loyal criticism by committed others. Even
the most senior organizers subject themselves to this form of accountability through
the practice of checking in daily with their counterparts. Maribeth, a senior organizer,
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for example, attested: “I've been an organizer for 28 years and I'm still accountable
every day. That culture of accountability is something you have to cherish. It's
intense.” Ongoing critical feedback is also viewed as necessary for keeping the work
fresh and inspired. As One LA’s lead organizer confessed:
Sometimes I don't have the patience for [organizing], to be quite honest, and
the only thing that keeps me in check is a group of colleagues that remind me
that this is not just about making me feel good, this is not just about satisfying
my own frustrations, this is about a developmental process.

Political Philosophy
One LA’s political stance reflects a populist bent and borrows heavily on a
participatory democratic framework. One LA calls itself “radically non-partisan,” for
example, and makes a point of declining to endorse candidates emphasizing that “our
agenda is our candidate.” One LA’s agenda itself is shaped by a range of institutions,
from more conservative religious institutions to secular non-profits and unions, and
therefore embodies issues that bear some appeal to a range of constituencies on the
political spectrum. In the process of looking for people to recruit and organize,
furthermore, One LA tends to pay special attention to people “on the margins,”
whether women, immigrants, outsiders, or others. In addition to promoting voter
activity around their agenda, however, One LA also envisions a political culture which
entails a broader notion of democratic participation. Lead Organizer Cortés regularly
decries what he sees as an overemphasis on the electoral process labeling it a
“quadrennial electronic plebiscite” and arguing that contemporary Americans have
largely ceded to professional politicians their “political birthright” which is a tradition
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of active political and civic engagement. One LA organizers and leaders therefore talk
about One LA as a “university” designed to teach people “how to participate
effectively in public life” - a place where people are “taught, developed, and mentored
how to act on their own behalf.” Cortés, again, expands the point by contesting that
“social capital” is not enough, because “the Nazis had a lot of social capital.” One
LA’s goal is instead to help its member institutions create “a democratic culture or
ethos.” Cortés asks, for example: “How do you create that kind of understanding,
contestation, deliberation, and struggle?... How do you teach people how to argue?...
How do you create that sort of culture of development of these attitudes and habits?
That’s a big question for this century.”

Social Change Approach
One LA has explicitly set about to “rebuild civic culture.” A senior organizer
elaborated by explaining that what they are trying to do is help “ordinary citizens,
rooted in their institutions…develop relationships with each other and with other
institutions” in order to “identify issues that are of interest…research them, become
literate about [them],” and then, finally, “organize a powerful enough constituency to
influence public life.” Three facets are reflected here that characterize One LA’s
approach to bringing about social change: the role of institutions or mediating

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organizations, relationships, and the expression of power through collective action.
The next vignette is offered to show how the thinking of one organizer working
around education issues reflects each of these facets. Following, I will discuss each
facet further.

Organizing Power for Education Reform
Joaquin is a senior organizer doing work around education
reform. He is currently working with several schools situated throughout
the county - in Southeast LA, East LA, the Mid-city, Pasadena, Glendale,
Pomona, and the San Fernando Valley. He has successfully built
relationships with various leaders at these schools and has helped them
begin to organize around their interests. Three different approaches
within the organizing work of these schools can be detected. Some of the
schools have focused on strengthening existing relationships, for example,
by organizing house meetings between parents and teachers. Other
schools are targeting specific legislation - in one case trying to get
relocated from the site of a toxic landfill. The third group has focused on
broadening the constituency that supports public education in one way or
another. Joaquin’s goal, however, is not to merely “service” the various
efforts of these schools in isolation, but to organize them into a powerful
and sustainable movement. A broad and sustainable movement, he knows,
will require all three of these emphases. It will need to be grounded in a
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“relational culture” where trust and sustainability can be built. Relational
trust, however, will need to be translated into political power by building
a larger constituency and targeting specific policy areas.
Joaquin has begun, consequently, to create opportunities for these
schools to have meaningful conversations together about their respective
organizing efforts and experiences. An immediate result of these
discussions has been greater realization about the shared impacts of No
Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation and the testing regime. While this is
an issue all of these educators have in common, most have felt like they're
the only ones going through it. Joaquin believes that the schools he is
working with are positioned to eventually assemble an effective and
constructive critique of NCLB. He envisions someday helping these and
other school leaders place such a critique before congressional
representatives and state officials and create an alternative to the status
quo. For the moment, however, he knows that they don’t yet have the
power to take it on. He will thus continue to challenge these leaders to
work together and strengthen their relationships with each other. He will
help them broaden their constituency by building relationships with other
schools, superintendents and school boards, as well as with other

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community organizations including religious congregations. Bringing
about substantive changes to NCLB, he knows, will require more than a
handful of schools; it will take a powerful collective consisting of a large
number and variety of institutions who are committed to acting together.

Mediating Institutions
One LA’s organizing approach, which it terms broad-based, is an explicit
“institutional strategy” to recruit and mobilize whole organizations rather than
individuals and reflects one of the latest iterations in the organizing field. The
approach emerged in the 1970s in an effort to create more durable citizen
organizations by building them not around individuals but around civic institutions.
The justifications included that it is harder for an institution to “pick up and leave,”
that institutions present an existing network of relationships and potential leaders upon
which organizers could draw, and that already embedded within many institutions
were traditions or ideals around public life and social justice. It was also a response to
the dominance of state and market sectors relative to the beleaguered civic sector
which “used to prepare the leaders” but now is comprised mostly of “pseudo-civic,
government-funded, neighborhood associations” and the like. Prevailing organizing
strategies were focused on organizing concerned individuals, however, while many
civic institutions had largely “abandoned” parts of their own traditions that were
related to a public mission. Cortés describes it this way:
Unfortunately, we have a lot of institutions whose fundamental role is to teach
us learned helplessness. They teach incompetence…a lack of capacity. They
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teach people to be seen but not heard…to look to the experts. So we’ve got to
begin to build institutions – the broad based organization – which teach people
about…the politics of township, the politics of school district, and the politics
of municipality…because that’s where decisions are made about the education
of our children…about whether or not we have healthcare, about whether or
not we…have access to the kind of infrastructure that we need for our
communities to thrive.

Organizers argued that the only sustainable means of negotiating the various forces
affecting communities is for civic institutions to “reclaim their public role.” IAF
organizers thus focus on helping organizations to become models of citizen
development and promoters of democratic participation rather than organizations that
reinforce a culture of deference. They also seek to help organizations go against
prevailing “politics of isolation” by developing a network of institutional relationships.
Institutional relationships occur on different levels and parallel the scope of a
particular targeted issue. On one level are efforts within and around individual
institutions themselves. Member institutions may, for example, decide to institute a
leadership development strategy or take on issues in their immediate neighborhood.
This often involves reaching out to partner with other neighboring institutions. Safety
is a real concern in Lincoln Heights, for instance. Local Sacred Heart Church, a One
LA member, has therefore embraced the task of holding that division of the LAPD
accountable. In order to be effective, however, One LA is encouraging them to “get
into relationship” with other schools and churches in their community. Another level
consists of work around region-wide issues. Institutions across a city or cities may
share a desire to be engaged around an issue, such as affordable housing in the San
Gabriel Valley or environmental safety in Sun Valley. Some issues, finally, require
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county-wide coordination. Work around healthcare, for example, or educational
testing, is requiring that One LA begin working on a county-wide strategy that can
then be leveraged at the state and possibly federal level.

Relational Networks
One LA organizers are quick to distinguish their approach from ‘issue-based’
organizing or coalition-building. A lot of problems are not going to be solved
overnight they argue. Instead they will require a serious commitment of time and
resources and a degree of patience that coalition-building or mobilization alone cannot
supply. One LA, they say, is trying to foster these long-term requirements in order to
deal with the “heart of the matter.” Joaquin Sanchez provided an example of a
coalition that's pushing for the A through G requirements…for a high school
student to enter the University of California. That's great if a high school takes
on those as their graduation requirements… But that means more counselors,
better teacher training, a different expectation on the part of the administration,
students, and teachers…[and] learning a new content that's going to get taught.
All of those things have to get thought through and just winning the A through
G requirement is not…enough. I don't know if coalitions have the patience to
do the follow through on all of those things that come out of winning
something like that. But that's exactly the type of organization that we're trying
to build - to over time and incrementally take on those kinds of things, but also
deal with the follow through.

Instead of organizing “around issues,” One LA organizers say their work begins with
organizing “around relationships.” While there will always be one more issue, a strong
relational network is what it takes to have “real action” - not just a one-time
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mobilization, but “sustained action.” This begins with “teaching or re-teaching”
people inside of their member institutions “how to relate to each other” in order to
generate trust and reciprocity, things that “only get built over time.”
The effort to organize people brings with it challenges. Aspects of a very task-
oriented society can frustrate the work of “relational organizing.” As Corey
Alexander, an experienced One LA leader, confessed:
I'm somebody that likes to do something. You know "let's move." And there
are many, many, many, steps before an action. And one of them involved one-
on-ones until I thought we would just die... not that we [shouldn’t] have one-
on-one conversations, but I can't keep people coming back if the only thing we
do, meeting after large group meeting, is to meet one-on-one and then talk
about how it felt.

Organizers also battle what they refer to as a strong culture of social isolation in Los
Angeles. And they constantly struggle with ways to connect people who come from
very different social and ethnic backgrounds.

Collective Action
One LA’s ultimate purpose in equipping a constituency, including individuals
and organizations, with political skills and understanding is the exercise of power in
the public sphere. One LA is clear about its aim to build a “power organization” and
states that the “work of justice” cannot be done unless they cultivate and put into
action leaders who “desire power.” One LA’s notion of ‘power’ is rooted in the idea of
agency, or the capacity or means to achieve some end. It links its use of the word
etymologically to the Vulgar Latin potre, from which comes the Spanish poder, both
of which reflect the same basic meaning: “to be able.” Power for One LA then means
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the ability or capacity to perform or act on one’s own behalf. One LA also critically
analyzes the distribution of power by teaching that power can be divided into two
forms: “organized money and organized people.” One LA teaches its member
institutions, therefore, which are typically not well resourced financially, that their
power or ability to bring about change rest primarily in the form of social networks.
The objective One LA seeks to help its constituency achieve through the
exercise of power can be seen as twofold. One purpose is clearly to rectify injustices
and to solve common problems that are of immediate concern to communities. This
aspect is reflected in One LA’s ongoing effort to help participants identify collective
concerns, distill “winnable” issues, and organize public actions to confront those
holding the power or the relevant means in the given circumstance. This is a part of
One LA’s program – the confrontational tactics rooted in grievances – which it is
more (in)famously known for. On the other hand, One LA’s purpose can also be seen
to involve an effort to introduce new claims and new definitions of political reality.
This is reflected in One LA’s advancement beyond the “protest politics” of its
predecessor Alinsky or direct action alone and its effort to reshape peoples
understanding of themselves as political and the way politics is done. Senior Organizer
Judy Donovan linked One LA’s founding convention, for example, directly to the
absence in Los Angeles of any “public commons or public square.” The essence of the
event, as she described, was about “building the public square” and building the
“public space” in which institutions could come together to “claim” their stories and
confront public officials. One LA thus seeks to redefine what it means to practice
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democracy and to present an alternative to the status quo that includes participatory
collective reasoning and debate as well as the space for collective voice to be inserted
into public decision-making process. A new claim is also represented in the vision
One LA promotes of a network of actively participative democratic citizens who are
partially shaped through mediating institutions that accept and embody their public
role. Here One LA moves beyond correcting grievances and enters the realm of trying
to help citizens come together to shape the public sphere and not only be a reactive
force to the governing arrangements, but also a creative one, one that will help “create
the agenda upon which public life [can] be run.”

Opposition to the Movement
One LA’s achievements have not been met without opposition. Resistance to
the movement often takes the form of various objections to One LA’s approach or of
subtle accusations of one sort or another. One LA leaders organizing in a largely
middle class city of about 150,000 in the north of the county, for example, have
encountered numerous obstacles. They have been accused of associating with “outside
agitators” and admonished for not using existing channels for citizen input, such as a
city-community collaborative called “Neighborhood Connections” that organizes
forums around the city. They also initially focused on education, but quickly began to
encompass other issues such as housing which elicited resistance among certain
stakeholders for unnecessarily “complicating the issue.” These stakeholders are
influential people who are willing to support targeting public education, but resistant
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to an approach which might take on business or development interests. Some
resistance to One LA’s work is more overt, occasionally crossing over into violence.
One illustrative example is the organizing One LA has done in Maywood around
workers’ rights which I portrayed in the following vignette. One LA’s Maywood effort
is noteworthy and illustrative both for its effectiveness as well as for the particularly
strong backlash it elicited.

Disorganizing a Small Political Machine
Drivers’ license check points were an issue everyone was talking
about when One LA began organizing in Maywood. Two evenings each
week, drivers were stopped and the cars of anyone without a driver’s
license were impounded. One community leader in particular, Father
Mark of a local Catholic parish, was very interested in doing something
about the situation. Every week he heard stories about the impact on lives
of people who had their cars taken away. The practice was particularly
egregious due to a state law requiring that cars impounded due to lack of
a drivers’ license be held for 30 days. This law was passed during a wave
of anti-immigrant legislation in the early nineties, but was no longer
enforced in most cities. The owner of Maywood’s main tow yard, however,
was one of the larger contributors to the campaigns of the several city
council members and Maywood had no policy preventing city contracts
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with campaign donors. The tow yard owner was successfully leveraging
the enforcement of the 30-day law as it was very lucrative for him to do
so: a 30 day hold represented over a thousand dollars to his business.
One LA leaders decided to organize a public action to call for a
moratorium on the check points. As news of their plan spread, they got a
visit from the mayor of neighboring Huntington Park. He wanted to know
why they were making such a fuss and to assure that this tow yard owner
was “a great benefactor on behalf of the community.” The day of the
action arrived and they had the entire Maywood city council and mayor
on stage with over 1000 people present. Several people told stories about
having their cars taken away and the entire city leadership agreed to a
moratorium. One LA leaders had clearly touched a nerve, however. The
next day the tires were slashed on the cars of the two co-chairs for the
action. Nothing could be proved. While it was probably the work of
someone connected to the tow yard, they couldn’t rule out other
possibilities. Several police officers, for example, were benefiting from the
overtime pay associated with running the checkpoints.
Over the next year and a half the city held to its agreement.
Eventually, however, undocumented drivers were targeted again in other
ways. Police officers, for instance, routinely positioned themselves near a
local garment factory in the morning when many undocumented workers
arrived. Stories of police stops and 30-day impoundments began to
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accumulate, frustrating the One LA leaders. They decided the next step
was to organize around the upcoming city council elections. One of the
five city council members was an ally, so if they could get two more
council members elected who supported their agenda, they could bring an
end to the enforcement of 30-day holds. They assembled a slate of
candidates to oppose the incumbents. Then, given that the previous city
election drew about 1,200 voters, they set out to find 1000 sympathetic
voters through neighborhood walks and voter registration drives. They
also planned another public action for the eve of the election where they
intended to ask the candidates to publicly support their agenda. By
election week, they had 700 signatures of registered voters and buzz about
the upcoming action was growing.
On election eve, all of the candidates and over 1300 community
members showed up at the 1200 seat auditorium of Father Mark’s church.
The tension in the room was palpable. Not long into the program,
supporters of the incumbents shouted out to be heard. One later walked up
to the stage and moved for the microphone. A One LA leader grabbed the
mic and began to chant: “One LA…One LA…One LA.” The crowd joined
in while the disrupting individuals were escorted out. The incumbent
candidates remained, their arms crossed, casting glares at the One LA
leaders for the rest of the meeting. The mayor even resorted to
intimidation, telling a One LA organizer, “The police are looking for
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you.” After the action was over rocks were thrown through the window of
the church and Father Mark found a message on his answering machine
saying, “We know your license plate number,” and “now you’re going to
see what discrimination looks like.”
The organizing effort paid off nonetheless. One LA leaders
managed to double voter turnout in their city with about 2400 ballots cast,
demonstrating that they could rally a significant number of new voters
almost exclusively in support of their agenda. One LA’s slate of
candidates, moreover, won office by more than 700 votes. A few months
later at its first meeting, the new city council agreed to end enforcement of
the 30-day holding period in Maywood.

A key principle of One LA, finally, is that there are “no permanent allies and
no permanent enemies.” Alliances and oppositions are both held up largely as practical
means to achieve some end rather than as ends in themselves. Enemies in one fight,
furthermore, may turn out to be important allies in another. In the Maywood story, on
the other hand, One LA leaders worked hard to win allies who were “inside” the
establishment in order to reverse a policy. While intending to nurture relationships
with these allies, One LA as a movement will in fact remain outside the establishment,
going about its business, including developing new leaders who may very likely be in
opposition to the very city council One LA helped elect. Evidence of this sort of
tension was already visible in the manner in which the decision to end the 30-day
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holds took place. I asked Daniel how getting the policy finally changed made him feel
as an organizer and he frankly replied that it “feels pretty damn good.” When I asked
what it was like at the meeting when the decision was made, however, he conceded
that he and his leaders weren’t there. He explained:
I wish we could have been… We found out that they were going to move on it
the day of… I mean if we had known five days in advance we would have had
people there, done a press conference. But it’s still them sort of operating as,
you know, “We’re going to do this on behalf of all these people,” rather than
thinking about a real, you know, partnership.

Daniel also reflected a realistic perspective that while they didn’t know the whole
story, he felt he could reasonably presume that the three council members they helped
seat, “[got] some pressure” from the other two to “cut a deal” in order to avoid public
attention and mediate their loss. Loosely holding allegiances, therefore, is also in part
simply a reflection of the political milieu in which One LA operates.

Summary
One LA came about to organize individuals and organizations in a landscape
that is marked by racial and economic stratification. At the heart of this effort are
trained organizers who exhibit a strongly relational approach to their work, but
nevertheless evince seriousness and an acknowledgement that a key part of their role
is to raise awareness or agitate. One LA’s emphasis on learning and education is
already evident. While its goal is to mobilize organizations, build relational networks,
and ultimately amass and exert collective power, a central tenet of One LA’s approach
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is teaching people how to participate effectively in public life. One LA is also
primarily non-religious in nature but reflects substantial partnership with religious
organizations and it has a record of achievements that have incurred both praise and
opposition.

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CHAPTER 5
THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION IN ONE LA

This chapter is the first of three which present findings concerning the
educational strategy of One LA. The following vignette will serve as an entry point by
offering a glimpse into an actual organizing scenario that brings into relief some of the
issues that comprise the remainder of this study.

Emerging Political Actors
Members of Invest in Kids trickle into the lobby of the Pasadena
Senior Center. About a dozen eventually show up on this Monday evening
despite the cold and rain. They have come to make an impromptu
presentation at tonight’s Pasadena City Council meeting. Invest in Kids is
an incipient effort to generate community-wide support for public
education in the Pasadena area and to promote a better working
relationship between the city and the board of the Pasadena Unified
School District. They learned just today that the city manager will tonight
propose ways the city might offset some school district costs in the area of
transportation. The group has decided to take the opportunity to endorse
this show of city support for the school district and to formally introduce
the Invest in Kids Campaign to the council.
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The group pulls up chairs outside the small auditorium where the
council meeting is already underway for a brief pre-meeting to discuss
their plan. Disagreement concerning the approach they should take
quickly arises. Many think the appropriate course is self-evident: they
should simply enter the meeting, submit individual requests to the clerk to
make a public comment, and be ready to speak should they be called.
Some in the group, however, suggest an alternate strategy. They propose
that a few members speak on behalf of the group and rehearse a more
coordinated presentation. What if, for example, one person introduces the
group and frames why they are here tonight, another then shares a
pertinent personal experience, and a final speaker reinforces the points
and formally invites the council to the upcoming Invest in Kids forum?
After some discussion the minority view prevails and the group selects
four speakers, including two people who will share personal stories. The
four speakers begin to rehearse. They are shortly interrupted, however -
the city manager’s proposal is already under discussion. Everyone quickly
moves to the auditorium and takes a seat.
When the time for public comment arrives, the Invest in Kids
representatives are invited to the front. The first presenter articulates
support for the city manager’s proposal and introduces the purpose of
Invest in Kids to promote a long-term, sustainable working relationship
between the city, the school board, and the community. Presenter two
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shares an anecdote about the importance of authentic democratic
discourse and states that the group wishes to invite the council into an
“ongoing conversation.” The next presenter details through a personal
story the need for funding in the area of teacher health care, and the final
speaker ends by recapping the group’s purpose and publicly inviting the
council members to an upcoming Invest in Kids forum.

The individuals who intervened in the vignette above can be credited with
helping to formulate a more strategic and effective presentation of the Invest in Kids
campaign. Imagine if, alternatively, this group had simply arrived, taken their seats in
the meeting, and each randomly offered statements during the public comment section.
The question is: Who were these individuals that helped shape this effort? The answer
comprises much of what follows in this study. This small but not insignificant
intervention outlined above did not “just happen.” It resulted from an intentional effort
by a subgroup of Invest in Kids members who were leaders with One LA and the work
of a One LA organizer herself who was also present and who had alerted the group to
city manager’s proposal in the first place. This One LA organizer and these leaders
displayed a characteristic ability to work together to help shape this “action” by
initiating the “pre-meeting,” for example, and contributing focused, strategic thinking.
They managed to interject notions such as the importance of group recognition and the
power of story, and encouraged the simple but valuable practice of rehearsing one’s
comments. The resulting message was succinct and coherent, it reinforced a few
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points, and it was made concrete through brief first-hand accounts. The Invest in Kids
presentation, consequently, held the attention of the council members, elicited a
couple of meaningful questions from them, and ultimately helped move the campaign
along.
Skills and practices such as these are just a few of outcomes that result from
One LA’s robust educational strategy which includes both facets that are readily
apparent and some that are more hidden. It is to an examination of this educational
program that I now turn, laying out in this chapter the main educational goals of One
LA and exploring in the next chapter the strategy and methods it employs to achieve
those aims. Chapter seven then analyzes the actual outcomes in terms of evidence of
learning that is observable among the participants of One LA as well as linkages
between One LA’s educational program and its political goals.

Overview of Goals and Formative Objectives
The focus of this chapter concerns the purposes behind One LA’s educational
program. What drives One LA’s educational effort? One LA’s curriculum, it turns out,
bears clear connections to its political goals. One LA’s overarching goal, for example,
is social change by creating a “power organization” with the ability to effect real
change. One LA wishes to both affect immediate and discrete changes as well as shape
social realities and challenge prevailing notions of public space and democratic
involvement. One LA’s educational program, consequently, contains both an emphasis
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on consciousness-raising as well as on organizing structural change. Here One LA
parallels other education projects within the wider struggle for social change which
seek not only to bring about heightened political awareness and orientation but also
actual transformations of society.
As a social change organization, One LA must also concern itself with
promulgating its particular organizing approach to an ever widening audience. It
exhibits an effort to increase its influence by building a collective of diverse
institutions across the county that is in relationship through involvement with One LA.
It is also interested in building a movement with some longevity rather than in short-
term mobilization. One LA’s interests here produce educational goals consistent with
the community of practice model. A community of practice involves three facets, a
domain, a community, and a practice. Each of these facets represents different aspects
of knowledge that the community, if it wishes to grow and sustain itself, must produce
and convey. One LA’s educational program is clearly designed to transmit knowledge
in these areas – about the theory and framework of organizing (its domain), a
particular way of relating to others in the movement (its community), and skills and
strategies associated with its specific organizing practice.
The overarching aim of educating for social change and the need to build a
community of practice most clearly play out in the form of a third goal of One LA that
has particularly strong educational implications. This is the formation and
development of participants into political agents. As a One LA organizer attested, “For
us organizing is about formation as much as it is about dealing with the action of
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change.” Formation in One LA, as both a means to other goals and an end in itself,
carries three specific educational objectives: 1) the use of education internally by One
LA to prepare for its tasks through the training and development of organizers; 2) the
outward-focused formation of community leaders; and, 3) the development of the
public role of One LA’s member institutions. Figure 1 offers a simple rendition of One
LA’s main goals and these three developmental objectives. I will next focus a bit
longer on these three formational objectives to illustrate further how One LA’s
educational goals are articulated.

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Figure 1. Goals and Objectives Informing One LA’s Educational Program

Internal Formation: Preparation of Professional Organizers
The training and development of new organizers represents a fundamental and
crucial educational objective for One LA. One LA Organizers are the catalyst for
virtually all of the movement’s activity, and clearly occupy the role of ‘mobilizer’ or
‘animateur’ that organizers have been linked to in the adult education literature.
Pressure to sustain the movement, on the other hand, is just one component of a

Internal Formation
Prepare professional organizers

Formation of Others
Train and develop community leaders

Institutional Development
Strengthen public role of
member organizations
Formation
Development of participants
into political actors
Social change
Consciousness-raising
Organize for power
Sustainability of movement
Build a Community of
Practice
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demanding occupation that calls for a both a unique set of prerequisite traits and
acquisition of a number of additional necessary skills. One pre-requisite trait or
inclination that potential organizers need, for instance, is “anger” – anger of a very
specific type, however. One LA describes anger in terms of its roots in a Norse word,
ang, which carries the meaning of grief. Thus, what One LA looks for is not so much
raw anger or “cold” anger, but rather anger that is connected to a sense of loss;
ultimately, anger that is “social” or that results in a degree of concern for other people.
It must also be connected to a healthy “imagination” or the ability to put one’s self in
others’ shoes - both “allies as well as…adversaries.” Absent a sense of humor, finally,
anger may lead to fanaticism or to a self righteous attitude; thus One LA also searches
for people with a certain degree of “perspective.” One on hand, this represents more of
a highly unique trait as opposed to skills to be acquired. Either a potential organizer or
leader possesses it or not. There are those people that clearly bear one set of traits or
another. On the other hand, One LA is sensitive to potentialities in people and for
people who carry strand of possibility for cultivating various “traits.” An ongoing
formative challenge One LA notes related to the expression of anger, for example, is
how to grow in one’s ability to accept and direct anger, as well as demonstrate it in
appropriate ways when pertinent. These are just some of the mix that One LA looks
for. Other potentials it seeks include exhibition of a strong “appetite” for the work, the
ability to develop relational skills, and a “sense of one’s own mortality” or the
willingness to work for change beyond one’s own lifetime.
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A logical question given the unique characteristics or potential that One LA
requires is how does it identify people? Here it is helpful if we turn to the business
literature. Collins (2001), in his book, Good to Great, reports on a study to distinguish
the factors that set companies sustaining great performance over time from those that
turn out moderate or good results. Relevant here is Collins’ discussion on leadership
selection, where he writes:
The good-to-great leaders did not pursue an expedient “try a lot of people and
keep who works” model of management. Instead, they adopted the following
approach: “Let’s take the time to make rigorous A+ selections right up front. If
we get it right, we’ll do everything we can to try to keep them on board for a
long time. If we make a mistake, then we’ll confront that fact so that we can
get on with our work and they can get on with their lives. (2001, p. 57)

The companies with a better performance culture thus did not rush to judgment but
instead invested substantially in the initial assessment phase. One LA adopts reflects a
similar approach and combines both an aggressive scouting campaign with a series of
screening mechanisms. Virtually all of the process is relational, face to face, and relies
little on more formal application procedures and traditional paperwork.
Individuals with suitable potential for organizing are understandably in short
supply and One LA is continually searching for potential organizers “just about
everywhere” they can find them. One LA organizers I interviewed, for example,
emerged from a variety of settings including graduate school, non-profit work, social
work, engineering, and missions. The recruitment process remains relatively selective,
however, despite the high demand and the slim pool of potential candidates who bear
the right competencies and a willingness to engage in what can be very hard work.
Successful candidates are typically recruited word of mouth. One LA heavily relies on
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a network of scouts to “surface” potential organizers. One new organizer that was
recently surfaced is Joy Silvern. Joy is in her mid-twenties and a former teacher in an
overcrowded urban school. She shared a space with eight other classes with no
partitions, leading to “complete chaos” and to questions like, “Ms. Silvern, do White
kids have walls in their classrooms?” She also brought snacks for students like Ronnie
and Aisha who regularly arrived to class hungry. A growing sense of anger and
powerlessness led her to increasingly ponder the notion of “comprehensive education
reform.” She finally enrolled in a masters program in public policy and at one point
ended up interning as a presidential campaign organizer in the very precinct where she
had taught. Her efforts helped double voter turnout and she developed a love for the
work of promoting “participation and democracy.” Post-election, however, she found
herself disillusioned as there was “no way to continue [the work]…no way to build
from it.” She returned to school determined to “organize,” but in a manner that was
more sustainable. It was then that a friend introduced her to an organizer from One LA
whose experience sounded “really interesting” and caused her to want to learn more.
When potential new organizers like Joy (whose story we will return to in
Chapter seven) do turn up, One LA concedes that it remains a challenge in terms of
available resources to devote the time needed to adequately assess their potential.
Once hired, the demanding and often frenetic nature of the work means that new
organizers are by necessity quickly immersed and expected to carry their load. On the
other hand, One LA is aware that a sufficient learning process for most new organizers
can easily require as many as five years. Lead organizer Cortés explains:
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People have different learning curves…Ten years ago we wouldn't have had
the capacity to allow [for] that. After six months if they didn't work out:
"You're out. Not because we don't want to keep working with you, but because
we can't. We don't have the money.” And we still don't, so that's a big
challenge.

The training and formation of its new organizers, nevertheless, features prominently in
the activity of One LA and reflects a number of well codified objectives.
A first set of objectives can be captured in One LA’s overall goal for its new
organizers which is their development as a “public person.” This term, public person,
provides the outline for a fairly discrete set of skills necessary for the work of broad-
based organizing and which new organizers are expected to master by the first year or
so. These include, for example, basic relational skills, such as a growing ability to
establish and maintain relationships with others and the ability to nurture leadership.
Successful organizing also requires the ability to give and receive critique, to act with
a certain level of confidence, and to readily engage people in positions of power. Part
of preparing organizers therefore involves enhancing a sense of what One LA refers to
as their “ego” or their level of self-assurance and assertiveness. A related objective is
the development of their sense of “agency” or the capacity to take initiative and “make
something happen.” Here, however, organizers must also learn to distinguish “action”
from “activity” - the former being defined as that which “moves the work forward” in
some way. Action might entail any number of outcomes such as the production of new
leaders or member institutions, increased group recognition, or the generation of a
promising new idea, strategy, or approach. Discerning how to bring about action thus
also involves the development of one’s capacity for strategic thinking, including
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learning “about power” and about how institutions operate. Mastering practical skills
such as self-organization and calendar keeping, finally, comprises yet another
objective in order to prepare individuals for maintaining the typically busy schedule of
an organizer.
One LA’s model is that all organizers have the potential to act as senior, or
supervising, organizers. A second array of skills are therefore also required which are
expected to emerge two to three years into an organizer’s practice - generally a
“turning point” in most organizing careers. After an organizer has acquired the basic
organizing skills and competencies, One LA asks, for example, whether an organizer
has developed the ability to “think politically.” The idea here is the ability to be
analytical, to see both sides of issue, and to understand how to negotiate and
compromise. One LA’s lead organizer, Cortés, describes this in terms of being an
“integrated schizoid” – someone who understands the need and has the capacity to
understand the opposition’s perspective.
[F]or example, you're in a strike…you know the business has got to make
money… They've got investors…they want to get rich. You have to be willing
to accept a dimension of legitimacy in that. At the same time, they've got to be
willing to share their prosperity…that [workers] provide for. Therefore, you
have to be able to take your position and be very strong and…say that justice is
on your side, and at the same time recognize that there is some right on their
side as well. If you can't do that, then you'll end up being destructive…you'll
destroy your movement…you have to be able to understand…negotiation,
compromise [in order to reach] a deal.

Another question One LA puts forth is, Are they able to build people and build
institutions rather than just “service” them? An oft cited mantra among One LA
organizers is that an organizer’s job is not to organize, but rather to find and train
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others who want to do so. Long-term success as an organizer therefore rests on a
growing ability to discern what it means to empower others rather than do for others.
Daniel, a fourth-year organizer, recalls how his initial tendency to want to “service”
sprung from a natural desire to be useful to the leaders and institutions he was working
with as well as to the organizers who he admired. As a result, he wanted to be told
what to do and what service it was that he was to provide. Over time, however, he
began to settle into that fact that rather than provide a service or be a “consultant,” his
job was to “build” something by organizing others. Finally, supervising organizers
must assume responsibility for training other organizers, for guiding the overall
organizing strategy, and for administrative matters such as generating funding. One
LA thus also seeks to instill a capacity to “think above the organization" – about its
long-term growth and development – as opposed to just “working for it.”
The educational objectives for organizers have become clearer. One LA
organizers are expected to develop relational abilities, strategic thinking, and the
ability to get things done. They must also exhibit growing capacities for “political
thinking,” for “building” others, and for working for the long-term development of the
movement. The wide range of backgrounds these organizers reflect combined with the
magnitude of their task and the evident acquisition of concomitant skills and
knowledge will make it important to examine the educational strategy and outcomes
surrounding their development. Next, I move on to consider a second main
educational objective occupying the attention of One LA: leadership development.
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Formation of Others: Developing Community Leaders
Lead organizer Cortés essentially equates organizing with “identifying leaders,
training leaders, mentoring leaders” and often reminds organizers that leadership
development is their primary role. Organizers also generally describe their job in terms
of helping “leadership skills and capacities emerge” both on behalf of member
institutions and in the interest of the broader community. But what are One LA’s
specific objectives concerning the training and development of its leaders? One LA’s
educational program for its leaders clearly exhibits both the objective of
consciousness-raising and of equipping its leaders with the means for social
transformation. Further, these objectives coalesce around the three elements of
domain, community, and practice and include, respectively: induction into the overall
organizing framework; promoting relationship-building around the notion of “political
friendship”; and, developing competence in One LA’s organizing strategy.

Transmitting the Organizing Framework
One LA endeavors to transmit to its leaders a particular framework or
interpretation of public life that is rooted in the broad-based organizing domain. The
goal is to convey a fundamental understanding of “how the world works” in order to
help leaders think about themselves and the world differently. Part of this objective
also entails helping leaders unlearn certain stereotypes, fears, and other
presuppositions about public life and to see themselves as people with a “political
story” that matters. This task primarily involves a number of established teachings
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concerning specific themes; for example, on the nature and use of power or on
handling the tension between the “world as it is” and the “world as it should be.” One
objective, for example, is to break through frequently negative stereotypes of power
and help leaders analyze its nature more objectively. At a standard One LA training I
attended, for example, organizers prompted participants by asking, "So what's the deal
with power? Why is it ‘bad’? If we have such a negative view, how do we know when
power is good or bad?” They proceeded to offer a framework to interpret power based
on the ethics of power or “how consent is obtained.” The trainer drew on the board a
continuum between force or violence and what One LA calls “informed consent”
(Figure 2).
How Consent is Obtained Ethical Base of Power

Informed consent (relational)

Misinformation
Magic or mystery
Habits and tradition

Force or violence (unilateral)

Strongest

Weakest

Figure 2. One LA’s Framework for Conceptualizing the Nature of Power
Leaders were hereby encouraged to dispel notions of “power” as inherently bad and
instead to distinguish power according to the strength of its ethical foundation. The
exercise highlighted One LA’s proposition that informed consent, or “relational”
power that is amassed through deliberation, reflection, and collective judgment,
represents a positive form with a strong ethical foundation.
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One LA also recognizes that its leaders come out of institutions which often
bear strong traditions and ideals. The Judeo-Christian tradition of many of One LA’s
member congregations, for example, foregrounds notions such as love, community,
justice, and mercy. Democratic ideals, on the other hand, pervading many public
schools, unions, or other secular civic organizations, often highlight human rights,
tolerance, and equality. Leaders typically bring a particular vision of the world “as it
should be.” Because they must operate in the world “as it is,” however, a key objective
of One LA is to help leaders negotiate these conflicting visions of the world by
pointing out the contrasting forces, virtues, and forms of power they typically embody
(Table 4).
Table 4. One LA’s “Two Visions of the World” Framework
World “as it is” World “as it should be”
Driving force Money Love
Virtue Self-interest Self-sacrifice
Operational power Unilateral Relational

One LA attempts to prepare leaders to operate within existing realities by teaching
them to recognize when idealism may be destructive to the larger enterprise. One LA
also teaches leaders to shift their attention away from what One LA terms “problems”
- broad societal dysfunctions such as racism or poverty – and instead to focus on
“issues,” or specific concerns that are more treatable and winnable.

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Building “Political Friendships”
One LA seeks to teach its leaders how to become more relational. One LA
believes that to create a durable citizen organization that is able to engage in sustained
action over time and around multiple issues requires teaching people how to build and
maintain public relationships. Public relationships are those which exist primarily for
the purpose of addressing common or shared – public – interests, in contrast to
relationships which concern the private sphere. One LA calls this “political
friendship.” Political friendships, therefore, require building “trust and reciprocity” –
often across various social cleavages - in order to facilitate taking political action
together. One LA thus seeks to teach people how to have “serious conversations” with
people who are different than they are in order to listen to other peoples’ stories and
possibly identify shared concerns. Building public relationships also requires teaching
people certain ways of relating that may be somewhat countercultural, such as
practicing “calculated” vulnerability, deferring judgment, and learning how to be
constructively confrontational.

Developing Organizing Know-How
One LA’s third objective, finally, is to equip leaders to act collectively and
strategically on their new understandings in order to affect actual political change. One
LA portrays itself, for example, as a “university” where people are taught how to “act
on their own behalf.” One LA thus seeks to help leaders see themselves agents by
developing the specific skills and strategies associated with its organizing approach.
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The practical steps associated with One LA’s approach are laid out in its “organizing
cycle” (Figure 3), an overview organizers use when presenting the organizing process.
One LA’s expectation is that leaders will over time become adept at applying this
cycle through an ongoing, reiterative experience with it.

Figure 3. Schematic of the Organizing Cycle

Recruit
Member
Institution

Assemble
Core Team

One-on-One
Meetings
House
Meetings
Research
Action

Public
Action

Reflect and
Evaluate
One LA’s
“Organizing Cycle”
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Situated in each of the various steps in the cycle, moreover, are other attendant
skills and knowledge which One LA attempts to convey in the process. Recruiting
member institutions, for example, represents the process of soliciting involvement by
new organizations and ultimately having them come on board as dues-paying
members. While an important step, as dues comprise more than 90 percent of One
LA’s funding base, this can be an arduous process sometimes requiring as much as
two years. Soliciting membership, however, involves multiple tasks that may elicit
new skills and knowledge. These include meeting with members to learn about the
institution, conducting a “power analysis” of the institution, teaching members about
the organizing process, and learning to negotiate. Another stage in the cycle, “public
action,” entails other types of knowledge and skills such as those associated with the
art of “democratic argument and struggle” like storytelling, inquiry, public speaking,
and the ability to stand up to questioning or think on one’s feet. In one planning
meeting I observed, organizers made a call for sign-ups for an upcoming action and
the list of possible areas in which to participate was extensive, including media,
briefing officials, ensuring turnout, floor arrangements, assembling materials,
translating, and being part of the floor team.
Formation of leaders therefore involves developing political awareness and
equipping them for collective action. One LA attempts to do this through introduction
to the organizing framework, promoting practices for building social networks, and

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transmitting skills necessary for engaging in the broad-based organizing approach.
Next I move on to examine One LA’s educational objectives for the organizational
units in which its leaders are typically found: One LA’s member institutions.

Development of Member Organizations
A third formational objective of One LA’s educational program is the
“development” of its member institutions. One LA’s aim here is to help its member
institutions recover a sense of public mission and corporately adopt the framework and
capacities to work for social justice. One LA’s endeavor is to see the civic spaces
represented by its member institutions become not just “sites of refuge” but places of
democratic “transformation.” This goal carries with it three main objectives.
The first objective involves casting a vision about the potential role of
mediating institutions based on the organizing framework. This generally entails
getting an institution to “live up to its own rhetoric,” or recapturing existing, possibly
latent, ideals, more than introducing new ones. As one organizer stated, “There's a
tradition inside of an institution that you can recall and teach back to.” For most of
One LA’s member institutions, which are religious congregations, organizers appeal to
the basic justice values that are embedded in the Judaic-Christian tradition. A senior
organizer described notions, for instance, of the “dignity of the person” and of the
importance of paying attention “to those at margins - the widow, the orphan, the
stranger.” In a school setting, on the other hand, organizers may recall the tradition of
progressive education, such as during a One LA leaders’ assembly. A speaker
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exhorted listeners to remember John Dewey and his critique of the political and social
effects of vast concentrations of private wealth and corporate power. She pointed to
the link between the “decline of the local community and small scale enterprise” and
the “loss of important opportunities to learn the art of democratic participation.” She
went on:
I imagine what [Dewey] would say today observing today's society and our
global economy…Education for engaged citizenship consists of two essential
elements: Respect for diversity [and] development of critical, socially engaged
citizens…We…want to educate citizens who value our diversity and who have
the abilities to make decisions for the good of the community. No student will
be left behind when our society dedicates itself to fostering [this].

Second, One LA’s contention that sustained organizing hinges on durable
relationships has particular import for its member institutions where all of its leaders
are based. One LA’s approach - sometimes called “relational organizing” – also
involves teaching or “re-teaching” a church, school, or other member organization
how to foster an internal culture whereby people relate to each other in ways that
generate trust and reciprocity. One LA wants its members - schools, churches, and
other non-profits - to become sites where democratic skills can be practiced and where
conversations involving “understanding, contestation, deliberation, and struggle” are
promoted, what One LA calls a democratic “ethos.” One LA’s strategy to build an
adequately powerful organization in Los Angeles County, however, requires not only
relational networks within institutions, but networks between institutions. Part of this
relational objective therefore involves building relationships between member
institutions so that they begin to “think and learn” together about their common
interests.
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One LA’s goal for its institutions finally means developing their ability to
build and use power in the public sphere – to successfully engage in the practice of
broad-based organizing. One LA’s objective is for its member organizations to begin
to act corporately in the public sphere by organizing their own people, learning to
think strategically, and acting collectively with other institutions across various lines
such as social, economic, racial, and religious. While extolling the importance and
potential public role of its civic institutions, One LA also attempts to impart realism
about their relatively weak influence in the social sphere – thereby also reinforcing its
imperative of the need to organize collectively. During a typical training session I
observed, for example, an organizer walked participants through a “power analysis” of
Los Angeles by eliciting various institutions in the city and arranging them on the
board according to the “level of influence” they wield in the local public sphere. The
diagram which resulted from the exercise (Figure 4) poignantly illustrated that fact
that so-called ‘mediating institutions’ including churches, schools, unions, and other
community organizations, generally rank near the bottom in terms of the institutional
pecking order.

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Most influence

Least influence

Major finance corporations
Real estate developers, pornography industry
Media companies, Port of Los Angeles
State government bodies
Political parties
LAUSD, Mayor, Chief of Police
County supervisors
City council
Mediating institutions
Individuals and families

Figure 4. Results of a One LA Training Exercise: “Power Analysis” of Los Angeles

One LA’s educational goals for the development of its member institutions into
sites of “transformation” therefore involve three objectives: to impart a renewed vision
for their potential public role in society, encourage relational networks within and
between them, and facilitate capacity building around the organizing approach.
Organizational transformation depends on the formation of the leaders which means
equipping them with greater political awareness, relational skills, and increased
aptitude for collective action. Pivotal catalysts, finally, are One LA organizers
themselves, who are also the target of educative goals, including increased capacities
for relating to and developing others, for political thinking, and for organizing
competence. These objectives for educational formation derive directly from One
LA’s larger aim of educating for social change, reflecting as they do emphases on

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increasing political awareness as well as on facilitating structural change. These
formational objectives also reflect a desire to increase its scope of influence and
sustain the longevity of One LA as a community of practice by insuring transmission
of knowledge and skills with respect to One LA’s framework, its ways of being, and
its particular organizing approach.

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CHAPTER 6
ONE LA’S EDUCATIONAL METHODS

The educative goals that One LA has assumed are ambitious and complex. It is
understandable then that a recurring subject of discussion within One LA concerns
how to promote effective adult learning. Lead organizer Ernesto Cortés Jr., in
particular, reflects a preoccupation with this question by constantly inviting organizers
and leaders to think with him about what it means for an organization to create a
meaningful and politically relevant learning environment. He often likens his work to
other movements such as late seventeenth century social settlement houses, explaining
that One LA is
trying to capture the essence of a place like Hull-House…a place of
safety…but also of development for people…who are at the margins of life,
whether they be people of color or women or just…who have been kicked
around by the…rough edges of technology and the market. So it's a place,
hopefully, where people are really taught, developed, and mentored how to act
on their own behalf.

Others in the organization, such as senior organizer Joaquin, affirm that building this
“university of public life” constitutes an ongoing learning effort for everyone
involved. Joaquin talks about learning “more as an organizer than I ever did when I
was in graduate school. It just feels like a university that never ends.” In this section I
present the educational philosophy of One LA. I show how its strategy is linked to the
popular education framework and illustrate its core approach which is to develop new
knowledge through informed action. This chapter also describes the discrete
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educational methods that One LA has appropriated in order to achieve its goals. These
methods which will be elaborated on below are first briefly presented here in Table 5.
This table illustrates One LA’s use of both informal and nonformal educational
modalities. The considerable role that informal education plays in One LA’s strategy,
including organizational procedures which can be seen as constituting educational
processes, is notable and will be the subject of further attention later in this study.
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Table 5. Educational Methods of One LA
Modality Method Description
Collective
apprenticeship
Supportive network of mentoring relationships. Intentional contact through one-on-ones provides
encouragement and space for focused reflection and critique.
Action and
reflection
Central to One LA’s activity is a strong emphasis on reflective action or praxis. Ritualized
practice of cycles of planning → action → evaluation throughout organizing cycle.
Agitation
Practice of “stirring up” imagination of people to challenge held views and probe and (re)interpret
experiences.
Reading
practices
Regular reflection on a range of pertinent literature is encouraged. Readings are built into most
training events and organizers model ongoing reading and reflection.
Storytelling
Storytelling provides means of teaching and transmitting lessons throughout the organization.
Also facilitates catalyst for reflection on and interpretation of experiences.
Informal
Social
networking
Intentional networking across social and economic cleavages is facilitated. Leaders also recruit
and mentor others to form core teams and develop collective identity and pools capital for
increased influence and ability to operate within organizations.
Delegates’ assembly. Bi-annual half-day weekend retreats led by local organizers. Address topics
of relevance to local organizing activities and provide space for reflection on the work and to
network with other leaders.
Seminars. Two- to three-day exchanges between leaders, organizers, and a selected intellectual or
public figure that is doing work that is relevant to organizing practice. Purpose is to provide
extended discussion and reflection and to inform organizing theory or practice.
Nonformal
Structured
trainings
National training. Bi-annual multi-day sessions designed to provide comprehensive overview of
organizing framework and practice. Designed for leaders who can bring some organizing
experience upon which to reflect.
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Praxis as One LA’s Learning Philosophy
How does learning take place according to One LA? How do we know that
someone has learned? The concept of human learning that emerges from talking to
One LA leaders and organizers, and which will become clearer in the following pages,
has two core aspects. A recent IAF discussion paper explains that “our leaders and
organizers learn by ‘doing’ – through action, or praxis, reflection and evaluation” and
that “genuine learning” emerges only in this way (Alliance School Discussion Paper,
2004, p. 3). The learning that One LA seeks is therefore seen to occur through
participation and action. This paper defines praxis as “action that is aimed and
calculated” (Alliance School Discussion Paper, 2004, p. 3) and One LA organizers
routinely contrast this type of action from mere “activity,” which is less intentional,
more reactive, a “kind of moving things around” or “just doing stuff,” and void of
reflection. Reflection is therefore the second essential ingredient in One LA’s
conception of learning. Learning as a result of experience is not assumed to be
automatic but instead must be cultivated through reflection and interpretation. One LA
holds that without reflection or interpretation, “we may as well be animals,” as one
organizer put it, “we're not interpreting [our experiences] and changing and growing.”
In this framework, intentional, on the ground experiences comprise the main material
for learning, whereas nonformal educational methods such as workshops or training
events represent create spaces for talking about and reflecting on those experiences, as
seen in One LA’s comment that its trainings are “only as good as the experiences that
people bring to them.” One implication of this view of learning concerns how One LA
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measures learning. In the absence of more traditional assessments, One LA organizers
primarily rely on the evaluation of actual behavioral changes. Regular interaction
allows organizers to detect subtle differences in the way their leaders talk and act, such
as in the way they relate to others, in their ability to speak up or show assertiveness
public discussion, or in the confidence they exhibit overall, and so on. Indicators of
this type reinforce the centrality of praxis in One LA’s model of learning. Action is
both a vehicle through which we learn but also an important reflection of our learning
as we proceed iteratively through informed, reflective, and purposeful experiences.
This underlying view of learning reveals itself throughout One LA’s educational
framework, approach, and methods which we turn to next.

Popular Education Framework
One of the most useful frameworks for placing One LA’s educational program
in context is the tradition of popular education, most commonly associated with the
consciousness-raising work of Paulo Freire (1970). Popular education is associated not
only with the promotion of greater political awareness, but also with the facilitation of
learning through actual experience in an organized political movement – an emphasis
that directly aligns it with One LA. Schugurensky’s (2000) description of popular
education in particular is helpful in expanding our understanding of One LA’s
educational approach. He highlights popular education’s recognition of the connection
between knowledge and power and between individual agency and structural
arrangements, themes which circulate throughout One LA’s education strategy.
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Power, in the form of increased agency, is a central teaching objective of One LA, as
one organizer explained: “It’s really about, ‘Do you want to develop an identity as an
agent, as a power person, as someone who can act?’” Joaquin talks about how he sees
agency as pivotal in his work with parents around college access and achievement:
One of the indicators…for college students that make it through college is their
ability to go up to a professor and say, “Why did I get this grade? I got a B,
what does an A paper look like?” To be able to engage in that type of
discourse, well, that's not going to happen if students don't see that modeled for
them. And that's only going to happen if parents and teachers are doing that
around them.

Learning to see oneself as an agent and to exercise power is woven into One LA’s
pedagogy and its emphasis on learning through action. One LA organizers suggest,
however, that the skills and knowledge of organizing only make sense if they are
being exercised collectively and ultimately toward the purpose of confronting existing
power arrangements. As one organizer put t:
If you're getting street signs in [your] neighborhood and you're transforming
the way a budget in the school system is operating…and if you're having a say
in the development of what goes in here and what goes there; if you're doing
that kind of work, then, you know…you have to be engaging power. You have
to be engaging either the politicians or the developers. If you're not doing that
kind of action…you're…outside of…where the decisions are being made. Then
the action of training and the action of building relationships…[may mean that]
you’re learning some nice skills, but it's not pushing…the larger power
structure.

Schugurensky again reinforces popular education’s emphasis on constantly combining
education with actual social action, and reflection with political organizing activities,

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in other words, praxis. Such an approach calls for a pedagogy that is participatory and
rooted in the actual experiences of the learners, and aspect which parallels One LA’s
clear attempt to situate learning at the center of its organizing strategy through a heavy
emphasis on experiential learning.

Experiential Learning Approach
The heavy emphasis on “learning by doing” is perhaps One LA’s most
recognized educational feature. Many people with some understanding of community
organizing can recite the infamous “iron rule” – a main axiom of One LA which
states: “Never do anything for anyone that they can do for themselves.” Notorious as
well is One LA’s habit of taking time to “evaluate” virtually any action or meeting,
whatever the size. It is standard practice for organizers and leaders to pull up chairs
directly following an event and spend twenty or thirty minutes offering critiques and
drawing lessons. Organizers even elicit reflection in one-on-one settings, routinely
asking at the end of a meeting, “So, how was this conversation for you?” All of this is
consistent with One LA’s belief that it is by encouraging leaders to “test themselves,
to risk failure” which “enables them to develop new skills… [and] create a deeper
learning than that which is theoretical or rote” (Alliance School Discussion Paper,
2004, p. 3).
A concept for interpreting this approach is the notion of experiential learning.
Fenwick (2000) attaches the idea of experiential learning to the “intersection between
situation, educator, and…learner” that is “directly linked to individual and collective
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human actions” (p. 245). Experiential learning is, in the prevailing view, a process of
knowledge creation through “recalling and analyzing lived experience” to produce
“mental knowledge structures” (Fenwick, 2000, p. 244). This view of learning
resonates well with One LA’s belief that people learn best through trial and error and
is consistent with the IAF’s theory of adult education which is “not unlike the
scientific method: based on current knowledge, form a hypothesis; test the hypothesis;
evaluate the results; revise the hypothesis based on the new experience; and repeat”
(Alliance School Discussion Paper, 2004, p. 3). Experiential learning of this nature is
most directly reflected in One LA’s pervasive use of the Planning → Action →
Reflection process. While any incident is liable to be the subject of evaluation, One
LA’s “organizing cycle” (presented earlier in Figure 3) provides a guiding structure of
main activities around which planning and evaluation revolve. A perpetual
experiential learning loop can be visualized as residing at the center of One LA’s
organizing cycle as illustrated in Figure 5.
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Figure 5. One LA’s Organizing Cycle and Experiential Learning Loop

A senior One LA organizer expanded on this image by explaining that this ongoing
process of action and reflection ideally produces an “upward spiral” effect, whereby
reiterative organizing cycles lead to an accumulation of lessons that build upon and
reinforce each other, resulting in increasing understanding and sophistication in the
work.

Recruit
Member
Institution

Assemble
Core Team

One-on-One
Meetings
House
Meetings
Research
Action

Public Action

Reflect and
Evaluate

Act

Reflect

Plan
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The following vignette provides a glimpse into the experiential learning among
a group of leaders in the run up to a key component of the organizing cycle – a public
action. Here we are introduced to Anna, a One LA organizer working around the issue
of public safety. She has arranged a pre-meeting in advance of the action between
twelve of her leaders from Southeast Los Angeles and the sheriff of Los Angeles
County, Lee Baca. These leaders have invited the sheriff to the action they are holding
on the following Sunday and the objective of this meeting is to confirm his intention
to attend and ascertain his level of support for their agenda. The sheriff is a key figure
for One LA as the most powerful republican they have a relationship with and his
decisions around safety have particular import. So far, however, the sheriff has tended
to be “patronizing” toward One LA. Anna has worked to prepare two of the leaders,
Dr. Wood, a local pastor, and Patricia, a middle school teacher, to act as facilitators.
Others participating in this research action include clergy, teachers, and parents.

Learning on the Ground
Anna and the leaders enter the police station and are led to a
conference room where they take seats around the table. Moments later a
commander walks in, introduces herself as a community liaison, and
checks to confirm that those gathered are the “clergy group” from
Southeast LA. She explains that the sheriff is running late and probably
won’t be able to meet with them and invites them to tell her what they
wanted to communicate to him. The leaders begin murmuring to each
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other across the table, agreeing that this arrangement is unacceptable.
Anna knows that most of these leaders took time off of work and fought
rush hour traffic to get here. She scribbles a note and passes it to Patricia.
Patricia speaks up and explains to the commander that since they came
prepared to meet with the sheriff, they will need a few moments alone to
discuss their next steps. The commander reiterates that the sheriff himself
asked her to come in his place. “We appreciate that but we were prepared
to meet with Sheriff Baca,” Patricia explains, “so we’re going to have to
figure out a new agenda for this meeting. If you wouldn’t mind, we just
need 10 minutes.” Reluctantly the commander leaves and a few minutes
later, in walks the sheriff, stating that he just got in. He explains that he
only has a few minutes and asks the group what they want. As the group
begins to lay out their agenda, the sheriff interrupts to explain that
community safety solutions ultimately lay with the community and that he
is angry about the lack of support from parents, teachers, and others. The
sheriff continues and tension builds. Anna interprets his comments as
blatantly accusatory – as telling the community leaders sitting in front of
him that they are doing a poor job. She is pleased therefore when Dr.
Wood politely cuts him off and offers a different tact. Wood reaffirms their
commitment as a community to work with the sheriff and he invites the
sheriff to hear them out and consider possibly renewing his commitment to
work with them as well. At this point there is a noticeable shift in the
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conversation and the sheriff relaxes a bit. He ends up staying a full hour
and agreeing to attend Sunday’s action. He agrees to the group’s other
requests as well: to host a retreat for captains from eight of his stations
and leaders from One LA and to explore opening a sub-station that the
city recently closed down. The meeting closes and the One LA leaders
depart visibly encouraged from their interaction.

Before drawing illustrations from this incident, it should be noted that the
sheriff did indeed attend the action on that Sunday along with 1000 other people. He
was, furthermore, in Anna’s words, “on his best behavior”: he showed up on time and
even brought three captains and a few of his deputies; and he stood up on stage at the
appointed time and agreed publicly to the One LA leaders’ requests. The retreat was
also successfully held and provided a start for ongoing engagement between the
sheriff’s officers and community leaders. The matter at hand, however, is what the
incident above illustrates concerning One LA’s emphasis on experiential learning and
on their notion that we “act our way into new ways of thinking.” It is precisely
experiences like the one in the story above that comprise the main “classroom” in the
One LA framework. In her role as an organizer, for example, Anna likens herself to a
“teacher” who has one of the “most fun arenas for teaching”: real world, “on the
ground” interactions. Concerning these experiences, she declares, “that is my
classroom” and then goes on to reflect on this particular episode:
“Oh, the sheriff isn’t here?” Well, now we know. He was probably…in the
back with his feet up…on some personal phone call and got busy. “But what
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are we going to do? You know, he’s got the power and we don’t, so we’ll talk
to [the] commander.” We’ve all been taught that. So teaching people that, no,
that doesn’t have to be the case. You actually can have a say. I find a lot of joy
in that; and seeing people kind of realizing the true nature of some of their so
called leaders.

The possibility that the sheriff was truly running late, notwithstanding, the
experience above became a story that these leaders told to others: ‘the sheriff tried to
avoid them and sent a stand-in, but they insisted on talking to him and he finally
showed.’ Incidents like this thus result in narratives that reinforce the experience and
extend the lesson to others. We can also glean from this vignette evidence of another
important factor: Anna’s role as mentor figure to these leaders. Organizers are integral
to actions like this meeting - from conception to planning to arrangement. Anna’s
behavior in this vignette is characteristic of organizers, however, in that she largely
acts from behinds the scenes and focuses on guiding and eliciting initiative and
recognition among her leaders.

Informal Education Methods
The activity of One LA is consistent with other research which highlights the
importance of informal learning in social movements (Foley, 1999, 2004;
Schugurensky, 2002; Stromquist, 2000). One LA’s effort to root learning in actual
experience is linked to the use of a number of educational methods that occur in the
course of the organizing practice and without the aid of formal or even nonformal
curricula and instruction. One setting for this type of educational activity in the work
of One LA is the one-on-one meeting. These “conversations with a public purpose”
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represent a space where multiple educational aims are carried out such as learning
about other people’s stories, raising awareness, identifying possible issues, and
reflecting on the work. A number of specific methods used to facilitate and support
informal learning are evident in One LA including collective apprenticeship, agitation,
reading, storytelling, and social networking.

Collective Apprenticeship
One LA’s lead organizer is quick to point out that the “iron rule” does not
mean “root hog or die,” but instead brings with it a “responsibility to mentor.”
Underlying One LA’s emphasis on learning by doing, consequently, is a relatively
sophisticated relational network by which various levels of apprenticeship take place.
These mentoring arrangements are “collective” in the sense that mentoring
responsibilities and relationships are not strictly dyadic, but rather multiple individuals
assume responsibility for mentoring others. The IAF writes:
Our organizations create opportunities for emerging leaders to test themselves
in action, whether it [is] running a house meeting, leading a parish assembly,
or testifying before the school board. In each situation the leader is prepared,
supported, and then evaluated by the collective. (Alliance School Discussion
Paper, 2004, p. 3)

Mentoring takes two main forms in One LA: the apprenticing of organizers and the
mentoring arrangement between organizers and leaders.
Organizers begin their career with One LA with a six to nine month “tryout,”
whereby they formally begin their apprenticeship in the organizing practice. This
induction is primarily a seen as a training period in which newly accepted organizers
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begin learning the work. There is, however, as the term ‘tryout’ suggests, a
probationary element as well. Most new candidates bring little or no previous
organizing experience and thus One LA has a very real interest in discerning early on
whether or not new people have what it takes to be successful as an organizer. The
recollections of most organizers highlight the “intensity” of this phase. One LA helps
assuage pressure, on the other hand, by providing new organizers with strong
mentoring and by making clear the expectations and objectives of their learning.
Apprenticeship itself provides both the main means as well as the objective of
learning at this stage. The most important question concerning new organizers
according to senior organizer Judy Donovan, for example, is: “Can they learn?”
Learning how to learn vis-à-vis mentors is crucial because apprenticeship represents
such a central means pursuing other learning goals. It is through supportive and
collective mentoring, for example, that One LA seeks to teach organizers how to be
relational. Mentors guide new organizers as they develop practices like conducting
one-one-ones. Mentors observe and provide feedback on how new organizers behave
in certain situations, such as interacting with people in positions of authority. Mentors
may encourage new organizers to take more initiative, help them think strategically,
and provide an arena to begin the practice giving and taking critique. Mentors also
serve as models for the practice of routine procedures such as record keeping,
communication with leaders, and arranging a weekly schedule. Apprenticeship

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pervades the entirety of a One LA organizer’s career. Once through the initial tryout
period, formal acceptance as a One LA organizer carries with it the expectation of
continued learning through ongoing mentoring and development of the ability to
mentor and develop others as well.
Apprenticeship of leaders is therefore another key process in this process and a
constant focus in the work of organizers. Daniel, for example, who sees his work
“differently on different days,” attests that “the main work is about finding and
developing talent.” Talent is used to describe people with an evident appetite for
building collective power and who exhibit potential as a leader. Daniel asks:
How do we overcome a culture of cynicism that tells us that the world cannot
be impacted? Well, that only happens if you start seeing yourself as an agent.
But that all gets down to finding people who [want] political power and then
working with them to just develop that.

Organizers generally begin by focusing in on people who have a “built-in following”
based on some organizational affiliation or involvement. Joaquin, for example,
explains, “I don't think of Franklin Elementary, I think of Ria Apodaca and Franklin
Elementary. I don't think of First United Methodist Church of Glendale. I think of
Christine Walters and the First United Methodist Church.” Organizers spend the bulk
of a typical fifty-five hour week meeting individually with their leaders. It is not
uncommon for an organizer to hold as many as twenty to thirty one-on-one meetings
per week, nearly half of these with new or potential leaders. Organizers seek to help
leaders acquire the basics of organizing and then help them learn to teach others
within their organizations as well.
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One of the first tasks that organizers guide leaders through is the process of
assembling a committed “core team” within their organization. Organizers then
maintain mentoring relationships with these teams throughout the area to which they
are assigned. Joaquin, for example, who was organizing in roughly five Los Angeles
Metropolitan area cities, was mentoring about 25 core teams; roughly half of these
organizations were dues-paying members and the others somewhere in the process of
“getting into relationship” with One LA. Once a core team is established, it then
becomes that team’s responsibility to continue to nurture its organization’s
understanding and involvement in the movement. Member organizations will always
have access to organizers and enjoy relationships with One LA organizers, but
organizers commonly move on to new areas every two to three years or so.
Organizers, for their part, point out that One LA as an organization doesn't belong to
them, but to the leaders. They argue that for the organization to be sustainable, it must
not rest on them. Consequently, they typically maintain somewhat the posture of an
“outsider,” preferring to see themselves as part of a network, or “guild,” of organizers
which largely rests outside of the organization they are building. While leaders
occasionally exhibit a degree of dependence on “their” organizer, attributing stalls in
the work, for example, to organizer absence or turnover, or voicing the worry, “If our
organizer left, I don’t know what we’d do,” the real impact of organizer turnover or

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reassignment appears small. I witnessed several such reassignments and departures of
organizers, as well as the introduction of at least two new organizers, during the period
of my observations, all of which appeared to be taken in stride by both organizers and
leaders.

Agitation
Another key method One LA uses to prompt development in leaders and
organizers is a method they call “agitation.” This is the attempt to “stir up” the
imagination of people and to help them “see themselves differently.” Agitation, which
is linked to the notion of conscientization, is a practice that is used both in group
settings as well as in one-on-ones. Joaquin, for example, described the “best moments”
in his recent workshops with a group of parents of school children as those occasions
when he posed questions and they came to realizations on their own:
I'm not saying, “Well, you should be relational,” or, “You should spend more
time talking to your kids or your teachers.” They're coming up with that on
their own. [It’s] the idea of forming an identity as a learner, or in Freire's
language, the consciousness-raising that has to take place.

Agitation often involves probing people’s prior experiences as a pertinent source of
knowledge, and more commonly takes place in one-on-one settings. Agitation is a
routine part of working with new or potential organizers or leaders in an attempt to
elicit past experiences that may prove instrumental in helping people become involved
in the work. Background experiences such as instances of injustice, early political
involvement, or discontinuities around notions of equity or fairness, are probed and
often reinterpreted in an effort to integrate them into foundational personal narratives.
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Anna, now a senior organizer, vividly recalls the flavor and impact of being agitated
during one of her first one-on-one meetings as a new leader. During the meeting, she
mentioned a recent decision to relocate to a new city to be involved with a community
nonprofit, which the organizer “grabbed that like a hook” and asked,
“Why did you want to stay in Fresno?”
I said, “Well, you know, I wanted to make a change.”
She said, “Why?”
I said, “Well, I was reading these books…”
“What was so interesting in those books?”
I said, “They were about democracy and…”
“What, you’ve never read about democracy before?”
“Well, yeah…”
“Well, why did that spark an interest in you?”
“I guess I never thought that I could have a say in decisions that affected me.”
“Why didn't you think that?”
“Well, because my parents didn't act that way.”

And I had never actually said that before. I was like, “How did you [do that]?”
This brief episode stayed with Anna and represented a significant part of the process
that ultimately led her to want to become an organizer with One LA. Agitation can
also be seen as expanding on One LA’s experiential learning approach described
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earlier which primarily focuses on facilitating experiences in order to learn from them.
Through the process of agitation, however, previously lived experiences as well as
new ones are open to interrogation and reflection and hold promise for learning.

Reading Practices
Another informal educational method that is laced throughout all of One LA’s
activity is the practice of regularly reading and reflecting on literature that is pertinent
to organizing theory or strategy. The promotion of intellectual inquiry of this sort is
evident in several ways, beginning with One LA’s maintenance of a 15,000 plus
volume library which is housed in its headquarters. Visitors to this modest base of
activity for One LA organizers encounter an office space in which virtually every wall
and cubicle divider is lined with bookshelves carrying an extremely wide range of
material meticulously organized and catalogued. Organizers personally model the
practice of staying immersed in the literature by typically having a book in hand and
often referring to ideas or lessons they have drawn from various authors. They are also
likely to refer titles to leaders or ask about what a person is currently reading. One LA
also maintains a selected list of readings that are regularly used in discussions or in
training settings and which comprise a core curriculum covering key theoretical or
practical aspects of the work (see Appendix C for sample list). One LA clearly
conveys the message that it is a culture in which an expected norm is regular
engagement with literature and application to one’s practice.

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Storytelling
Storytelling represents a valued skill for participants in One LA. It is a
technique that is carefully developed and used for multiple purposes such as to briefly
and skillfully introduce oneself in a new setting, to add impact in public actions by
illustrating and humanizing issues, and to make personal connections or to credential
oneself with others. Storytelling in One LA also represents a significant informal
educational method and the use of stories is encouraged explicitly as an aid in the
transmission of knowledge. Leaders describe the use of story as a more effective
teaching tool than simply “explaining how something works.” One leader described
trying to explain unsuccessfully an aspect of One LA’s approach to her core group.
She then remembered to try and tell a story about it, which she did, and “they were
like, ‘Oh, I get it’…they could really visualize it.” Organizers especially talk about
learning to develop the “art” of storytelling. They describe how poignant stories that
result from the actions of participants are passed on throughout the whole organization
allowing for broader collective learning or awareness. Storytelling is also viewed as
contributing to the reflective process. Organizers explain how the work of formulating
narratives about our experiences, whether past or recent, facilitates deeper reflection
on those experiences and ultimately stronger and more useful interpretations.
Organizers similarly describe storytelling as a means of gauging a person’s learning,
maintaining that the ability to tell a compelling story about an experience or
concerning a new point of view offers one important indicator that the new
understanding has been internalized.
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Social Networking
The informal educational methods described so far can be seen as primarily
targeting individuals – leaders and organizers – in relatively straightforward ways. But
organizational development also represents an important educational objective of One
LA. Part of this aim, for example, involves helping schools and churches become
better at promoting democratic “attitudes and habits” and become more civically
engaged. It is important to ask therefore: How are these educational strategies directed
toward learning on an organizational level? One LA’s method for organizational
development can be interpreted as a process of social networking that extends
throughout its activity. “Relational work,” or building trust and reciprocity between
individuals in an organization, for example, is foundational to One LA’s strategy and
permeates everything One LA does. One LA also exhibits the desire to transfer
practices associated with its own distinct internal culture to its member organizations.
One LA’s strategy of building a core team within an organization and promoting a
collective identity within that team is directly linked to this effort. Core teams allow
One LA to establish a pool of capital which can be leveraged within an organization as
greater “recognition” is built. One senior organizer described the “building” of
organizing teams in churches and schools as helping leaders “aggregate” their
transformations. One LA asserts that the path toward the kind of power it wants to
build, as one organizer put it, “is through the institutions in the neighborhood, not the
individuals.” At the heart of this process, however, are the individual relational skills
and practices that One LA emphasizes in its approach, such as mentoring, agitating,
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trust-building, and carrying out one-on-ones. The various educational methods of One
LA can thus be seen as being intentionally woven together and directed toward
organizational change through an intentional process of social networking.

Nonformal Education
One LA’s educational strategy also involves the regular use of nonformal
education primarily in the form of various trainings and workshops. One LA typically
holds on a roughly bi-annual basis two- to three-day seminars with public intellectuals
or other authors who have written or researched on topics of interest to One LA. These
seminars are participatory, two-way exchanges, in which leaders come prepared,
having studied a book or other writings by the person who has been invited. One day
leadership retreats, also known as delegates assemblies, are also generally held two to
three times each year. One LA’s flagship training session is its “national training”
which is held twice each year and is intended to provide an intensive and
comprehensive introduction to the entire organizing framework. It was my observation
that, in fact, a fuller grasp of the basic organizing framework does somewhat hinge on
participation in a national training, where the entire organizing strategy is intensively
laid out over the course of a few days. Leaders who were “trained” in this way
revealed greater ease in explaining or talking about the main theoretical components
of One LA’s approach, such as the nature of power, the role of public action, or the
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characteristics of a leader. Leaders themselves, moreover, sometimes self-
distinguished as having attended or not attended national training as though the
significance of this milestone was understood.
More structured or “classroom” learning in One LA’s view largely remains
secondary to, or is seen as deriving from, learning that occurs informally or through
action. One LA talks about its trainings and workshops as places where leaders and
organizers meet to reflect on their work, contribute their stories, and learn from each
others’ experiences. The presence of this view and its implications were revealed
during one three-day training I attended, where an unusually high percentage of the
one hundred or so participants at this training were quite new to the work. Organizers
leading many of the sessions found it difficult to root the discussion in the limited
experience of the participants and often resorted to lecturing about the work. A visible
tension resulted as organizers tried unsuccessfully to make the sessions interactive and
participant-based. Organizers leading sessions in One LA’s multi-day trainings tend to
face the additional pressure to work through a set amount of material in a given period
of time.
An example of another training format that organizers have recently begun
using in schools is their “Achievement Academy” model. A six-session academy I
observed involved about fifteen new leaders, including parents, teachers, and other
community members, from six institutions – two churches and four schools. The
curriculum was shaped in advance by an organizer and a sub-group of these leaders,
representing each of these institutions, each of whom spoke to other would-be
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participants to help determine the content. The six resulting sessions covered basic
skills in organizing, provided opportunities for participants to get to know each other
and build relationships, addressed the isolation that parents and teachers often feel,
and discussed the local political context of education. One session, for example,
included training on how to carry out a one-on-one conversation and a homework
assignment to have a one-on-one meeting with someone from their organization.
Another session drew on a research article entitled “Trust in Schools” which
distinguished three types of trust: organic trust which rests on shared values such as
“we all care about kids”; transactional trust, which is based on a contractual
arrangement – a parent might trust a teacher, for example, to educate his or her child;
and, finally, relational trust which is built over time through an actual relationship.
The participants discussed the implications of the author’s argument that successful
school-wide improvement involved the presence of all three types of trust. Another
session was devoted to outlining the sort of constituency they would to build in order
to fight current negative trends around education. The academy was well received by
the participants and largely met its purpose of providing space for reflection on the
organizing model and helping to build a network of local individuals who could begin
to organize together.

Summary
The educational scenario within One LA reflects strong alignments with the
framework of popular education and the experiential education approach. It also
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exhibits the use of both informal and nonformal educational methods. What is notable
is the considerable role that informal education plays in One LA’s strategy. Nonformal
education methods clearly play a supportive role to various informal methods such as
collective mentoring, agitation, voluntary reading practices, storytelling, and attempts
to aggregate individual learning to the level of organizations through social
networking. The unifying themes in this educational strategy, which include
participation or praxis and the exertion of political agency, are themes which clearly
resonate with One LA’s educational and political goals and which are quite consistent
with the educational principles that were seen to be associated with a participatory
democratic framework. In the next section, I begin to examine the implications of this
educational program in terms of how these various methods translate into actual
learning outcomes and political impacts.

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CHAPTER 7
ANALYSIS OF ONE LA’S EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES

The parameters of One LA’s educational program have become clearer.
Guiding it are goals associated with building a sustainable power organization which
include consciousness-raising, organizing a movement, and building a community of
practice. These are directly related another key organizational goal of formation,
which includes developing political agents by preparing professional organizers,
training community leaders, and strengthening mediating institutions. Specific
formational objectives follow such as equipping organizers with relational skills or the
ability to negotiate and think strategically, trying to foster a public identity and
competence in organizing practices among One LA leaders, or helping member
institutions recover a sense of public mission and become more engaged in the public
arena. One LA’s educational strategy to accomplish its goals, while rooted in the
tradition of popular education, is multi-faceted and incorporates a strongly experience-
based learning approach and various methods such as collective mentoring and
agitation as well as nonformal trainings and workshops. One LA also attempts to
aggregate learning to a collective level through social networking. With One LA’s
educational goals and methods in better view (Figure 6), it is appropriate now to turn
to the question of results by asking: What educational outcomes has One LA actually
achieved?

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Figure 6. Summary of One LA’s Educational Objectives and Methods

The findings I present in this section point to a range of learning outcomes
which correspond to One LA’s objectives and result from its educational methods. I
begin by presenting outcomes observed among leaders, who represent the primary
intended beneficiary of One LA’s educational program, and follow this by addressing
developments among One LA’s member organizations and then also examining
evidence of learning outcomes among One LA organizers themselves. A complete
assessment of One LA’s educational program, however, requires setting such
outcomes in the context of One LA’s larger political project. Imbedded throughout,
therefore, I relate these outcomes to clear civic and political outcomes at the
community level. I then address in subsequent sections how One LA’s educational

EDUCATIONAL METHODS

Popular education framework

Experience-based approach

Informal education methods
Collective apprenticeship
Action and reflection
Agitation
Storytelling
Readings
Social networking

Nonformal education
Trainings, seminars, workshops

EDUCATIONAL GOALS

Social change
Consciousness-raising
Organize for power

Sustainability
Community of practice

Formation
Equip leaders
Strengthen institutions
Prepare organizers
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project produces socially transformative learning and how One LA’s model of
transformative education utilizes religion as social change capital. I end this chapter
with a review of some of the evident challenges to the educational activity of One LA.

Formation of Leaders
A vignette will be useful here to help frame the learning outcomes observed
among One LA leaders. The portrait below of a One LA leader’s experience helps
capture how participation in this movement and the learning that ensues implicates a
person’s individual thinking and understanding, their public relationships, and
ultimately their behavior in the civic sphere. One way to interpret such learning
outcomes is to return to One LA’s adherence to the situated learning or community of
practice model. The educational objectives associated with this concept, as noted
earlier, involve transmitting knowledge about the domain or framework of organizing,
about the ways of behaving within the particular community, and about the actual
practice of organizing itself. The outcomes among One LA participants – not only
among leaders, but also among other actors as will be shown in following sections –
can be neatly arranged according to these themes. This is consistent with One LA’s
own discourse, as exemplified by one organizer who explained that her goal was to
teach people “how to think about themselves differently, how to act differently, how to
be in relationship with others” (italics mine). Another organizer summed One LA’s
objective as seeing people learn “how to have serious conversations with each other,
how to see themselves as leaders, and how to think strategically about the issues.”
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“Thinking,” “relating,” and “acting” are thus areas which parallel the facets of domain,
community, and practice. This parallel calls to mind observations by others that
successful communities of practice are those that develop knowledge involving the
“head, the heart, and the hand” or “inquiry, interactions, and craft” (Wenger,
McDermott, & Snyder, 2002, p. 44). These three areas are explicitly embedded in the
Jewish definition of community as “believing, belonging, and behaving” and in the
three foundational elements of Buddhism: “Buddha (enlightenment; domain), sanga
(community), and dharma (practice)” (Wenger, McDermott, & Snyder, 2002, p. 244).
Referents like these are seldom used in the social sciences, but here they affirm the
scope and durability of the community of practice concept and help place One LA’s
educational project squarely in the middle of a longstanding learning tradition.

Thinking, Relating, Acting Differently around School
Robert is principal of an urban public elementary school. He was
introduced to One LA at a public action targeting the Sheriff and several
candidates for local offices. He was impressed to see citizens stand up and
talk persuasively to these political leaders about problems in their
communities as well as demand some action: “Here are these
people…from the neighborhood…getting up in front of this
microphone…very organized…they had floor leaders and all this other
kind of stuff…I was very amazed at all that organizing. I thought, ‘Gee, I
wonder if that's something that I could do with my school?’”
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Robert pursued a relationship with One LA and was invited to
attend national training. There he extracted a vision of school as a
potential hub for organizing the community; as an institution that is able
to bring a diverse group of people together and help them work for the
good of the students and the community in a new way. He returned and
immediately began trying to implement the organizing strategy in every
way he could. “That's what happens at those trainings,” he explains, “you
study, read articles, research and stuff, and try to apply that to your
school and your situation.”
Organizing principles have impacted everything from the manner
in which he conducts conversations and runs meetings to how the school is
structured. He has set up grade level coordinators, for example, who
regularly meet with him as a group to share their concerns and needs.
“That’s like the house meeting,” he explains. Robert also blocks out two
weeks each semester to schedule one-on-one meetings with all 50 teachers
on his staff. He says this wreaks havoc on his schedule but that One LA
has taught him the importance of conversation and of building relational
trust:
I want to know what I need to do to be a better principal, and I
need to know how you're feeling as an educator and I need to know
if you're learning…it's not a power thing - it's a relational thing.
It's about creating power, not the power of bureaucracy or
authority, but of relationship. The difference is that [now] I have a
relationship with the teachers who are at this school, and we can
talk about [setting] aside our personal needs for the gains of the
group…
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One LA also helped Robert and some other community leaders -
including teachers, clergy, and other principals – collaborate together to
address a long-standing glitch in the system that left many students
without access to intervention funds. Robert and the others arranged a
meeting with the Superintendent where they proposed using general
education funds to provide intervention until the State funds were
distributed. The group’s effort was successful as Robert reports:
After twenty years the Superintendent made that happen. Why?
Because little ol’ Robert – a little wet-behind-the-ears principal -
had a relationship with these One LA people, who then heard the
story, hooked me up with other leaders who then heard the story
and were shocked enough to go talk to the Superintendent - [who]
then waived the magic wand and…miraculously there it was,
money for 25,000 students…What we did was change the
system…because of these conversations and because of the
relationship and because of the organizing, we changed the entire
system for the entire city for all the children in year round schools
.
Robert’s experience through One LA is building his skills as an individual
and as a principal. He claims the “biggest thing” that One LA has done
for him, however, is help him change his view of himself, “from
administrator and principal…to leader in the community.”

Robert’s experience illustrates well the three broad categories of skills and
knowledge that are acquired among One LA leaders: increased political agency,
expanded social networks and social capital building, and greater capacity for and
evidence of civic engagement and collective action. Robert’s participation elicited
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different views about himself as a leader and about his school as a community
institution, it facilitated the development of practical skills and opportunities to have
more effective and politically relevant interactions with others including his teachers
and colleagues, and it equipped him with the know-how to engage in collective action
on behalf of his entire school district. The following findings serve to further elaborate
these learning outcomes among One LA leaders.

Increased Political Agency
A fundamental outcome that One LA leaders exhibit is new thinking and raised
awareness about their own potential role as political agents. One aspect of this new
thinking is an increased appreciation for their capacity to act and affect change.
Leaders reported shifts away from stances of passivity or resignation after becoming
involved in the movement and toward more assertive ways of thinking. “If there's
something deep that I've learned,” one leader explained, “it’s, you know, I [now] go,
well…I guess if like I really want…my block, my city, or something to change, like I
can actually create that…and I should.” One LA’s emphasis on experiential learning
means that organizers routinely nudge leaders toward greater participation and toward
every increasing responsibility in actions and meetings. Leaders also begin to learn
immediately that the One LA culture is one in which participation means having a say
in the direction of the movement itself. On several occasions I observed newer leaders
respond with a mixture of surprise and delight when they were invited into a
discussion by an organizer or asked for their input on a question of strategy. Gains in
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individual power and initiative result from making such contributions to the movement
and from successfully executing newly acquired skills. One leader exclaimed how
organizing had opened her eyes to so many problems that she wanted to fix in her
children’s school district. When I interrupted to ask if she hadn’t thought about those
things before becoming involved in organizing, she replied, “I would have thought
about it, but I didn't know what to do about it. This really gives me a vehicle to
actually do something with it.” Many leaders spoke, finally, of coming to see
themselves as political equals with the officials with whom they interact and of
moving beyond the tendency to simply “elect somebody and put them on a pedestal.”
Connected to an increased sense agency is the intellectual development that One LA
leaders experience in numerous theoretical areas. Virtually everyone I interviewed
touched on One LA’s effort to “make the whole community smarter.” Many also
noted appreciation for One LA’s assumption that anyone is “smart enough” to interact
intellectually level and how One LA always expects them to engage with very serious
material. Leaders also report benefiting from One LA’s constant effort to help them
connect theory to practice and to directly apply various concepts and ideas to the
practice of organizing. It is common for leaders, consequently, when talking about the
work, to refer to writers they have read or to ideas they have heard in a recent One LA
training.

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Social Capital Building
A second area of outcomes among leaders is in the acquisition of skills and
understanding that contribute to building trust and reciprocity with others for explicitly
public purposes. Learning outcomes of this sort can be grouped as the promotion of
social capital and are directly related to One LA’s ongoing construction and promotion
of a supportive social network. Leaders report coming to see relational networks as a
fundamental tool for building power. They cite growing appreciation for the fact that
even a few individuals who are willing to act collectively have “great power for
change” and tend to arrive at a view of social change that emphasizes agency as well
as structural factors, such as the notion that “the neighborhood won’t change…unless
some of the relationships in the neighborhood change.” Leaders also discover that
relational networks can lead to important resources that they would not have access to
such as different perspectives, information, connections to others, and mobilization
capabilities. One LA‘s use of social networking as an educational method is reflected
in the assertion of many leaders that the greatest source of learning in the movement is
in “relating to others” or in what One LA calls “relational work.” The educative
processes of One LA’s supportive social network result in increased social capital
building in three distinct ways as follows.
Trust-building through public conversation. Another fundamental skill that
leaders develop and which provides the basis for many subsequent outcomes is the
one-on-one conversation or the practice of having more intentional conversations
around issues related to the public good. Learning to engage in one-on-ones is said to
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be a “powerful” part of the experience for leaders. Through this practice, leaders learn
to get to know where others “coming from,” to build trust, to identify issues and other
leaders, and ultimately help maintain the social network upon which the One LA
strategy rests. Leaders acknowledge obstacles to learning in this area such as the
dominant societal tendencies to “just want to stay to an agenda” or to place more
emphasis on practical tasks than on relationship-building. One leader now realizes, for
instance, that most people tend to question the value of taking time to get to know
somebody in a public or work setting. What she has learned, however, is that it is
much more effective in the long run to first establish a relational connection with
someone before jumping into the “nitty-gritty.” Some of the other skills leaders
describe learning in the context of developing an ability to do one-on-ones include
learning to be vulnerable, learning to be direct and forthright, learning how to express
anger in productive ways, learning to be confrontational and to accept critique, and
learning how to keep others accountable, and be held accountable, to one’s word.
Leaders also report finding broad applications for this skill in other organizational
contexts.
Enhanced understanding of others. The broad social network upon which
organizing rests creates opportunities for leaders to forge connections with people very
different from them and these relationships in particular tend to be viewed as
producing some of the most important new insights. Leaders learn, for example, the
necessity of going beyond one’s comfort zone and meeting someone in “their
environment” in order to produce valid understandings that might adequately
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challenge stereotypes between various groups. Leaders describe a broadened
awareness of what others are experiencing in terms of economic difficulties and other
social realities. Such representative thinking may lead to both an understanding of the
sense of “powerlessness” and consequent political apathy of others as well as to an
appreciation of how groups of very different means may actually share underlying
systemic problems. Overall, leaders cite a newfound appreciation for understanding
other people’s points of view, for “hearing the other side,” and an understanding that
multiple viewpoints are necessary to adequately solve shared problems.
Expanded commitment to one’s community. Leaders report that increased civic
engagement with others in their community through organizing leads to increased
sense of ownership for a place that they may have inhabited or worked in for some
time. For these leaders there is a sense of having a new perspective about a
community, whereby for the first time or in a new way, it becomes “my backyard, my
people, my schools.” New relationships in a community may elicit a sense of having
tighter bonds with neighbors or more confidence that people are going to “look out for
each other.” Leaders also attribute new relationships with people in their community,
particularly people from different backgrounds, as producing deeper understanding of
the problems embedded in their own community. In addition to an increased sense of
ownership in one’s immediate community, leaders also say that organizing leads to a
broadened sense of self-interest and concern for communities that they may not
immediately be a part of.

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Acquisition of Skills and Strategies for Collective Action
One LA leaders display an increasing capacity and tendency to act in new
ways through the specific skills associated with the organizing practice. There was
variability among leaders in terms of knowledge of and comfort with the actual
organizing approach of One LA. Some leaders who were newer to the movement, for
example, voiced residual suspicions about the strategy or doubts about its efficacy.
Most, however, exhibited increasing commitments to One LA’s strategy and the
various practices it entails. Stronger support of the strategy was therefore generally
associated with a higher level of involvement and greater experience in implementing
the strategy, as well as with a stronger grasp of the underlying theoretical framework
resulting from participation in One LA trainings. As one leader explained, “that’s what
happens at those big trainings…you study, read articles, research and stuff, and try to
apply that to your school and your situation.” Leaders also generally reported
appreciating One LA’s “culture of reflection” and the opportunity to reflect on their
own actions more often because of it. One leader described becoming “more
intentional about choices” as a result and others indicated coming to see the times of
serious and critical feedback that are routine in One LA as “opportunities for growth.”
Through training in, experience with, and reflection on organizing practice, therefore,
leaders acquire greater facility with numerous skills and strategies associated with One
LA’s organizing approach.

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Long-term view of social change. Hands-on involvement in the organizing
process tends to inculcate a long-term perspective of social change and appreciation
for the role of patience. While most leaders are seriously committed to the effort,
organizing opportunities looks very different from organization to organization. One
leader who is a teacher, for example, described moving to a different school and
sharing with her new principal that she did “a lot of organizing” and wanted to
continue that work. She found little receptiveness, however, and is now struggling
through a slow process of relationship building and trying to locate others with interest
in the work within that school. Other leaders, on the other hand, may report greater
levels of openness in their organizations and some also find themselves in positions to
exert more influence. In general, however, leaders report coming to realize “just how
hard the work of organizing really is” and learning to adjust their immediate
expectations for results. Nearly all leaders, nevertheless, also reflect a certain
confidence in the organizing approach espoused by One LA, particularly its emphasis
on building a durable and sustainable movement by promoting strong relational
networks within and between organizations. Leaders consequently display the view
that the movement isn’t going to go away, or as one leader explained: “You can take
breaks from it, come back to it, and it’s still something that’s there.”
Political knowledge and skills. Involvement in organizing provides leaders
with direct opportunities to develop important political skills and understanding. This
ranges from coming to understand the process of how public projects make it into a
city budget to learning how to interact with political leaders, such as learning how to
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“conduct yourself when you talk to a council member.” Leaders become adept, for
instance, at the use of brief, compelling accounts to convey their interests in public
settings. Robert, the principal introduced above, spoke about an upcoming meeting
with the Los Angeles mayor, explaining:
We have to clarify [our position]…hopefully come up with some good stories
about why we are asking for...the funding…tell about the culture, tell about the
intercessions, tell the individual stories. [And] get that across to the mayor in
30 seconds or less…those are all skills…that I learned in...One LA.

Leaders also report learning firsthand about political inequities such as how
various forms of influence affect how money gets used or distributed or how political
decisions are determined. They report a better understanding of the nature of
bureaucracy including its inherent resistance to change and the consequent need to
build power in order to hold officials accountable to delivering on their agreements.
Involvement in the work also tends to demystify the notion of an elected official or
public figure and curb tendencies to glorify them as leaders arrive at the realization
that they are “just people” too.
Use of religion as social capital. Leaders exhibit several learning outcomes
concerning the strategic use of faith traditions in mobilizing and shaping civic
engagement. Leaders report learning firsthand “how churches and schools might come
together…to build community,” for example, by focusing on shared principles such as
the importance of equitable educational opportunities as a principle of justice.
Participation in organizing raised the awareness among leaders from faith institutions
and allowed them to more easily recognize and acknowledge disparities between their
faith ideals and real practice. Many leaders cite their congregation’s stated
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commitment to justice, or to making a difference in the world, but also evident lack of
involvement in the public sphere. Acting in response to this sense of omission in the
practice of congregations, leaders also may learn how difficult mobilizing some
congregations can actually be. Nonetheless, leaders from faith backgrounds generally
report that organizing has made their religious beliefs more “relevant” or has brought a
sense of fulfillment and purpose to their particular faith practice. In the end, leaders
across the board report increased respect for the potential contributions of
congregations to the public good and for the role of values and beliefs in the work of
social change.
Leadership skills. Another area in which there is evidence of development
among leaders is practical leadership skills. Many leaders speak about having acquired
a different perspective of themselves, such as Robert’s transformed self-view from
school administrator to “leader in the community.” They also attribute to One LA the
right mixture of opportunity and support needed to counter their own fears or
reluctance and help them develop in the area of leadership - something many wouldn’t
have done otherwise. Opportunities include being encouraged to “step forward” to do
things such as chair a meeting or tell a story at an action and chances to interface with
other leaders and “interesting…and powerful people.” Another development includes
increased skills and interest in the area of developing other leaders and learning how

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to mentor others. Leaders also come to redefine what it means to be a leader, including
a more nuanced appreciation for various levels and types of involvement and an
acknowledgement that the “struggle” is not made up of big charismatic leaders, but
that it consists in “ordinary folks, when they believe in something…and are willing to
build power.”
Exercising collective power. Leaders are frequently animated when talking
about the lessons they have arrived at concerning the nature and use of power. Three
main lessons are reflected in these discussions. First, leaders learn that the goal of
organizing, relational power or the “power of organized people,” is quite effective and
can produce tangible results. Many convey a sense of novelty in learning to exercise
power and speak with some incredulity about the successes they have witnessed and
about having had a personal role in those efforts. Leaders also learn or have reinforced
the principle that there is power in numbers, even small numbers. On one hand,
leaders voice surprise at the political influence that even a few organized people
represent, and at the small number it requires to get the attention of public officials or
other targets. On the other hand, they become acutely aware that larger numbers of
organized people, accordingly, can affect relatively significantly greater outcomes.
Leaders also learn, finally, that building and exercising power is essential. They speak
of the critical necessity to display and sustain power in order to get something done
and of the realization that “politicians don’t do anything unless pushed.”

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Summary
One LA’s educational program for its leaders produces political agents who
exhibit raised awareness about themselves and about surrounding social and political
realities. This program fosters new understanding and behaviors concerning relating to
others and an increased capacity to act collectively. One LA’s educational strategy
also equips leaders, finally, with practical organizing skills and strategies, resulting in
clear civic and political outcomes. One LA leaders, however, are situated in
organizations. One LA’s broad-based approach involves an explicit emphasis on
mobilizing organizations rather than individuals in order to increase the power and
sustainability of the movement. The outcomes of One LA leadership development
must therefore be considered within this larger network of organizational
engagements, as leaders move within and around individual organizations and as
leaders within organizations partner with other leaders in neighboring institutions or
with organizations more scattered more broadly throughout the One LA network. In
the next section I present learning outcomes from the point of view of two One LA
member organizations. I pay attention once again to outward results or political
outcomes on a community level which can be linked to this development.

Organizational Learning and Development
The learning outcomes described so far as associated with individual leaders
should also be elaborated on in the context of organizational development, another key
educational objective One LA. The development and strengthening of mediating
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institutions is a critical component in One LA’s social change strategy to bring about
meaningful and lasting social change to the Los Angeles area. This institutional aspect
of One LA’s social change approach emphasizes the need for its member
organizations to become more aware of and serious about their potential role in
sustaining social justice and democracy and ultimately to become corporately engaged
in the organizing movement. Such engagement is said to rest, however, on the
development of a more relational and collaborative culture internally and between
organizations in order to provide the space for determining shared interests and
building the trust necessary to act collectively.
It is important here to recall One LA’s approach to organizational development
which can be interpreted as a process of social networking that permeates One LA’s
activity. Core teams within member organizations represent hubs in this network
which try to build a collective identity and leverage increasing recognition within their
immediate organization in order to elicit action from these member organizations
within the broader public sphere. In this way the development of individuals must be
seen as tightly situated and in a dialogic relationship with organizational development
and transformation. In this section, I present two organizational stories in order to help
illustrate the main themes that were observed in this study with regard to
organizational movement or development. The first concerns Glendale Methodist, a
church whose involvement in the movement reflects evidence of congregational

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development and illustrates some of the struggles associated with this process. The
second is about Harmony Elementary, the public school led by Robert, the principal
introduced in the vignette above, and a site of some rather marked transformations.

The Story of Glendale Methodist Church

Opening Vignette: The Action
Christine Walters steps to the podium at the front of the church
auditorium. “Our goals tonight,” she explains to the hundred or so
community members gathered, “are threefold: to learn through stories
about the issues that are important to us; to get commitments from the
school board candidates to work with us; and to commit ourselves to
further action.” Tonight’s “community agenda forum” unfolds with
stories by One LA leaders from Glendale Methodist and four other
member organizations. They reveal concerns about Glendale’s school
district including military recruitment at the high school, problems in the
special education program, insufficient translation services, and poor
school security. The ten candidates are then invited one at a time to a
microphone to hear the group’s six “challenges” and give a two-minute
response. Corey Alexander, another leader, goes down the list: “Will you
work with us…Will you agree to…Will you meet with us about this…” One
candidate is indignant and calls the two minute limit “unfair.” Another
responds politely but is visibly perturbed at tonight’s arrangements. Some
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respond dutifully while a few run over and have to be cut off. All of them,
however, state their intention, if elected, to work with the Glendale cluster
of One LA. After a call to action, the meeting ends with a closing prayer.
Soon the twenty or so One LA leaders assemble in a side room for the
traditional post-action evaluation. The organizer asks them how they are
feeling. “Angry,” “stunned,” “relieved,” “glad its over,” they respond.
Some are disappointed in the turnout or in the responses from the
candidates. Others are hopeful, even “jazzed.” After some discussion, the
organizer commends their good work and assures them they got the
recognition they needed. He encourages them not to frown too much on
the turnout. The crowd - half the number they wanted - was still “bigger
than anything Glendale has seen for this type of event.” He ends by
pointing them forward: “Imagine if we do this next year and have two to
three hundred people present…what kind of power you’ll have. That’s
what it’s about: power, the ability to act and to make things happen.”

The back-story to the action above reveals an evident process of organizational
development while also highlighting some of the challenges churches often face. It
begins some years earlier when Christine Walters, the spouse of Glendale Methodist’s
pastor Wayne, became a leader with One LA as a result of her community work
around schools. Energized by her experience with One LA, she eventually invited
Wayne to meet with an organizer. Though a bit suspicious at first, he found the
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conversation stimulating and over time came around to the idea of organizing the
congregation. Together they began to assemble a core team, a task that would not
prove easy. Glendale Methodist was a predominantly White, middle-class church with
what Wayne calls a “castle mentality” – happy to welcome people in, but wary of
getting too involved in the local community. It was also not untypical in its emphasis
on charity work as opposed to systemic change. Wayne illustrates using the story of
the person in the river that's drowning, and somebody goes and pulls them out.
While they are recovering [the rescuer] sees somebody else in the river, and
there's more, and more. So that's…taking care of people after…the crisis has
already happened. And the point…is that somebody needs to go up stream and
find out why people are falling into the river to begin with. And that's what this
church has not been very engaged in.

After two years a consistent core team from among the congregation finally
emerged. Though the team numbered about eight individuals - as opposed to the
twelve- to twenty-member team that they still hoped to realize someday, it was very
committed and persisted with a vision of seeing their church more actively
participating in the life of Glendale. They worked with organizers to implement the
organizing cycle in their church, carrying out one-on-ones and house meetings and
facilitating various internal actions in an effort to recruit others and increase
understanding. One such event was as an awareness-raising forum on immigration
which featured one of Glendale Methodist’s own janitors sharing his story about being
undocumented. Small but perceptible shifts toward greater acceptance of the work of
the core team by people in the church resulted. Members of the core team members
exhibited learning and development as they engaged in this work even if the promise
of developing significant new numbers of leaders still proved elusive.
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A couple of key challenges to more widespread acceptance and participation in
the organizing effort continued to present themselves. While theologically the work
resonated with longstanding Methodist traditions of social justice, this church tended
toward political conservatism. As a result, Wayne Walters observed, “once you start
talking labor groups, then that's a little different.” Raising alternative viewpoints was
also difficult given Glendale’s emphasis, like many churches, on maintaining internal
unity and avoiding “anything that will divide us.” Glendale congregants, similarly,
also tended to resist the contentious political culture that organizing implies. The
church sent a delegation of about thirty to One LA’s founding convention. While it
was educational for a lot of these people, it was also “very foreign and very
uncomfortable…‘all that screaming and yelling’” as Wayne describes it. Glendale
Methodist’s relatively small delegation, consequently, stood in stark contrast to other
delegations, often numbering in the hundreds, which represented other, mainly
Catholic, churches from around the county.
Glendale Methodist’s core team persisted despite such challenges and after
another two years managed to get the church sufficiently on board to organize its first
public action, the community agenda forum portrayed earlier. This event represented
something of a turning point in the development of Glendale Methodist’s core team.
The core team reported learning with some surprise about the reaction that a public
action evoked. Wayne relates how somehow, despite having only a hundred or so
people present, they
disturbed so many people [on] school board… We said “That's very interesting
that they're so threatened and upset,” because they could have just said “Well,
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we've got groups complaining about us all the time.” [After] putting in three or
four years of hearing theory and seeing it in some huge settings… to do it
ourselves and see that it actually worked was stunning. You could say “Well,
what did you expect?” But we didn't know.

The action also marked the point where members of Glendale Methodist’s core team,
many of them people with some standing in the wider community, took their views
public, both raising the church’s profile and stirring up some controversy in the
process. Christine Walters, the pastor’s spouse, explained feeling “uncomfortable” to
have “very publicly taken a stand on something. And so I felt exposed really – ‘Okay,
now people know what I'm really like.’" Corey Alexander, a longtime Glendale
Methodist Church member and highly regarded public school teacher in the Glendale
district, discovered that
the public arena is where I have the most to learn… part of One LA's teaching
is…to have this public relationship and what that means in terms of how one
speaks and all of that. The problem comes when you have a public relationship
and a private relationship too.

One of Corey’s friends and also president of school board, Mandy, scolded her for her
participation, likening the action to “dragging out our dirty laundry” and exclaiming
“you should have picked up the phone and I would have taken care of it.” Corey found
herself in the middle wanting on one hand to deflate the situation: “Will there be
tension? Absolutely, because the assumption is that we're not serving people as well as
we should…and I think that's true. But I don't think that it's necessarily the fault of any
individual within the set up. It's the whole system.” At the end of the day, however,
reactions to the forum furthered Corey’s transformation. At one follow-up meeting
with several leaders at the school superintendent’s office, Mandy, her friend and
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president of school board, was mean and accusatory. Corey, who had planned on
politely listening, was shocked to be demeaned in this way and found herself
interrupting and trying to correct her. Joaquin saw the situation as a “watershed
moment” for Corey, and Corey agrees, saying the whole affair only strengthened her
resolve to help bring about an alternative arrangement to the political status quo of
Glendale:
We don't have all that much time left in which to see some of the changes that
we would like to see affected and that in part pushes me to be more
confrontational, definitely. But it's also the response…of "Just call me and I'll
take care of it” [where we are] absolutely …not on the same page [and] that
this is not about. One LA’s and my high ambitions for this wonderful group of
students and their families - it's not about learning about which person at the
top to call. It's about learning the ropes of course, of course, how to navigate
the system, of course, but it's not about relying on the teacher liaison to the
board to figure out how we can get this problem solved. It's about coming
together to know well what our priorities are and…collectively, with as many
different allies as we can muster, saying, “We'd like you to work with us on
this.” And I do buy that absolutely. The elected officials are there to serve
us…we're really talking about including folks in a more democratic way and
not just collaborating with more public agencies…

The community forum, it turned out, was “just the beginning” and
subsequently Glendale Methodist’s core team, along with other leaders in the city,
began to initiate further actions. In the months following the election, they arranged
meetings with all of the new school board members, building on the power they had
displayed through the action. “If we do stumble in the next six months,” Wayne
explained during this time, “the school board could say [we’re] weak.” They have also
followed on their commitment to host “listening events” at three local schools to have
school board members and other administrators hear the stories and issues that the
school community is concerned about.
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At this point we can step back to consider what evidence there is that Glendale
Methodist has experienced change on an organizational level, again, recognizing the
important linkages between organizational development and individual
transformation. First, according to One LA’s use of the term, organizational
development includes seeing member organizations take more seriously ideals around
social justice and democracy. Glendale Methodist’s involvement as a member of One
LA does appear to have elicited movement in this area, primarily on the part of its core
team members, including the pastor, Wayne, who attests:
For me…staying with this is to keep making myself uncomfortable and the
congregation uncomfortable. So the fact that some people got uncomfortable
with the way we handled things [at the community agenda forum], I'm not
regretful about that. It's okay… That's new. It's pushing on me to walk the
walk. You know, Wesley had these…components to faith: piety, which is
improving yourself through public worship and private discipline, and then
acts of compassion and justice. And compassion is more that person in the
river, somebody who's in need... But it's that justice one… addressing the
systemic issues of the culture, [where] One LA [has been] the most effective
thorn in terms of really pushing that.

A second aim of organizational development is to foster a more relational
culture internally and between organizations. Here we can say that while Glendale
Methodist’s core team itself developed relational practices such as one-on-ones and
skills associated with public debate and deliberation, there are few signs that this
amounted to any internal church-wide changes. Wayne Walters himself stated that
even three of four years into the process, the wider congregation is largely indifferent
to the work and uninvolved. On an external relations level, however, we note that the
community action forum and subsequent actions were the result of substantial
collaboration between Glendale Methodist’s core team and One LA leaders in other
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area organizations. While One LA organizers were working with Glendale Methodist,
they were also at work in these other organizations throughout the city including the
local Jewish Temple, a Latino parent’s association, an Armenian student group, and a
local Catholic Church. Over time, the various One LA leaders throughout the city
coalesced into what became the Glendale city cluster of One LA. This inter-
organizational collaboration, which was first publicly witnessed at the community
agenda forum, became a theme that those both inside and outside of the movement
used to characterize the organizing strategy in Glendale.
Finally, One LA’s goal in developing institutions is to have them become
corporately engaged in the organizing practice. On this point Glendale Methodist
presents the clearest example of progress, moving from a posture of isolation and from
a lack of experience in any sort of intentional public engagement to one of playing a
leading role in an emerging city-wide organizing strategy that has public education as
its initial target. This is a strategy, moreover, that outside stakeholders are taking
seriously. Doris Mathews, an eleven year member of the Glendale school board, and
someone who describes herself as a bit of a “rebel,” assured me that the Glendale
cluster of One LA has clearly attracted the school board’s attention. As someone who
has “worked on the inside” of a bureaucracy for eleven years, she notes how
entrenched the Glendale school district leaders have become and how so-called
channels for parental and community voice such as the PTA have been largely co-
opted. She sees real hope, however, in the activity of One LA. She places value in One
LA’s “outsider” perspective, its willingness to confront long-standing grievances
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head-on, and the legitimacy of participants like Corey Alexander, Wayne and
Christine Walters, and many others. She believes that this movement “will be an
impetus to move the school district in some areas that we need to go that we wouldn't
do no our own.” Glendale’s assistant superintendent, Rick Pollock, on the other hand,
was more circumspect about the Glendale cluster of One LA and the bulk of his
responses consisted of attempts to counter or deflect any possible negative reflection
on the district. He did respond more adamantly on the matter of how the group came
about, however, revealing the standing that the One LA leaders clearly possess.
It couldn‘t have happened if it weren‘t for people who we know to be
supportive of schools. So, Christine and her husband, very supportive; Corey
Alexander, teacher of the year; the Seders, who are very pro public
education… to our view, they are it. And so when we say One LA, we think
Michael, Christine because they are the only faces we have to attach to it. We
don‘t think [the organizers], we think these guys.

The outcomes above suggest evidence that One LA’s process of organizational
development has occurred at Glendale Methodist. The transformations reflect
developments first among a small yet dedicated core team placed within a
congregation that is marked by suspicion or apathy concerning the work. A question
that remains, in this case, is how durable or deep are the visible changes. Wayne’s
own perspective is that the chances of the “whole thing kind of collapsing are high”
should he be called to pastor another church. Further, the increasing level of activity of
the Glendale cluster of One LA is demanding higher commitment on the part of
Glendale Methodist’s core team and Wayne acknowledges, “I don't know if I can give
the amount of time” that is needed to “keep the momentum.” On the other hand, he
and the others exhibit an undiminished commitment to the work, despite challenges or
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indifference within their congregation, for their own “integrity” because they believe
that it is what the church should be about. Wayne’s conclusion is that “it's worth it in
the long run,” not as much for the immediate families in his congregation as for the
“people in the community.”

The Story of Harmony Elementary School
Harmony Elementary opened its doors in South Los Angles in 2004, the first
new school to be opened in Los Angeles Unified for more than a decade. Its incoming
student body was overwhelmingly made up of English language learners and students
who qualified for free or reduced lunch. Surrounding neighborhoods were known for
gang violence, vandalism, drug use, prostitution, and poverty. Creating a productive
learning environment at Harmony would be a challenge. The school's principal,
however, had handpicked many of his teachers and was committed to the vision of
creating high-performing school even in this difficult environment. He was also
inspired by his recent introduction to community organizing through One LA.
The cornerstone of the school’s strategy was the understanding that parents
rather than schools represent a student’s main support system. The most pressing
concern, therefore, was how to engage parents. With One LA’s help and full support
from the principal, teachers began implementing practices from One LA’s organizing
approach. They began having one-on-one conversations with parents and facilitating
house meetings in which parents and teachers shared stories and discussed together
how to create a successful school for their children. Teachers at Harmony began to see
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signs of greater parent involvement. Everyone agreed, however, that they had only
begun to tap the power that more effective relationships could bring to the school.
One LA helped a team of two teachers and a coordinator organize a Leadership
Academy. They designed the Academy to help interested parents increase their skills
in developing relationships at the school. The three women worked with a group of
twenty-five parents and community members over the course of three Saturdays. The
first workshop addressed basic communication skills and addressed the cultural
barriers that some parents felt, especially when relating to people in authority.
Workshop two introduced a practice of organizing by offering participants the chance
to share their stories with one another. The Academy concluded with an action where
participants collected signatures for a petition to the city requesting speed bumps to be
installed to increase safety near the school, an issue the group had identified as
something they hoped to see improved. Following the Academy, three of the twenty-
five parents who attended became active members of the school’s Core Organizing
Team. These same parents successfully recruited over thirty other parents to attend a
One LA facilitated workshop along with teachers one afternoon on the practice of
house meetings, a discussion that led to a plan to hold neighborhood house meetings
the next spring.
The relational culture that such activities are fostering at Harmony has yielded
tangible results. During its first year, the school counted roughly five to ten parents
who regularly participated on its advisory councils and visited its parent center. Two
years later, a parent workshop delivered by teachers one evening attracted over two
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hundred participants. Harmony teachers directly attribute this high turnout to the
public relationships with parents that they have fostered. A quarter of Harmony’s
teachers, moreover, recently chose to “loop” with their kids - stay with the same class
of students from one grade to the next. Looping is rare in most traditional public
schools, but Robert expects that close to half of his teachers will request to do it next
year. He accounts for the trend at Harmony this way:
Normally [it] would not…happen because teachers have seniority rights. So if
I'm a senior teacher and you're not…and you want to loop to second
grade…[and] I want A track second grade, you're not going to get it. The
difference is that I have a relationship with the teachers who are at this school.
And [we] talk about being able to set aside our personal needs for the gains of
the group…and how can we negotiate and talk about what you need as a
person as opposed to what's better for the greater [school].

Harmony Elementary represents an organization that was poised for
transformation due to a forward thinking principal who wished to challenge the
prevailing conception of poor urban schools. One LA offered a catalyst and a strategy
that Robert and his staff needed and indications of development are clear. The
organizing process with One LA helped to shape the vision of linking Harmony to its
community through its parents. Organizing processes also gave the school the
language and the tools to cultivate a “relational culture” both internally and beyond its
boundaries. Harmony Elementary’s identity is also now strongly aligned with the
larger organizing strategy of One LA. It represents an anchor school in One LA’s
educational organizing strategy and is actively collaborating with other schools and
other institutions throughout the county.

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Summary
The two stories above illustrate the main profiles observed in this study in
terms of impacts on organizations that result from corporate involvement in One LA.
Glendale Methodist’s experience reveals some of the struggles faced by member
institutions in terms of aggregating individual learning and transformation to an
organizational level. Here, while there is evidence of raised corporate awareness, an
increased relational culture and social network, and actual engagement in the
organizing strategy, it is limited in scope, largely confined to a highly committed core
team, and accompanied by broader indifference. Glendale’s nascent outward actions,
however, also display how even with a small scale of transformation, participating
organizations in this movement can achieve an important awareness raising role as
well as actual impacts on the lives people in their communities. Harmony Elementary,
on the other hand, represents those participating organizations in which evidence of
corporate development is much more pronounced. Like other “anchor” organizations
among One LA’s membership role, Harmony Elementary has embraced the organizing
process and used it to help shape a community-focused vision, enhance its
relationships and social network, and begin to take steps in acting collectively with
other organizations committed to social change.

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What Organizers Learn
The ultimate aim of One LA’s educational program is to achieve outward
impacts at the community level in the form of changed political policies and social
arrangements through the formation of civic actors into stronger and more active
political agents. One LA organizers, who fulfill the primary role of “educator” in this
scenario, however, talk quite frequently and readily about their own learning. This
holds for organizers-in-training as well as for veteran organizers. Ernesto Cortés Jr.,
returning to lead One LA after nearly three decades, described his experience this
way:
What have I learned? That I need to learn a lot more; that sometimes you have
got to be willing to start from scratch. You can only rely on your reputation
from press clippings for about 30 days. Then you’ve got to start scratching it
out. So what I've learned is that there's a lot of new stuff to learn.

Another senior organizer stated that the work of organizing is “all about learning” and
one way One LA measures success for an organizer is if they show evidence of
learning by making “new” and “ever larger” mistakes, in contrast to repeating
mistakes or preferring to avoid the risk of learning altogether. Learning among
organizers is therefore an important outcome of One LA’s educational program. It not
only represents a direct product of One LA’s effort to promote an internal learning
culture, but also reinforces the notion that some of the best learning can result from the
process of teaching.
In this section, I begin with a vignette concerning Joy, the prospective
organizer introduced earlier, to show how the education of organizers begins early on,
commencing early in the hiring process. Joy’s experience helps illustrate how in the
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lead up to becoming an organizer with One LA, strategies like collective
apprenticeship and agitation begin to play out and produce important initial
knowledge. Following this vignette, I go on to describe the main categories of learning
that I observed among the organizers participating in this study.

Lessons in Becoming an Organizer
Joy’s decision to seek work with the IAF came quickly once she
began investigating more about the network. One of her professors, for
instance, encouraged her saying, “Well, there’s something to be said for
learning from the best, and the IAF is the best.” She discovered, however,
that the onus for pursuing a relationship with the IAF was largely on her.
One LA’s screening process is designed to elicit initiative, or “appetite” –
an important characteristic for an organizer. One LA seemed to be a bit
reserved, requiring that she keep actively pursuing them. She decided to
take some initiative after learning about a conference on education that
the IAF was arranging in Texas. She sent a letter requesting permission to
attend and expressing her interest in possibly becoming an organizer. She
received an invitation to the conference along with an assignment: she
was to write a two to three page statement about “how her political views
were formed.” Joy was fine with not having to complete the traditional
application materials and arrived at the conference with her statement in
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hand, ready to “check it out.” She was quickly reminded again, however,
that if her interest in the IAF was serious, she would have to assert it:
Daniel started taking me around and introducing me to people and
saying, “That might be an interesting person to meet with.” And I
was thinking, “Okay.” And you know the IAF has this whole thing
about the “iron rule”… So apparently I was…supposed to be
taking the initiative and setting up meetings with the people…I had
to be like "I'm Joy, I'm interested in organizing. Is there a good
time we can meet?"…The point was to see if I could take that
initiative.

Joy managed to successfully arrange individual meetings with all
of the senior organizers before the conference end. This gamut of one-on-
ones is reciprocal not only provided the IAF with “collective judgment”
about her but it also helped Joy learn more about the work, such as the
central role that face-to-face interactions play. Joy also got a taste of what
it means to be “agitated.” She remembers one senior organizer asking
her,
“Well, what makes you any different from other white people who
don't care what's happening in the inner city?" And I could not
answer it. So [while] I found the premise somewhat offensive…I
absolutely could not answer the question. So I went back and
thought about that for months, which was great. That was
agitational in the best possible way.

She recalls a lot of “that sort of thing” but also some less successful
meetings which did not quite hit the mark. But overall Joy recalls them as
being “very intense” and realizes that this was the start of her own
process of learning how to do individual meetings.
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Joy’s final meeting at the conference was with the IAF’s southwest
regional director, Ernesto Cortés, who expressed the IAF’s interest in
hiring her, but gave her yet one more assignment: write a letter stating
“where you want to work and how much you want to make.” Joy wrote to
him and two months later visited One LA to get a feel for the place. She
was offered a position as an organizer during the visit and returned three
months later to begin her first day on the job.

Joy arrived at critical understandings about organizing through her hiring process,
including a first-hand taste of certain requirements of the job: political thinking,
personal initiative, agitation, relational meetings, and mentoring. This knowledge
helped her move forward in her decision to accept a position with One LA.
Learning intensifies once new organizers are on the job. While Joy reported
being “welcomed in” and encouraged to participate right from the start, she was also
well aware of the investment One LA was making in her and of their keen interest in
her progress. Adding stress is the fact that learning for organizers is something that
takes place in public view. While more accomplished organizers are routinely lauded
for their various capacities, leaders and other stakeholders stand ready to point out
inexperience when they see it. One outside stakeholder openly disparaged the fact that

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only “young, inexperienced organizers” had been assigned to work in his area.
Virtually all leaders, however, bear a certain optimism and willingness to work with
even the newest organizer, cognizant that in time they will likely gain the needed
skills.
Joy found her apprenticeship with One LA “supportive and helpful.” In
contrast to previous mentoring experiences, such as during her first year of teaching,
she discovered that with One LA there is constantly someone “running with you,
watching, critiquing, and learning.” Her primary mentor was Joaquin, a senior
organizer with over fifteen years of experience in the IAF. They talked every day and
met officially at least once a week to discuss the day to day. Once a week or so,
Joaquin would “run” with her - or shadow her – after which they would “talk it
through together…‘What happened? At this point, what were you thinking, why did
you do this instead of this?’” This offered immediate and tangible feedback. Joaquin
also discussed the readings that new organizers are expected to consume. Joy met bi-
weekly with another senior organizer to focus more on her “personal development,
about what I am learning…about myself and the work.” She also found that the other
organizers, moreover, constituted a wider circle of mentors who often provided
additional sources of thinking and input. Joy’s story illustrates the emerging
educational experience encountered by One LA organizers. I next detail further the
key learning areas that I observed among organizers further on in their career.
The following examples of the learning which occurs among One LA
organizers also parallel the situated learning model. The first two categories I report
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can be seen as domain related learning: the development of self-reflexivity and
personal agency provides a foundational perspective whereby organizers come to
think of themselves as political agents. Organizers acquire community or interaction
oriented outcomes in the form of specific skills and behaviors associated with the
building and promotion public relationships. Acquisition of skills and knowledge
around the organizing practice is also reported in the form of increased strategic
political know-how, creative externalization, and an increased capacity for leadership
development.

Critical Reflection, Self-Reflexivity, and “Ego”
A common refrain among One LA organizers is how their work demands a
willingness and ability to learn about and critically reflect upon oneself and one’s
work. Joaquin remembers being told bluntly that his first “project is you; for you to
figure out if you really have an appetite…if you really want to learn this work.”
Weekly reports, regular meetings with mentors, assigned readings, and many of the
other practices into which organizers are quickly immersed create space for reflection
concerning what they are working on and what they are learning. The two questions
organizers “are always asking” are “what am I learning about myself?” And, “what am
I learning about the work?” Many organizers are not only surprised to learn how much
the work is “about them,” but may, like Anna, find this heavy emphasis on self-
reflection and critique - what One LA calls “disorganizing” oneself - to be “very
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disruptive” and even “brutal” at times. For Anna, learning to discern her own
motivations and “articulate her own story” was
hard work…it turns upside down everything that you ever thought
about…your religion, justice, faith… And, you know most people haven’t
engaged in that level of learning before…your learning curve is straight up.

Another organizer, Daniel, described it as suddenly being forced to “put myself in the
work…to think about…what got me there…why did I react…in this way? What is it
that I bring to this?” He found such questions “incredibly difficult” because they were
so unlike questions he had faced in previous jobs. Organizers must ultimately develop
their own practice of personal reflection. As a senior organizer explained, “you don't
stay in this work unless you develop your own capacity for reflection, whether you do
something in the morning, go to church, or sit in the park. That balance is critical.” In
the long-term, however, such self-reflective practices lead to greater fulfillment and
relevance in their work. They cite the value of dissecting the origins of their own sense
of social responsibility or anger around injustice – ways of thinking that they may
never have interrogated before. Self-reflection ultimately plays a key role in helping
organizers figure out their own stories, a prerequisite to helping others do the same.
Reflection and self-inventory within One LA is also a collective practice. As
organizers begin to establish trust with one another, initial anxieties tend to subside.
The expectation for ongoing reflection and critique, however, does not diminish. “In
fact,” Anna explains, “the longer you do this and the thicker the trust, hopefully the
deeper the critique.” One LA organizers ultimately credit this culture of ongoing
personal scrutiny with an enhanced sense of “ego” – a term that can be roughly
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associated with increased self-confidence and greater security and ease with one’s own
identity. More specifically, organizers link a stronger ego directly to the objective
assessment of their own strengths and limitations and the intentional development of
their capacities by supportive mentors and colleagues. This process leads to a more
accurate self-appraisal and lays the ground for both better calculation and heightened
assertiveness in personal choices and actions. Anna relates an excellent example of
how critical reflection vis-à-vis objective evaluation by her mentor, Judy, elicited new
understanding, greater confidence, and the possibility of changed behavior. As Anna
began organizing, she had to face anew a tendency to withdraw from social situations
in which she felt a lack of control or like she didn’t “know what is going on.” Judy
addressed this on one occasion pointing out Anna’s “tendency to shut down” in
uncomfortable situations. Anna recalls how Judy went on and “just kind of unpacked
that with me and said, ‘Okay, now I’ll kind of floor team for you and I’ll pick up the
slack when you shut down, but I want you to re-engage. Because you’re fine…you’ve
just got to get back into the conversation.’” Judy’s observation plus her practical
assistance enabled Anna to learn to stay engaged with people in stressful social
situations: “‘Okay…I don’t know anyone in this room, and I’m incredibly
introverted…and so I’m going to shut down’ – learning how to not do that, and having
someone watching my back…and helping me see that…and just kind of walking me
through.” Anna describes this support which Judy provided as “sort of scaffolding

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to…get [me] to a point where I could do that myself.” A stronger sense of self and
greater assertiveness are vital factors in helping organizers to engage more
confidently, honestly, and productively with others, including the ability to deal with
and confront people in positions of authority or power, an area where a fragile ego is a
liability.

Increased Agency
One LA organizers report a growing sense of agency or growth in their
appetite and capacity to initiate and bring about action. Such an outcome is consistent
with One LA’s explicit emphasis on “building power” and its conceptualization of
power as ‘the ability to act.’ From the beginning of an organizer’s experience, one of
the main points around which they are assessed is the extent to which they can “make
something happen,” whether in displaying initiative in seeking out the IAF in the first
place, learning to successfully set up individual meetings or pull together a meeting of
leaders, or ultimately being able to bring about the creation of something new – a new
constituency, a new organizing strategy, a new policy, and so on. In the end, to be
successful, as one organizer stated, “You've got to want to create something that's
yours.” The strong focus on personal agency is new for many new organizers and
frequently produces dissonance. Daniel’s initial feelings as a new organizer are
illustrative: “I wanted to be shown what to do…I was incredibly discouraged with
myself. I felt like there was something I was supposed to be doing that I wasn't doing
and something I was supposed to understand…that I didn't understand.” Maribeth, a
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senior organizer who describes herself as shy, recalls thinking when she first heard
about organizing, “that's a very good thing - for someone else. I couldn't see myself
talking to city council. I had a good education but didn't see myself as a public
person.”
An increased capacity for initiating action and seeing it through originates with
One LA’s practices of reflection and critique which help illuminate impediments
organizers may bring with them. When Daniel, for example, began to deliver critiques
about the way One LA operated, he was surprised to discover “a kind of culture that
welcomed those critiques.” This presented a difficulty for him because he could no
longer simply be an “outsider critic” and led to the realization that it finally “comes
down to you…the organization is going to be what you make of it.”
I had been able to be pretty detached about my [previous work] experiences…
you know, “This is a screwed up [organization]”… Suddenly it was like, I
wake up…figure out what to do with the day. And then tomorrow…figure out
what to do with that day, and the next… I had so much more responsibility for
myself than I'd ever had. And…the question was always, ‘So what are you
going to do about it?’

Self-reflection allowed Daniel to see that underneath his sharp critiques of others
lurked his own fears of being perceived as incompetent or ignorant and over time he
began to accept fuller responsibility for his actions or inactions. Similarly, as Maribeth
got involved and began experiencing the training and support of colleagues, she began
to tap into her “anger” and to realize new potential within herself. She now contests:
“you're not born into this…you can't do what you can't imagine.”
The actual experience of organizing, however, is critical in eliciting an
increased capacity and appetite for action. A sense of efficacy often accompanies
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successful organizing efforts thus feeding the desire for further action. Anna,
describing her increasing interest in organizing around community safety, recalled a
key moment in a public action she helped organize. During the action, a police captain
was addressed on stage by a woman whose son had been murdered by a gang:
…the grief…and powerlessness that she felt was just tangible…the
division…had sort of just shuffled her and her son and they had become a
statistic in a matter of days. And that's all he was and that's all she was. And
for her to stand there and tell her story in front of 300 people, and just say,
“This is not right,” and to have him have to account for something, that was the
beginning of something… In that moment it changed something between them.
But it wasn't just [her as an] individual. She was representing…other mothers
in the audience…that church, that community, people who don't have
[power]…

For Anna the experience helped reveal the essence of organizing, which is elevating
people who are not in positions of power or influence to a place where they can
engage with power. It also illuminated in a new way the potential she had in her role
as a One LA organizer:
I didn't know that I had an appetite for that. That opened up for me a
tremendous appetite around dealing with law enforcement. I mean I'd never
had any negative encounters with cops. But just hearing other people's stories
and being in that room and recognizing that this is a powerful institution of
people I work with, changed me.

Social Capital and the Art of Public Relationships
One of the most critical skills organizers learn is how to initiate and nurture
public relationships. Such skills rest at the center of the organizing work, since
nothing, as organizers are quick to note, can be achieved in the absence of authentic
“trust and reciprocity” between those involved in the movement. Building strong
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political friendships requires that organizers develop a high capacity for relating to
others, generating rapport, and fostering substantive dialogue. The unit of currency in
this framework is the ‘one-on-one’ or individual meeting, the practice of which
represents something of an art that organizers must acquire. Many organizers come to
the work with the assumption that they have to be the person with the answers. As
they develop the art of one-on-ones, what they become quite skilled at is expressing
curiosity and eliciting the “stories” of others. One organizer came to realize that the
important skill “is being able to ask the questions…and that there's something kind of
wrong if you feel you've got the answers to them.” A similar turning point in Anna’s
development as an organizer was when she came to grips with the fact that organizing
was as much about her “ability to engage in conversation” as it was about action. She
recalled her tendency to be “shrill and bitchy,” a trait that could be useful sometimes
but was the “only gear she knew.” On one particular occasion, a priest she was
meeting with made her angry: “I felt like he was patronizing me, treating me like a
little kid: ‘Look at this cute little girl coming into my parish.’" Anna reacted by
snapping at him in a “humorless, explosive” way, which set back their relationship and
only perpetuated his stereotype of her. Over time, however, she learned how to
withhold her anger and be more “curious about other people.” Rather than her anger
taking control when dealing with church leaders, she was able to “have more humor

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about it.” Furthermore, through reflection, she was able to link her anger to specific
experiences with patronizing religious leaders during her youth and eventually arrive
to the point where she could somberly articulate her anger and channel it toward
ending discrimination in the church based on gender, class, and other factors.

Strategic Political Know-How
Organizers display a political savvy – an ability to think in strategic political
terms – that is grounded in the organizing framework and is shaped by reflective
engagement in the work. Organizers immediately begin practicing various political
arts such as the exercise of power, negotiation, and use of relationship, and to
internalize core political principles. Organizing precinct walks in support of a key
health care measure a few years ago illuminated for Anna the fundamental connection
between voter turnout and political power:
I was a political neophyte…and precinct walking? What is that? What does
that have to do with anything?...Yeah, okay…voting power, blah, blah,
blah…But then you go out and do it, and…you get the precinct results…and
you see, “Oh, wow, we walked in this precinct and [the measure] passed…and
in this precinct we didn't walk and it didn't pass.” And you start putting two
and two together and, you know, “Well, if we could do this in all the precincts,
we could really make some change.”

Joy, who was organizing a small district during her tryout period, explained how
through her developing practice of one-on-ones she was learning to analyze
organizations and “get into the heart of an institution” and “figure out the power
dynamics.” She also reported learning about the importance of self interest, a key
organizing principle: “people aren't necessarily used to thinking about social justice in
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a way that comes out of their own story. So…for a lot of [people] social justice means
helping some other people with their problems.” The realization led Joy to better see
her task as helping people reflect and act on their own interests and countering
paternalism. Applying this to her present work, she asked: “How can these individual
conversations, how can our trainings, and the way we think, get people to start acting
with people, and quit acting for people…to really get the kind of power we need [in
these schools]?”
Acquiring political thinking and analytical skills becomes critical for One LA
organizers as they constantly navigate the pull between the ‘stories’ and interests on
the ground and, in Anna’s words, the “political reality of what we have the power to
do something about.” Anna exhibits an aspect of this as she reflects on the tension in
one particular organizing effort:
I mean, I wish we could change the school culture of [this city]…that would be
huge. We don't have the power to do that right now. We don't have the political
connections…. But [community] safety is something we do have…anger and
stories and will and energy around…We can work on that…build enough
capital and power and relationships. [Then]…we'll ask the police chief…‘Do
you have a relationship with the school superintendent?’…You
know…leverage those relationships to power to…get into some of the arenas
where we can't get in on our own. We're going to need some more powerful
allies…We may need the police chief and mayor and developers.

Political thinking for organizers also involves what Ernesto Cortés Jr. calls the “ability
to connect a local fight to larger questions.” He recites one of his early organizing
experiences when he was learning about public utility policies:
We were trying to get the city to do something about infrastructure in the inner
city because it was flooding. But I got curious…[and] figured out that the
growth management of the city was dependent on utility policy…developers
were getting on the boards and deciding where the big water mains were going
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and where the pumping stations were going. And that was pouring resources
into those areas at the expense of the older areas…To make a long story short,
an organization that was supposed to be fighting for drainage got into growth
management and got into all kinds of issues.

Another capacity organizers learn related to political strategy is to think beyond the
immediate campaign or issue and about the long-term growth and sustainability of the
organizing movement. One LA calls this thinking "above the organization” in contrast
to “just working for it,” or in the words of Ernesto Cortés Jr., running with the
assumption that the movement is “always one-third built.” It means teaching
organizers to be concerned with how their present political decisions can help shape
the movement and bring greater sustainability over the long-term.

Creative Externalization
Another capacity that emerges in the development of One LA organizers is the
creative ability to envision new alternatives and possibilities or to exert, in One LA’s
terms, “new imagination” with respect to organizing practice and social realities. One
LA’s position is that the work of an organizer is a “building” process, the product of
which is only limited by their imagination, a stance which offers, in the words of one
organizer, “amazing freedom.” One LA terms this capacity “entrepreneurial,” not to
refer to profit-making in the traditional sense, but to conjure a view of organizing as
an enterprise that should lead to novel political thinking and solutions. As one
organizer put it, “We're not just out waiting for someone to do a visionary thing and
then tack onto it. We want to create something.”
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One LA organizers describe this aspect of organizing as one of the hardest to
learn. From the beginning of their career they must contend with a high degree of
autonomy and grapple with what it means to shape their own organizing strategy.
Each One LA organizer is ultimately responsible, as Joy discovered early on, for his or
her own “turf”:
they may have someone run with them, give them feedback, think through it
with them, but then they're still out there in that turf, building it…So you have
really strong mentorship, but then it's also entrepreneurial…you are working
out there. You're building it.

When I asked Joy if she knew what she wanted to build, her response revealed some
of the challenge new organizers may encounter: “No. And that's okay. I think…I mean
definitely what I'm supposed to be doing is the individual meetings, and so (pause) but
that’s been hard, not to have this clear picture.” She continued: “I'll have time in
between meetings and, you know, I don't quite know what to do (laughs). Like…I
want to be doing something that's efficient and productive…but I don't know what it
is, you know?” Over time, through mentoring and the recursive process of practicing
and reflecting on their work, organizers learn to nurture the emergence of organizing
strategies that meaningfully address issues they encounter. In the span of less than a
year, Joy was behind a promising campaign around education in Pasadena that, by all
accounts, showed potential for coalescing disparate efforts in that city which had a
long history of being splintered.
Organizers display not only growing competence in basic organizing skills and
strategy formation but also eventual versatility in applying their organizing skills in
new ways and toward new ends. Organizers refer of this in terms of being part of an
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“organizing guild” in which mastery in the skills of organizing leads to opportunity if
not obligation to make an original contribution by shaping the field in some new way.
One organizer described it this way:
…the fact that I work with Ernesto Cortés Jr. who's been doing this for years
and years, that gives me a vision for what I can be, what I can do. But also I
feel like I have the freedom to shape and change the work…I feel like I have
entered into an ongoing conversation about what it means to be a professional
organizer. And it's a conversation that started before I was born… I mean I
used to want to be an artist when I was a kid and it kind of feels like artists
who…define what art is, what a genre is; and it changes over time…with the
surrounding environment.

Mid-level and senior One LA organizers each revealed some personal emphases or
area in which they were trying to innovate or create something new. Anna was focused
on developing a new organizing strategy around community safety, Daniel around
engaging synagogues in a new way, Joaquin around education and achievement
academies, and so on.
The line of inquiry known as activity theory (Engestrom, Miettinen, &
Punamaki, 1999) is useful in interpreting this outcome. Activity theory posits that
social systems engage in two basic processes related to the creation and transfer of
skills and knowledge: internalization which is geared toward the maintenance and
reproduction of a system; and externalization, or the creation of new thinking,
solutions, and other “artifacts” that enable development and innovations within the
system (Engestrom, Miettinen, & Punamaki, 1999, p. 10). A transformative “activity
system” includes both. Internalization, through socialization and training, helps
novices become competent participants, but does not necessarily lead to novel
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structures. These instead result as members of the system engage in critical reflection,
revealing “disruptions and contradictions” which lead to a search for new solutions
and new models (Engestrom, Miettinen, & Punamaki, 1999).

Leadership Development
One LA ties effective organizing to the presence of strong community leaders.
It maintains, however, that “most leaders have to be built.” One of the most critical
areas of learning for One LA organizers, consequently, concerns what it takes to
nurture leadership and organizers report significant growth in their understanding and
abilities in this regard. One of the principles that organizers learn is that they cannot
afford to pursue every promising leader and instead must hone in on individuals with
the greatest potential. Related to this is the capacity to identify organizing “talent.”
Organizers learn to look for people who exhibit the requisite traits - curiosity, humor,
anger, and so on - and those individuals with “interesting stories” – relevant and
compelling background experiences that lead to an interest in the work. Joaquin
offered an example that shows some of the subtleties of this process:
There's a gentleman…in the achievement academy [who] surprised me… I had
given…a homework assignment…to keep a journal about asking their child
daily: What did you learn in school today? So he came back and he said, “You
know, I did that and it was a very” - he actually said it this way – “it was a very
beautiful experience. But also frustrating…because my two older children
were asking me why I never showed an interest in their education. I had to
explain that I'm learning as I grow too.” So he exhibited some vulnerability
and some risk-taking in sharing that story. I mean you have a stereotype of
this…macho Latino guy. And yet, here he was in a room of women and two

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guys and he was sharing a story like that. That makes him attractive enough to
want to have a conversation and to follow up and to see what else is behind it.
You know, who taught him that type of risk taking? Who taught him that level
of vulnerability? Where did he get that from? I meet with him next week.

Organizers develop the skills to begin engaging potential leaders and then,
through conversations and observations, to make a determination whether the person
has sufficient appetite for the work. As a senior organizer explained, “It's not a value
judgment, it's not around intelligence, it's not around skill level. It's around appetite.
[Without appetite] you can't really do much with them.” To gauge a person’s interest
level, organizers learn to trigger people to act – to provide opportunities to initiate or
do something out of their interest. They will propose something or extend a challenge
- perhaps an invitation to meet again or a suggestion that they pull together a house
meeting in their neighborhood or school - and then await the response. Throwing such
challenges frequently leads to disappointment. An organizer stated that out of as many
as fifteen conversations with potential leaders in a given week, three may show any
level of appetite for involvement in the work of organizing. Organizers also learn,
therefore, to develop perspective and to remain persistent.
As individuals do become engaged in the work, organizers must become adept
at focusing on their leaders’ continued development and learning while balancing
demands for other organizing outcomes. Joaquin described the presence of “multiple
bottom lines” in his work:
Right now I'm working with Ria on this rally in Pasadena… And my interest in
this is, yes, we need to have a successful rally and say all the right things about
what…is wrong around education and all of that. But my real interest is around
all of the learning that is taking place with Ria and the evidence of that when
we talk after [and] I ask her: What did you learn? Is this useful? Do you see
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yourself differently now? [Which other potential leaders look] interesting to
you? That's the evidence that there's development taking place, and that's what
keeps me interested in doing that. In some ways the issue is secondary.

Organizers also learn ways to augment their influence such as by utilizing other
leaders in the development process, such as by arranging collaboration between newer
leaders and those who are more experienced.
The various skills One LA organizers acquire cohere in a leadership
development approach that mirrors One LA educational philosophy and is strongly
action-oriented. The most fundamental skill that One LA organizers learn, therefore, is
the ability to employ direct experience combined with practices of reflection as the
primary medium for learning among leaders. Organizers become quite accomplished
at intentionally guiding and mentoring their leaders through the steps in the organizing
process, detecting learning potential for their leaders and helping them reflect on and
interpret their experiences. According to one senior organizer, every organizer is
tasked with learning the art of mentoring much as reflected in the character of mentor
in Homer’s Odyssey: they must learn to be the one “who’s been there before,” who
appears at the right time and just the right form - “sometimes as a house mom,
sometimes as a pastor - and who disappears in all the right ways.”
One organizing activity which organizers learn to make special use of in the
development of their leaders is the public action. Organizers learn, in short, that “it is
on the stage” where leaders “develop politicalness.” Organizers learn to help others
interpret public actions as dramas through which leaders are transformed as they
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engage with others as “diverse equals” explicitly for the common good. One organizer
exclaimed:
I mean where do we do that? We go and we sit and we're entertained, and that's
what we're comfortable with…that's not what our public actions are. Everyone
is a participant, the floor is as important as the stage, and you are a participant.
And that's something people have to learn.

Organizers come to expect certain results from public actions. By encouraging their
leaders to submit to new experiences like chairing an action, “pinning” a public
official, or telling their story on stage, they seek to expand the leaders’ notion of the
possible. One organizer flatly explained that while people might “fantasize” about any
number of they want to do in terms of public involvement, the point of a public action
is to have leaders “actually act on something” and then say afterward, "’Oh…well, I
got to tell my story, well, maybe I could [do something else]’.” Organizers also learn
that public actions tend to produce a sense of ownership and to help leaders claim a
greater stake in their communities. One organizer concluded that while “not
everything that we do needs to be [a public] action…if we don't get to a point where
we’re also doing public action, we're not organizing.”
One LA organizers, finally, learn to focus on new potentials and possibilities
for others, effusing the positive view that “people can change.” Listen to Anna as she
talks about first getting to know a potential leader, Tracy:
I started having imagination for her, because I know that we have this
organization where she could perform, where she could connect with people
that were different than her. And I could imagine her a year…in a totally
different kind of way than she could see for herself.

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Tracy eventually came into the work, “kicking and screaming,” as Anna recalls. About
a year later, however, Anna observed Tracy acting differently than she did when they
first met:
She's a lot more curious about people. She suspends judgment about herself in
a way she didn't before. She takes more risks… And then [she is] in
relationship with people who are different than herself in a way that she wasn't
before – with a catholic priest, with people from different churches. She's a
much more animated person.

Summary
An important product of One LA’s educational program is the significant
learning that occurs among organizers themselves. As organizers learn to practice
critical reflection and self-reflexivity both on an individual level and collectively, they
develop greater assertiveness and “ego,” characteristics which underpin the public and
sometimes contentious nature of their work. Organizers exhibit development into
serious political agents, displaying growth in the area of political initiative, strategic
thinking, and creative externalization. Organizers also acquire skills that contribute to
social capital building such as the capacity to promote and maintain strong public
relationships and relate to a variety of people and build trust. Organizers, finally, learn
to nurture and develop leaders into political agents and to facilitate their successful
involvement in meaningful collective action.

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Education for Social Change
Table 6 below portrays how the One LA learning outcomes described above
parallel the facets of knowledge associated with situated learning in a community of
practice context. Aligning One LA’s educational program with the community of
practice framework, however, still leaves unaddressed the question of content. Any
number of communities of practice can be found, including the extremely technical-
rational – say, a collaborative of specialized software developers – and those quite
removed from pressing social concerns, such as an online network of saltwater
aquarium enthusiasts. It remains to be asked, therefore, how and to what degree does
the educational program of this particular community of practice advance its stated
aim of social change?
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Table 6. Learning Outcomes in One LA as Facets of Knowledge in a Community of Practice

Domain related learning Community related learning Practice related learning
Thinking Relating Acting
Outcomes among
leaders
New thinking and raised
awareness about their own
potential role as political
agents
Acquisition of skills and
understanding that contribute
to building trust and
reciprocity with others for
explicitly political purposes
Increasing capacity and tendency to
act in new ways through the
specific skills associated with the
organizing practice

Outcomes among
member organizations

Interrogating and taking more
seriously ideals around social
justice and democracy
Use of practices to foster a
more relational culture
internally and with other
organizations
Acquisition of organizing know-
how through corporate engagement
in collective movement

Outcomes among
organizers
Development of self-
reflexivity and personal
agency leads to organizers to
self-identify as political
agents
New skills and behaviors
associated with building and
maintaining public
relationships
Increased strategic political know-
how, creative externalization, and
capacity for developing others into
political agents

219

220

An answer begins to emerge by recalling the roots of One LA’s educational
strategy which rest in the explicitly social-change-oriented tradition of popular
education. Examination of One LA’s learning outcomes in light of Schugurensky’s
(2000) characterization of popular education shows that One LA’s results match what
one should expect from this framework. One LA participants clearly arrive at a view
of learning which recognizes the link between knowledge and power and that
emphasizes the importance of developing a sense of political agency. The learning that
One LA leaders and organizers exhibit reflects an explicit effort to provide skills to
those who feel marginalized in order to help them bring about actual social changes.
Outcomes like learning to ground the work in actual experience and stories of people
and to draw on participants’ faith beliefs echo the popular educator’s desire to root the
educational experience in the everyday knowledge of the learner. The learning
outcomes also, finally, largely derive from actual participation in collective social
action through specific organizing strategies combined with critical reflection. This
conceptualization thus moves us along in interpreting One LA’s educational outcomes
as evidence of an educational project that actually helps learners acquire and exert
political power in order to bring about social change.
Even more helpful is to assess how the various educational dimensions of One
LA’s education program specifically contribute to social transformations. Just as it is
important to avoid the Tocquevillian “overgeneralization” that “more participation
makes citizens more virtuous” (Warren, M. E., 2001), simply positing a general
connection between One LA and a social change tradition like popular education is
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one part of the answer. Further clarification is gained by teasing out specific links
between One LA’s educational strategy and social change processes in the
movement’s democratic context. Warren’s framework concerning how different
associational involvements produce different “democratic effects” in an advanced
liberal democracy offers an excellent means of extending the analysis in this way.
The results of the work of One LA can be held up against the three categories
of possible democratic effects which Warrens isolates as abilities, skills, knowledge,
dispositions, attitudes, and so on that are “good for democracy” and which participants
may acquire through an association. The core definition of democracy for Warren is
the ‘equal distribution of power through collective self rule’ and his categories of
effects outline the three essential ingredients for this type of governance. There is the
requirement of individual autonomy or the ability for individuals to arrive at reasoned
judgment without the influence of coercion or misinformation. Associations may
contribute here by increasing a citizen’s sense of agency, ability to gather and critique
information, political skills such as deliberation, and basic “civil” virtues such as
recognition and trust – Warren terms these “developmental effects.” The second
requirement for collective self-rule, indeed the essence of democracy, Warren
suggests, is political autonomy or the ability for collective decisions to be driven by
public discourse, debate, and reasoning alone – through “communicative power” – and
apart from other forms of influence such as money or raw force. What Warren calls
here “public sphere effects” are those factors that support and protect inclusive
processes of public deliberation and encourage the rule of the “force of talk,” whereby
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individual reasoning can be turned into public reasoning. Public sphere effects include
the creation of public spaces for communication and deliberation, the ability to
highlight commonalities, and the ability to address differences and insert the interests
of silent or weaker society members into public discussion. Warren’s final set of
democratic effects – “institutional effects” - include the contributions of an association
toward influencing traditional governing bodies and institutions and bringing them
into better alignment with democratic values. The main expressions here include an
association’s ability to help equalize the process of representation, to induce change
through organized influence or resistance, to increase political participation by
organizing alternative forms of local governance, to provide coordination and
cooperation to resolve political conflicts or problems, and thereby help legitimize
democratic processes.
Using Warren’s matrix it is possible to interpret the outcomes observed in One
LA as products of a unique association that has particular relevance to democratic
governance and change. Table 7 illustrates how One LA’s educational outcomes can
be aligned with the categories of these democratic “effects.”

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Table 7. One LA Educational Outcomes as Democratic Effects of Association
Democratic effects One LA Educational Outcomes
Developmental: increase in
individual autonomy – the
ability to make reasoned
political judgments – among
leaders and organizers

Critical reflection and self-reflexivity
Raised awareness about oneself and political realities
Intellectual development
Interpreting civic role of faith beliefs
Political skills
Leadership skills
Increased agency

Public Sphere: promotion of
political autonomy or means
for inclusive collective
decision-making

Increased public action
Social capital building
Building trust through public conversation
Enhanced understanding of others
Expanded commitment to one’s community
Promotion of relational networks

Institutional: enhanced
organizational means of
influencing governing bodies
and institutions
Acquisition of collective organizing skills
Increased exertion of collective power
Strategic and creative political thinking
Enhanced understanding of nature of social change
Development of member organizations
Act around ideals of social justice and democracy
Networking between member organizations
Engagement in collective strategy

Framing One LA’s educational outcomes in this way allows us to view the
knowledge and skills which participants acquire through the broad-based organizing
process on three levels. New capacities represent immediate learning outcomes that
result from participating in One LA - tangible expressions of an intentional
educational project geared toward the formation of participating actors. Here leaders,
organizers, and member organizations are the focus and main beneficiary of skills
which they can put to immediate political use. The outcomes we encounter also
represent important progress toward achievement of One LA’s political goals.
224

Warren’s categories help to specify how the developments One LA participants
experience reflect a broader contribution to social change in the context of a modern
liberal democracy in which One LA operates. These are democratic effects that might
reverberate in the public sphere for the greater public good. Schugurensky identifies
this reciprocal arrangement as a virtuous circle, whereby local democracies provide
the seedbed for political learning and such learning in turn nurtures healthier
democratic functioning (Schugurensky, 2003). Finally, One LA’s political project
contains discrete and localized political objectives which its educational strategy is
designed to further. Learning outcomes are therefore also linked to specific political
impacts including observable changes One LA has wrought as well as to the growth
and relevance of the movement. Figure 7 provides a descriptive illustration that brings
together the various educational dimensions that we have encountered thus far.
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EDUCATIONAL METHODS

Popular Education framework
Political learning and collective
action linked in social change
movement

Experiential, situated learning approach
Learning vis-à-vis immersion into
broad-based organizing community
of practice
Targeted knowledge
Domain: BBCO theory
Community: Relational network
Practice: Organizing cycle

Informal Education Methods
Collective Apprenticeship
Action and Reflection
Agitation
Storytelling
Readings
Social Networking

Nonformal Education
Trainings, seminars, workshops

EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES

Formation of leaders
Increased political agency
Increased social capital building
Public conversation and trust-building
Enhanced understanding of others
Expanded civic commitment
Organizing skills and strategies
Social change perspective
Political knowledge and skills
Use of religion as social capital
Leadership skills
Exercise of collective power

Development of mediating organizations
Increased commitment to social justice
Increased political collaboration internally and
with other organizations
Increased know-how and engagement in
collective action

Learning among organizers
Critical skills
Increased political agency
Strategic/creative political thinking
Social capital building skills
Leadership development
Facilitation of collective action

DEMOCRATIC EFFECTS

Developmental: Increased
individual autonomy

Public sphere: Greater political
autonomy; increased
opportunity for, participation
in inclusive collective
decision-making

Institutional: Increased capacity
for, frequency of exerting
influence on governing bodies
and institutions

POLITICAL IMPACTS

Democratic social change

Political formation of individuals
and mediating institutions

Sustainability and relevance of
movement
Figure 7. Descriptive Framework Illustration
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Social Change through Faith-Secular Partnership
A question that logically emerged in this study and that warrants some
elaboration concerns the role that religion plays in One LA’s social change program.
The strong presence of religious institutions in One LA’s membership has in fact led
to various labels for the movement such as “congregation-based” and “faith-based”
organizing. It is possible, however, to more clearly articulate the religious nature of
One LA by employing a typology produced by the Working Group on Human Needs
and Faith-Based and Community Initiatives (2003) in its effort to clarify burgeoning
discourse around “faith-based” organizations and initiatives. The typology outlines
five categories of organizational religiosity, from most to least faith-oriented: faith-
permeated, faith-centered, faith-affiliated, faith-background, faith-secular partnership,
and secular. The group considered characteristics such as an organization’s mission
statement, the aims of its founders, how it selects management and secures resources,
and the content of programs and activities. Observations from this study allow us to
rather solidly place One LA in the category of a faith-secular partnership as illustrated
in Table 8.

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Table 8. Placement of One LA on Continuum of Organizational Religiosity
One LA

Faith-
permeated
Faith-centered Faith-affiliated
Faith
background
Faith-secular
partnership
Secular
Mission
statement
Explicitly religious
Explicit or
implicit
Implicit
Not religious,
but mission of
faith partners
may be
No religious
expression
Founders Religious group with religious purposes
Religious group
but historic tie is
weak
No religious
reference but
partners may
No reference to
religious identify
Selection of
management
Faith
commitment
explicit
prerequisite
Faith
commitment
implicit
prerequisite
Expectation to
share or at least
accept religious
tenets
Faith
commitment not
determining
criteria
Expectation to
understand and
respect faith of
religious
partners
Consideration of
faith considered
improper
Funding and
volunteer
support
Often refuse funds that might
jeopardize religious mission
Generally cultivate support and
volunteers from religious
community
Significant
reliance on faith
partners
Little or none
from religious
community
Religious
content and
goals of
activities
Integrated and
mandatory; goal
is religious
experience
Integrated but
optional; main
goal is religious
experience
Implicit or
explicit, but little
expectation of
directly religious
outcomes
Generally source
of motivation for
staff only
None generally,
but sometimes
introduced by
faith partners
None

X
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One LA thus represents a registered public charity organization
which is primarily non-religious in nature whose “primary exempt purpose,” as stated
on its IRS Form 990, is to “promote community involvement.” Its partners (member
organizations), on the other hand, largely consist of organizations with explicitly
religious missions and it is in this context that the recruitment and training of potential
community leaders is carried out. One LA, consequently, exhibits an expectation that
its leaders respect the various faith traditions of its member partners and these faith
beliefs are framed as value added in terms of One LA’s objectives. This also accounts
for One LA’s routine integration of religious activities, from the inclusion of opening
prayers at public gatherings to the use of sacred scriptures to ground its teachings of
core practices and principles.
In this partnership, organizers navigate the intersection of public and sacred
space and skillfully employ religious symbolism and beliefs in order to foster civic
engagement. The organizers I interviewed, all of whom brought a Judeo-Christian
religious background to their work, spoke, some rather fervently, about coming to
appreciate the relevance of faith tenets to their organizing practice. While their work is
clearly political, they learned to draw on religious language and moral authority to
support their movement. The biblical imperative of extending hospitality to others was
a way to encourage crossing various social cleavages and collaborating with others
who are different. They framed the importance of organizing around immigrant issues
in terms of the biblical prescription to welcome in the stranger and they routinely drew
on the biblical notion of justice to frame a picture of a preferable society. Joy

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recounted with great animation what she had learned at an internal training
where organizers discussed the implications of the Old Testament law on human
relationships:
…the issue is then how do we create the kind of society where slavery doesn't
happen and where nobody is left out. And…in the torah it says “welcome the
stranger because you were a stranger in Egypt”…it didn't say…send aid to
slaves in other places; it said how do we create a society where that doesn't
happen?

Organizers also spoke about the interaction of their faith and public life as
central to their spiritual formation. One organizer described the work of building a
relational culture that crosses boundaries as part of her “salvation,” stating, “If we
don’t engage the other…if we don't deal with ourselves in the other, and we don't deal
with that difference, then I will never understand myself.” Organizers thus come to
acquire a variety of ways of framing religious traditions in order to extract applications
for the purposes of civic mobilization and engagement.
In this faith-secular partnership we observe an example of a social change
movement drawing upon religious beliefs as a unique form of social capital. The
contribution that the religious membership of One LA presents aligns with previous
attempts to characterize religious social capital (Corwin, 2003). Religious social
capital has been distinguished by its sheer quantity. One LA provides an illustration of
this in that its largest constituency – religious congregations – represents one of the
largest sources of social capital in American society. One LA participants also voiced
rationales for involvement in One LA that were directly related to their religious
values, values which sometimes countered other influences and kept them in the work

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simply because it was the “right thing to do.” This, like the correlation
between church attendance and volunteering, charitable giving, and other forms of
civic engagement, supports the notion that religious-based social capital is more
sustainable as it is rooted in other than pragmatic considerations. Religious association
has also been identified as an important opportunity to generate social capital among
poorer segments of the population, an idea born out in the fact that One LA for the
most draws its membership from churches in poorer urban areas (Corwin, 2003).
Drawing again on the concept of democratic effects of associational
involvements provides further illumination regarding the reciprocal nature of the faith-
secular partnership that One LA represents. As One LA provides an opportunity for
individuals to actualize their faith beliefs through direct civic engagement, it generates
greater individual autonomy, a political asset. Many of the One LA leaders I spoke to
reported how their social justice-oriented work through One LA helped provide a
missing piece or bridge a gap in the relationship between their faith beliefs and
practice. Leader John Whitney talked about his Christian heritage and “all those
stories” he heard growing up about Moses, Abraham, and other biblical leaders who
compelled by their values to “do justice.” His own lived experience, however, often
did not match up, resulting in growing disconnects between grand religious narratives
and the actual inward-focus and retreat from civic life exhibited by most churches. For
John, like many, this became acute and he cites his experience with One LA as helping
him to finally restore that connection. By having space and training to act on his
ideals, he was able to align himself with others, including people in sacred narratives,

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who successfully acted in the world to bring about change. Thus by training
leaders to engage in social action, One LA helps resolve cognitive dissonance between
their ideals and their actions, opening the door to greater individual autonomy. The
autonomous self, Warren tells us, is “self-identical…in the reflexive sense that one can
identify oneself as an individual who maintains a biographical continuity in time and
who is distinguished by a unique life-history” (Warren, M. E., 2001, p. 63). Greater
individual autonomy stems from behavior that is integrated with who we really are;
the more one is “able to develop consistency between their thoughts, words, and
deeds” the more one “underwrites trustworthiness, responsibility, and promise-
keeping, which in turn produce social fabrics” (Warren, M. E., 2001, p. 64).

Obstacles to Learning
Description of One LA’s learning outcomes cannot be left without addressing
some of the main challenges to learning that were observed. One LA’s model of
educative practice strongly aligns with a participatory model of democratic
governance, which includes a view of learning and formation as constitutive of
participation. Obstacles to learning in One LA thus begin with challenges to elicit
greater participation. Some groups opt out to avoid diluting their own political capital
or to conserve limited resources. Many potential member organizations are resource
poor and/or are involved in very specialized advocacy. Such groups face the problem
of discerning whether alignment with One LA and its broader set of interests will
impede or forward their own cause. Myron, a One LA leader through his church,

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described this tension using his experience serving on the board of a small
immigrant-led advocacy non-profit focused on immigrant rights. The organization he
used to work with was asked by One LA to join in as a member. They struggled with
this, concerned that they might get distracted from their specialized work. The
irreconcilable question became: “Are we going to build our organization or are we
going to build One LA?” The board went on to develop a five-year strategy that did
not include joining One LA.
Among other prevalent sources of resistance to participation include the
simple lack of knowledge about the movement or the inability of people to connect the
movement to their own self-interest. Those that do have an interest in participating
may find that time constraints preclude it and people that do become involved
frequently are too busy to remain sufficiently engaged. One leader bemoaned his own
core team’s recent lack of follow through, observing that they poured a lot of energy
into organizing an event “and I think people got pumped up about it and felt really
good afterwards. But then we haven’t gone to the next step. We all have our own lives
and whatever.”
The obstacles to involvement I encountered among the more middle-class
constituents I spoke with were much more acute and decisions to participate,
therefore, often took on greater profundity. Among this group, the simple lack of
knowledge about the movement - or frequent mischaracterizations of it floating about
- was extensive. While I discovered numerous individuals who in college had “read all
about Alinsky” and others who were quite familiar with the IAF, One LA had largely

233
passed under the radar for most people I encountered from more traditional
middle class segments. One pastor from an established, predominantly White middle-
class church that was just beginning to explore One LA, had been quite involved in
anti-war campaigns and other social causes in the 60s and 70s. Nevertheless, One LA
represented something “very new” for him. Some individuals, on the other hand, had a
limited or vague notion about an organization such as One LA. For many of these
folks, it simply meant “something political,” or worse, something “activist,” and in
two cases, the term “rabble-rousers” came to the person’s mind.
A lack of knowledge or misperceptions about One LA suggests more than just
poor information flow and instead points to divergent interests, a key obstacle to
greater involvement. A gulf remains between the traditional felt concerns of middle-
class congregants and the day to day issues One LA is fighting for. One LA relies on
peoples’ self-interest as the core motivator for meaningful involvement. The
predominant interests of would-be middle class participants, however, tend to be less
localized and instead focused on international matters like the war in Iraq and the
AIDS crisis in Africa, or on broad appeals for human rights or equal treatment of
homosexuals and other minorities. The pastor mentioned in the paragraph above, for
example, was candid in describing his own ignorance about local politics – “I don’t
even know who the mayor is” – and how, as a “middle class intellectual,” the things
he or his congregants are upset about do not generally fall into categories of local
issues like education, community safety, or housing.

234
A dearth of knowledge or understanding about the movement and
an inability to connect meaningfully to a need for the type of political issues One LA
specializes in therefore present a significant challenge for One LA in terms of
engaging more middle-class groups. There are other roadblocks as well, however,
mostly concerning what might be termed conflicts between political cultures. Fear is
often raised about “dividing” people politically by many of the churches which place
value on internal harmony. They resist embarking on anything that might bring
division between the “red” and “blue” members in their midst. Many of these
individuals see One LA’s approach as too “confrontational” and unsettling, while
others cast One LA’s tactics off as brutish or unsophisticated. Some individuals voiced
complaints about how One LA’s public actions appear obviously “scripted.” One
community member from a middle-class area, who said she knew public actions were
a “performance” mostly for the policy makers “and a little bit for the people who are
there to feel powerful,” was still “not sold” on the process. And an active One LA
leader frankly assessed that public actions were probably not suitable for her middle-
class city’s more polite political context.
A consequence from all of these obstacles is missed opportunity for
participation and learning in an observably effective social change movement. These
obstacles are reflected in One LA’s relatively low percentage of member organizations
representing more middle-class constituencies. Once engaged in One LA, middle-class
churches and schools tend to produce fewer new leaders and smaller turnouts at
actions than their counterparts, and display slower and sometimes more modest

235
changes in terms of organizational development. Ultimately, this lower
intensity of involvement results in fewer and sometimes stalled political outcomes.
During a public action in one middle-class area where One LA has had unusual
difficulty establishing a strong movement, a politician on the stage stated: "You know,
we did this four years ago and there was nothing afterwards. I'm challenging you to
follow up and do something after [tonight]."
Failure to elicit participation in the movement thus comprises one form of
challenge to the learning program of One LA. There is another learning obstacle
among those already engaged in the work however. Even though some of the most
significant learning among One LA participants takes place informally, One LA’s
structured trainings provide a critically important backdrop to this learning and a vital
component in One LA’s overall educational strategy. One LA places a strong
emphasis on its various seminars, leader assemblies, and multi-day regional and
national trainings, and works extremely hard to ensure a high level of participation. It
follows, considering One LA’s strong commitment to fostering effective learning, that
such trainings would reflect the aggressive application of the latest in nonformal adult
learning theory and methods. What I found, however, was substantial variation in
pedagogical quality and execution throughout the numerous training events I
observed. There were to be sure many superb sessions featuring participatory and
strongly learner centered teaching. On the other hand, they contained a large amount
of direct lecture, some of it quite didactic in tone. Comments by trainees mirrored both
realities. Participants mostly voiced deep respect and appreciation for the intensity of

236
the learning they experienced, but they also cited frustration about attempts
to transmit knowledge in more rote fashion. Negative pedagogical aspects like these
contradict One LA’s observable strength and potential as an exemplary learning
organization.

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CHAPTER 8
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS

The purpose of this research was to illuminate the educational processes
embedded in the work of One LA and to identify connections or linkages between
these processes and One LA’s political project of social transformation. The results of
this study reveal the acquisition of important knowledge, skills, and dispositions
through an intentional educational project geared toward the political formation of
participants. Leaders, member organizations, and organizers together display increased
political agency and capacities through increasing participation in a sophisticated and
multi-faceted participatory educational experience. The results of participation in this
situated learning environment in turn directly contribute to social change outcomes in
One LA’s democratic context and to the creation of important democratic effects that
underwrite democracy. This learning community also effectively builds social capital
by creating social networks and activating the social capital represented in religious
organizations. Such outcomes directly relate to the capacity of the movement to
achieve its goal of creating and sustaining collective power in order to bring about
lasting tangible political changes
The purpose of this chapter is to present summative conclusions based on the
preceding observations and findings and to discuss possible resulting implications.
The conclusions presented here derive from the overarching question of this study

238
concerning how educational means may be used to promote social
mobilization, civic engagement, and political change. The aspects which are
elaborated on include the contribution of nonformal and informal learning methods,
the role of tacit learning, the connection between informal education and social
capital, and apparent obstacles to eliciting broader participation in a movement like
One LA. Implications from this study are then addressed. These include the relevance
of these findings for One LA’s own practice and the ways that these findings enhance
our understanding in three main areas: the nature of productive learning processes, the
role of education in social change, and the connection between socially transformative
learning and democratic engagement.

Conclusions
Several conclusions emerge from this study. Three of these concern the use of
education to promote social mobilization, including the contribution of nonformal and
informal learning, the role of tacit learning, and the connection between informal
education and social capital building, an element of which is social networks. A fourth
conclusion surrounds the challenges faced by One LA in terms of eliciting broader
participation.

Contribution of Nonformal and Informal Education Modalities
The rapid expansion of mass formal schooling around the world throughout the
twentieth century has been the subject of longstanding study and debate. Increasing

239
attention, however, has been directed to the ultimate failure of schooling to
mediate social problems, such as growing political and economic stratification
(Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Blossfield & Shavet, 1993; Collins, 1971; Hurn, 1993;
Torres, 2001). Traditional formal education largely reflects other shaping forces in
society and alternative forms of education and learning must be looked to for
advancing social change. The findings of this study of One LA help to reveal the
contrasting contribution that such alternative educational methods can play when
situated in a socially transformative project. One LA utilizes a remarkably wide
variety of educational methods and organizational practices to elicit learning among its
participants. The various educational methods reflect both nonformal and informal
modalities. Nonformal methods are reflected in structured educational arrangements
such as leader assemblies, seminars, national trainings, achievement academies and
the like. Informal or less structured processes, on the other hand, include practices
such as apprenticeship, praxis, agitation, regular readings, use of storytelling, and
social networking. This educational approach presents a clear contrast to most formal
educational arrangements and provides a fertile context for One LA’s structuralist
concern with altering political and social arrangements.
Embedded throughout One LA’s educational methods is a strong “process”
orientation as opposed to a view of knowledge as something to be “banked” and a
consequent emphasis on dialogical interaction. Through One LA’s methods we see an
attempt to reveal and problematize existing “naïve or magical” perceptions and to
deepen social and political consciousness whereby “resignation gives way to the drive

240
for transformation and inquiry” and by which individuals increasingly see
themselves to be in control (Freire, 1970, p. 85). The practices of One LA may be seen
as constituting an important space for increasing critical consciousness among leaders
and for “profound critical reflection on one’s world” (Mayo, 1999, p. 91). Informal
and nonformal encounters with new ideas and diverse individuals facilitate
conscientization among participants about existing social realities, political injustices,
and even deeply held religious traditions.
One LA’s educational methods clearly advance counter-hegemonic ideas,
challenging leaders to question dominant views about politics, democratic
engagement, and the role of mediating institutions such as churches. The prevailing
view that religious institutions should disengage from social concerns, for example –
which may be compared to Freire’s “traditionalist church” which was “dichotomized”
from earthly “structural and systemic bases of oppression” – is uprooted through the
educational means of One LA. Participants are introduced to new possibilities of
changing the status quo from within, calling to mind the formation of Gramscian
organic subaltern intellectuals (Mayo, 1999). One LA’s educational methods also
support an explicit social change effort in the form of an organized movement
designed to create political power and shift power to the poor (La Belle, 1987). One
LA’s educational methods, consequently, result in an increasing combined focus on
individual change as well as systemic change.

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Moving from Tacit to Explicit Learning
An important conclusion is to be drawn surrounding the role of tacit learning
processes in the work of One LA. This conclusion derives, however, from a negative
finding: upon inspection, it is difficult to isolate occurrences of learning within One
LA that would traditionally be characterized as tacit or unconscious. Schugurensky
(2003) distinguishes three types of informal learning: self-directed learning, which is
defined as being intentional and conscious; incidental learning that is unintentional but
consciously recognized; and socialization, or learning that arrives without both
intention or conscious awareness. Analysis of One LA’s activities in these terms is
noteworthy for its silence with respect to incidental and socialization learning, two
categories that are largely unobserved. A review of One LA’s informal education
activities reveals surprisingly few, if any, that occur without a degree of intentionality
or conscious awareness.
The significance of this point is brought into relief when we recognize the
immense number of studies highlighting the importance of incidental and socialization
learning in education for social change efforts. Research on social change education is
replete with descriptions of unintentional or unconscious means of learning and
repeated calls for more research in this area (Eraut, 1999; Foley, 1999; Schugurensky,
2003). Prevailing conceptions of learning in social movements emphasize this tacit
dimension – learning that is unplanned or serendipitous, hard to detect or articulate; or
learning that is simply “more than we can tell” (Polanyi, 1967) – and frequently
portray participant learning as peripheral, an unrecognized by-product, or in better

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cases “a sort of positive ‘hidden curriculum’” (Schugurensky, 2003, p. 8).
In a stark contrast, the conception of learning at work in One LA is quite explicit and
involves learning practices (non-formal and informal) which are carried out with a
great deal of consciousness and intention. When learning was talked about less
explicitly, it was generally among newcomers to the movement or occasional
participants, something to be expected in a situated learning context whereby the
members of a community of practice reflect gradations in familiarity with and
expertise in the community’s goals and activities.
The high level of consciousness and intentionality surrounding One LA’s
educational purpose and activities can be attributed to two components that stand out
in its practice. First, there is One LA’s ever present attempt to promote and model a
culture of reflection and evaluation. This is directly linked to its emphasis learning in
action and therefore any activity is bound to be followed by space in which
participants engage in critical reflection. A strong emphasis on reflection and
evaluation is also linked to One LA’s attempt to make routine its own internal or
organizational learning. These two emphases combine in an especially powerful
manner when One LA turns a critical eye on the effectiveness of its educational
strategy. Senior leaders and organizers within One LA frequently discuss how they as
well as member organizations might foster a more productive learning environment.
A second feature of One LA’s practice that heightens consciousness flows
from the first. In an effort to enhance learning among participants, One LA
deliberately seeks to elicit tacit knowledge and bring to light possible learning

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processes that may be obscured. Established practices of reflection
represent a more obvious part of this effort, but there are other ways that One LA’s
strategy helps to extract or distill learning. The use of storytelling as a pedagogical
tool, for example, involves practices that enable individuals to uncover and reinforce
details, implications, or meanings that may have been less explored as they craft
narratives out of past or present experiences. The use of axioms provides another
means of constantly (re)framing actions and processes in terms of targeted concepts
associated with the organizing framework. Table 9 illustrates some of the common
axioms encountered in One LA and the related concepts or meanings they are used to
convey.
Table 9. Selected One LA Axioms and their Meanings
Axiom Concept or meaning
“Don’t do for someone what they can do
for themselves”
Human agency is foundational to
building power
“A leader is someone who has a
following”
Relational influence rather than positions
or titles is the mark of leadership
“There are two types of power:
organized money and organized people”
Collective action is a valid way to
counter prevailing political forces
“Public action is to organizing as oxygen
is to the body”
Collective action that does not lead to
confronting power structures is
meaningless
“The action is in the reaction” We judge our performance by what it
elicits
“We understand the ‘world as it should
be’ but operate in the ‘world as it is’”
Organizing success requires balancing
one’s ideals with existing political
realities

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Practices like storytelling and the use of axioms can be seen from a
situated learning perspective as central to the process of negotiating meaning (Wenger,
1998). One’s experience in a community is shaped and given meaning through the
production of abstractions, symbols, stories, concepts and so on which help give the
experience a more conceptually unified form. Part of this process involves making the
tacit explicit – turning what we do, for example, into stories that we can tell, or
abstracting the deeper meanings of an occurrence which may appear ordinary or
mundane on the surface. At the same time, however, this process points to the
dynamic interplay tacit-explicit relationship. It will always be possible, Wenger points
out, to find aspects of our knowledge and practice that are not explicit, and we
generally produce only enough meaning “in order to proceed with the practices in
which we participate” (1998, p. 69).
One additional illustration of One LA’s deliberate effort to illuminate tacit
learning is in its use of discourse concerning the different forms of knowledge that it
seeks. One LA distinguishes knowledge by drawing on etymology from the ancient
Greek. It declares an interest in creating opportunities to generate phroenesis or
“practical wisdom,” philio or the capacity for objective concern for another’s well-
being and the basis of “political friendship,” and, as has been discussed, praxis, or
learning through informed action (Alliance School Discussion Paper, 2004). Another
form of knowledge One LA pursues, however, it calls metis, a term rooted in Greek
myth which One LA organizers use to describe practical wisdom or know-how that is
rooted in the life of a community. This is knowledge that exists in a culture or group in

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the form of people’s everyday skills or common sense. On several
occasions I observed One LA organizers use this term in working with groups to raise
awareness about the importance of the knowledge people bring as a result of their
everyday lived experiences.
Together these examples portray a movement in which the role that tacit
learning processes play has been diminished and learning made more transparent
through deliberate and identifiable practices. One LA’s successful effort to illuminate
and augment learning among its participants leads to the conclusion that while the
bulk of examples of learning in social movements suggest a prominent role for
unintentional learning, this does not necessarily have to be the case. A final question,
however, is why this high profile on learning within One LA. At least two
explanations arise from my observations. First, One LA exhibits a high level of
historical awareness and readily acknowledges its indebtedness and attempts to draw
on education for social change traditions that precede it. Organizers noted, for
instance, the practice among One LA’s progressive Latino Catholic member churches
of the Freirean base community model. This reality makes many priests and their
parishioners more sympathetic to the use of educational methods and has also
informed One LA’s educational practice. One LA also posits itself as harkening from
Northern progressive traditions such as the settlement house movement as exemplified
by the well known Hull-House in Chicago. A second reason, related to the first, is the
fact that Ernesto Cortés Jr., the person most often credited with recent innovations in
the IAF, the network of which One LA is part, exhibits a deep appreciation for the

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power of education in developing leaders and shaping institutions. After
leaving post-graduate work in economics at the University of Texas, Cortés worked
with Cesar Chavez and the farm worker's movement and then took an active role in
the Civil Rights movement. In the early seventies he participated in the Saul Alinsky
Training Institute before taking up the role as lead organizer in the IAF’s work in
Texas, where he began to introduce innovations in the organizing model that have
shaped the broad-based organizing movement largely into what it is today. The sense
of the possibility that Cortés brings concerning the use of education for transforming
people’s lives is palpable. It is something that he thinks and talks about routinely.

Connections between Informal Learning and Social Networks
Sorting through the various learning outcomes evident among One LA
participants reveals that most ‘transformative moments’ emerged in the context of
interacting with others. Opportunities to relate to people very different from them, in
particular, led participants to some of the keenest insights, including those that
challenged stereotypes, produced better understanding of other points of view, and
raised consciousness about social realities. Such outcomes can be seen as directly
relating to social capital building, or to creating the trust and reciprocity necessary to
support an expanding political movement. More specifically, this emphasis on
promoting learning and understanding across cleavages through relationship building
reflects an elaborate social networking approach.

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“Associative networks” have been described as a vital new form of
popular representation (Chalmers, Martin, & Piester, 1997). Such flat structures
involving multiple actors coming together to “shape public policy” represent another
intermediary institution between state and society which serves important functions,
including the potential to generate new understandings between groups with
competing interests and to create spaces in which political outcomes are less
determined by the “fundamental resources associated with class, property, social
status, or access to the means of coercion” (Chalmers, Martin, & Piester, 1997, p.
576). Two conclusions concerning the role of social networks in One LA warrant
further elaboration. The first issue concerns how social networks produce learning that
is relevant to social change. A second conclusion addresses how such learning
networks, and the social capital they elicit, might provide a link between individual
and organizational transformation.
One LA participants reported that some of their most important lessons arrived
in the course of interacting with diverse others in the movement. They experienced
enhanced social and political awareness, the realization that multiple viewpoints are
necessary to adequately solve shared problems, and an increased concern for the
common good. New and diverse relationships, we can say, expanded important
political resources for One LA. How did this occur? Much of this learning arrives
through repeated informal interactions in the ongoing stream of core team meetings,
cluster meetings, seminars, leader assemblies, trainings, and the like. Another
important medium is the ubiquitous one-on-one, whereby One LA participants

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regularly engage with others in focused conversation. One-on-ones also
represent a primary vehicle for the method of agitation, the consciousness-raising that
leads people to critically reflect on their held beliefs and assumptions. Another notable
source of transformative moments is action, when participants are challenged to step
out and try something new, to “exert agency,” followed by reflection on the
experience. Action of this sort is ultimately a collective event and depends on
relational dimensions such as support from others, encouragement to perform, and a
degree of trust and familiarity so as to allow critical reflection and critique. Social
interactions can therefore be seen as bearing potential for critical learning space in
One LA – including both one-on-one interactions as well as larger group contexts.
One possible critique here is the Freirean notion that group work is preferable
to methods focused on the individual in terms of helping subjugated groups
collectively identify and resist structural constraints. A Freirean framework can lead to
criticism of an individual change orientation as being slow or naïve in terms of
bringing about true social and political transformation. Such a view largely reflects
Freire’s context, however, which was largely classroom based, and his emphasis on
knowledge as preeminently a collective social construction. One LA’s setting is
slightly different and would suggest an opening for individual as well as collective
learning interactions in a movement focused on structural change. First, One LA’s
educational approach, while sharing Freire’s critical perspective (and more – Freire
began as a community organizer), is notable for its lack of reliance on formal
classroom arrangements. It is also a situated approach which places emphasis on the

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individual mentor-apprentice dyad as a means of nurturing increased
understanding and skills. Individualized learning in One LA, finally, is always directly
related to collective activities. Social networks in One LA thus expand and diversify
potentials for relational interaction, increasing potential sites of transformation among
participants. This situated learning process is an interactive system in which the
acquisition of individual skills and knowledge is anchored in situations of human
interaction (Fenwick, 2000). This situated perspective emphasizes the goal of
education as increased meaningful participation in the community. A one-on-one
provides space to critically reflect on one’s performance in a recent public action,
multiple individual conversations agitate a leader toward taking greater responsibility
in the movement, and trust built through a personal interaction serves to underwrite a
future collaboration.
A situated learning framework draws in part on Vygotsky’s (1978) view of
social learning and on his concept of the zone of proximal development or ZPD, an
idea which can be used to help visualize the meaning of a learning network. A ZPD
can be roughly defined as the differential between what an individual can accomplish
alone and what they can achieve under the guidance of, or in collaboration with,
mentors or more competent peers (Vygotsky, 1978). An eloquent articulation of the
ZPD is given by Holzman (2001) who notes that in “ZPD-like environments – that is,
in ones in which learning and development are jointly created by people’s activity –
what happens is that we do things we don’t yet know how to do, we go beyond
ourselves” (p. 6).

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The notion of a ZPD has informed many aspects of contemporary
teaching theory. One that is pertinent here is the idea of cognitive apprenticeship by
which the acquisition of skills involves a guide who models, coaches, provides
scaffolding by breaking tasks down, and who reflects with the learner (Collins, Brown,
& Newman,1990). The traditional association of concepts like cognitive
apprenticeship with more hierarchical, formal education settings such as an elementary
classroom does not diminish their applicability to an informal setting like One LA
which involves significant peer-to-peer guidance in a collective apprenticeship
framework. These concepts together can be visualized in Figure 8 in which the
relational space between participants in One LA is represented as a potential ZPD,
containing unique new learning possibilities.

Zone of Proximal Development
c

Cognitive apprenticeship
Agitation
Modeling
Coaching
Scaffolding
Reflection

Transformative moments
Greater awareness
Challenged stereotypes
Other points of view

c
Guide/
Learner

Interaction
Learner/
Guide

Figure 8. Relational Interaction as a Zone of Proximal Development

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Building on this illustration it is possible to visualize how an expanded
social network may serve to augment learning by introducing new possibilities for
encounters with transformational ZPDs. An expanding social network in a situated
learning context such as One LA results in greater possibility for learning encounters
with potential “guides” in one form or another – organizers, peers who are more
accomplished in organizing behaviors and skills, diverse others who bring different
perspectives and life experiences. A cumulative expansion of learning space results
enhancing outcomes of direct benefit to the movement.
We have so far discussed how social networks support and expand
opportunities for potentially socially transformative learning. But there is more to
draw from One LA’s example. As One LA leaders themselves report, social networks
are a fundamental tool in One LA’s strategy for organizational development and for
building collective power. A helpful framework for unpacking this larger process can
be found in Nan Lin’s (2001) work on social capital. He looks at the structural
constraints and opportunities for social change that exist in a given “institutional field”
– a social terrain in which various actors share a similar set of rules as “dictated by the
social institutions.” An important opportunity for social change, he argues, is found in
the concept of an institutionalizing organization. Social movements, for instance, face
options in terms of how to go about eliciting broader institutional transformation. A
movement may seek a direct approach through rebellion or revolution, if the goal is
wholesale rejection of prevailing institutions. Usually, however, Lin points out, the
movement involves a relatively small number of actors and therefore must come up

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with a more “elaborate” process in order to bring about institutional change.
Moreover, rather than seeking to entirely reject existing institutions, the objective is
usually to “substitute an alternative institution for a prevailing one or to incorporate
the alternative institution into the configuration of prevailing institutions” (Lin, 2001,
p. 195). Consequently, Lin explains, “the movement must develop its own
institutionalizing organizations in which alternative values and rituals are taught and
new members are indoctrinated”; this “mounting and sustaining of alternative
programs,” furthermore, may be carried out using either existing or “alternative”
organizational forms (2001, p. 195).
One LA offers a good example of an emerging movement that is attempting to
develop its own institutionalizing organizations, both through an alternative
organizational form, an incorporated body and organizing network, and in the context
of existing organizations, its member institutions. Further insight as to how it actually
achieves this begins to emerge when we look at Lin’s analysis of the processes which
link “actors…to organizations” (2001, p. 208). At its heart is the concept of social
networks. Lin suggests that while attempts to transform social institutions by a single
organization or a charismatic figure rarely succeed, transformations that are built upon
a social network can prove powerful. In this process, an increasing number of actors
sharing similar “alternative rules or values” begin to forge a collective identity through
the process of social networking. The expanding network increases the amount of
pooled capital resulting in greater potential for a social movement. As the number of
actors “equipped with alternative institutional capital increases,” other actors and

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organizations increasingly “recognize” the alternative institution and “take
it into account in their actions” (Lin, 2001, p. 195). The result is that it is easier to
recruit new actors (individuals and organizations) and for the individuals who have
acquired such capital to operate within organizations. We can therefore see in One LA
an alternative organization with an education strategy designed to equip pools of
actors with “alternative” social capital – knowledge and skills consonant with an
understanding and practice of politics different from prevailing ones. This effort also
involves the creation of alternative programs through organizational development of
its member institutions in an effort to broaden the scale and influence of the
movement.

Challenges in Diversifying Participation in One LA
An important question, given the important educational opportunity that
involvement in One LA represents, is who participates? One LA’s work allows us to
conclude that it is a movement with a grassroots approach to agenda formation and
that it encourages and facilitates participation by individuals and organizations who do
not reflect the dominant majority. There is however an evident and ongoing tension
around this issue and attendant obstacles to greater involvement by some groups.
A problem encountered both in the literature and in my interviews concerns the
degree to which the agenda of a movement such as One LA is truly grassroots or
bottom up as opposed to imposed from the top-down or from the outside.
Observations of One LA suggest that its agenda does in fact possess a grassroots

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character. One LA organizers are open about the “temptation” to want to
help guide agenda formation, however they themselves point out the distinction
between “efficiency” and “effectiveness” and note that by circumventing the process
of nurturing an organic agenda in order to speed things along, they would impede buy-
in from local constituencies which is critical for long-term sustainability. An
experienced One LA leader captured the prevailing insider perspective saying the
“only agenda of One LA” is the “agenda that people bring to it.” Leaders and
organizers essentially convey the idea that if you don't agree with the agenda, you
shouldn’t blame One LA but instead assert your own voice. On the other hand,
allowances are made for member organizations to focus on those parts of the agenda
they feel close to. Institutions may, for instance, elect to abstain from actions around
issues that they didn't wish to support. Myron, an immigrant from El Salvador who is
a leader with One LA and active in immigrant rights work through an immigrant-led
non-profit, appreciates the fact that One LA’s approach is built slowly over time and
with “hundreds of people” giving input: “I respect that…we are in need of leaders,
institutions…issue-based organizations, scholars…who understand that we’re building
a community here.” In contrast to “people who come from outside…and screw you up
big time, just based on their interests,” Myron is grateful for a movement that operates
“in a way that people have a sense that they’re making something for themselves.”
According to him, One LA “does that…they’re not selling you anything.” One LA’s
grassroots emphasis notwithstanding, critique from perspectives such as gender and
ethnic regularly attended the movement. A brief presentation of my incipient study at

255
a local professional conference elicited a vociferous response from one
community activist deriding One LA’s “top down, white male dominated” approach.
In another case criticism emerged from a political target seeking to de-legitimize a
particular campaign for not having enough immigrant representation.
My observations suggest that One LA does well in a couple of areas, including
engaging Latino immigrants. Latino immigrant churches comprise the majority of One
LA’s membership and at most actions it was Latinos who displayed the real turnout.
One LA’s organizing approach typically resonated with this constituency, which
exhibited more acute felt need around issues such as housing, education, safety, jobs,
and so on, and some members of which cited a degree of familiarity with political
organizing in their countries of origin. Despite a dearth of civic engagement among
immigrant groups in Los Angeles, even among activist organizations focused on
immigrant issues, One LA does relatively well at meaningfully engaging Latino
immigrants through their religious affiliations and may provide a model for other
partnerships wishing to engage other immigrant groups.
Involvement by women also presents a fairly positive picture. Numerically,
participation by women and men is spread evenly among both leaders and organizers,
and the nature of their involvement is largely the same. Because One LA depends on
organizational membership and buy-in from senior leaders in those organizations,
however, most top leaders from churches are male, given the historically patriarchal
nature of that institution. On the other hand, other leaders produced by churches, and
often the more available and active leaders are equally if not slightly more comprised

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of women. One LA’s new lead organizer, it should be noted, is also now a
woman. Another criticism that surfaced both from insiders and outsiders familiar with
the movement concerned an ethos of ‘machismo’ evinced by One LA’s lead organizer,
Ernesto Cortés, himself of Latin American heritage. Cortés displays a direct,
sometimes brusque, exterior and little tolerance for anything resembling chit-chat,
mostly consistent with what can be described as organizing culture in general. In some
of his interactions I observed, however, particularly in training sessions he was
leading, his responses to participants were interpreted by some as demeaning,
especially by those less familiar with organizing culture. Short, direct questions, quick
challenges to assertions made, attempts to unsettle, and so on all can be seen as
coming under the overall attempt within One LA to constantly agitate and
“disorganize” people’s assumptions and beliefs. In these settings, Cortés also came off
somewhat authoritarian, asking people to stand up or come up on stage to respond or
give a critique of his lecture, using short abrupt commands. On the other hand,
organizers and more experienced leaders showed ample evidence of being able to
assert themselves within the environment just described, including the ability to
critique Cortés as easily as anyone, for instance one leader in a typical evaluation
session telling him matter-of-factly that in her opinion he talked too long. Critiques
like these are welcomed and even encouraged in One LA. It is difficult to distinguish
precisely where in such an environment individual characteristics like those of Cortés
begin and end. I did not observe an attitude of machismo as an organization wide trait

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or as a factor affecting participation. Organizers in general typically were
perceived as showing remarkable skill at treating people equally and displaying real
interest.
The most common critique I observed was shared within the movement in the
form of an ongoing tension, openly discussed, about the need to introduce more
diversity or “get more people around the table,” where the focus was directed toward
the need for more African American involvement. During many of the house
meetings, planning sessions, evaluations and so on, someone inevitably made a point
to this effect. This was a particular issue in the lead up to One LA’s founding
convention. In a planning meeting of regional leaders, the issue was raised about the
possible low turnout among African Americans. The lead organizer responded saying,
“Yes, that’s a problem, we need to get more there. What is it going to take to do that?”
A leader, an African American woman, quickly protested that part of the problem was
the very idea of trying to “just get them there for symbolic reasons.” “That’s not good
enough,” she continued, what was really needed was to figure out how to authentically
engage the African American community - something that, in her view, had not yet
been done. One LA’s continual struggle to recruit African American churches and
organizations stems to a large part from a basic concern among African American for
protecting their local interests and gains. A One LA leader who was African American
and from South Central Los Angeles said some in the African American community
exhibited suspicion toward One LA’s motives out of fear that its broad representation
might jeopardize adequate representation of their needs. This leader also attested to

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reluctance among some African American community to share recognition
and influence they had attained with a group from the “outside.” Such thinking is
related to a larger issue that challenges other forms of minority involvement.
A real dilemma exists for minority groups that have amassed political capital
or made marked social gains around the question of joining a movement like One LA.
To what extent will participation dilute their existing power or resources? One LA
makes clear its goal of building a “broad-based” county-wide movement and
acknowledges the commitment this requires from organizations in terms of linking
their self-interest with the interest of others who are dispersed geographically and
diversified demographically as well as in issues that they are concerned about. While
One LA emphasizes that this is not a “zero-sum game” and that collaboration over the
long-term will produce greater political capital all around, leaders from other
organized groups recognize that participation in One LA means diverting immediate
resources to build the wider movement – not only finances for annual dues, but also in
the form of people’s time as well as the need to share recognition. Thus African
American groups or other groups involved in specialized advocacy have to decide
whether aligning with One LA will advance their own causes. They ultimately must
resolve the question that Myron’s board faced from the last chapter: “Are we going
build our organization or are we going to build One LA?”
The participation within One LA is also generally comprised of individuals
with slightly left-of-center partisanship. At its founding convention, a member of the
media, in an attempt to “red-bait,” according to one of the organizers, accused the

259
convention as being “pretty Left” and offered a challenge: “Well, can you
show me some Republicans?” The organizer took the journalist to a small
constituency from one of the few white middle-class suburban churches that were
attending. One LA’s member institutions are, to summarize, heavily Latino, and
predominantly reflect lower income or working poor constituencies. African
Americans, Caucasians, and Koreans make up a smaller percentage. Increasing
numbers of public schools and more middle-class churches and synagogues are slowly
becoming engaged. One LA thus facilitates participation by a wide range of
stakeholders, but challenges nevertheless remain in terms of greater involvement by
certain groups.

Implications
One LA’s educational project, as we have seen, has successfully produced
knowledge, practices, and dispositions that directly contribute to greater collective
civic engagement and democratic social change. Learning results from participation in
One LA which advances the political formation of leaders, organizers, and member
organizations. Such outcomes lend to the achievement of One LA’s political goal of
democratic social change. This political learning nurtures healthier democracies by
producing democratic effects that have direct impact in the public sphere for the
greater common good. It also furthers the attainment of policy changes as well as the
growth and relevance of the movement. The synthesis of political formation and
political change which One LA has achieved is significant and leads to implications in

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four main areas. These include implications pertinent to the practice of
organizing as exemplified in One LA, implications for the role of churches and other
faith-based institutions in social change, lessons for the broader field of learning vis-à-
vis social movements, and, implications concerning the connection between
transformative learning and democracy.

Increasing the Scope of Broad-Based Organizing
One LA offers an important space for effective political learning. Challenges
remain, however, as we have seen, in terms of expanding the scope of this work.
Several implications from this study therefore arise from the consideration of how One
LA could increase its effectiveness and impact. How could One LA elicit more
participation? This is not to say that more participation is always better. By One LA’s
own account, some individuals or organizations carry the potential of slowing the
work and choosing alliances generally involves a rather utilitarian political calculus.
An organizer during a training session pointed to a prospective leader in the group and
explained matter-of-factly, “See, we’re not interested in Sam here unless he can
deliver his church.” Some factors that keep people out of the movement also fall
outside of One LA’s control to be sure. The extent to which One LA might be able to
assuage a group’s fear of diluting its own political capital or limited resources is
questionable. Addressing a general lack of knowledge about the movement or solving
the problem of the pervasive constraint of time would also likely be efforts with little
relative return. On the other hand, some possible means of improving connections

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between the movement and certain constituencies, such as from the middle-
class, do appear within reach. Greater buy-in among middle-class churches and
schools, for example, would mean enhanced development of these institutions,
additional leaders, a broader base, and, at the end of the day, potentially greater
political outcomes.
The question here is to examine ways that One LA’s approach might be
nuanced to be a better “fit” with middle-class constituents without blunting its
agitative power or diminishing its political effects. While this may be too much to ask,
addressing such a question is useful because gets at the heart of a key debate in social
movement theory – how to inspire collective action. Morris (2004) suggests that
traditional process model explanations emphasizing mobilizing structures, political
opportunities, and framing processes do not adequately address deep cultural and
emotional factors in enlisting movement participation. Morris emphasizes the need to
look at existing culturally embedded frames and to make them the guiding force in
shaping collective action. Morris terms this “frame lifting,” whereby collective action
is “grafted on to the cultural and emotional schemata of actors embedded in relevant
social networks” and “agency-laden institutions” and shaped around these actors’
politically relevant beliefs and cultural understandings (2004, p. 239).
One LA’s attempts to build on traditions that are embedded in its member
institutions point to this frame lifting process already at work. Additional aspects of
middle-class cultural frames could possibly be lifted, however, to further shape the
movement into a form that this segment will more readily receive and that directly

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counters various existing negative conceptions. The purpose again would
not be to dilute the agitative intention or need to engage power, but to increase
people’s understanding of such core aspects by shaping them in a way that makes
better cultural sense. Examples include examining ways to more aggressively educate
outsiders so as to increase interest in and knowledge about the movement, increasingly
legitimize it, and counter mischaracterizations. Greater use of a website could raise
perceptions and transmit information in a way that cues increasing number of people.
Provision of more information about the movement up front in ways that people find
easy to apprehend could serve to demystify One LA and the organizing process.
Common questions about the movement, for example, such as the role of an organizer,
One LA’s stance on partisanship, the arrangements for becoming a member
organization, dues structures, and so on, are currently addressed verbally over time,
but frequently hang in the air for many potential participants. The use of simple yet
well designed tools in addition to a website, such as a brochure could enhance One
LA’s visibility and success in articulating its approach among segments that place
high value on such artifacts.
Another possibility for increasing the scope and understanding concerns a key
component of One LA’s practice: public actions. These events appear to be a fulcrum
of negative perception due to failure by some observers to adequately comprehend
intended meanings underlying these events. Ways should be explored to more
effectively educate general participants and observers and to enhance better
interpretation of public actions. The potential new understandings embedded in this

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practice concerning basic democratic ideals are vital and warrant clearer
expression. It is commonly accepted that it takes multiple exposures for active
participants in One LA to gain a more accurate understanding of what a public action
is all about. Less attention is given, however, in terms of the development of
understanding among casual participants, including some public officials, who do not
have the benefit of other learning opportunities including focused evaluation sessions
afterward. One LA could examine ways to illuminate the symbolism and meta-
narratives of public actions for all participants without diminishing their effect. A
counter-argument might be that an explicit purpose of public actions is to agitate
existing notions of acceptable political behavior, thus, any unease or discomfort
resulting from a public action is a good thing. Indeed, agitation is a critical feature of
One LA’s educational methodology and its use parallels the notion of a critical
incident consistent with transformative learning model: the disruption of peoples
existing perspectives is an important part of transformative learning and therefore
public actions void of agitation could have reduced educational value. The challenge is
not to diminish agitation and unease but rather to enhance it by diminishing
misinterpretation and other counterproductive noise. My observations suggest that
most people intuitively grasp already that public actions are intended to evoke some
reaction. Therefore, any form of interpretive commentary or teaching component as
part of a public action would simply be another means of bringing learning more into
the open, something, as has been seen, at which One LA excels.

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The Role of Religion in Building Social Capital
The discourse around the need to revitalize, renew, and strengthen democracy
is accumulating rapidly. The insight One LA provides into processes by which a
movement can enlist religious organizations in developing social capital leads to
several implications for churches and other religious organizations wishing to engage
in democratic social change. One LA’s experience invites us to consider possible roles
for churches in addressing local issues in a politically relevant and effective way.
What if more churches became sites that facilitated the coming together of citizens for
explicitly public purposes to understand and address local problems and to engage
with others around creating meaningful solutions? What if these spaces, moreover,
promoted not just concern with remedying immediate crises, but also with redefining
notions of democracy and public life? In the same way that there is growing mutual
interest between those concerned with public education and the organizing strategy,
this movement also seems to have the potential to resonate with greater numbers of
mainstream American churches. In One LA’s experience, problems such as affordable
housing and health care coverage that were once confined to poor urban areas are now
finding their way into middle class segments. There is also a growing movement
within American Protestantism to repair the schism that arose early in the twentieth
century between social concerns and spiritual piety. The framework is perhaps in place
then to bring an organizing strategy into a greater number of seminaries and churches.

265
To portray what this might look like requires projecting the shifts in
assumptions that would have to occur as a result of widespread congregational
development. There would be a shift in focus from traditional compassion ministries
focused on patching up society’s problems toward a justice framework that would
focus on policy and systemic changes to address issues closer to their source.
Churches which are strong in support of international programs in development or
religious proselytizing would increasingly add to this a focus on local social justice
activity as well. This would parallel a shift toward more representative thinking,
toward seeing one’s self-interest as implicated in the interests of others. Another
related shift would be to move from acting around concerns in a proxy arrangement,
by supporting the social outreach activities of others, toward more direct action. The
measure of a good work would therefore increasingly entail a question of formation
for the participant. Activity would move from being an accumulation of atomized
efforts toward more collective action whereby organizations act corporately and more
in sync. The focus of efforts by churches would reflect less a stance of needing to
protect truths or a desire to impose truths and more the legitimate expression of
recovered historical ideals around the need to do their part in working for a socially
just society. Outcomes from these efforts could be measured in terms of changed
thinking, changed relationships, changed organizational behaviors, and ultimately
tangible social and policy changes.
Ongoing debates continue, however, concerning the very question of whether
and how religious values ought to be part of public debate in the first place. The rise

266
and dominance of, and increasing negative reaction to, models put forth by
the religious right, as well as national faith-based initiatives arising over the last
decade, have raised social and religious consciousness about this question. One LA’s
approach could be helpful by offering an important and politically valid model of how
faith beliefs can be inserted into public discussion. It centers on One LA’s emphasis
on teaching people how to engage in public debate and collective decision-making.
One LA teaches people how to assert their views using the mode of political validity,
rather than other forms such as religious or ideological validity. By engaging in
deliberative politics, leaders learn that collective political decisions, to be legitimate,
arise from collective reasoning among participants who, while diverse, have equal say.
Any individual’s beliefs or opinions, consequently, have to be subjected to common
judgment. That is, any “truths (factual, normative, or expressive)” must be “converted
as it were into the force of public opinion” in order to exert influence (Warren, M. E.,
2001, p. 67). Participants, including people of faith, thus learn that the public sphere is
a place where they may express themselves freely, but that no matter how much
validity their ideas may carry in other domains, they are subject to collective reasoning
and criticism in order to produce politically valid decisions. This taps the core
meaning of democracy and thus presents a significant alternative to prevailing
approaches which include utilizing political means in an effort to guard truths, trying
to insert normative values through monetary power or lobbying, or avoiding anything
“political” altogether and rejecting the notion that faith has any relation to the public
sphere whatsoever.

267
A critique of social capital theory is that it leaves institutional or
structural factors unaccounted for. This is a critique One LA shares as its own Ernesto
Cortés Jr. pointed out that “it’s not enough for there to be ‘social capital,’ Nazi's had a
lot of social capital. There also has to be connections to those institutions associated
with a democratic culture or ethos.” One LA’s experience of trying to bring about
changes within mediating institutions provides a basis for understanding more clearly
the role of churches and organizational development from a social change point of
view. First, the nature and purpose of associational involvements vary widely and a
focus on converting a large number of mediating institutions into pure social change
instruments is defeating. One LA directs us to reconsider the value of nudging
everyday community institutions toward greater awareness and activity around their
public role. This means accepting the civic terrain for what it is and focusing on
moving this church or that school further along the continuum toward more effective
democratic formation. A white, middle-class activist church encountered in my
research, for example, was notorious for its national work around gay rights, nuclear
war, the death penalty, and local advocacy. What was discovered, however, was that
while this church bore a plethora of good programs, they were largely staff driven and
few in the congregation were directly connected to the work. One LA’s objective in
this situation consisted of broadening the direct participation of a larger number of
congregants.

268
Learning in Social Movements
What do other social movements have to learn from One LA? In considering
broader implications of this study’s findings it is helpful to step back and situate One
LA’s case comparatively to be reminded of the type of movement One LA represents.
Doing so helps in identifying other conditions in which a movement like One LA
could potentially be useful and other types of social movements to which findings
from One LA might apply. One LA represents one prevailing model in the current
generation of the American community organizing tradition and its purpose is to
engage and mobilize mediating organizations, mainly churches, a growing number of
schools, and other nonprofits, around the goal of helping them build and exercise
collective power in order to bring about tangible policy changes. Here One LA is in
potential alignment with a host of other social change efforts ranging from more
moderate to very progressive. Its focus on building a broad base that extends across
various social cleavages, and on operating through a faith-secular partnership, in
particular, represents important facets that potentially have relevance for social
movements seeking to expand their constituencies or collaborate with disparate
groups. And while One LA’s greatest alignment will be with movements rooted in
poor and working class communities, it also displays increasing middle and upper-
middle class participation. This is a both a direct result of One LA’s effort to actively
engage a middle-class and upper-class constituency and a natural consequence of the
increasing recognition of growing economic disparities as well as increasing economic
constraints felt among the traditional middle-class. In other words, the issues targeted

269
by movements like One LA – housing, healthcare, public education – are
increasingly becoming middle-class affairs. Finally, the primary expression of One
LA’s model is in North America and Western Europe where the IAF network, of
which One LA is a part, has fifty seven affiliates alone, and several other networks are
active. Another application, therefore, may be in New Social Movements in advanced
liberal democratic states. One LA’s strong overarching emphases on the educational
development and political formation of its leaders, on the other hand, will strongly link
it to movements in a variety of contexts that reflect the concept of learning for social
change or explicitly draw on educational frameworks such as popular education or
participatory action research. There are several implications that warrant further
discussion now that we have this backdrop in mind.

Intentional education. Findings from this study first illuminate the important
possibilities that social movements face in terms of making participant learning a more
explicit part of their program. It is common in the area of learning for social change to
extract educational evidence and principles by “reading into” the activity and practices
of a certain movement (Foley, 1999, p. 140). One LA, on the other hand, reveals how
a movement can situate educational methods and participant learning front and center
and implement ways to bring learning to the surface, diminishing the role of hidden or
tacit learning. Learning in a social movement, therefore, does not necessarily have to
remain predominantly incidental. More significantly, however, recent research
suggests that by not addressing directly the tacit component, an important obstacle in

270
social change is left unaddressed. Clark (forthcoming) lays out extensive
evidence from recent studies on learning that “our failure to achieve individual,
organizational, and social change may be due, in part, to the impact of automated and
unconscious knowledge” (p. 1). Those engaged in personal or social change efforts,
Clark argues, commonly engage in self-deception in order to avoid the reality of
failure, but they are also largely unequipped to explore the source of failure which is
the fact that unproductive behaviors have become “automated, unconscious and highly
resistant to change” (forthcoming, p. 16). Clark suggests a need to spend more time
figuring out how to alter our unconscious knowledge and cites possible means of
doing so from recent research, such as “overlearning” new behaviors or ways of
thinking, or replacing old behaviors through “goal substitution.” Other methods that he
recommends, interestingly, parallel key aspects of One LA’s approach. Eliciting
changes in values or behavior through the inducement of cognitive dissonance, for
instance, can be seen in One LA’s reliance on the use of agitation. Here, conscious
mental deliberation results when latent or unconscious conflicts between attitudes,
beliefs, and behaviors are pointed out. One LA’s pervasive utilization of reflection and
evaluation, moreover, is extremely consistent with another proven strategy identified
by Clark, which he terms ‘socially supported change feedback.’ He reports on a
number of studies on a variety of fields that show that the provision of “constant,
systematic, candid peer assessment” helps individuals recover from mistakes, avoid
self-deception, and ultimately implement more successful practices (Clark,

271
forthcoming, p. 15). Feedback that is most effective, he also notes, is
focused on self-development, but also has benefits that are distributed on an
organizational level.
The example One LA provides in addressing what can be seen as a critical
need for more explicitness in understanding and promoting learning for social change
leads to other related implications. It serves to further resolve the longstanding
education versus organizing tension concerning how and to what degree the mergence
of formative as opposed to political objectives is advantageous. Those who would fear
sacrificing political or movement success by focusing too much on formative goals
might be encouraged to view durable social change as contingent upon a robust
educational program. Similarly, in much of political science literature, the traditional
benchmark of success for a movement is whether or not they have successfully met
their political goals. Did they accomplish the policy change? At this point, however,
we can confidently say that formative processes, ideally through an explicit
educational strategy, represent an equally vital part of the social change formula.
Another important yardstick to use in assessing a movement’s effectiveness, therefore,
is: How effectively are the educational or formative processes working? How and to
what degree are participants in the movement being changed?

Innovative knowledge creation. Findings from One LA also introduce
important possibilities for social change movements in terms of more effectively
nurturing and putting to use creative or expansive thinking. Characteristics of One LA,

272
including its focus on learning, on evolving as a community of practice, and
its success at promoting within its leaders and organizers an attitude of political
creativity, cohere in a picture of a successful innovative knowledge community.
Paavola, Lipponen, and Hakkarainen (2004) share the view that fundamental changes
in society increasingly call for solutions that involve the creation of new knowledge
and they examined various models of innovative knowledge communities to highlight
some of their characteristics, a substantial number of which clearly echo practices we
have seen in One LA. First, innovative knowledge communities exhibit a constant
pursuit of “newness” and a focus on knowledge creation in addition to the
transmission of existing knowledge and the acquisition of necessary skills. A
continuous effort is made to go beyond existing knowledge or practices and develop
new forms of activity and understandings and to “work at the edge” and nearest to
“progressively changing requirements of the environment” (Paavola, Lipponen, &
Hakkarainen, 2004, p. 563). Innovative knowledge communities are also marked by
the strong use of “questioning” and other “disturbances” to provoke cycles of
innovative thinking, including regular interrogation of current practices. Innovative
knowledge communities view the creative production of new knowledge not as the
result of singularly creative individuals, but as a social process. Innovations arise
through shared problem solving when individuals “who have partial but different
information…improve their understanding collectively through social interaction”
(Paavola, Lipponen, & Hakkarainen, 2004, p. 564). Such communities are also seen to
share a desire to conceptualize and make explicit individually and collectively held

273
tacit knowledge including “subjective insights, intuitions, hunches, and
ideals” and view this process as an important step in bringing about change (Paavola,
Lipponen, & Hakkarainen, 2004, p. 566). Finally, innovative knowledge communities
are successful at creating organizational arrangements and routines that support
collective behavior and learning over the long-term. The clear exemplification of these
principles of innovative knowledge communities in the work of One LA provides an
important resource for social movements wishing to more creatively participate in the
process of social and cultural transformation.
A specific example of a movement for which the application of these lessons
from One LA, including the principles of innovative knowledge creation, could have
special import is the longstanding effort to reform public schools. Sarason (2004) has
argued that one of the most important assets that needs to be brought to the school
reform table is creative thinking – a long “underemphasized skill,” but one that has
“changed history” (p.104). Sarason’s (2004) critique of formal education is a more
sweeping indictment of the institution’s pervasive lack of concern for genuine learning
despite the yearly onslaught of evidence showing declining school achievement. He
reports asking hundreds of educators over the years the same question “What do you
mean by learning?” only usually to be met with quizzical looks and an assortment of
answers that “defies categorization” (2004, p. 2-3). His conclusion is that until a
clearer understanding is gained about what makes for productive classroom learning,
successful public school reform is unlikely to occur. In a similar fashion, critique can
be leveled at the school reform movement itself for its inability to learn over time or

274
inspire innovation and its consequent track record of repeated and largely
failed attempts to institute a revolving door of various technical programs or remedies.
Oakes and Rogers (2006) have recently highlighted the growing interest in the
organizing framework exhibited by scholars who are concerned with public school
reform. A community organizing approach promises a means of addressing the
increasingly recognized socially embedded nature of schools and the links between
educational change and change in other sectors such as housing, employment, safety,
and healthcare. Organizing as an innovative knowledge community, however, could
offer fresh means of addressing an intractable problem desperately in need of new and
creative solutions.
These researchers make a case, furthermore, that current developments in the
U.S. education system are producing conditions that could elicit an influx of
involvement in social movements which are organizing around education like One
LA. They point to growing visibility of justifications for pushing against the status quo
such as rising segregation along racial and class lines in neighborhoods and school
systems. They cite growing opportunities for political involvement as reflected in
renewed activity within the labor organizing movement which is raising people’s
awareness about the possibility for inserting their voice into local governance issues
that affect them. Increasing contradictions between stated demands and ideals
concerning academic preparation and the reality experienced by a growing majority of
low-income and minority students produce further discontent and motivation to enter

275
the public discussion. Finally, these researchers describe a legitimization
process that is taking place as media increasingly cover grassroots organizing efforts
around education issues and portray their efforts in a favorable light.

Longstanding obstacles to popular education. The findings derived from One
LA also address some of the more persistent obstacles that have long been associated
with popular education type movements – efforts which aim, broadly, for both
political formation among marginalized groups and the affecting of social change
through mobilization and organizational structures (La Belle, 1987; Schugurensky,
2000). One of the identified challenges for many popular education efforts includes
bridging significant gaps in political knowledge and strategic know-how between
members of dominant and subjugated groups. The observable achievements from One
LA’s leadership development process provide promise. One LA approaches leadership
development from an asset-based perspective as opposed to a deficit mentality and
successfully nurtures leaders both from within subjugated groups as well as from
dominant classes who may bring pre-existing leadership experience. Also of
significance is One LA’s approach of disaggregating leadership opportunities into
different capacity and interest levels – primary, secondary, tertiary – which in effect
expands possibilities for involvement and provides benchmarks for development at the
same time.
Another obstacle faced by popular education movements is the tendency for
top-down approaches to be imposed by outside leadership. The posture that One LA

276
organizers maintain as outside agitator, combined with One LA’s strong
adherence to the iron rule, and to letting the work emerge from below, also offers an
instructive model. Another significant barrier cited by popular educators is the
inability to achieve sufficient political power due to the difficulty of forming cross-
class alliances. Here, One LA’s focus on, and incipient but measurable steps, in
bringing lower and middle class groups together for collaboration is potentially quite
significant. Findings from One LA suggest that success in developing agency and
forming individuals into political actors crosses class boundaries. Many of the One LA
leaders attesting to profound transformations reflect mainstream middle-class
backgrounds. One LA’s experience reveals the important point that relative economic
stability and mainstream political values do little to counter a growing sense of
alienation from any real decision-making power in society. Movements should
therefore strive to address this by emphasizing the potential for heightened agency and
political engagement among a range of people, regardless of class. This leads to
another challenge which movements face: how to generate a unified agenda when
multiple and disparate groups are involved. Participants in One LA represent a variety
of backgrounds and social segments, yet they have learned, or are learning, to isolate
and work together on mutually agreed upon goals. This may partly be seen to result
from One LA’s attempt to train leaders to operate within existing realities by explicitly
teaching the political skill of representative thinking – of seeing one’s political well-
being as linked to that of others; teaching leaders to recognize when idealism may be
destructive to the larger enterprise; and, teaching leaders to shift their attention away

277
from what One LA calls “problems” – broad societal dysfunctions such as
racism or poverty – and instead to focus more narrowly on “issues,” specific concerns
that are more treatable and winnable. Success at creating a broad-based agenda can
also be attributed to One LA’s serious and persistent effort to reframe self-interest in
ways that better connect people to issues that they may not rally around upon first
inspection.
One concept that is useful to convey the idea of generating shared
understanding and mobilization across groups with divergent interests is that of civic
capacity, something that depends on the development of a “communitywide identity”
(Stone, 1998, p. 270). This is quite different than the consciousness that popular
education is traditionally associated with, however. For popular education movements,
identity is typically group bound and sharply demarcated from the surrounding
dominant and/or oppressive cultural frame. In contrast, the communitywide identity
associated with civic capacity is said to rest on “a pragmatic orientation toward
compromise” (Stone, 1998, p. 167). Further, findings associated with the civic
capacity concept suggest that successful coalitions are not necessarily built on a
convergence of interests, but rather on a history of cooperation among groups (Stone,
1998). But how to build shared understandings or create histories of cooperation
where few exist? Some help is provided by findings which reveal an apparent lack of
socioeconomic, demographic, and political correlates to civic capacity, suggesting that
even heterogeneous communities can generate civic capacity and that these factors are
not completely dominant. Along these lines, Gustavsson (1997) has argued for greater

278
multiculturalism within social change education efforts and for greater
realization “that each minority group is also part of a greater whole” (p.240). In
Gustavsson’s view, a multicultural approach would encompass not only an effort to
understand the hidden structures and historical factors that exert a hegemonic
influence over the consciousness of individuals, but also an effort to “challenge our
self-evident interpretations in our everyday lives” and see things from another group’s
point of view (1997, p. 246). Gustavsson argues that tensions inherent in such an
endeavor are surmountable and indeed One LA’s example provides some insight into
how skills supporting collaboration might be learned in the absence of historical
cooperation among groups (1997).
Participation in One LA does appear to have a role in promoting broader
community consciousness and inter-group collaboration to some degree, leading to
further implications for making education for social change more effective in a
democratic context. Social change educators may need to increase their capacity to
find lines of agreement, even with traditionally opposing groups, in order to develop a
shared understanding about how to solve a problem. This may involve reducing the
goal of change from sweeping reform to successfully targeting what is “doable”
(Stone, 1998). Finding lines of agreement will involve the hard work of challenging
long-held views and trying to see things from another point of view. At the same time,
part of the answer in developing a communitywide identity lies in the act of increasing
engagement in social movements like One LA themselves.

279
Developing Socially Transformative Citizens
In the early twentieth century, Walter Lippmann argued that ordinary citizens
were unfit for participatory politics, susceptible as they were to the manufacture of
consent by the state and by mass media (1922). Dewey countered that serious
democratic involvement by citizens was essential and possible, but required the means
to equip citizens to “judge…the bearing of the knowledge supplied by others upon
common concerns” (1927, p. 365). Advocacy for a participatory approach to
democratic engagement is no less germane today and the educational program of One
LA has provided a glimpse into one important and effective means of equipping
regular citizens to not only exert political judgment but to increasingly and
successfully act collectively for meaningful social change.
The picture of the effective use of educational means for social change that has
emerged from this study suggests the importance of formation among three
overlapping domains: new thinking, durable and purposeful social networks, and
strategic organization and action. The educational project of One LA represents an
important school for socially transformative democratic citizenship which fosters the
identity of leaders as political change agents and their understanding of the world as it
is; develops skills for interacting and building relationships among diverse
constituencies; and equips leaders with specific competencies and practices in
organizing for social change. The preceding exploration into this educational program
hopefully has increased understanding of not only who social change agents and
educators are today, but how they operate. It is hoped that the results of this study

280
have highlighted new possibilities for contemporary social change
movements and illuminated the “educational means of getting there” (Finger & Asun,
2001). I leave with these words from Rifkin (in foreword to Fisher, 1998):
Participants in civil society come from every race and ethnic background, and
from every class and walk of life…Mobilizing these millions of people into a
broad-based social movement that can make demands on both the market and
public sectors will be the critical test. (p. viii)

281
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APPENDICES
Appendix A. Geographical and Theoretical Developments in Adult Education

Europe North America
Latin
American and
Caribbean
Africa and
Asia
Scientific
humanism
American
“radicalism”
Main tradition(s) of
influence

Pragmatism
(Dewey)
Humanism
(Rogers)

Marxism

(time ↓)

Selected
developments
involving adult
education

Scandinavian Folk
High Schools

UNESCO
UNDP, Decade of
development
ICAE (Canada)

Sustainable
development

Éducation
permanente
(UNESCO)

Learning society

Non-vocational
adult education
(Lindeman, “father”
of adult education)

Experiential
learning (Kolb,
Lewin, Schön,
Argyris)

Symbolic
interactionism
(Jarvis)

Transformative
learning (Mezirow)

Andragogy and
Self-directed
learning (Knowles)

Expansion and
codification of self-
directed learning
(Brookfield)

Antigonish
movement

Highlander
Center of
Tennessee

Community
organizing
(Alinsky)

Critical pedagogy
(Apple, Giroux,
McClaren, Shor)

Critical adult
education (Hart,
Collins, Torres,
Welton)

Popular
struggles by
subjugated
groups

[also
introduced:
Dependency
theory;
Liberation
theology]

Consciousness-
raising (Freire)

Popular
education

Feminist
pedagogy
(Stromquist)

Liberation
struggles in
China (Foley)
and Africa
(Samoff, 1990)

Participatory
action research
(PAR)
291

292
Appendix B. Comparison of Three Approaches to Education for Social Change
Transformative learning Popular education Participatory action research
Social vision Socially responsible individuals;
consensual democracy
Egalitarian, participatory
democracy; transformed institutions
Collective agency for common
good; pre-Descartes humanism
Problem(s) Distorted frames of reference due to
cultural and social factors
Oppressive social relations;
political and economic inequality
Colonizing development paradigm;
disorienting social structures
Learning
objective
Transform frames of reference from
problematic to more dependable
Acquisition and exertion of
political power by oppressed in
order to reorganize society
Explore how practices are shaped
by wider social structures and
collectively seek ways to intervene
Learning
process
Experience, critical reflection,
reflective discourse
Participatory investigation,
analysis, identification of avenues
of action
Investigating reality in order to
transform it; action research spiral
Role of
educator
Facilitator, creator of opportunities
for TL; cultural activist
Consciousness raiser; organizer;
mobilizer
Animateur; reflective collaborator
Link to social
change
Transformed individuals leads to
social change
Combine education with political
mobilization and social action;
develop alternative institutional
forms
Participant change sine qua non of
social change; changes to external
structures may follow
Sites Widespread; personal experience,
classrooms, informal settings,
organizations
Social movements, grassroots
organizations, community based
projects
Distressed urban areas and rural
areas; community-based health,
education, resource management
Contextual
origins
North America, late 1970s; field of
andragogy
Latin American and Caribbean
popular struggles; social
movements in U.S. and Europe c.
1900
Third World; “failed” UNDP
development program
292

293
Appendix C. Sample IAF National Training Bibliography

294
Appendix C, Continued. Sample IAF National Training Bibliography

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Asset Metadata

Creator Filback, Robert Arvid (author)

Core Title Transformative learning in the public sphere: the educational dimensions of a broad-based community organizing movement

School Rossier School of Education

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Education (Policy, Planning and Administration)

Publication Date 07/27/2007

Defense Date 04/19/2007

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag community organizing,informal education,OAI-PMH Harvest,social change,transformative learning

Language English

Advisor Stromquist, Nelly P. (committee chair), Maxwell, William (committee member), Miller, Donald E. (committee member), Sellers, Jefferey M. (committee member)

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