Two sides of the same coin: The New Communities’ Program, grassroots organizations, and leadership development in two Chicago neighborhoods

ABSTRACT

Studies on community development have demonstrated that the presence of local nonprofits with ties to political and economic power holders may lead to a silencing of community voices or a narrowing of civic activity. These studies often overlook intra-neighborhood dynamics and the multiplicity of local organizational responses to broader development initiatives. Using a case study of the New Communities Program (NCP) in 2 low-income neighborhoods of Chicago, I analyze the strategies, programming practices, and tactics implemented by 2 distinct types of community organizations: nonprofit lead agencies and grassroots organizations. Whereas the lead agencies focused on NCP goals of social service provision and relationship building, the grassroots organizations combined community development practices with community organizing in order to expand local development and increase resident leadership skills. These processes, though complementary, also highlight the growing divide between formal development policies that aim to transform the individual and local responses that aim to transform structural inequities.

Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges Margaret Weir, Wilson Valentín-Escobar, Angela Fillingim, Jonathan Wynn, William Hope, and the anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on earlier drafts. She also thanks the many community residents and staff members of the city and community organizations that she conversed with throughout Chicago, particularly in Greater Englewood and Little Village.

Notes

1. CBOs are formal not-for-profit organizations tied to specific geographic regions, such as neighborhoods (Marwell, 2007). For a comprehensive discussion of CBOs, please reference Ferguson and Stoutland (1999), Marwell (2007), and Stoutland (1999).

2. Local economic development in the United States is a place-based approach to development that places importance on activities in and by cities, districts, and regions. These plans receive funding from and are often managed by local and national governmental and philanthropic organizations.

3. These include the City Challenge, the New Deal for Communities, and Sure Start.

4. See Greenwood and Holt (2010), Maloney, Jordan, and McLaughlin (1994), and Simon (2001).

5. For example, see Marwell (2007) and Freeman (2006).

6. Headed by the Southern Rural Development Center and funded by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Turning the Tide is a 13-state initiative aimed at increasing civic engagement and rural development in the Southeastern United States. It was modeled after the Horizons Community Leadership Program developed in the Pacific Northwest.

7. Spearheaded by LISC/Chicago and the MacArthur Foundation, this was a year-long series of meetings and discussions regarding community development work in Chicago.

8. Gathering resident input was most successful during the planning phases of the quality-of-life plans. Community outreach, however, was not sustained equally in all of the 16 neighborhoods.

9. A report by Fred Tsao (2014) for the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights estimates that Little Village contains a population of 20,000 undocumented immigrants.

10. Although the NCP program only exists in Englewood, I focus on Greater Englewood because community organizations target both areas when creating programming and residents view the area as one neighborhood.

11. In 2010, the population size for the city of Chicago was 2,695,598. Of that, 33% identified as African American, 29% identified as Latina/o, 32% identified as non-Hispanic White; 15% of the population had less than a high school education; the median income was $47,371; the unemployment rate was 9%; and 21% of the population lived below the poverty line.

12. This relationship developed partly due to LISC/Chicago’s former executive director, who was previously an executive director at the Chicago Housing Authority and a Chicago Housing Authority board member, coauthor of Chicago’s Plan for Transformation, and who left LISC/Chicago to head Chicago’s Department of Housing and Economic Development in 2010.

13. Prior to involvement with the NCP, the Southwest Organizing Project was already deeply involved in policy advocacy. In addition, it had strong preexisting ties to allies in the state legislature and with other Chicago-based advocacy organizations.

14. The data are taken from GuideStar using data from the organizations’ 2011 Form 990.

15. This included interns from the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Illinois Institute of Art, the Illinois Art Institute, and DePaul University.

16. Bridgeport Alliance is a neighborhood-based grassroots coalition–based organization that consists of local Bridgeport residents and organizations. Organizational members include Clean Power Chicago, CivicLab, Chicago Teacher’s Union, Southsiders Organized for Unity and Liberation, Benton House, and First Lutheran Church of the Trinity.

17. Located on Chicago’s southeast side and currently one of the most diverse communities in the city, Bridgeport is a historically working-class neighborhood. Five of Chicago’s mayors were either born or lived in Bridgeport, including both Mayor Richard J. Daley and Mayor Richard M. Daley.

18. Although R.A.G.E. is an acronym for the Resident Association of Greater Englewood, it connotes members’ extreme frustration with, and also their intense passion and pride for, their community. Members consistently play with language and definitions and often highlight the alternative meanings of rage as a craze or an early adopted fashion.

19. A slang term coined by Chicago-based rapper King Louie to describe the ongoing gun violence in Chicago (Gibbs, 2015). It is used to compare the high rates of murders in Chicago as compared to the number of U.S. military troop deaths in Afghanistan under Operation Enduring Freedom and in Iraq under Operation Iraqi Freedom.

20. R = Respondent.

21. Implemented in 1994 across the city of Chicago, the goal of CAPS is to blend traditional policing strategies with alternative strategies that hope to encourage police and residents to work together and reduce crime rates. CAPS emphasizes increased communication between police and community residents.

22. According to observations and interviews I conducted in Greater Englewood, residents and activists view the majority of local churches as divorced from the issues of the neighborhood.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Teresa Irene Gonzales

Teresa Irene Gonzales, a native of Mexican Chicago, is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Knox College. She believes in community-engaged pedagogy and scholarship and strives toward a practice of reciprocity in research. Her current book project—which draws on 27 months of ethnographic data, 35 interviews, archival research, and content analysis—examines how organizational ties to national intermediary organizations influence the distribution of resources to low-income urban neighborhoods within Chicago. Her project highlights the complex, and oftentimes contradictory, political and economic development goals that community organizations encounter when they partner with external organizations and funders. Her future projects analyze the importance of adult play within marginalized communities and the barriers to inclusion within rural redevelopment initiatives. Her research has received support from the Woodrow Wilson MMUF Fund, the SSRC-Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives, the Community Development Society, the U.C. Berkeley Center for Latino Policy Research, and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund.