One job of community change agents is to engage in dialogue with the oppressed and find what Freire called their generative themes, the core issues that face a group (Freire, 2007). Freire believed that community members are the best ones to identify the nature of the problems they face and participate in the solutions. When they align themselves with those facing oppressive conditions, they can, together, start directing their attention to unjust actors who control structures. For example, when the UN created the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (United Nations, 2006), those in the disability community objected because they had been left out of this process. People with disabilities were successful in demanding that they were the best ones to shape the foundational principles of the Convention, and they indeed became instrumental members. The famous phrase that came out of the disability community was “nothing about us without us.” Follow this link to hear young participants’ perspectives within the process.

Within the field of Community Psychology, Julian Rappaport (1981) coined the term empowerment, which is very compatible with the value of helping the oppressed gain access to resources and increase self-determination. Rappaport often cautioned community psychologists against suggesting they were in charge of “empowering” community members. Rather, the empowering process is one in which all parties work together to bring about a greater sense of collective efficacy and work to equalize power throughout society.

it is too easy to adopt a position of fighting “for” but not “with” community members. The Third Way of Empowerment (Rappaport, 1987), as described in this chapter, is very much aligned with working with community members. However, sometimes it is difficult to work directly with the community that is oppressed. As in the example of the Coalition in Case Study 17.1, it was impossible to work with the detainees because they were in secluded and restricted detention settings. Nevertheless, the Coalition communicates with multiple groups in an effort to help “educate” rather than “train” others. “Training is defined as teaching a group what to think rather than how to think. This makes the people dependent rather than assisting in developing skills which could be used for independent activity. It rewards behavior that operates against their group’s interest, promoting individual rather than group achievement, and instilling negative self-concepts and low self-esteem”
– Bobby E. Wright (Anonymous, 1982)Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed was similarly all about a new form of non-hierarchical education. Like the “empowerment process”, it was about collaboration and dialogue––where the teacher is also the student, and the student also the teacher. When working with communities, empowerment involves everyone working toward common, mutually-decided upon goals.

Community change agents learn from community members, co-design research projects, and try to put that learning into real action and activism. They then see how things work, and then return to the drawing board. Ethics, morals, and values are all essential parts of the praxis process. But here there is sometimes a division between those who use any means to get to their goals met and others who feel the means have to be ethical. Several community activists, such as Saul Alinsky and Malcolm X (particularly in his early life) felt that any means could be used as long as the ultimate goal is just. Sometimes using any means results in cutting corners or even harming others.

To use an analogy, the ring of power in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings is often attempted to be used for good, but it can only be used for evil. The characters with the best of ends in mind can become corrupted, due to the influence of the ring. So, what we are suggesting is that the means of reaching one’s goals in social justice is of importance.

Poet and activist Audre Lorde famously declared, “the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” (2007). If the problem is oppression and violence, using oppression and violence to achieve one’s goals might not be effective or just. Malcolm X realized this toward the end of his life when he sojourned to Mecca and saw people of all races, nationalities, and backgrounds praying together in unity. This radically altered his views on working to dismantle the oppressive power structures in this country, and he began preaching more about love and collaboration. To demonstrate the difference in approach to the means of activism, Case Study 17.2 compares different means of two influential social activists.

Case Study 17.2
Alinsky and Gandhi

Alinsky and Gandhi were both tricksters in defying powerful individuals, but they were also different in the means with which they carried out their work. Alinsky in Chicago believed in confidently insulting those in power and even using tactics of deception. In other words, all means could be used to get to the objective. As an example, in Alinsky’s book Rules for Radicals, he recommended: “find their [the opposition’s] rules and use those rules against them–because they find these rules precious and they cannot live up to them.”

A different approach was used by Gandhi in British Colonial India, where he engaged in nonviolence and humility, attempting to make the means ethical, and always striving to work with love for all human beings. In India in the 1930s, a British “rule” or “law” was a salt tax, making it illegal for the people of India to make or sell salt or even to collect it from the sea. Gandhi engaged in civil disobedience by initiating a march to the sea to collect the salt. This act inspired all of India and made the British look foolish, as they were unable to stop the march. In this way, Gandhi successfully took on the British without using their oppressive and violent tactics. His means were just and not corrupted in radical opposition to British rule. But, as is often the case when engaging in defiance of oppressive systems, Gandhi was punished by incarceration for his salt march.

It is in choosing the means of activism that a tempting crossroads presents itself to community psychologists, and we would argue for the adoption and use of ethical means to reach the goals.

The Means of Working in Partnership With

The means by which we partner with community members also matters. Community members are sometimes labeled with oppressive terms: the disenfranchised, vulnerable, the marginalized, the poor, those of “high risk”. The words we use do matter, and even the term “community organizer” suggests a person who is in charge of the collaborative spirit. Therefore words that suggest hierarchy, where one might have more power than others in the change process, are outside the spirit of community engaged service and learning.

As we saw with Gandhi and with Martin Luther King’s community work, this can be done in an ethical way that does not replicate the oppressors’ way of being. For an example of how to practically consider and address colonization using Community Psychology tools, learn more from Demystifying Decolonization: A Practical Example from the Classroom.

Ultimately, a key responsibility of community change agents involved in activism is to ethically persuade others through the use of research and community-based action. Some individuals will never change and with others, it will take considerable time. Sometimes in a democracy, what is needed is to convince a majority of people, and encourage them to continue to engage in voting and social action. Change agents can also help keep groups of people cohesive, effective, and willing to engage in a long-term struggle despite criticism, insults, threats, and even risks to one’s career.

The Means of Exposing and Changing the Oppressive Power Structures

It might appear that activism has only a loosely structured set of rules. In fact, there are no definitive rules to the liberation process, as much depends on context and on the many paradoxes one encounters when trying to change societal systems. Many community activists, such as Alinsky, focused on finding the immoral weaknesses or vulnerabilities of those in power, and inciting the police or public officials to over-react. The activist takes action, like in Gandhi’s salt march, in order to get the powerful system of oppression to react to the defiance.

Therefore there are patterns that help us, but activism is less a set of procedures that can be learned and memorized and more a process of experimentation. This perspective frees one to take risks, but our goal is to use ethical means so that when we are wrong, we will not bring about harm to others. It also gives us additional motivation, and that is of learning, invention, and searching for truth. Altering the path of an abusive power structure is intimidating, and Gandhi saw this as experimentation toward truth. Gandhi and King’s commitment to nonviolence showed the real possibilities, even death, to those that challenge the status quo. These activists embraced a self-purification process, but as Gandhi said, “non-violence laughs at the might of the tyrant” (Gandhi, 2001, p. 57). Nevertheless, both Gandhi and King used self-purification to avoid hating the enemy. Gandhi described this through a story about a burglar breaking into one’s house and the need to treat the thief as family, a concept referred to as critical kinship (Olson et al., 2011). We need to be critical, but at the same time see the opposition as kin.

One might ask whether students can participate in this process of taking on the power structure. The next case study shows it is possible, and it began with student reactions to the lynching of 128 African Americans living in the south. These killings had been unsolved for decades, and when the Justice Department withheld information about these civil rights injustices, it operated as an oppressive power structure. The hiding of this information can lead to cross-generational trauma, as the victims’ immediate loved ones and descendants have to live with the agony of unanswered questions, such as “What happened? Who did it? And why?” The students in Case Study 17.3 sought to answer these questions by confronting the source of the structural violence.

Case Study 17.3
Students Taking Action For Justice

A teacher of Government and Politics at Highstown High School in New Jersey told the students about this historical civil rights injustice, the unsolved lynching of 128 African Americans. They merely asked, “Should we try to do something?” (Jackman, 2019). In a true community organizing fashion, the class made it their mission to bring some semblance of peace of mind to the loved ones of the victims. The class drafted a bill that would force the compilation and immediate release of all the withheld case files to the public. The students understood the importance of focusing on the historical injustices and rectifying them. With the implementation of their activism, the students demonstrated a successful model of praxis. The students conducted research in order to fully understand the issue, took the time to meet with the families of the victims, and made sure to set the agenda through a strategic media campaign. Their efforts were noticed by two US lawmakers, who advocated for the bill and encouraged citizens to pressure the President to sign the proposed bill into law. The students also engaged the President through social media, and the high school allowed the cancellation of classes to undertake the social media effort. The President did sign the bill to release the withheld cases.

The students demonstrated the power of effective community organizing, community engagement, and speaking truth to power in order to take on an oppressive power structure.

A social justice campaign is rarely a single event or a single march. Organizations begin and fizzle but activists continue to fight for justice. Having a framework for the intricacies of social change is needed for the long-term process to be successful. This process is referred to as praxis, which is the cycles of participatory action and research: community input, research, action, and reflection (Olson et al., 2011). Part of praxis is seeing what works and what does not work. When barriers and obstacles are insurmountable, certain tactics need to be let go of in order to search for new creative ways. Community change agents plan for readjustments, adaptations, setbacks, small wins, and unexpected barriers. They also need to remind themselves of the higher goals they are trying to achieve. A long-term commitment is often the best ally a change agent has, along with allies from the community, in bringing about real change against those who control the status quo (Jason, 2013).

The analysis moves in spirals toward the best possible fit: the combination, the generation, the cyclical action—this is what a temporal campaign involves, until there is progress—a small win, and then another, and another, until transformational change gets going. To implement these processes, finding or creating alternative social settings helps protect individuals and the community from daunting oppression and barriers to change.

We are all part of many settings, some of which are more or less consistent with our social justice identities. To the extent one finds oneself in settings that support oppressor norms, it is possible to work from the inside to change them. When impossible to change, it is often possible to leave a setting, and seek or create new settings that better support one’s values. The creation of alternative settings has been described by Seymour Sarason, whose book The Creation of Settings and The Future Societies has much information on these alternative settings (Sarason, 2000). The creation of such settings is exactly what is needed for the sustainability of campaigns for social justice. The creation of alternative settings takes time and commitment, but they can provide an essential home base for sustainable activist work.

Ultimately, community change agents measure whether or not their actions and efforts were successful in the short and long term. But what should the outcomes be? Certainly, it is useful to know if the program was successful. What actions helped? When it worked, what was the active combination of ingredients that had the effect? How do we study and help amplify where good grassroots connections are happening? Another goal is to understand how we can make a campaign more sustainable. How can capacity be built when campaigns fizzle out? Can we hold onto the small wins and keep going? To answers these questions, and to avoid burnout and keep the campaign sustainable, it is important to pace oneself, and ensure that self-care and mutual education are present at every part of the process (Olson et al., 2011).

Let’s provide another example of a problem that was encountered at a university. One of the highest members of the university’s administration had been actively involved in the APA’s collusion that made it permissible for psychologists to be involved in interrogation settings that included torture. As described earlier in the example with the coalition, this collusion came to the public light following the July 2015 publication of the Hoffman Report (see also the material cited in Case Study 17.1). The administrative official was mentioned dozens of times in this Report, and when the school student newspaper emailed a psychology undergraduate student named Jack O’Brien, asking for his reaction, the following case study shows what next occurred.

Case Study 17.4 
The Vincentians Against Torture Coalition

Jack O’Brien was interviewed with the reporter for the school newspaper, and he gave his thoughts regarding the university official who was alleged to have been instrumental in the facilitation of changing APA policy and procedures that allowed for human rights violations perpetrated by psychologists in interrogation settings. After being quoted in the school paper, O’Brien started a petition to remove the official from the university and organized the Vincentians Against Torture Coalition. He collaborated with several local human rights organizations such as the World Can’t Wait and Voices for Creative Non-Violence. He also networked with student groups, such as Students for Justice in Palestine and Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, that were invested in the issue. His petition amassed over 700 signatures, and this ongoing struggle was prominently featured in many articles in the student newspaper. O’Brien next organized a press conference on campus, which was featured on local television news channels and written about in newspaper articles in the Chicago metropolitan area.

However, even though there was a high level of media visibility and protests involving faculty, staff and students, ultimately, the President of the university announced that the school would not be taking any actions against the university official. In the short run, the campaign had not dislodged this official, but a few years later, both the university President and the official that had been the focus of these protests left the university. Although the protests and the media attention might not have been a direct cause of both officials departing, they contributed to concerns that many university employees had regarding their performance.

Following graduating from college, O’Brien continued to invest himself in the torture/human rights issue affecting psychology, such as organizing a symposium addressing the issue at a national psychology convention. As in Case Study 17.1, both activists had to stick with the torture issue for a long time in order to see meaningful change occur in the profession of psychology.

SUMMING UP

The work of community change agents does not support hierarchical social and political change. Rather it is non-hierarchical, working from the bottom up with grassroots sources in the community. The voices of the people are the main data that are used. Praxis possesses an improvisational quality, and it is experimentation at its best—as there are many advantages to this approach when working with the community to advocate and engage in social change.

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REFERENCES

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Gandhi, M. K. (2001). Non-violent resistance (satyagraha). Dover.

Jackman, T. (2019, February 23). ‘From students in high school all the way to the president’s desk.’ How a government class fought for the release of unsolved FBI civil rights case files. https://www.washingtonpost.com/crime-law/2019/02/23/students-high-school-all-way-presidents-desk-how-government-class-fought-release-unsolved-fbi-civil-rights-case-files/?utm_term=.f7d295ead2dc

Jason, L. A. (2013). Principles of social change. Oxford University Press.

Jason, L. A., Glantsman, O., O’Brien, J. F., & Ramian, K. N. (2019). Introduction to the field of Community Psychology. In Jason, L. A., Glantsman, O., O’Brien, J. F., & Ramian, K. N. (Eds.), Introduction to Community Psychology: Becoming an agent of change. https://press.rebus.community/introductiontocommunitypsychology/chapter/intro-to-community-psychology/

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Rappaport, J. (1987). Terms of empowerment/exemplars of prevention: Toward a theory for community psychology. Journal of Community Psychology, 15(2), 121-48.

Rappaport, J. (1981). In praise of paradox: A social policy of empowerment over prevention. American Journal of Community Psychology, 9(1), 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00896357

Sarason, S. B. (2000). Barometers of community change: Personal reflections. In J. Rappaport & E. Seidman (Eds.), Handbook of community psychology (pp. 919-929). Kluwer/Plenum.

United Nations. (2006, December 13). Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. https://www.ohchr.org/en/hrbodies/crpd/pages/conventionrightspersonswithdisabilities.aspx

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