January–February 2005 - Sargent Shriver National Center …povertylaw.org/files/docs/article/chr_2005_january... · · 2018-04-17LSC’s advocacy training and development unit

583Clearinghouse REVIEW Journal of Poverty Law and Policy ■ January–February 2005

1FamilyCare is an initiative on which many and widely varied supporting groups continue to play key roles. Materialsabout FamilyCare, including a full list of supporting organizations, are available at www.povertylaw.org/advocacy/fami-lycare_materials.cfm. In this article I describe one relationship within that wider effort because it contains lessons thatmay be useful for a successful collaboration between community organizations and lawyers or policy advocates.

2I use the term “lawyers/advocates” to refer to lawyers and policy advocates interchangeably—legal aid and other pub-lic interest lawyers, nonlawyer advocates, and those who engage in either direct service or policy advocacy.

The Power of Working with CommunityOrganizations: The Illinois FamilyCareCampaign—Effective Results ThroughCollaboration

By John Bouman

A bipartisan group of state

legislators, administrators, and

governor’s office policy staff convene

to agree on a program model for

FamilyCare, clearing away partisan

issues and reducing the debate to a

straightforward issue of funding.

John BoumanDirector of Advocacy

Sargent Shriver National Centeron Poverty Law

50 E. Washington St., Suite 500Chicago, IL [email protected]

In October 2002 some 30,000 working poor Illinois parents became eligible forhealth insurance through a newly created program called FamilyCare. Amidst alle-gations of influence peddling and other scandals rocking the state administration,

a high-stakes election year, and unprecedented budget shortfalls, this outcome wasunlikely. In each of the next two years a new administration extended coverage to77,000 more working parents. In the context of an ever-worsening state fiscal crisis,this expanded health coverage was equally unlikely. To a significant extent, these out-comes, like the vignettes above from the FamilyCare campaign, were the result of avery successful collaboration between community organizations and advocacygroups.1

Such collaboration can be productive in helping both kinds of organizations reachshared goals, but it does not routinely happen. The proverbial “failure to communi-cate”—to understand each other’s views of how to bring about change and of the waythe world works—commonly prevents collaborative work. In fact, organizers andlawyers/advocates often work at cross-purposes, butt heads, and frustrate one anoth-er’s efforts.2

A dozen children, using little red wagons,

deliver to Gov. George Ryan some 70,000

postcards expressing support for FamilyCare,

a health insurance expansion that will cover the

children’s uninsured working parents. News

photographers and reporters are present and

report on the event, and FamilyCare receives

widespread favorable media attention.

Scenes from the Illinois FamilyCare campaign:

584 Clearinghouse REVIEW Journal of Poverty Law and Policy ■ January–February 2005

Working with Community Organizations

Legal aid lawyers, for example, tell storieslike this: A client is sued for eviction andseeks representation. The lawyer negoti-ates an excellent settlement, acquiringfor the client substantial time to move,waiver of rent for several months, and anamount of money paid to the client. Theclient considers and happily accepts thedeal. However, after later meetings withan organizer who has been trying toorganize the building to force the land-lord to make repairs and improvements,the client joins the tenants’ union andreneges on the deal. The lawyer, con-strained by promises made to opposingcounsel and the court, withdraws fromrepresentation. The client is evicted. Tothe lawyer, this looks like outrageousinterference with the attorney-clientrelationship and bad advice manifestly

counter to the client’s best interests. Anycontact between lawyer and organizer isnot communication at all but a shoutingmatch. Repetition of such experiencescreates an aura of distrust, resulting inmutual avoidance.

A big part of this problem is that mostlawyers/advocates are never taught aboutcommunity organizing either in school orin practical training offered formally bytheir employing organizations (andrelated national training groups) orinformally by supervisors and profes-sional mentors.3 It is not a standard partof legal education generally or of (most)legal services training in particular. Thisis also true of the training offered inmany graduate schools for public policyand in organizations that employ non-

Scenes from the Illinois FamilyCare campaign:

Hundreds of community residents walk door to door in key precincts of city and suburban state legislative districts to make clear the political impetus behindFamilyCare. One delegation that includes a state senator’s own parish priest is thrown out of the senator’s office after the delegation expresses discontent over the senator’s refusal to back FamilyCare. But the effort is instrumental in

garnering cosponsorship from nine of ten Chicago-area state senators in the Republican majority.

A complex legislative strategy results in bipartisan groupssponsoring FamilyCare in both Illinois legislative bodies: 88 inthe House, where the measure passes 115-to-0, and 30 inthe Senate, where fiscal conservatives block the bill in com-mittee. Late in the session, Governor Ryan announces sup-port at a grassroots lobby day, but the measure remainsstalled.

Nevertheless, the following year the governor wins legislativeapproval for FamilyCare in the midst of the worst state budg-et crisis in two generations and obtains an ambitious federalwaiver that secures federal FamilyCare funding amid verytricky political currents in Washington. That fall Illinois launches the program.

3This has been especially true in recent years. During the early years of the Legal Services Corporation (LSC), however,explicit discussion of the relationship between poverty law and community organizing was much more common. In 1981LSC’s advocacy training and development unit published The Law and Direct Citizen Action: A Guide for Trainers andTraining Responsible Persons; the authors were lawyers associated with the Institute for Social Justice, the research andtraining arm of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (Acorn), a community organizationdescribed infra. The manual introduces lawyers and organizers to each other’s perspectives and discusses the “organiz-ing handles” that various legal tools and remedies offer. One of its authors is Marcia Henry, now a CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW

legal editor, who in 1979 conceived and conducted, through Acorn’s Institute for Social Justice, a training series entitled“Organizing Perspectives for Lawyers” in ten cities; much of the material and experience from those sessions were adapt-ed for the LSC manual. In the early 1980s LSC also sponsored a series of “Multi-Forum Advocacy Trainings” that focusedon how poverty lawyers could collaborate with community organizations.



lawyer policy advocates. As a result, mostlawyers/advocates do not understandwhat organizers are trying to do or thetactics that they deploy. That makes com-munication difficult, not only preventingactive cooperation but also often produc-ing conflict.

My intent in this article is to use a casestudy to promote, among advocates, thebenefits of collaboration with communi-ty organizations and their organizers andleaders. Since few lawyers/advocates arelikely to have much information aboutcommunity organizing in general, I beginwith the profession’s principles andpractices that inform an advocate’s inter-actions with organizers.4

I. Basics of Community Organizing

The roots of most leading communityorganizing models, with related traininginstitutes and umbrella organizations,can be traced, some more directly thanothers, to Saul Alinsky’s work in Chicagoin the 1930s and 1940s.5 Generally com-munity organizations have the twin goalsof building citizen power and developingcitizen leaders to produce positivechanges identified as important by citi-zens themselves.6 They take somewhatdifferent approaches and deploy variousmethods of organizing and advocacy, butmost employ individual conversations,well-planned group meetings, poweranalysis, and strategies to bring thegroup’s power and agenda into the politi-cal arena. They tend to be “multiissue”;an assessment of what will contributemost to building the organization deter-mines the issue that is the focus of activi-

ty at a given time. Public activities, oftencalled “actions,” focus on an individual“target” who has the power to meet theorganization’s demands; actions involvemedia, pressure, and confrontation.Community organizations stress the cre-ation of tension with the target, based onthe theory that those in power never“give” anything away but only relinquishthings when confronted with opposingpower (some refer to this dynamic as“polarization”). In most organizing theo-ries the citizen leaders must make deci-sions, exert leadership, and be the publicface of the organization. A central tenet isthat organizers remain behind the scenesand do not do what the organization’smembers can do for themselves. Theseexperiences develop leaders and buildthe perception and the reality of organi-zational power.

The Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF),which Saul Alinsky founded in 1940, isone of the leading organizing institu-tions. It describes its work as follows:

The leaders and organizers of the Industrial Areas Foundationbuild organizations whose pri-mary purpose is power—the abili-ty to act—and whose chief productis social change.… The IAF isnon-ideological and strictly non-partisan, but proudly, publicly,and persistently political. TheIAF builds a political base withinsociety’s rich and complex thirdsector—the sector of voluntaryinstitutions that includes reli-gious congregations, labor locals,homeowner groups, recovery

4As a twenty-nine-year legal services and policy advocacy lawyer, I claim no special knowledge about community organ-izing theory and practice. The major portion of my legal services career has been spent in the kind of mistrust and avoid-ance described in the foregoing text. Only relatively recently did ideas about the merit of organizing principles and theadvantages of cooperation begin to penetrate, culminating in the experience of the FamilyCare campaign that I describehere. The information I present about community organizing is therefore very summary and comes from readily availablegeneral texts. It is a very diverse field with different theories and practices and even rivalries that cannot be describedhere. The organizers with whom I have worked have, no doubt, influenced my perspective. I encourage readers to devel-op their own understanding the way I did: through reading and especially in dialogue with organizers in their commu-nities. Most organizing groups offer their own training programs, and many colleges and universities offer courses.

5A very good list of community organizing groups, community organizations, community organizing resources andumbrella organizations, and college syllabi for courses on community organizing can be found at http://comm-org.utole-do.edu.

6In the context of most community-organizing efforts and for purposes of this article, the term “citizen” is used in a verygeneric sense to refer to people who live in the community. It does not refer in any technical way to U.S. citizenship orimmigrant status, or lack of it. Some organizations have deliberately stopped using the term “citizen” because theybelieve that it conveys an exclusionary message in communities with immigrants.



groups, parents associations, set-tlement houses, immigrant soci-eties, schools, seminaries, ordersof men and women religious, andothers. And then the leaders usethat base to compete at times, toconfront at times, and to cooper-ate at times with leaders in thepublic and private sectors. TheIAF develops organizations thatuse power—organized people andorganized money—in effectiveways. The secret to the IAF’s suc-cess lies in its commitment toidentify, recruit, train, anddevelop leaders in every cornerof every community where IAFworks. The IAF … has a radicalbelief in the potential of the vastmajority of people to grow anddevelop as leaders, to be fullmembers of the body politic, tospeak and act with others ontheir own behalf. And IAF doesindeed use a radical tactic: theface-to-face, one-to-one indi-vidual meeting, whose purposeis to initiate a public relation-ship and to re-knit the frayedsocial fabric.7

Another organizing group with which manypublic interest lawyers/advocates haveinteracted is the Association of CommunityOrganizations for Reform Now (Acorn).Although Acorn’s organizing style can alsobe traced to Alinsky, the connection is moreattenuated; Acorn began in Arkansas in1970 as a project of the National WelfareRights Organization. While Acorn and IAFhave many similarities, a major differenceis that people “belong” to IAF-affiliatedorganizations through existing communityinstitutions, usually churches, while Acornmembers join the organization directly asindividuals. Here is how Acorn describesitself:

ACORN … is the nation’s largestcommunity organization of low-

and moderate-income families,with over 150,000 member fam-ilies organized into 800 neigh-borhood chapters in 65 citiesacross the country.… Our prior-ities include: better housing forfirst time homebuyers and ten-ants, living wages for low-wageworkers, more investment in ourcommunities from banks and gov-ernments, and better publicschools. We achieve these goals bybuilding community organizationsthat have the power to winchanges—through direct action,negotiation, legislation, and voterparticipation.… ACORN mem-bers, not staff or lawyers or politi-cians, speak for and lead theorganization. Many are new tocommunity activism when theyjoin but leadership development isat the core of ACORN’s organizingprocess. On-the-job and in formaltraining programs, ACORN mem-bers develop the skill and confi-dence to chart the organization’scourse. From the neighborhoodgroup level to the national board,ACORN leaders call the shots.8

Acorn aims its efforts at low- and moder-ate-income people and therefore, notsurprisingly, identifies officially withissues that public interest lawyers andlow-income advocates address. Becauseof this focus on a somewhat lower-income constituency, the work of publicinterest lawyers/advocates may overlapmore with Acorn than with IAF groups.Like IAF, Acorn seeks to develop leadersand build power, and it will insist on itsmembers “fronting” the public events,meetings with political officials, and for-mal statements in support of the initia-tives. Enlisting Acorn or any communityorganization in support of an issue that ithas not identified or given priority isprobably difficult, although Acorn hasallowed advocates with whom it has trust-

7See Industrial Areas Foundation, Who Are We?, atwww.industrialareasfoundation.org/iafabout/about.htm. See alsoSAUL ALINSKY, REVEILLE FOR RADICALS (1946) and RULES FOR RADICALS (1972); EDWARD CHAMBERS, ROOTS FOR RADICALS (2004).Chambers succeeded Alinsky as head of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) in the early 1980s and still serves as its leadorganizer.

8See Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, Who Is ACORN, at www.acorn.org/index.php?id=2.



ing relationships to help in identificationand prioritization.9

Several points in IAF’s and Acorn’sdescriptions of themselves shed light onwhat happens when organizers interactwith lawyers/advocates, as in the unfor-tunate story of the eviction casedescribed earlier. First, the organizer’sprimary goal is to build citizen power.Winning on an issue is a means to thatend, and the organization pursues theissue only when doing so will help buildpower for the organization to wield onbehalf of its members. An organizationthat views its work in this way is not like-ly simply to sign onto any old issue that alawyer/advocate is marketing. This isparticularly true if the path to victory isthrough a courtroom—an arena whereorganization members have little powerand reliance on which therefore is seenby most organizers as counterproductiveto developing leadership and to mem-bers’ confidence in their capacity tomake change.

The organization is unlikely to interruptmember-initiated and -led efforts inorder to cooperate with a lawyer’s view ofwhat an individual client should do (as inthe eviction case). Nor is it likely to ask alawyer/advocate or any other person not apart of the organization to “front” orga-nizational events or speak for the organi-zation in any public forum, no matterhow much more expert or more effectivethe lawyer/advocate may be. This factoroften causes friction between communityorganizations and even lawyers who areactually working with them (e.g., a probono attorney working with a group on azoning issue). Wanting to do the talking is

lawyers’ nature, and we tend to becomefrustrated when others who seem to us toknow less are tapped instead, especiallywhen the job those others do is not as“good.” Moreover, the lawyer’s typicalmode of operation is to hear a client’sproblem and deploy a strategy to fix orameliorate it, often without the client’sactive participation and rarely with theclient in the lead. Even in a trial or a realestate transaction, while the client makescertain decisions, the lawyer controls theadvocacy. This is antithetical to organiz-ing principles dictating that the commu-nity people act for themselves.

Perhaps more important, but somewhatmore subtle, the core organizing tool (atleast of IAF-inspired organizations) isthe “relational” one-on-one meeting,where people get to know one anotherand share what activates their interestand passion. Professional organizers usethis tool to recruit leaders, who then userelational meetings to add more leaders.This is a frustrating kind of meeting forlawyers used to result-oriented businessmeetings, positional negotiations, com-pressed time demands, and unequalpower relationships (in which the lawyerhas the power and is being asked forhelp). Without understanding the pur-pose of the relational meeting, mostlawyers will regard it as a waste of timeand will not participate constructively, ifat all. Yet understanding and participat-ing in the relational meetings is probablyas important as anything else in forminga trusting and productive relationshipbetween a lawyer and a communityorganizer or a citizen leader from a com-munity organization.10

9Lawyers/advocates for low-income people also may encounter “intermediary” organizations that serve as a bridgebetween community organizations and policy groups. One of the best known of these is the Center for CommunityChange, which organizes nationally on antipoverty and justice issues. It supports community organizations, supplies themwith policy expertise, trains organizers, and puts together grassroots coalitions on national antipoverty policy issues (suchas the National Campaign for Jobs and Income Support). See www.communitychange.org.

10See CHAMBERS, supra note 7, at 44–54 (describing the relational meeting and its position at the core of IAF organizingprinciples as “the most radical thing we teach”). To sum up a highly developed concept, the relational meeting is a half-hour conversation with a potential leader (“leader” meaning someone with followers) or someone with a certain amountof power. “When a good relational meeting occurs, two people connect in a way that transcends ordinary everyday talk.Both have the opportunity to pause and reflect on their personal experience regarding the tension between the worldas it is and the world as it should be. And in that moment a new public relationship may be born, through which bothwill gain power….” Id. at 53.



II. Organizers andLawyers/Advocates—a Powerful Combination

Community groups and their organizingstaff have skills and assets that overlapsomewhat with, but are often highly com-plementary to, those of public interestlawyers/advocates. These complementa-ry skills and assets, when deployedtogether in campaigns to win positivechange, can be very effective. Thestrengths of one group meet the needs ofthe other, and the overall effort is muchmore nearly complete, strategic, andhard-hitting.

Community organizers and groups cancollect powerful human stories fromtheir grassroots members and memberorganizations to legitimize and portraythe issues in the media and other forums.This can solve a constant problem thatlawyers/advocates face when challengedto produce such stories in connectionwith advocacy efforts (for reporters,committee hearings, or policymakerswho need convincing that a problem is“real”). Even frontline legal aid attorneyscan find themselves unable to produce apowerful individual story on demand,and the predicament is heightened foradvocacy organizations that are not “onthe ground”; indeed, the difficulty isinherent in such organizations’ nature asthey house advocates and experts, notdirect service workers. Collaborationwith a community group can resolve thischronic advocacy problem.

Community organizers and groups havepractical insights on public policy prob-lems and possible solutions. They areexperts on the facts: what problems are“real” and what proposed solutions willactually help. Policy advocates who arenot located in communities or who lacksignificant direct service capacity oftenneed this “ground level” perspective.

Community organizations have the abili-ty, rarely found within public interest lawor advocacy organizations, to “fill aroom” for media events or public gather-ings aimed at public officials. They canalso mobilize grassroots district-levelmeetings with officials in their home

offices, make presentations to reportersand editors of local media, and engage inprecinct-level political work. They alwayshave “real people” (their leaders) readyto speak publicly.

As part of their regular work, communityorganizers develop relationships with awide network of groups and individuals,including unlikely allies to whomlawyers/advocates may not themselves beable to reach out successfully. Organizersare highly likely to have media contactsthat supplement those of the lawyers andadvocates. Because their use of largegroups of citizens and media have thepotential to affect elections, communitygroups also can exert a forceful influenceon politicians—or at least raise concernsin politicians’ minds. Because communi-ty organizations have this apparent voterpower, they can be more confrontationalwith politicians than lawyers/advocatesmay be willing or able to be.

Finally, community organizers aretrained in skills that are not usuallytaught in law school or public policyschool—power analysis, time manage-ment, group dynamics, media approach-es, and general prioritizing and planning(i.e., the dictionary definition of being“organized”). These are valuable addi-tions to strategic thinking on legal issuesand public policy campaigns and to theskill sets of the lawyers and advocates.

For their part, lawyers and other profes-sional advocates usually have technicalknowledge of complex substantive issues(laws and regulations, court precedents,research, and best practices), financingmethods and funding streams, and themysteries of the legal process and policy-making (deadlines, requirements forwritten papers, statutes of limitations,ways to play the process) that is farbeyond that possessed within most com-munity groups. Lawyers and advocatesalso often have strategic and tacticalexperience and judgment in legal dis-putes and public policy campaigns thatcommunity organizers and groups cantap to inform their own planning deci-sions. Many lawyers/advocates haveearned their own public credibility andhave established relationships with key



administrators, policymakers, opinionleaders, reporters, and allies in the advo-cacy world. Despite a certain amount ofoverlap (e.g., in relationships and mediacontacts), community groups tend to lackmost of these assets.

As noted above, however, communityorganizers and the leaders they develop,for the most part, live in a different worldfrom that of lawyers/advocates. The basicwork styles and operating assumptions ofthe two worlds are not only different butalso often antithetical. Bridging these two“cultures” is difficult and requires build-ing strong relationships between indi-viduals who are from either culture andperceive the value of the collaboration.No matter what the issue or the circum-stances may be, the success of anyattempted collaboration will usually boildown to the interactions between thespecific people involved. The effort isworth it because the collaborationbetween such highly complementaryforces can enhance opportunities toaccomplish change.

III. Case Study: The IllinoisFamilyCare Campaign

The Illinois FamilyCare campaign bene-fited immensely from fruitful collabora-tion between a leading law and policyadvocacy center and an ambitious newcommunity organization. The Chicago-based Sargent Shriver National Center onPoverty Law has been the lead advocacyorganization on the FamilyCare initiativesince FamilyCare’s inception.11 UnitedPower for Action and Justice is an IAF-organized Chicago area metropolitanwide

organization of over 300 dues-payingmember organizations, including congre-gations, other religious bodies, neighbor-hood organizations, and unions. UnitedPower became the most important grass-roots supporter of FamilyCare in CookCounty and a coleader of the statewideeffort.12

The Shriver Center derives its advocacyagenda from numerous sources of com-munity information, and the lack ofhealth care for low-wage working peoplewas high on the list of problems in 1999and 2000.13 The Shriver Center’s ownperspective on this issue flowed from itspolicy and systemic work on welfare andworkforce reform. Health insurance wasthe aspect of welfare reform that was themost ironic and perverse—people whoachieved their goals and did what societydemanded by working their way off wel-fare received a “booby” prize: they losttheir health insurance (Medicaid), whichwas still tied to receiving welfare.Countless client stories and informationfrom allies who provide direct servicesidentified this issue as a high priority.

The Shriver Center’s policy researchuncovered several potential ways toattract federal funds to help pay for stateexpansion of coverage for the workingpoor, and we identified precedents fromother states. To open its advocacy strate-gy, the Shriver Center used its credibilityand relationships to convene a bipartisanworking group of legislators, administra-tors, and policy staff from the governor’soffice to devise an agreed-upon modelfor the program; the Shriver Center ini-tially put aside the matter of whether and

11See Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, About Us—Policy Development and Advocacy, www.poverty-law.org/aboutncpl/index.cfm?action=show_advocacy.

12See generally www.united-power.org. The United Power website contains somewhat dated material, but the found-ing statement is current: “Our Purpose is to create a broad-based organization whose goal is to build relational powerfor collective actions in the name of justice and the common good. We are an organization of other organizations, weav-ing together the city and its suburbs. We are inclusive, embracing the full diversity of metropolitan Chicago. As part ofcivil society, we are non-partisan: moderates, conservatives, liberals and radicals committed to acting on our social val-ues and working for a just society by standing for the whole. We are generational: originating, not just reacting, and sus-taining as a legacy for the future our dedication to fostering public life.” www.united-power.org/MainFrameset.htm. Seealso CHAMBERS, supra note 7, at 112–20 (describing the thinking and organizing that produced United Power, its found-ing meeting in October 1997, and its subsequent action on the FamilyCare campaign, among other issues).

13 E.g., John Bouman, Ryan’s Final Budget Should Address Four Essential Issues to Fill Gaps in Departments of HumanServices and Public Aid Budget Requests, ILLINOIS WELFARE NEWS (Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, Chicago,Ill.), April 1999, available at www.povertylaw.org/advocacy/iwn/index.cfm?action=show_article&id=307.



how to fund it, and drafted model legisla-tion.14 On another track, we beganorganizing an ad hoc coalition of friendsand likely allies on welfare reform andworkforce issues inside and outside thelegislature to support the initiative. Thiscoalition contained many advocacyorganizations and some organizationswith grassroots capacity, but none was alarge-scale community-based organiza-tion with a large grassroots membership.

The Shriver Center and the growing adhoc coalition promoted the issue in thespring 2000 session of the IllinoisGeneral Assembly. We knew it was toosoon for a bill to pass, but we seized theopportunity to use committee hearings tobegin debate and otherwise educate leg-islators and the public, to talk up theissue and the proposed solution, and tobegin to make the issue a higher priorityfor the incumbent administration.15 Theissue garnered much interest and a cer-tain amount of “traction,” but it wouldneed more political impetus the follow-ing year to achieve a breakthrough.

At about the same time United Power mar-shaled its members for a metropolitanwidesetting of priorities for focusing its citizen-based resources on action for meaningfulchange.16 One of the metropolitanwideissues chosen was the widespread lack ofhealth insurance and resulting lack ofaccess to health care. United Power hadsubstantial numbers of active leaders inmiddle-class institutions (mostly congre-gations) in the suburbs as well as the city;their zeal for working on the health careissue came from values-based concernsraised in thousands of relational meetings.United Power developed a multifacetedapproach to this problem, and one of thekey facets of its approach was expansion of

health insurance for a large group of work-ing poor. In support of this facet, UnitedPower began to assemble research on lackof health insurance in Chicago and Illinois.In accordance with its organizing principlesand power analysis, United Power alsobegan to assemble important and often“unlikely” allies, including the AdvocateHealth System (the largest hospital chain inthe state and the third largest employer ofany kind) and Blue Cross Blue Shield ofIllinois.

At this point United Power’s health taskforce, which contained some organiza-tions and individuals familiar with theShriver Center’s advocacy on FamilyCare,began to look at FamilyCare as a potentialmeans to fulfill United Power’s goal ofexpanding health insurance. FamilyCarewas attractive because it appeared to sat-isfy the organizers’ pragmatic calculationthat the health insurance initiative mustbe both significant and achievable, and ithad a running start—the technical modelwas “worked up” and costed out, and ithad credible early momentum due to theShriver Center’s expertise and advocacywork.17 What gave United Power organiz-ers and leaders pause, however, andmight have outweighed these advantages,was whether the FamilyCare proposalcould be squared with the organizing pri-orities of building citizen power anddeveloping leaders. United Power, con-sistent with its principles and purposes,would not simply “sign on.” It had to be inthe lead in order for its goals to beachieved. Its leaders would have to be outin front. Otherwise, it would find anoth-er initiative to further its health care con-cerns.

This, the first of many decisive moments,had explosive potential; the organizer

14See John Bouman, KidCare—An Opportunity to Insure Low-Income Working Parents, ILLINOIS WELFARE NEWS (Sargent ShriverNational Center on Poverty Law, Chicago, Ill.), March 2000, available at www.povertylaw.org/advocacy/iwn/index.cfm?action=show_article&id=168.

15At this time and until 2002 the administration was that of Republican Gov. George Ryan; the state Senate was alsocontrolled by the Republicans; and the state House was controlled by the Democrats. In 2002 Rod Blagojevich becamethe first Democrat governor since the mid-1970s; the Democrats took over the Senate and retained control of the House.

16CHAMBERS, supra note 7, at 112–20.

17See John Bouman, Illinois Can Expand Health Insurance to Working Poor—Plan Would Insure Parents of ChildrenCovered Under KidCare or Medicaid, ILLINOIS WELFARE NEWS (Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, Chicago, Ill.),October 2000 (noting that a costed-out proposal had been submitted to the governor’s office and legislative leaders),available at www.povertylaw.org/advocacy/iwn/index.cfm?action=show_article&id=70.



might make what an advocate could per-ceive as overbearing demands for leader-ship and even “take over” the initiative,and the advocate might react with piqueand refusal. But that did not happen. Theorganizer made an effort to explainUnited Power’s agenda (citizen powerand leadership, followed by health cover-age for the uninsured), and the advocate,seeking to add allies and grassrootsstrength, struggled to appreciate whatUnited Power could bring to the effortand to keep an open mind. Through aninitial relational meeting, an ongoingseries of conversations, and, moreimportant, constant attention to person-al relationships between key partici-pants, the two organizations developedan alliance.18

The United Power lead organizer and I, asthe Shriver Center’s lead advocate, thoughtthrough together and agreed on the compo-sition of a strategy committee to steer thecampaign. That committee included repre-sentatives of leading advocacy groups and powerful interests—the AmericanFederation of Labor–Congress of IndustrialOrganizations (AFL-CIO), the ChicagolandChamber of Commerce, the City of Chicago,and religious leaders. The Shriver Centerled the committee, but all-importantstrategic decisions were made jointly. Thisgave the campaign a critical strategic center,while power sharing cemented a growingtrust between United Power and the ShriverCenter.

United Power’s ceding of this measure ofleadership was a pragmatic recognition ofthe Shriver Center’s advocacy acumenand its running start on the FamilyCarecampaign but was also a sharing of “own-ership” of the issue that United Powerhad developed in its own discernmentprocess—a step not taken lightly due tothe risk of loss of the organization’s pub-lic identification with the issue and sub-

sequent diluting of organizational powerand citizen leadership. United Power alsorisked being unable to develop longer-term relationships with elected officialsthrough its normal use of creative “ten-sion” to confront elected officials. Thegroup feared that the Shriver Center andother allies would try to veto such tacticsand prefer their own more conciliatorymethods that focused more on immedi-ate results for FamilyCare than on build-ing power relationships that a citizengroup could deploy later on other issues.

For our part, the Shriver Center had torisk our own well-earned public owner-ship of the FamilyCare initiative and cedemajor recognition and stature to UnitedPower in shared events and actions. Wehad to give United Power a full measure ofreal leadership within the largerFamilyCare coalition and thus risk thewhole direction of the advocacy. For theShriver Center, an organization depend-ent for its operating budget upon directcontributions and foundation grantsbased in large part on its successful poli-cy advocacy, this was a potential sacrificeof essential capital. We also ran the riskthat United Power might pursue con-frontational tactics that would hinder theprogress of FamilyCare and even damageour reputation as a nonconfrontationaland nonpartisan policy organization.

Through constant reevaluation and com-munication, both organizations consis-tently concluded that the relationshipwas worth the risks and sacrifices. Bothsides delivered on promises, rewardingmutual trust and easily justifying therisks and sacrifices. The result was apowerful collaboration.

The FamilyCare strategy group had bothadvocacy acumen and organizing expert-ise. Those complementary skills com-bined to enable the group to coordinate

18The organizer was relieved to find that I was not only an advocate but also a member of a congregation that was adues-paying member of United Power; this made my role easier to square with the organizing objectives. Once I under-stood the importance of this connection, I regularly preceded presentations at United Power meetings by identifyingmyself first as a member of that congregation, then as an employee of the Shriver Center. The leaders from other UnitedPower institutions were thus able to feel empowered by the Shriver Center’s expertise and to accept its leadership as partof their organization’s own growing power. I could “front” the issue on behalf of United Power by speaking as one ofits own leaders. The relationship might have worked without this angle, but, according to the organizer, it made thingsmuch easier.



several concurrent tracks of actiondesigned to peak at important decisionpoints in the campaign, then regroup andadjust to peak again at the next decisionpoint. The tracks included grassrootsactions such as large rallies; media (newsand editorial, print and electronic);advocacy before the executive branch,legislative leaders, and rank-and-filelegislators; and continual coalitionbuilding. Various members of the coali-tion helped with the tracks where theyhad assets to deploy. United Powerorganizers added value to this strategicthinking, bringing expertise in poweranalysis and media and access to a host ofrelationships. And, in a burst of organiz-ing energy, United Power directly pro-vided or substantially assisted in

■ a postcard drive that produced 70,000postcards addressed to the governorand speaker of the house and demand-ing their support for FamilyCare;19

■ large and very public events, includinga rally of over 1,000 people and numer-ous policymakers at the State of IllinoisBuilding in Chicago and timed to coin-cide with a key vote in the GeneralAssembly;20

■ connections to unlikely allies such asthe Advocate Health System and BlueCross Blue Shield;

■ direct access to likely allies that theShriver Center alone might not havehad the person power to cultivate, suchas the leaders of religious denomina-tions and other community groups;

■ leadership in organizing an open letter topolicymakers and the media and signedby 150 clergy and key religious leaders,including the Roman Catholic cardinal,the Jewish Federation, the Episcopalbishop, influential African Americanpastors, the Lutheran bishop, the leadersof the Council of Islamic Organizations,and the Methodist bishop;21

■ excellent media work that prompted arti-cles by influential op-ed writers and con-tributed greatly to formal editorial sup-port from all Chicago-area dailies and theleading business weekly;

■ strong turnout for state capitol activi-ties, including at least two lobby daysand numerous smaller meetings andevents;

■ ongoing gathering of individual storiesof families struggling without healthinsurance and powerful public tellingof those stories by members of thosefamilies; and

■ active district-level advocacy in bothsuburbs and the city, directed at bothparties, including a drive that featuredhundreds of people canvassing door todoor in key precincts of key legislatorsin the northwest and southwest sub-urbs (through this activity UnitedPower constituents produced on-the-record support for the initiative fromeight suburban Republican state sena-tors).

Straining its own resources, the ShriverCenter provided the complementaryskills and activities that, when combinedwith the United Power activities, madethe FamilyCare collaboration highlyeffective. These included

■ organizing a statewide ad hoc coalitionin support of FamilyCare to comple-ment United Power’s metropolitanChicago assets (the coalition includedgrassroots operations, many organizedover the years by policy advocacyorganizations that had long relation-ships with the Shriver Center—e.g., theChampaign County Health CareCoalition; the Work, Welfare andFamilies Coalition; Voices for IllinoisChildren; Women Employed; the DayCare Action Council; the IllinoisMaternal and Child Health Coalition;the American Cancer Society; the

19See Dan Kening, Gov. Ryan Urged to Support Family Care Health-Insurance Bill, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, Feb. 22, 2001.

20See Nancy Ryan, Backers Urge Ryan, State Senators to OK Family Care Bill, CHICAGO TRIBUNE, April 1, 2001. See alsoSabrina Walters, Rally Backs FamilyCare Insurance, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, May 13, 2001 (describing large suburban rally).

21See Shamus Toomey, Clergy Urges Vote on Health Insurance Bill, CHICAGO DAILY HERALD, May 3, 2001 (describing relat-ed press conference).



March of Dimes; the Lutheran synods;and the Catholic Conference);

■ a leadership role in activities—includ-ing appearances at community meet-ings, editorial board meetings, andpress events— beyond the Chicago area;

■ its own relationships with legislators,policymakers, and allies, including the AFL-CIO of Illinois, ChicagolandChamber of Commerce, and SpringfieldChamber of Commerce;

■ technical research and writing, devel-opment of the health insurance model,production of campaign materials suchas fact sheets, cost estimates, back-ground memos, and testimony;

■ coordination of the statewide effort andfor the coalition a “face” known, credi-ble, and trusted around the state and inSpringfield.

As a result of the advocacy campaignFamilyCare emerged as House Bill 23 inthe spring 2001 General Assembly ses-sion. The bill attracted 88 cosponsors inthe House and passed 115 to 0.22 In theSenate it gained 29 cosponsors, includ-ing nine Republicans, in a chamberwhere 31 votes are needed to pass a bill.But the Republican Senate leadershipfollowed an approach it took with manybills in the 1990s and refused to allowH.B. 23 out of committee, on the groundthat the bill called for spending that hadnot been included in the governor’s orig-inal budget proposal at the beginning ofthe session. However, the issue remainedalive in the budget negotiations. At a cli-mactic United Power grassroots lobby dayin the capitol during the last week of thesession, Governor Ryan announced thathe now supported FamilyCare and wouldinclude it in his budget agenda. However,it was too late to sway legislative leaderswho were locked into other priorities,

and the final budget did not includeFamilyCare. The Shriver Center quicklydrafted a resolution calling on the Ryanadministration to formulate and seek thefederal waiver that would allow access tofederal funds for FamilyCare, and theHouse, in one of its last official actions ofthe session, passed the resolution.23

United Power, the Shriver Center, andthe whole FamilyCare coalition had spentthemselves intensely on this effort.FamilyCare had started the session as along-shot big-ticket item with little for-mal support and no mention in the gov-ernor’s budget. During the session itgained support among a clear majority ofrank-and-file legislators, a set of firmlycommitted legislators willing to champi-on the program as their highest priority,public expression of support fromGovernor Ryan backed by a resolutionfrom the House urging him to seek thewaiver, and editorial support from all thestate’s major newspapers. When theGeneral Assembly adjourned after itsspring 2001 session without passingFamilyCare, despite the emotional out-pouring of effort that led to high hopesfor the bill, all the members of the coali-tion were disappointed. But we had builtdecisive momentum.24

The momentum paid immediate divi-dends. The governor’s support proved tobe real, and in late summer, citing theHouse resolution, he instructed the stateMedicaid agency to begin drafting andnegotiating the federal waiver necessaryto attract federal funding for FamilyCare.In February 2002, at an event that aUnited Power member church hosted onChicago’s southwest side, Governor Ryanannounced the formal filing of the waiverapplication and his intent to include anappropriation for a program start-up inhis fiscal year 2003 budget proposal, andthis he did the following week.25 Not at

22The bill and its history are available on the state’s legislative website, www.legis.state.il.us/legislation/legisnet92/status/920HB0023.html.

23House Resolution 427 is available at www.legis.state.il.us/legislation/legisnet92/status/920HR0427.html.

24See John Bouman, FamilyCare Falls Just Short at End of State Legislative Session but Gains Ryan’s Support for FuturePassage, ILLINOIS WELFARE NEWS (Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, Chicago, Ill.), June 2001.

25See Budget Talk Gets Extra Attention, STATE JOURNAL-REGISTER, Feb. 20, 2002; Chad Anderson, State Budget, ROCKFORD

REGISTER STAR, Feb. 20, 2002.



all clear was whether the governor wouldhave followed this course without know-ing that he could stage it in an importantChicago neighborhood before a full roomof appreciative community residentswith news cameras rolling. UnitedPower’s capacities in this regard werecrucial.

Unlike the year before, in 2002 the gover-nor included FamilyCare in his proposedbudget. Our strategy turned to protectingthat appropriation and shepherding thewording of accompanying legislativechanges through the budgetary process.United Power helped secure favorablemedia coverage in this effort and continuedto generate grassroots phone calls and let-ters.26 Perhaps more important, the pro-jection of citizen power exhibited the previ-ous year continued to resonate in the statecapitol. The General Assembly approvedthe budget and thus established FamilyCareas a new program in spite of extreme budg-et difficulties.27 In September 2002 thefederal government approved the Illinoiswaiver, and the program was launched thefollowing month, with potential to expandparent eligibility to families with income upto 185 percent of the federal poverty level.28

The initial phase covered nearly 30,000very-low-income people by raising eligi-bility from 39 percent of the federal pover-ty level (the top level under the Medicaidprogram) to 49 percent.

The FamilyCare coalition promoted theprogram in the context of the 2002gubernatorial campaign, and full imple-mentation of FamilyCare became a cen-terpiece of that campaign for theRepublican and Democrat candidates.The positioning of Shriver Center staff asexperts during the campaign and in thenew governor’s transition committeeshelped this effort, again complementingUnited Power’s rallies and campaignevents at which the candidates wereasked to and did commit to full imple-mentation of FamilyCare.

The new governor, Rod Blagojevich, adopt-ed FamilyCare as a cornerstone of his poli-cy agenda and staked out public ownershipof the program. In his first state-of-the-state-budget message in March 2003 hepromised full implementation of the pro-gram over three years (the phase-in wasnecessitated by the state’s historically dev-astating fiscal crisis). Amid severe budgetausterity, the FamilyCare expansion is onschedule. The program’s eligibility thresh-old increased to 90 percent of the federalpoverty level effective July 2003, and to 133percent effective September 2004, offeringeligibility to over 200,000 parents. Theongoing campaign remains a cornerstoneof United Power’s agenda, and the organi-zation responds promptly and in significantnumbers to calls for contacts with the gov-ernor and legislators.

IV. Lessons from the FamilyCare Campaign

The FamilyCare initiative yields lessons for productive relationships betweenlawyers/advocates and community groupsand organizers. Among these lessons:

■ Community organizations and advo-cates can find important areas of agree-ment. They often pursue the samegoals. If they can find ways to collabo-rate, their complementary tools canlead to powerful results.

■ Each must understand the other’sessential purpose. For lawyers/advo-cates, the organizing goals of buildingcitizen power and developing leaders,while important in their own right, areprimarily means to accomplishing apolicy initiative or winning a case. Fororganizers, accomplishing a policy ini-tiative or winning a case, while impor-tant, are primarily means to accom-plish organizing goals. Understandingthis distinction can help contextualizeand explain areas of potential conflict,the types of accommodations each side

26E.g., Editorial: Keep Health Care for Poor in State Budget, CHICAGO DAILY HERALD, May 2, 2002.

27See John Bouman, Governor’s FamilyCare Proposal Is Included in the Budget; Federal Waiver Is Last Step to StartProgram, ILLINOIS WELFARE NEWS (Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, Chicago, Ill.), June 2002.

28The Illinois FamilyCare waiver is available at the federal Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services website,www.cms.hhs.gov/hifa/ilhcfakcpc.asp.



may demand of the other, and the basisfor peaceful coexistence when the con-cerns of organizers and lawyers seem tocompete. This can be confusing forlawyers (and other advocates), who mayengage in substantial activity that theyconsider “organizing” around specificissues and who may think they shouldbe in sync with community organizers –it will help if lawyers/advocates under-stand that their core purpose is still theaccomplishment of the issue goals andthey still differ from organizing groupsin that regard.

■ The initiative must evolve through eachorganization’s own agenda setting. Thewillingness of each to cooperate willdepend on the legitimacy of the issue inits own eyes. Organizations will notautomatically sign onto preformed pol-icy initiatives that they have not legit-imized themselves.

■ A “good cop–bad cop” dichotomy canbe useful. United Power constituentswere intentionally demanding and, attimes, confrontational with their elect-ed officials and through the media. TheShriver Center was the friendly policyexpert, of necessity on good terms withall points on the political spectrum.Both roles were necessary, and eachorganization understood the impor-tance of the other’s role and knew whatthe other was up to. Each understoodthat the other’s tactics need not beentirely consistent with its own but thatcoordination was necessary. This dis-tribution of roles was consistent witheach organization’s understanding ofthe sources of its own power, and theroles tapped into each organization’sstrengths. And, understanding theirshared goals and the need to coordinatetheir strategies, each organization wasable to adapt its tactics to serve thecommon purpose while accommodat-ing the other’s organizational needs.

■ Constant and open communication,together with honoring commitments,keeps the collaboration together. Thesequalities constitute the glue that allowstrust to develop. A successful collabo-ration of this type relies on organiza-

tions interacting through individualswho understand the relationships andpolicy making and have developedmutual trust. Understanding the prin-ciples of collaboration is important,but the success or failure depends onthe actual interactions of individuals.

■ Collaboration is beneficial. By associ-ating itself with a highly skilled advoca-cy effort, United Power was able todeploy its citizen power to help achievesuccess. It had a stage in the state capi-tol where its power was showcased andrecognized. Since 2001, United Powerhas not had to generate anything likethe effort it generated that year onFamilyCare, but it has not had to—thepower it projected that year still rever-berates in the capitol. The ShriverCenter, by associating itself with astrong community organization, wasable to deploy grassroots power to helpwin a large policy victory that wouldotherwise have been very difficult.Over the course of FamilyCare’s imple-mentation, which is not yet complete,that power has helped sustain the suc-cess even while the state budget crisishas deepened and other programs andagencies are experiencing cuts.

V. Final Thoughts—What Aboutthat Eviction Case?

Earlier I cited an example of the difficul-ties that can arise between organizers andlegal aid attorneys. That exampledescribed a lawyer’s frustration with anorganizer’s apparent interference withthe attorney-client relationship; theinterference appeared to damage theclient’s interests. I used the example toshow the antagonism, or at least mutualexasperation and distrust, that oftenarise between legal aid lawyers andorganizers in order to discuss why thoseincidents occur and make the case thatboth sides can benefit from a betterunderstanding. The eviction example istypical of direct case-by-case legal aidpractice, while the case study(FamilyCare) is typical of policy advoca-cy. Do the lessons of the FamilyCare casestudy translate to the eviction example orother direct-service contexts?



The answer is absolutely yes. The context,of course, is different, and the scale issmaller. Yet the lessons are much thesame. Knowing what motivates theorganizer, and how approaches mightdiffer, will still help the lawyer. If thelawyer is aware of the organizer’s effortsto get tenants to become leaders in win-ning decent conditions from landlords,there may be ways to collaborate. A lawyerwho knew that community resourceswere available to help establish a condi-tions defense to an eviction would likelyevaluate the tenant’s eviction case—andthe advisability of the settlement—differ-ently. A series of questions to the tenant-client about the organizing effort willreveal the client’s true wishes—and canhelp the lawyer understand why a tenant-client, for fear of harming the organizingeffort, might decide to forgo an individ-ual agreement with the landlord—before

the lawyer obtains a settlement that theclient eventually declines despite itsmerits.

As noted in the FamilyCare case study,there is no magic to this. It takes a con-certed effort to establish communica-tion, understand what each side offersthe other, and sustain a relationship. Italso takes a full understanding of whatorganizers and lawyers offer each other toappreciate why the attempt to communi-cate is worthwhile. The organizer ishelped by an alliance with a technician ofthe laws and procedures governing land-lord-tenant relations. The lawyer can“force” things by litigating or threateningto litigate— a way to project power thatcan be extremely useful to organizing ifdirected such that it serves organizingpurposes (building citizen power, devel-oping leaders). From the lawyer’s pointof view, the endless servicing of futileeviction cases while the larger housingissues are left unaffected can be frustrat-ing. By aligning with a strong communityorganizing effort, the lawyer’s work canaccomplish the larger goals of preservingand improving the affordable housingstock, empowering clients, and gettingthem off the eviction carousel.

Those are the possibilities, but, as withthe FamilyCare effort, the reality involvesestablishing a relationship where indi-viduals communicate and establish trust.If it works out, there are substantial ben-efits for both sides.

[Editor’s note: This article draws in part froman article written for the 2003 Annual Reportof the Woods Fund of Chicago by JohnBouman, Joshua Hoyt (an organizer forUnited Power during the events described inthe article and currently executive director ofthe Illinois Coalition for Immigrant andRefugee Rights) and Matt McDermott (nowan organizer for United Power and, during theevents described here, lead organizer for theSouthwest Organizing Project, a memberorganization of United Power).]

Author’s Acknowledgment

I would like to acknowledge the research andanalytical assistance of Kameron Matthews,a University of Chicago law student whointerned at the Shriver Center.

An Invitation to Readers: Make Your Voice Heard in CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW

Have something to say to other readers of CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW about poverty, legalaid practice, issues affecting your work? Do you have advocacy success stories toshare? Or less-than-successful-efforts-from-which-you-nonetheless-learned-valuable-lessons stories to share? Is there some aspect of poverty law practice you think shouldbe done differently?

For decades, CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW has offered resources to help poverty lawyersimprove their representation of their clients, through the Poverty Law Library andREVIEW articles that offer expert analysis of poverty law issues. We’d like to expand thetype of material we publish to include case studies, advocacy stories, opinion pieces,advocate profiles, roundtable discussions, short point-counterpoint articles, andthoughts about the direction of poverty law practice.

We continue our primary focus on publishing the kind of articles for which we’reknown—those that bridge scholarly analysis and the front lines of poverty law. But therange of poverty law organizations has expanded far beyond the relatively cohesivegroup of programs funded by the Legal Services Corporation that formed the REVIEW’score readership for many years. We’d like to facilitate communication among readerswho engage in poverty law practice from a variety of points of entry into the work.We’re all part of an expanding universe, and we hope the REVIEW can be a vehiclethrough which practitioners in various parts of that universe challenge, inspire, andlearn from one another.

We extend this open invitation to readers to share your thoughts, frustrations, hopes,fears, lessons learned—whatever you think your fellow practitioners would findthought-provoking or useful in their work. Submissions (of 2,500 words or less) shouldbe sent to Ilze Hirsh, CLEARINGHOUSE REVIEW Managing Editor, at [email protected]. (Feel free to call Ilze Hirsh at 312.263.3830 ext. 231 or to e-mail her to dis-cuss your ideas; she will share them with the editorial team.)

—THE EDITORS

Documents

January–February 2005 - Sargent Shriver National Center …povertylaw.org/files/docs/article/chr_2005_january... · · 2018-04-17LSC’s advocacy training and development unit