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[By Allison Barlow, David Dyssegaard Kallick, and Rhonda
Shary, New World Foundation]
Over the past few months, Allison Barlow, Rhonda Shary,
and David Dyssegaard Kallick were commissioned by the New World Foundation
to undertake a preliminary study exploring this question.
What we've found so far is that there seems to be an impressive
infrastructure for supplying information about a variety of issues.
Grassroots organizers who want specific statistical information about
income distribution, water quality, or voter turnout generally are able
to get it. Analysis of trends and data is also generally available,
at least at the national level, in the form of in-depth reports on topics
such as welfare reform, tax policy, or environmental effects of given
industries.
Organizationally, there is a significant cadre of groups
with substantial national policy research capacity. This includes Economic
Policy Institute, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Children's
Defense Fund, Citizens for Tax Justice, Natural Resource Defense Council,
to name only a few. We have a tendency to take these organizations for
granted, but although many seem like a permanent part of the political
landscape, most were founded in the last fifteen or twenty years and
had no counterparts in an earlier era. When new research needs of this
type appear, there is are clear models for how to be effective in these
arenas.
State
and Regional Models
Information at the state or regional level is somewhat
more spotty, but there is a good deal here-from Western States Center
to Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action, Western Organization of
Resource Councils, Democracy South, Southwest Research and Information
Center, Center for Neighborhood Technology, or Alabama ARISE. A somewhat
different universe of state and regional organizations more closely
oriented to policy analysis is coming together around the Center for
Community Change initiative to bring groups together.
Municipal
Level
There are a large number of small yet important progressive
institutions conducting research and analysis that can be useful for
organizing. In New York City alone, the still emerging New York Progressive
Network has identified and pulled together over 40 New York City-based
"think tanks," with more being identified each week. What does this
"hidden infrastructure" look like in other cities, university towns,
or centers of progressive politics? We are curious to know more, and
suspect there is more out there than we are connecting with.
University-Based
University-based research is a large and mixed field.
Organizers are quick to cite difficulties in working with academic researchers,
with several conferences having been organized on this topic. Yet many
of the interviewees were also clear about exceptions; many could name
at least a few academics whose work and work style they found useful.
There are also a series of academic networks with varying degrees of
connection to community and issue organizing-including (among others)
UCLA's Community Scholars Program, Poverty Race Research Action Council,
Science and Environmental Health Network, the Policy Research Action
Group at Loyola University, Union of Radical Political Economists, and
at least a half-dozen others.
The
Missing Links: Mediating, Synthesizing, Translating
What we heard repeatedly from organizers, however, is
that-with rare exceptions-all of the above is focused on specific forms
of research and information that, while useful, miss a key aspect of
what they need to run campaigns and educate their members.
What seems to be missing is a kind of mediating, synthesizing,
translating capacity-not so much profound new research, but research
that someone will follow through on until it has an impact, research
that clearly and easily feeds into the work of organizing. There is
intellectual work involved, but it is work to be done in close coordination
with focus groups, graphic designers, pollsters, and others who can
help to hone a message that the public finds engaging.
There are indeed groups attempting some of this work.
Many interviewees praised The Environmental Research Foundation (publishers
of Rachel's Environment and Health Weekly) for its digest of environmental
science that is highly accurate and accessible for activists. Interviewees
pointed to The Applied Research Center was also cited as an important
resource for grassroots movements. The Preamble Center was mentioned
regarding its close coordination of research work with ongoing organizing
campaigns by Jobs with Justice. In Los Angeles, AGENDA is developing
a model for connecting research to organizing by creating a sister organization,
CIPHER, that will do research for and about campaigns run by AGENDA.
The National Organizers' Alliance's "Gatherings" have begun to address
the need for a cross-organizational dialog about ideology. The Data
Center was noted for its responsiveness to grassroots requests for information
on a given subject. And Fellowship programs, such as Bannerman, MacArthur,
or Annie E. Casey, were called out for doing some of the work of "building
intellectual capital," as one interviewee put it.
Interviewees also cited the informal networks that fill
some gaps-organizers told us they tend to get the most useful information
about framing issues from other organizers "who have been there already,"
not from policy centers. Whether there are ways of bolstering and expanding
this type of informal connection-and the role of some of the nascent
efforts to formalize such linkages-is another area about which we hope
to learn more in the coming months.
Yet, while we heard about a good number of organizations
beginning to fill these needs, we heard over and over that this layer
of mediating, synthesizing, and translating is too thin, the organizations
in it too small. This layer is also seen as chaotic, without clearly
embedded models for integrating the various aspects of what's called
for by organizers-this we heard as much from the research groups themselves
as from the organizers with whom they work.
Despite the good efforts of various groups, the overall
feeling of our interviewees was that:
- Research groups have gotten better at providing information to the
media, but are weak on translating it into materials for popular education.
- Organizers running campaigns need to be able to have a hand in
directing the research that will be fed to them, so they can use it
easily and quickly.
- We don't do enough to identify, support, and develop the individuals-especially
young people-who can do the work of making research useable for campaigns
and for organizing.
- We desperately want to see our own politics presented in media debates;
we're tired of seeing the progressive side of the spectrum represented
by public figures we don't much believe in.
- We don't have a good mechanism for learning from each others' experience
in running similar campaigns on similar issues-which many cite as
(when it happens) the most valuable kind of help. So instead of building
better and better materials as we go along, we're repeatedly starting
from scratch.
- We need to have some "excess capacity," so that we're not so tightly
stretched by our organizational imperatives that we are prevented
from responding news and opportunities as they arise.
- We need to be more effectively proactive, and to do a better job
of framing the public agenda. We need the resources to enable us to
be catalytic rather than constantly putting out fires.
- We need to find ways to construct and build a case for the political
philosophy that ties together the many issues and constituencies we
work with and support. We need to begin to find ways to add up to
more than the sum of our parts.
Having gotten this far, we are pausing briefly in our research as we
absorb what we have found and consider what we may do next. We are eager
to hear from activists and researches around the country. We encourage
you to take the time to consider the information here, and give us some
feedback.
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