ABSTRACT
The Citizens’ Action Program (CAP), an organization founded with the intention of building cross-cutting alliances between various community and interest groups across Chicago, was the last organizing project started by Saul Alinsky before his death in 1972. The CAP, like many groups formed on the original model of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), built alliances through thick organizing networks used to develop consensus on broad-based issues, which would unite diverse constituencies. Originally formed as the Campaign Against Pollution, the group fought and won in its early struggles for better air quality and better regulation. Becoming a city-wide organization with a focus on local community interests, the group restructured into the CAP, with the intention of mitigating the relative powerlessness of small, local organizations based primarily on face-to-face ties; such an organization would hold the promise of thick community networks tied to others and congealed into a larger organization more likely to offer substantial influence in city politics. However, the metropolitan structure of CAP was as much a liability as an asset, as it struggled not only to maintain the commitment of member groups, but also to retain individual members. Moreover, due to their multi-issue focus, member groups each focused on a single instrumental goal such as service provision or defeating a specific policy and often lost interest when CAP sought redress on larger issues such as structural inequality. The organization became increasingly detached from its constituents, a problem further exacerbated by its tendency to adopt forms of fundraising, which would not mobilize its membership through involvement in grassroots revenue-generating activities. CAP also faced another series of problems; several at the bottom and others at the top. First, potential member organizations often refused to join CAP out of fear that their group would be faced with pressures to give up autonomy, especially given the fact that some of the white working-class member organizations distrusted the often largely black and Hispanic members who made up other CAP organizations. At the top of the organization, problems stemmed from CAP’s relationship to the IAF. Although the IAF helped the organization to form, it did not entirely honor the autonomy of CAP, nor was it perceived to recognize the sorts of local issues CAP faced; this inspired resentment among the locally-developed leadership of CAP toward the IAF’s professional staff. By 1975, the organization was in disarray. It disbanded shortly after (Reitzes and Reitzes, 1987: 83–9).
