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Larry Ferlazzo doesn't believe in leadership. He believes in leaders. As the lead organizer in California's Sacramento Valley for the Industrial Areas Foundation, Ferlazzo works with community institutions, such as churches and other organizations, to provide a framework for people to be empowered to lead. Making change is not invested in one person or institution but in the people who want the changes.
"Organizing isn't really about any issue. It's not about housing or job training or a living wage. It's about identifying and developing emerging leaders to take on those issues that are important to them and do something about them," says Ferlazzo.
The Industrial Areas Foundation, which was created by Saul Alinsky in 1940 and has partnered with churches, labor unions, and other groups to create change in local communities, places its emphasis not on the big picture but on the little one. Ferlazzo explains, "All organizing is about one-on-one meetings with people to find out where their anger is, to hear their stories. We push people to see their own self-interests clearly and to understand that achieving their individual goals takes the participation of others."
What organizers like him do is not to tell the community what it wants or to make it happen for the community. Rather, Ferlazzo says, "We help paint a vision of what is possible, get people to react and change it to make it their own, and then agitate them about what it would take to achieve it." Then Ferlazzo says the stories can be brought together and collective action can begin.
The structure of making change happen is based on cultivating leaders by providing training, facilitating meetings, and helping to strategize. "We help the organization that invites us to the community to identify potential leaders. When those leaders are identified, we work with them," he explains. The bedrock of leadership in this structure is that it depends on "being able to make small mistakes, learn from them, go out and make bigger mistakes, learn from those and keep going. It takes patience to build an organization that can create the kind of change people want."
And it works.
The Sacramento Valley Organizing Community has built one of the largest regional community development organizations in the U.S., bringing together thousands of activists of diverse racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. The organization has helped to bring about enhanced welfare-to-work programs, worked to create more housing and provide opportunity for homeownership, advocated for a living wage, and created job-training programs.
But the programs and the changes are nothing compared to the real accomplishment of the Committee. Ferlazzo tells the story of a local leader who spoke at the opening of a new housing development where she owned a home. This is what she said: "This is a great day and a big victory. My friends and I own our houses. But the biggest victory is that I am speaking to you. I've led negotiations with members of Congress and mayors and my children have seen me do it."
That's what organizing is all about, Ferlazzo says, giving people the education they need to create change, to become leaders in their communities. And that takes patience and a willingness to work with people as they make mistakes and learn from them.
Ferlazzo reads a quote from Fred Ross, Sr., an organizer who was Cesar Chavez's mentor, that hangs on his wall, "Shortcuts will take you to detours, which will ultimately take you to dead ends." Bringing a community to action and advocacy on behalf of what it needs demands the long road and a willingness to continue down that road for as long it takes to make change happen. In the Sacramento Valley, that road continues to stretch ahead.
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