How Community Coalitons Damage Advocates

Corinna WestMember

An artice I published about the risks of community coalition work.

http://www.madinamerica.com/20...k-damages-advocates/

The research mentions several types of community engagements and several types of projects. The projects that were most similar to community resilience projects actually did the most damage to advocates. (consultation style and topic related). The main three research articles I cite in this post are attached below. The main issues are:

1) people from marginalized communities get beat up and ignored in meeting style processes

2) community engagement does not happen by magic, there needs to be a budget, plans, prep work, training, and time allocated for effective community engagement

3) communities that were not included in overall project planning may or may not actually benefit from the project planned

4) inexperienced advocates with zero connection to the advocacy community can't actually be exchanged for experienced advocates. Ie. Closeted mental health professionals are not neccessarily a decent representative for people in recovery.

A trauma informed project should know how traumatizing it is to be blown off and told it's your fault that you are not being heard. That you "should have asked nicer."

Coalition work damages advocates, the research is clear. Don't be that guy. Add good community engagement to your programs, please. It takes careful planning, budgeting, and infrastructure. Don't expect it to happen by magic. Don't set advocates up for failure.

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risks of community engagement.pdf

dynamics of unheard peer voice.pdf

risks and promises of comm coalitons.pdf

3/17/161:33 PM

Original Post

Allen K. NishikawaMember

The problem you discuss is not new. One of the critiques of 1930's era progressivism (think FDR New Deal) was that it tended to be a top-down system which imposed white, middle-class values and solutions upon populations whose values were often different and for whom those solutions were not ideal. That said, one should not throw out the baby with the bathwater. Changing social attitudes is a slow process, and if you can't convince the folks who are partly on your side, how do you expect to win over those opposed to the idea?

For a few decades, I've worked in the field of HIV services which has also had a vigorous, ongoing discussion about the differences between the needs of affected community members and the perceptions of the service providers. It has been noisy, boisterous, and occasionally more heated than illuminating. However, in the long run, I believe I was moved and persuaded and changed. While thinking that we were only talking about health, we were in fact promulgating notions of what we felt was "normal" or "socially acceptable." Following the facts and questioning your beliefs is a lesson we all need to learn at some point.

Coalitions are not perfect. I've quit several tedious and annoying coalitions myself. But I have also enjoyed others, because they provided emotional support, a sense of belonging and in some cases, made some progress.

3/18/1612:00 PM

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