Core Issues in Comprehensive Community-Building Initiatives ...

Even when a community process has been successful in
developing some capacity to capture and exercise authority
over decisions affecting the community, however, it doesn’t
How [do you] nurture the empowerment of
individuals without simply creating new local
despots, or playing to divisions that might
already exist within a neighborhood?
necessarily mean that power is sustainable. Community influence
can come and go with the changing political structure
in the city and in the community itself. What one official
may do for political gain, said site directors, another may
ignore because the relationship garners them nothing. If there
is no history of community input to decision making over the
allocation of resources, or if that input has been dependent
on a single influential individual, community control will
remain episodic rather than being embedded in the life of
the community. It is embedded, sustained control for which
CCIs strive. As one participant told us:
The trick in all this is how do you unfold a
process, provide information, have enough transformation
of individuals that it becomes community
momentum: where people feel they have
the right to decide, the tools to decide.
Community Power and the Collaborative Board
The first part of the comment above raises another important
point surfaced by the site directors, and that is how to
nurture the empowerment of individuals without simply
creating new local despots, or playing to divisions that
might already exist within a neighborhood. “Power within
the community” is critical, one participant told us.
“Every neighborhood has to play this out.”
There is a tendency, surely not unique to community
initiatives, said many participants, for individuals who
get a little power to act like those who have wielded power
over them: they push independent agendas, promote their
own gain, and stifle the input of others. What is particularly
important for CCIs which typically operate in isolated,
disenfranchised communities, said one director, is
that “sometimes the people who have the least experience
with power tend to become the most abusive when given
authority because they imitate the behavior of power brokers
they have experienced.” Another participant commented
that in their initiative, the CCI “had developed
some great leaders, but there’s an imbalance in the exertion
of leadership.” Many said that this seemed to be a
particularly sensitive issue in poor communities of color.
Commented one participant:
Oppressed people learn where [an individual]
can possibly have power. So we have to really
reach for what’s meant by resident power.
Community power. If you replace the city, lord
it over your neighbors, forget it. It’s important
that no individual substitute themselves for the
institutions we fought for power with.
Another said,
This group of people who never had power
before is just really, really difficult. And a lot of
times, [there may be] people benefitting from it,
because they want to run for political office or
because of whatever other gains may be there.
But I think [part of the job is helping] the community
and board keeping their eye on why they
came there. Is the mission [of community benefit]
being fulfilled?
An especially complicated piece of the CCI power
dynamic, directors told us, is the collaborative board, a
governing body typically made up of various community
“stakeholders” who guide the initiative and frequently
make decisions about resource allocation. Many site directors
said they considered a large part of their job to be help-
Looking at Power and Race from the Director’s Chair 27