Gangs and Power: Advocacy in the Inner City
I found this article by Laura Miller of Salon.com a fascinating look at how advocacy works in communities where civil order breaks down — as Miller puts it, whether you’re talking about “Afghanistan, Somalia, or the South Side of Chicago.”
The piece is an extended book review of Sudhir Venkatesh’s inside look at inner city housing projects, Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes To The Streets. Venkatesh spent seven years following a Black Kings gang leader through the Robert Taylor Homes, the largest housing project in the United States. His account documents how when civil services are unavailable and ostensibly “legitimate” authority figures are unable or unwilling to act on behalf of their constiuents, all sorts of informal power structures will emerge. Citizens come to rely on back-door connections and unspoken agreements to advocate for their needs.
The article reminded me strongly of looks I’ve gotten from people overseas from time to time while talking to them about advocacy and strengthening civil society. Looks that tell me, an overeducated would-be do-gooder, that I don’t know the first thing about how things are done in their neck of the woods, and the solutions I’m peddling are pretty naive as a result.
And that’s fine, because they’re right — I really can’t do anything to help them gain a voice and be heard if I don’t understand exactly where they’re coming from. That’s what this article highlights for me: the dangers of applying a cookie cutter approach to advocacy, and the real difficulty of cultivating an environment where citizens not only have the right to speak their mind, but the power to make what they’re saying stick. Sometimes you have to start where they are — with the J.D.’s and the Ms. Bailey’s of the world, not with the mayors or the senators.
This is the United States — we don’t need to go far to see how easily the right to advocate and speak one’s mind can be abrogated or ignored.
Tags: advocacy, informal power, inner city