The alternative to save the democracy of Marshall Ganz

Marshall Ganz is an academic and activist who has worked, inspired and taught in the main social, labor and civic organizations in the United States. He worked for 16 years with César Chávez as a community organizer in the Unión Campesina, one of the most relevant movements in the history of Mexican communities in the United States, where he developed the pedagogies that are returning to Mexico today through his new book, “! Sí se puede!”, from Grano de Sal publishing house. A professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Ganz is the creator of the grassroots organizing model that led Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008. He once did the same Same for Robert Kennedy, who won the presidential primary in California, the same night he was assassinated.

In order to generate social organization from the community to the national level, Marshall Ganz proposes a pedagogy used today in the five continents, which complements the local organizational traditions. For Ganz, the organization is a leadership activity, but for him leadership is not something that falls to a great leader, but a task that anyone can perform, and that he defines as “accepting the responsibility of enabling others to achieve a purpose shared under conditions of uncertainty”. Marshall Ganz invites us to create what he calls “power to”, which, in contrast to “power over”, is the result of social cooperation and our ability to achieve together what we cannot achieve separately. For Ganz, the task of community organizing is to build power, through enabling others, to achieve shared purposes. All of this is central to building and strengthening democracy.

Marshall Ganz points out that in the current turbulent context, if we want to strengthen and preserve our democracy from the danger of authoritarianism and radical visions, it is necessary to find ways in which ‘power to the people’ can become real, not just a phrase. The organization provides the community with tools to attend to its own needs, which avoids falling into radical options that promise to solve everything. Organization is also a counterweight to government excesses of all stripes and is a key element to the health of any democracy. Democracy is rooted in individual voices being respected, having the right to a voice, and equal involvement in decision-making. It is also based on articulating interests and taking collective action. For democracy to work, we must manage to create collective capacity in communities, organizations and in the institutions and government agencies themselves.

The collective organization to achieve common objectives has been called into question by the reduction in the size of the State, the privatization of public services and the replacement of social organizations by those known as non-profit organizations, which only provide services, as well as by the idealization of individual autonomy, facing the possibility and need to participate in common projects. The collective has been labeled corporate, when there are no democratic alternatives to seek common goals. In reality, social organization puts people at the center and offers a way to decentralize power in favor of community benefit. This capacity for common action and social cooperation can be taught, practiced and recovered in all social spheres. It is something that can be learned with methodology and learning from the successful work of many communities. Ganz’s visit to Mexico is a reminder and an opportunity to move forward in that direction.

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