It’s Getting Hot In Here

Group centered leaders facilitate social movements. But who are they? In some ways they are merely receptors of all the external demands that a group of people makes, but even by receiving that energy they are doing a rare thing. By being open to ideas, to whims, to insights and to diversity of background and thought, a group centered leader is a focal point around which restless energy can be organized and turned into motion.

I came across a conception of leadership very different from the one we usually think of. Sociologist Kai Erikson writes about the a terrible coal mining catastrophe in Buffalo Creek, West Virginia. In 1972 a poorly made slurry damn broke at the head of a 17 mile creek on which 5,000 people lived, mostly coal miners and their families. Roughly 125 people lost their lives and 4,000 residents were left at least temporarily homeless. Understanding why this catastrophe was not avoided means delving into the community of Buffalo Creek as it existed before the slurry dam broke.

The community was described as very tight knit, with family and neighborly ties running deeper than anything most of us know in our transient and wired lives. Why didn’t the community rally behind the men who knew something was wrong? Social norms pressured many residents not to ‘rise above the rest’, not to name oneself as somehow different from one’s neighbors, not to have audacity. Although ‘individuality’ is one of the most common traits ascribed to people from Buffalo Creek by outsiders, traits commonly seen as ‘individualistic’, or internally generated, really result from restrictive social roles. While a father is often seen as unquestioned head of his family, he isn’t entirely acting on ‘his own whim’, he is also answering an external demand of a role to fill. None of these supposedly individualistic and free thinking men stepped up to show leadership outside of social norms.

Only after the disaster did some leaders start to show themselves, but at the utmost reluctance. Erikson quotes George Santayana:

Perhaps in the flight of birds…the leader was not really a bold spirit trusting to his own initiative and hypnotizing the flock to follow him in his deliberate gyrations. Perhaps the leader was the blindest, the most dependent of the swarm, pecked in to taking wing before the others and then pressed and chased and driven by a thousand hissing cries and fierce glances whipping him on. Perhaps those majestic sweeps of his, and those sudden drops and turns which seemed so joyously capricious, were really helpless effects, desperate escapes, in an induced somnambulism and universal persecution. Well, this sort of servitude was envied by all the world; at least it was a crowned slavery, and not intolerable. Why not gladly be the creature of universal will, and taste in oneself the quintessence of a general life. After all, there might be nothing to choose between seeming to command and seeming to obey…

The leader is revered for taking this sacrifice upon herself, and the group responds. However, after the initial thrust is made, and it is so very difficult to make, the burden can be shared. Ella Baker informs us of this imperative as no one else can: “I have always thought that what is needed is not the development of people who are interested in being leaders as much as in developing leadership in others.” A leader serves the demands of the group by encouraging more leaders.

Is it possible that effective campus leaders are merely conceding to the pecking and hissing cries of those around them? Is it possible that instead of deciding to lead community members into becoming a goal-oriented activist group, and pouring their hearts into the service of that group, they are merely answering and offering themselves up to the whims of the crowd that wants something too vague to name themselves?

Saul Alinsky tells the organizer to give people a sense of their own power, create concrete and meaningful changes in people’s lives,and change the balance of power. College students are seeking a sense of their own power everywhere, but in so many cases we do not know what that kind of power actually means. As youth preparing to enter the adult world, we’re trying to put ourselves into meaningful positions in that world. But what about the second principle?

Many (but not all) college students live some of the most comfortable lives in the world. We have every want near at hand, from food to friends, to fun. We have a purpose and rhythm to our days, and we have the optimism of being at the beginning of life and largely untested. What sort of meaningful and tangible improvement in our fellow students’ lives can we possibly hope to achieve? We can offer them a medium to express their passion, their sincere hope for a better world.

School creates a world where work, studying, skills and sometimes even ideas are important. But for some students, for the ones that are potential activists, the ones who want something more, class and activities can be frustratingly tedious. Some students start to realize that many professors do not share our vision of a better world, do not confront the connection between talking and doing. These students are on the cusp of allowing themselves to be thrust into leadership.

First and foremost, effective student leaders, group centered leaders care about the world that fellow students want to see. They are at the whims of that vision. That is how a leader creates a community where passion and vision are important. That is a meaningful change in students lives. Lets keep building groups where students passion for a just, peaceful and sustainable world is our guide.

References:
1. George Santayana, The Last Puritan (NY Scribner’s, 1936), pp. 128-129
2. Saul Alinsky, Rules for Radicals
3. Clayborne Carson, In Struggle
4. Kai Erikson, Everything in its path

5. Baker, Developing Community Leadership, pp 347, quoted in Charles Payne, I’ve got the Light of Freedom.

Note: This essay is the first of a six part exploration into campus organizing. The study will focus on applying organizing theory and experience to the day-to-day challenges of building the youth climate movement at Williams College, in Berkshire County and in the state of Massachusetts.