Failure is Where You Begin

Failure (n): the action or state of not functioning. Fail (v): be unsuccessful in achieving one's goal.

These words have been tossing around my head lately, heightened by the efforts of others attempting to assure me that I didn’t fail; that my efforts did not lead to failure. It all feels less of a lie, and more like a tweak of the truth. Ironically, the last time I had the space to really put thoughts about my organizing work out like this I was, at the time, the most confident I had been since I made the decision to be a community organizer. I can’t say I have felt that way recently. To be fair, that was almost 6 months ago, and I was still an apprentice. Anyone who has ever tried anything knows that high and lows are the natural process of growth. And there have been highs - In October, Cultivating Justice launched F.R.E.E. CT; a community campaign for the people, by the people, and our F.R.E.E. CT Greater Hartford Meeting was a success with over 70 community members in attendance. Additionally, our F.R.E.E. CT Public Meeting was also addressed by CT Mirror, highlighting how community members were holding their legislators accountable as representatives of the community. 

There have also been lows - the seemingly lack of concern and enthusiasm many have regarding strengthening community bonds and relationships, days where the number of signatures for the F.R.E.E. CT Support Letter didn’t budge, and times community members and supporters felt burned out and unenthused. At times, this has caused me to deep dive and ask questions like, ‘Is it my strategy?’ and ‘Was my approach off?’. Looking back I see that while these questions may be valid somewhere, they weren’t the right questions an organizer should be asking because they didn’t center the community or its needs. Alinsky addresses this for me with startling clarity. It’s simply this: If people don't feel as if they have the power to change a bad situation, then they aren’t actively thinking about it. Or as Alinsky puts it, the logic for most people is “Why start figuring out how you are going to spend a million dollars if you do not have a million dollars, other to engage in fantasy”. I understand now, more than I have previously, that the answer is organized people. When organized people believe they have power they start to ask their own questions in order to make the changes they seek. I recently finished reading “Don’t Believe Everything You Think” by Joseph Nguyen and there is one chapter where he speaks about there being no real ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ decisions in a person’s because there are infinite possibilities, but that our intuition guides us to a decision that is most aligned with our truth. To me, it sounded similar to what my mentor has been telling me for the last 6 months about mistakes and organizing rules. It is natural to make mistakes, however it has always been made clear that there are very rarely wrong mistakes. When I am unsure of what to do - it is time to look at the rules of organizing and ask which rule is closest to the current situation - which rule is most aligned. One of the biggest mistakes I have continued making is that I have been too busy thinking about doing something the right or wrong way, instead of just making a decision and doing. I am sure if Alinsky were nice enough, he would tell me that the last year was my beginning. He would remind me that every organizer has one. So, I went back to what he wrote about this part of becoming an organizer, “the beginning”. In Rules for Radicals he writes,

“The organizer's job is to inseminate an invitation for himself, to agitate, introduce ideas, and get people pregnant with hope and a desire for change [...] Here the tool of the organizer is the use of the question”. 

An organizer must, at all times, provide the space for members of the community to give feedback and to answer questions openly. Hindsight will always provide a clearer picture, and it allows reflection, and to remember where the organizer has unintentionally failed to always provide that space. I’ve learned that language is critical (especially in the work of a community organizer) but so is the way in which an idea is posed. A statement versus a question will elicit two different types of responses, and asking a question will usually take you further. People love to talk about themselves and their issues. Let them. To be a great organizer, it is important to always find a question at the other end of someone else’s position. The 5 W’s are your friend, and asking is a skill. It does get easier with time.

To bounce forward there has to be a pull back. Luckily, I am resilient. I know I must act as a rubber band, or better yet a slingshot - when I am pulled back I use that potential stored up energy to vault forward towards another goal, another high. To do that however, there has to: first, be acceptance, and then a lesson learned from whatever failure has occurred. Pinpointing where I had originally accepted a dance with failure and continued holding hands with it wasn’t hard, it was a combination of overthinking and ego. Just a few weeks ago I remember still not seeing any other paths but the ones I had taken. Now, with failure, I understand what the organizer carries. An organizer is not a facilitator. An organizer is not a leader and doing for others what they can do for themselves is not what builds strength, or resilience, or power and it’s not organizing. But the people need a reason they can get behind and understand. And there are 1000 reasons why we need to organize everyday - just turn on your local news - but it takes just one issue impacting people across streets and neighborhoods, with people realizing yes, this is actually happening where you live. And it’s on the organizer to remember the lessons about questions. Every single person you meet should be asked some variation of, “now what are you going to do about it?

And then it will begin.