Looking at Community Power

Bill Domhoff, author of the best-selling sociological monograph, Who Rules America?, tells this story to illustrate what ruling class power is all about. Speaking of an enormously wealthy and powerful woman, he said, “She knew that if she walked across a room and slipped and fell, there would be somebody there with a pillow to catch her.” Of course, not all people of power are treated like royalty,or act like royalty. In fact, most power brokers in cities such as Baltimore are invisible to the community. To be sure, they know each other and often act together, but they are seldom up front. Thinkof going to the theater. What you see is a polished performance.What you don’t see are the conflicts and decisions that resulted in the performance: how the play was selected, the choosing of the cast, the dramaturgical changes, the design of the set, and so on.
The same is true of many community decisions. The backstage maneuvering is seldom public, and the details of public meetings, when they are held, are typically staged to keep the audience in line. Only in a crisis are the elite performers on stage; mostly what the public sees are the managers and bureaucrats who represent theelites. The sociologist, Del Miller, said that to really understand a city’s power structure, you have to look at the issues that shake the entire community. These don’t occur every day. Moreover, the issue that excites one community may be of little notice in another.
The ability to make decisions which affect the city and the lives of those who live and work here is concentrated in a small number of people. They are the key influentials. Most are men, are white, are likely in their fifties, and are quite rich. They know each other well. They have gone to the same prestigious schools, go to the same churches, drink at the same parties, belong to the same clubs, and live in the same parts of town. We know these people by the positions they occupy–officer or director of a very large industrial corporation, the top level in community financing–banks, real estate, insurance, partner in a top law firm, president or trustee of a university or large foundation or maybe of a major civic or cultural association.

If we start by looking at the positions people hold, this will lead us to new ways of looking at and charting community influentials and their networks of involvement in community decisions. This is often easily accomplished by examining the corporate boards that people sit on. People who sit on more than one board are in a place to exercise influence over more than one firm and on more than oneissue facing the community. Related to this analysis of positions is an analysis of a specific community issue or conflict and the actors involved in them. Those involved in multiple issues are likely to bethe key influentials in the community. Usually, however, most localinfluentials in Baltimore and other big cities tend to “specialize,”involving themselves in issues of real estate, development, and finance.
Winning and Losing
Specific community issues can evoke a specific grouping of influentials, and that grouping may change over time. The power elite, which only surfaces for major issues (read that as big bucks), may only be peripherally involved in any given issue. In that regard, power structures can come and go, and often that confounds the judgment of winning or losing in community struggles. Here’s a case in point. A coalition of citizen’s groups stops the construction of a water treatment plant in their neighborhood promoted by the Army Corps of Engineers (ACE). The Corps withdraws after many months of public struggle; the coalition disperses. The ACE was outflanked and publically embarrassed and yielded. However, the victory did not create long-term citizen organizing.
This was not the kind of issue that shook the city. The conflict, even though it went on for almost a year, was resolved without most people even knowing it had occurred. The citizen’s groups were able to mobilize resources that the ACE could not because of the rules, regulations and laws it had to follow. Had the protagonist been a major developer in the city, the coalition would have been smashed. Was there a winner and loser? Yes and no. In this case, the ACE went down the road and is building the plant in another community. (This other community was dominated by a private firm which was able to get some concessions for themselves, though not for the community.) How do we score that? Did the first community win and the second neighborhood lose? Or is the idea of winning and losing not a good metaphor in talking about community power struggles.
Some activists cast the issue differently. From their perspective, there were two goals. One was the location of the water treatment plant; the other was the furtherance of democracy and participation. The two, of course, are not incompatible, though frequently the participants line up only on one side.
Here is a more direct case. A number of years ago Baltimore was declared a “nuclear free zone” by a vote of the City Council prompted by a small group of activists. Around the same time Hawaii County (the Big Island), held a referendum (a more directly democratic process) on their nuclear free zone status. A large number of people were involved in collecting signatures and getting out the vote. The vote lost, yet a large number voted for it. Which of these furthered the goal of participatory democracy?
For the political influentials and elites, there is a genuine fear, if not disdain, of democracy. The democratic process is seen as a threat to their power. Public citizens cannot be trusted. The control of elite affairs is delegated to top-level management, experts, and those foundations and faculties of universities who share their elitism or are at least willing to sell their services to the highest bidders.
Reasons for Study
The study of community power structures is of considerable importance to community organizers. By identifying the power players,we can often prevent secret deals and actual corruption. Secondly, by being able to identify these political elites, we may be able to neutralize or block their entry into the arena of a particular community decision. Finally, by being able to explain events and issues to the community that will result in a greater understanding of the democratic process.
Generally speaking, neither the political elites or most liberal community activists are focused on fundamental social changes. Most conflicts hone in narrowly to the issue of contention as opposed tothe underlying process of how we want community decisions to be made. To address that we need an image of a future society.