Week 6: Holding Ground and Dudley Street Initiative



Click DSNI Logo for Calender of Events

The short film Holding Ground based on the Dudley Street initiative is a reflection of successful social action within a community. The DSNI was developed in 1985 by residents in the Dorchester/Roxbury area of Boston, MA as a result of poor neighborhood capital.  The suffering of the Dorchester/Roxbury area started in the 1960s.

During this time, it was labeled a ghetto area because immigrants, blacks from the South and minority Irish and Italian Americans started to move in and the influential whites were moving out. The area was becoming multi-cultural and being redlined due to racism by the two major institutions that influenced the area - the city government and banks. 

The redlining caused landlords to burn down apartment buildings for insurance money as the housing market  declined.  People were dying in the fires, companies were dumping waste products and trash on the empty lots and drug dealers set-up shop where homes one stood.  The neighborhood had deteriorated to a point where humans could no longer live safely and healthy.  

The city government decided that the community needed to be saved and made plans without including the community residents in the planning of the community initiative. The residents revolted and demanded they become involved in the planning as it was their neighborhood and felt they knew its needs best.  The DSNI was then born.

Over time the DSNI included resident surveys, forums, focus groups, etc. to get the residents' input.  Community meeting were held at Saint Patrick's church which reached out to its parishioners to include them in the initiative.  The community began to build "social capital" to coordinate efforts to create free space or "environmental capitol",  affordable housing or "physical capitol".   In addition, the long-term relationships that DSNI began to create at this time and currently continue to grow, per Frasher & Kick (2005), using the the "political activist approach (p.26)". This approach changes  the institutional structures; as in this case, the city and banks, to help further alleviate poverty in the area and grow the community creating "economic capitol (Netting et al, 2012)".

The biggest connection the community made was with the city's mayor.  The community achieved "political capital" and support from the mayor and his office due to the strong community organization and "human, spiritual, and cultural capitol (Homan, 2011)".  Together the community was able to build affordable houses for the neighborhood, push out drug dealers, create a DSNI youth group, make open areas for children, create a sense of togetherness as "mutual support (Netting et al., 2012)" was utilized, and understanding that each little small step forward equals a big step in the right direction.

The Douglas Street Initiative can be conceptualized by the system theory noted by Netting, et al. (2012). Per Netting et al.(2012), the system theory describes how the function of each individual,  group, and organization depends and links each other  "horizontally" within its community and creates "vertical relationships" with communities outside of the local community to utilize each other's resources.  This is demonstrated by DSNI by assessing the community's needs and acquiring support from the government in forms of grants, banks in the form of financial security, and  the creation of the  DSNI website.  The website connects people internationally and creates awareness of the DSNI.  It also provides an easy source for donations to be accepted and information  for the donors to understand where their money is being used. Furthermore, the online store also provides monetary capital and  helps spread the initiatives progress through books.  The sites wish list is the best source of connecting DSNI with other organizations, private companies, corporations, foundations, etc.  as it gives a starting point for linkage and building relationships.  

                                                                            Work Cited

Fraser, J., & Kick, E. (2005). Understanding community building in urban America.
Journal of Poverty, 9(1), 23-43.

Homan, M. (2011). Promoting community change. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Netting, F. Ellen, Kettner, P.M. & McMurtry, S.L, & Thomas, L. (2012). Social work macro practice (5th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

Week 5: Assignment 2 - Three Problems That May Occur During Community Organizing!

This blog will focus on three of the thirteen problems that may occur during community organizing. After reviewing the Troubleshooting Guide for Solving Problems from The Community Toolbox (2012),  I decided to focus on:

#13: Not enough money to sustain the program initiative. While there are many ways to obtain money to sustain a program, I chose to elaborate on the grant writing process. Frankly,  grant writing seems a little scary and stressful and makes grad school applications look like a piece of pie if you ask me.  This is especially true knowing that there is so much research that must be done in order to match the organization with the  proper grants.  However, the good thing is there are many resources and support systems available to help grant writers find and write grants.  I also realized that the many steps that are included in the grant writing process, including creating a proper budget, developing a plan for financial sustainability, creating a business plan, bylaws, and so on must be in place before grant writing may begin.

 

#4: There is no clear direction or communication within our group.  Planning ahead and creating a framework for the organization must be established by the founder and/or Board of Directors before proper communication can exist.  The framework gives the members of the organization a focus and program initiative to guide them through their work. It provides goals and clear cut expectations for all involved.  The framework should include the outcome that is desired by the organization and how that outcome will be evaluated.  Furthermore, properly orientating members to the organizations will help alleviate any misunderstandings and provides the opportunity for the new members to ask questions that they may have.  The orientation process  also helps establish relationships within the group, which in itself is a must, to safe-guard proper communication within each group and organization.

#6: There is not enough leadership. Some people have natural leadership abilities and other's may have it, but may need to be shown how to utilize it.  A proficient and progressive leader helps others become leaders themselves.  The Community Toolbox highlights several ways to create leaders and to get more people to volunteer. However, the number one suggestion that I thought was most important is that in order for anyone to become a change agent and create a personal initiative, that person must have passion and desire to become a change agent for the organization's belief system or proper outcome may not be achieved.

 

Work Cited

Community Toolbox (2012). Trouble shooting guide for solving problems. Retrieved

from http://plato.bridgew.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_12662_1%26url%3d

Assignment #2 - Berta Capen Reynolds & Jerome Wakefield

Change Agents of Yesterday and Today

Bertha Capen Reynolds was born in 1885 and died at the age of 93 in 1978.  Born in Stoughton, MA she lived with her mother and father.  When Reynolds was seven her father passed away and she moved to Boston so her mother could work as a teacher (Bandler, L. S., n.d).   Reynolds appeared to have a normal childhood and was portrayed as polite, kind and caring person who only spoke when spoken too, but never felt loved and lived in a "life of no's" (McQuaide, 1987).  Reynolds earned a BSW from Smith College in 1908 and a second social work degree from Simmons School of Social Work in 1914.  Now she was ready to peruse her lifelong desire to help poor people and advocate against racism.  After graduation, Reynolds worked for a few years at a health clinic in Boston and in 1917 she enrolled in the newly formed psychiatric social work program at Smith College. Once she graduated, she perused a career as an Associate Dean teaching psychiatric social work at Smith College.  Reynolds tried to unionize the Smith College employees and was fired by the Dean as a result.  She briefly joined the Maritime Union, however, budgeting was tight and the program was shutdown. She then retired and concentrated on writing (NASW, 2004).  

Reynolds was a progressive social worker who appeared to be ahead of her time as her advocating and support for " social justice and sounder social order " was often rejected by her peers and society. Reynolds inferred that not everyone, especially the oppressed and needy, are  equally affected by policy and law and that societies benefit differently from distributive social justice (Barusch, 2009).  In addition, NASW (2004) describes Reynolds as a socialist and communist who was an active radical social work leader. However, McQuaide (1987) concludes that Reynolds had many layers to her personality and belief system.  She fit "Bowen's definition of a differential person, Kohlberg's post conventional thinking, and achieved Erikson's ego integrity state".  

Reynolds interest in Matrism offered an unconventional "systematic, structural, institutional, and organizational perspective (Coconis, 2006)".  Her viewpoint further studied how human behavior responds to and within these perspectives, rather than pathologizing each and every one.  Reynolds applied her perspectives to her writings, clinical practice, and social work education during the 1930’s and 1940’s.  Her most popular writing is Learning and Teaching in Practice of SocialWork and is stilled used today to help shape the perspective of social work, psychiatry, and psychology. Unfortunately, it was not until the end of her life that Reynolds was honored for her contribution to the social work field. To honor her life’s work, in 1985, the Bertha Capen Reynolds society was created, now named Social Welfare Action Alliance (SWAA). The SWAA is a national organization for progressive social and human service workers which concentrate on economic justice.  Without Reynolds forward thinking and societal sacrifices she made, social work may not have progressed with a diverse and radical foundation for equality (Freedberg, 1986).

Jerome Wakefield

Another change agent whose contributions to the field of social work that are similar to Reynolds is Jerome Wakefield.  Barusch (2009) quotes Wakefield by indicating "social work is to see to it that anyone falling below social minimum in any of the social primary goods is brought above that level in as many respects as possible".  However, Wakefield further infers that social work is becoming a mental health profession and provides more mental health care than any other profession. 

Per Wakefield's (2011) 47 page curriculum vitae, he is a professor of social work at New York University and is involved in over 40 international, national, and university service collaborations,  has an extensive educational and training background with doctorial and master level degrees, fellowships, LICSW, research, lectures, presentations, several academic appointments, awards, multi-language scholarly publications such as books and over 150 journals, is an active peer reviewer, grant funding writer. He has also been involved in media reviews and press and television coverage, and even discussed the over diagnosis of depression as indicated in his co-authored book The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiaraty Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder on NPR radio (2008).

Wakefield is considered a successful and intelligent individual whose theoretical base lies in the validity of the DSM criteria.  Wakefield's area of expertise and research include "psychiatric diagnostic criteria, psychiatry epidemiology and integrative clinical theory (NYU Language Medical Center, 2012)".  NYU (2012), recognizes Wakefield's current contributions to distributive justice through his recent research using "community- sample data sets" which indicates the over diagnosis of normal and simple sadness as a depressive disorder and further signifies the over medicating of society. Wakefield's extensive studies and research in the mental health field influenced the revision of DSM-IV-TR, to the not yet released DSM -V, with integral changes including a spectrum for each disorder.  Like Reynolds, Wakefield is a progressive advocate in society and exemplifies positive social change.  He pushes the envelope to assure equality of the inequality that distribute justice sometimes creates in the mental health and social work fields.

Reynolds and Wakefield's strong leadership qualities are best described by the Community Toolbox (2012) as "transformational" which coincide with my leadership style. Transformational leadership is illustrated as being able to empower those within the community and encourage them to pursue their vision of change.  This style of leadership quality further mirrors the NASW Code of Ethics in which all social workers must abide.

While doing research on these two change agents, I learned that my leadership qualities are not over-ambitious or aggressive, but that they are passionate, motivated, and humanized. I also learned that progressive thinking is not a bad quality and that thinking ahead is what helped create the profession of social work as we know it today.  Furthermore, I was encouraged by each change agent's small steps that they took in order to make big changes in their community and stood by their perspectives and beliefs regardless of the sometimes negative feedback from their colleagues.

These lessons have inspired to me to continue to be a leader in organizing fundraising events for the American Cancer Society and Kids Kicking Cancer foundation, especially when controversy within the organization is present. These two organizations are my personal passion as I advocate for support, education, and awareness of cancer patients, their family, and the ones who have fallen victim to this disease. But most of all, I continue to support cancer research in hope of a cure. Therefore, I hope contribute my leadership qualities and passion to these organizations to help the next generation of cancer advocates become leaders themselves. Furthermore, I am thankful for the extra years I have with my mother as a she is five time cancer survivor. I am also grateful for the extra time I had with my grandmother and father and I credit this to all the previous leaders who have advocated for cancer patients' and on their families' behalf. 

Cites

Bandler, L. S. (n.d). Bertha Capen Reynolds social worker of all times. Journal of education for  

            social work, 155-12.

Barusch, A. S. (2009). Chapter 1, Social justice and social workers (pp. 3-26). In Foundations of

            Social Policy: Social Justice, Public Programs and the Social Work Profession. Belmont,

            CA: Brooks/Cole.

Coconis,  M. (2006).  Social welfare action alliance: our roots.  Retrieved from 

            http://www.socialwelfareactionalliance.org/sitemap.html 

Community Toolbox (2012).  Styles of Leadership. Retrieved from

            http://plato.bridgew.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps

            %2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_12662_1%26url    

Freedberg, S. (1986). Religion, profession, and politics: Bertha Capen Reynolds' challenge to

            social   work. Smith college studies in social work, 56(2), 95-110.

            doi:10.1080/00377318609516609

McQuaide, S. (1987). Beyond the logic of pessimism: a personal portrait of bertha capen

            Reynolds. Clinical social work journal, 15(3), 271-280.

NASW (2004.) Bertha Capen Reynolds. Retrieved from

            http://www.naswfoundation.org/pioneers/r/reynolds.htm

NPR (2008). Jerome Wakefield. Retrieved from

            http://www.npr.org/player/v2/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=1900860

            2&m=  19024384

NYU. (2012). (n.d.). Jerome C. Wakefield. Retrieved from

            http://www.nyu.edu/soialwork/our.faculty/jerome.wakefield.html

NYU Language Medical Center (2012). Jerome Wakefield. Retrieved from http://psych-

            institute.med.nyu.edu/node/483

Wakefield,  J.C. (2011). Curriculum vitae. Retrieved from

            http://www.nyu.edu/socialwork/pdf/cvs/wakefield.pdffield.html

Blog Post #5 - Saul Alinsky: A Democratic Process and His Legacy

Alinsky as  Professional Agitator?

Saul Alinksy earned a criminology degree from the University of Chicago and yearned to find new ways to improve the country's democratic process as he realized that the oppressed were becoming increasingly secluded from the country's political process; and therefore, not having a true say in the policies,  procedures, and laws that were effecting them directly.  Alinsky's theories are derived from his involvement in his community as he went into the streets to learn what the community's needs were and to increase his knowledge about the conditions that lead to juvenile delinquency.  Further learning resulted from shadowing Al Capone on the streets to learn how gangs were established and run (Hercules, & Orenstein,1999). 

Who is Saul Alinsky and has he influenced Obama?
Watch Youtube video to find out. 

In addition to of all of Alinsky's success in organizing, Alinsky's documentary highlights the need for community and organizational groups to build intrapersonal relationships in order to gain a political voice, especially for the vulnerable population. Alinsky's hope of forming an alliance with the middle-class to further strengthen the democracy process for the poverty stricken citizens came to a tragic end when died of a heart attack in 1972 at the age of 63. The documentary also includes such details as Alinsky's work with the Farm Workers Movement and East Brooklyn Congregation (EBC).  These organizations were illustrated by their strong relationship building techniques with neighbors, groups, businesses, catholic churches, and school labor unions. These relationships gave individuals power in numbers. Furthermore, the documentary shows how Alinsky has an encouraging ability to get those who are directly affected involved in the democratic process. For example, when he organized the packing house alliance, he used the "back of the yards neighborhood council" to show him how to organize within that specific community (Hercules, & Orenstein,1999).      

Listen to NPR report on Saul Alinsky?

Alinsky's collaborative and obtrusive leadership skills portray his ability to develop his theory to acquire political back up.  He urges organizations to "tell them [politicians]your story and ask for support".   Such was illustrated in his documentary when one of the organizers blatantly asked their local politician for support and received it.  Another one of Alinsky's theories is that "social justice can be achieved through democracy" and by "organizing people to ensure power".  These theories are powerful and encourage individuals to stick together to create change. However, the most inspiring one to me is "remember where you came from - we came from the struggle".  This theory grounds my thinking and humanizes organizations.  Alinsky's theory suggest that we need to go back into the community and see what the needs are, just like he did when he hit the streets to learn about juvenile delinquency, gangs, and the needs of the farm workers.  This theory further implies that researching and understanding the community's needs is the only way that you can be successful in advocating for change; otherwise your advocating blindfolded (Hercules, & Orenstein,1999).       
      

I feel that Alinsky's documentary  was a powerful example of how community organization can make a difference in individuals lives. It also reminded me that the citizens of the United States have the right, under the Constitution in which this country's framework was build, to exercise their personal and constitutional  liberty.  It further taught me that macro social work is the foundantion of today's society. We need people who work in macro social work to keep the playing field level; otherwise, capitalism will continue to take over the management of the United States and interfere with our democratic rights.  This documentary also showed me how powerful organizations can be when working together to achieve a common goal. 

 Work Cited

Alinsky Rules 5 Retrieved fromhttp://alinskydefeater.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/the-alinsky-

            tactics-%E2%80%93-rule-by-rule-part-5-%E2%80%93-rule-5-ridicule/

Alinksy's Quote Photo.  Retrieved from  http://alinskydefeater.wordpress.com/2010/04/26/the-

            alinsky-tactics-%E2%80%93-rule-by-rule-part-5-%E2%80%93-rule-5-ridicule/

CNN (2012). Who was Saul Alinsky? (2012) Retrieved from

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyiRL_R1-KI.

Gaudette, T. (2011) Saul Alinsky Explains Community Organizing as an Outside Agitator

            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQtwo8lp_E8.

Hercules, B. & Orenstein, B. (1999). Democratic promise: Saul Alinsky and his legacy. Media

            Process Educational Film and Chicago Video Program.

NPR (2012). Gingrich's other opponent: who is Saul Alinsky? Retrieved from

            http://www.npr.org/2012/01/30/146101408/why-does-saul-alinsky-inspire-such-

            passion.

President Obama's link to Saul Alinksy. (n.d) http://whwweb.com/wp-

            content/uploads/2011/05/obama-president.jpeg