Utter the term "community organizer" to people and they usually conjure up the image of a picket sign, a bull horn and a cause- not much in the change of perception from 1968 to 1995. It's hard to name another profession that
has experienced less change during the past 28 years.

The 1960s style of conflict remains embedded in most community organizing today. The philosophy of conflict and power still prevails. The poor and the communities they reside in can only improve when power is taken away from those who have it. Those with power will only give it up when forced to do so. They acquiesce when larger numbers of the poor are mobilized against them.

For the past 28 years, the steps in this conflict style also have remained unchanged: The target is identified (tenement owner, city official, banker); the target is personally attacked; the target is embarrassed; the media are manipulated; and the target eventually surrenders. Thus, the poor feel empowered, and use this 'victory" to move on to other triumphs.

The conflict approach to community organizing is even more difficult to maneuver in 1995 than it was in 1968. The target is more difficult to identify, power has become more fragmented, and there is no single "enemy." People within and outside disadvantaged communities have become more conservative. There are fewer resources. The "targets" are more sophisticated and less prone to panic and over-reaction when '60s style tactics are used. Also, a much more subtle change has occurred in the last 28 years- there is a sincere desire to succeed.

As all elements in society have become more isolated from each other and as power has become more diffused, there exists tremendous opportunity in the field of community organizing. This opportunity is apparent in the
yearning for partnerships- a desire by all the parties to succeed and a sense that everyone has to pull together in order to succeed. The school board can't get anywhere without the teacher, who can't get anywhere without the students and parents. The city can't solve problems without citizens and the private sector involved. Social service agencies can't design effective programs in isolation. There is a realization of the need for partnership. Nonetheless, the community organizing profession still clings to the 1968 strategies of power and conflict when the situation cries out for partnership and consensus.

Community organizing skills are critically needed in making partnerships effective. An experienced organizer has many applicable skills: the ability to listen and sort out agendas, the ability to build confidence and encourage participation, the perseverance and dedication needed to complete tasks, the ability to build trust, and the ability to work toward a common goal. However, central to most traditional community organizing training has been another set of methods and strategies: looking for and exacerbating points of conflict, rallying supporters and alienating detractors, oversimplifying solutions, and applying constant pressure through mobilization against a target. Could it be that many situations today call for the first set of skills, but a different set of methods andstrategies? How about finding common, overlapping goals, teaching the value of new partners and building power through relationships of trust and respect?

The Consensus Organizing Institute was founded to offer choices within the community organizing profession. In situations that call for a more low-key, behind-the-scenes approach to bringing all potential partners together, a community organizer must use fewer conflict tactics and more "consensus tactics." Those techniques must be developed through both experience and training. The Institute not only offers different training, but seeks a different trainee as well. Conventional organizers possess a characteristic style: aggressive, disruptive and narrowly ideological. The Consensus Organizing Institute recruits trainees who want to enter the organizing profession but who might also possess seemingly contradictory personal qualities, such as humility and pragmatism.

Organizing Through Consensus

In the field of housing development in low-income neighborhoods, whom does a community organizer represent? Low-income tenants? All the residents of the community, including middle-income homeowners? All the residents and all the property owners, including absentee landlords? Everyone except banks?

In consensus organizing, the organizer elicits support from everyone, including past enemies and detractors. Everyone who has the potential to be a resource in providing better quality housing is seen as a potential ally. The organizer learns the self-interest of every player and looks for areas of overlapping concern. The organizer does this by listening carefully. Listening is essential to determining the real, underlying causes of past negligence, conflict or apathy. Many times, the causes are not inherent conflicts between the parties that can not be resolved, but miscommunication, misunderstandings and lack of creative, constructive thinking. Often, in the past, each party has been the lobbyist for its own interest, rather than organizers who convened various parties of self-interest. This is not to say that consensus organizing is the same as mediation. Consensus organizers may be advocates for the poor, but they see the other parties as critical partners.

This nuance allows the organizers to gain insight and support from a variety of players, but never leaves the organizer feeling he or she is rootless and ungrounded, floating between interest groups. If the consensus organizer is unable to expand the number of partners to increase the power of the poor, the method fails. If the organizer helps bring in new partners creatively, the poor begin to realize more power and results through consensus tactics. This is an extremely significant process, especially in conservative times during an era of shrinking resources. If all the players begin to witness success through tangible improvements, a creative energy is unleashed that can compensate for the sobering decline in resources all have experienced. If we do more, even though we have fewer resources, we
eventually will receive more resources. The conflict organizer would call this "avoiding the real issue," and constantly make demands for more resources before any real results are achieved. Today, this demand tactic is falling on an increasingly larger number of deaf ears.

For example, in order to produce more quality, low-income housing, a consensus organizer would analyze the banks, mortgage companies, real estate firms, appraisers, the building inspections department, city housing policies for allocation of federal dollars, for-profit housing developers, nonprofit housing developers, local community development corporations, neighborhood advocacy groups, churches, social service organizations, local
businesses, and schools. The organizer would analyze the agendas of all potential partners outside the neighborhood along with all the potential partners from inside the neighborhood. The organizer would shuttle back and forth, and would later train neighborhood residents to do the shuttling among all the potential partners, whittling down perspectives like a piece of wood. The shaving and polishing of the piece of wood is carefully and thoughtfully shared until a beautiful new baseball bat emerges. Thus, the bat is an idea that everyone has helped to shape, and over which everyone feels ownership. When everybody steps up to the plate with it, hits and scores, the team wins.

The consensus organizer builds relationships with all the parties around respect, understanding and genuine concern. The concern is for the appraiser, the lender, the city official, the developer, the tenant, - for everyone. They all must actually begin to trust the organizer, not through fear or intimidation but through earned trust. All of this is done with the organizer understanding that the best way for a real power shift to occur is to have low-income residents whittle down their idea to include partnerships and to reach out and merit the trust of and respect of everyone.

There are still many situations where the consensus organizing approach falls short. In some instances, no matter how skilled the consensus organizer, not enough partners can be found. In some cases, key partners refuse to participate, no matter how well the organizer has applied the model. Avis Vidal and Ross Gittell of the New School of Social Research have engaged for the past three years in interactive research on this model. Their work has sharpened the Consensus Organizing Institute's ability to pin-point locations and situations where the model may be most effective and to avoid situations where other organizing techniques may be more appropriate.

Institutionalizing Consensus

The Consensus Organizing Institute is a national, nonprofit organization founded in 1994 to advance the consensus organizing model. The Institute has assembled a core of talented practitioners who have been using this approach in such diverse places as the Monongahela Valley in western Pennsylvania; New Orleans, Louisiana; Little Rock, Arkansas; and Palm Beach Country, Florida.

In 1985 the 'Mon" Valley was a string of divided communities torn apart by the closing of local steel mills. Consensus organizers entered the community with the sponsorship of the Allegheny Conference of Community Development, an organization composed of top Pittsburgh corporate leaders. They built broad-based, indigenous participation within the communities. This led to the organizing of the Mon Valley Initiative (MVI), a coalition of 17 local groups building bridges to the governmental and corporate sectors.

MVI has received national acclaim for building consensus in a region where collaboration previously was though impossible, and for the numerous accomplishments the coalition of CDCs has achieved. Among these, MVI CDCs have built over 100 units of housing, and a number of commercial development projects, including a business development incubator center, a recycling company, an industrial workshop, a regional arts school, as well as renovating commercial structures. In addition to developing real estate and business projects, the MVI CDCs have pursued many other avenues to improve commercial conditions to their communities, such as business
district beautification programs, community playgrounds, a facade loan program, and load-packaging and tax-credit programs. Other avenues the MVI CDCs have found to enhance the quality of community life include organizing clean-up days, home-buyer seminars and counseling, neighborhood block watches, a tool "lending library," and numerous arts, ethnic and history project. (For more detail on citizen organization in the Mon Valley, see, Ross Gittell and Nancy Kelley, "Civic Strategies for Local Economic Development: Lessons from the Monongahela Valley," National Civic Review, May-June 1989, pp. 187-196.)

Another example of the quantifiable success of the consensus organizing approach is in Palm Beach County, Florida, where the Limestone Creek CDC alone has 22 new homes either under construction, completed or occupied. Ramshackle building in the neighborhood have been demolished and others are being rehabilitated. A tutorial center to help neighborhood children is meeting in a local church, and soon will have its own building. A greenway is being developed to link churches, schools and houses with a system of trails to preserve the natural beauty of the local landscape. Finally, the community - which, having been neglected by the county, has unpaved road and relies on well water - will next year receive piped water from the county, and the streets will be paved. These two examples show the potential of developing grass-roots capacity in disadvantaged communities.

Conclusions

The Consensus Organizing Institute now uses consensus organizers in a wider and wider variety of settings, addressing issues of economic development, education, health care, and social services delivery. The Institute's work is being sponsored by diverse partners, such as universities, city government, private foundation, civil and legal rights organizations, and large, for-profit corporations. Most encouraging, the response of people interested in receiving training in the consensus organizing technique has been phenomenal. There is a tremendous desire among young people to use their creative talents to build something lasting from the ground up. Their energy and resourcefulness dramatize the most positive of human traits: concern, dedication, honesty and integrity. There has been little if any similarity in the backgrounds of the consensus organizers. The one constant is their desire to succeed, with success defined in different ways by all the partners, but always benefiting the poor and the place where they live, and always sharing power to gain power.