Neighborhood Organizing

​Friends and Constituents,

I hope you’re well. Today, I want to talk about organizing. What it is, why it’s effective, and how it works.

The incredibly high level, “explain it to me like I’m five years old” is this:

When a group of people who share a common interest work together, they will have more power to achieve that common interest. 

The overused image of fish illustrates the concept well:

​​Each individual minnow has the self-interest of avoiding being eaten and to chase away predators. But it’s only when these little fish identify that they all share this self-interest that they can work together to collectively do better than they did before. 

Sure, an individual minnow might have an easier time swimming faster than other minnows near it than it would in cooperating. And as long as it’s the fastest one, it will have better outcomes by NOT participating in collective action and instead going it alone. But with a broader view of self-interest, that fish will hopefully realize that it can’t count on always being the fastest, never getting sick or slowing down. Collective power is insurance and security.

In workplaces, workers have a shared self-interest in job protections, higher pay, and better benefits - so they form unions. Those unions themselves have a shared self-interest in preventing unions from being individually crushed by the rich and powerful - so they form labor federations like the AFL-CIO.

As a socialist, I will never be one to downplay the centrality of organizing on the job - and I maintain that this is the only real way to remake our economy to care more for people than for profits.

But precisely because it’s powerful, labor organizing is difficult! Even though it’s against the law, organizers are frequently disciplined and fired, and historically in this country they found themselves blacklisted or murdered.

As the concept of a general strike continues to gain traction, many people are looking at other ways of organizing to help them learn how it works. If you’re one of those looking to find a way to really make a difference, I have a great suggestion: 

Start where you live.

At its root, a neighborhood association is very similar to a labor union or any other organization: a group of people with shared common interests work together to pool their power to further those interests. 

Neighborhood meetings can be frustrating. I guarantee you there will be people at the meeting you disagree with strongly. There will be people who want to pursue activities that you are bored by, or even offended by. 

But guess what? Those people are still your neighbors.

Just like with any other form of organizing, neighbors need to find ways to help everyone feel heard and keep sharing their hopes and fears, while working together to achieve them. You might really want to help organize a food distribution in your neighborhood, but find that the people coming to meetings are more interested in a crime prevention neighborhood watch. You might be a big fan of dense and walkable development, yet find that many of your neighbors are most interested in preserving and expanding the number of neighborhood parking spots for cars. 

But one thing you are very unlikely to find in a neighborhood association is the influence of billionaires and millionaires.

At the end of the day, the people who live near you have relatively similar socioeconomic status and are most concerned about having a safe, enjoyable place to live. As such, they are people you can and should work collectively alongside. 

And at the heart of it, that’s what organizing is: learning how to respectfully agree to disagree, how to persuade others to slowly come around to your way of seeing things, how to keep an open mind for where you yourself might need to change your perspective or priorities, and how to rally others to act together.

The skills you will be forced to learn at your neighborhood association meeting are absolutely essential for any sort of democratic organization. 

But if skills-building is not a sufficient reward for going to talk with your neighbors, consider this: organized neighbors get results. 

When new developments are being proposed for your neighborhood, the city planning agencies ask for neighbors’ responses - and they do far better at respecting the wishes of organized neighborhood associations rather than a few neighbors only representing themselves. This could mean the difference between a new liquor store or a new community garden on your block. 

When government agencies consider where to deploy scarce resources, you’d better believe that they pay attention to how engaged and active the neighbors are in a given area. That goes for police patrols, to health department inspections of slumlords’ units, to pothole requests.  

One person can’t do it all.

In District 13, there are immense numbers of neighborhood associations - I’ve counted at least 30. I can’t reasonably get to every neighborhood association meeting in the district every time they meet. I wish I could! 

For a while now, I have been using that fact as an excuse not to prioritize working with neighborhood associations at all. I love meeting individually with constituents, and just about every week I have coffee with at least one or two people to talk about their goals and priorities so that I can help as their Councilor. But as my wife reminds me constantly, I am not Batman. As a part-time Councilor with no direct reports working under me, I have little ability to personally resolve all of the issues that my 36,000 constituents care deeply about. I get my one vote on the 25-person Council, and the bully pulpit and media attention that I certainly use as much as I possibly can. 

Not me, us.

My power as an individual is limited. But our power as a collective District 13 is massive. When we work together, we can achieve anything. 

Just this week, spontaneous groups of constituents have set up food distribution and collection volunteer lists as a response to the SNAP cuts and the federal government shutdown. This is incredible work - that would be even more powerful if it could plug into a highly organized group of neighborhood associations.

It’s lucky for us that much of the legwork in creating this organized group is already done. 

NESCO - The Near East Side Community Organization is an umbrella group over 19 of the neighborhoods in the district.

The Marion County Association of Neighborhood Associations is an even larger umbrella group that covers the entire county! 

These organizations are tiny fractions of what they could, should, and must become with more attention and support.

​Some people have tried to participate in their neighborhood association or in one of these larger umbrellas in the past, and have stopped prioritizing it. Maybe they didn’t align with the desires and working styles of the other people currently coming to meetings. Maybe they had other life priorities come up and missed a few meetings, then felt awkward about coming back.

Do it anyway.

This week I ask you to get involved with your neighbors - for the first time or the thousandth. I’m doing the same thing - trying to prioritize helping neighbors connect with each other through organizations, and helping resolve interpersonal conflicts within existing organizations. It’s not fair to anyone for me to be a bottleneck, and all of us will get more done if we do it together.

Check out this link to try to find a neighborhood organization near you. Send them an email or give them a phone call. Show up at a meeting. Let me know how it goes.

I truly love all the people of District 13 and Indianapolis. We don’t all agree on everything, and we don’t have to. But when we work through our differences to take care of each other, learn from each other, and help each other achieve goals, we start to bring about the city we all want and deserve. 

In love and solidarity,
Jesse 

PS - tomorrow is a full Council meeting, but there is very little on the agenda for discussion or a vote. I will still be there in the Public Assembly Room starting at 6:00 pm holding a very informal People’s Caucus to chat with anyone who has something they’d like to discuss - but I expect attendance to be quite low and the meeting to go quickly.