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The serious concerns this society faces as it moves through the 1990s are etched deeply into the daily lives of Americans. The problems in energy, health care, poverty, minority opportunity, environmental pollution, taxes, corporate lawlessness and citizen powerlessness -- all bear witness to the vast discrepancies between the founding pioneers' dream and today's reality.
Though complex and often frustrating, these fundamental issues are being joined by active citizens across the country who recognize that implicit in citizenship is the duty to work toward making the country's performance consonant with its promise. Even now, as the difficulties seem more intractable than ever before, Americans conscious of their responsibility are working for solutions.
Their work covers many issues and a diversity of strategies and styles. But they are all working to make a variety of institutions accountable to civic needs.
They are working for social change.
Social change work requires people of diverse talents and interests. In every location, on every issue energetic people are needed -- to research, advocate, litigate and fundraise; to manage organizations efficiently; to mobilize people; and to publicize the issues by writing and speaking.
Tactics among these groups can vary widely. But few organizaitons rely exclusively on any one tactic -- most find that the lines blur. Still, four broad strands can be identified: educating the public, empowering citizens, changing institutional behavior and developing alternative institutions.
The belief that people must first understand a problem in order to resolve it motivates groups concerned with educating the public. Their methods include producing reports and newsletters, organizing training programs and conferences and utilizing innovative theater and film productions.
Groups working at empowering citizens seek to organize people into membership organizations around some common interest -- a geographical unit such as a community or workplace or common concerns such as energy or taxes -- and to teach the members how to build and maintain an organization that can take direct action. Members lobby, hold rallies, meet with officials and confront and seek to influence decisionmakers in other ways. Citizen empowerment groups also provide technical assistance to other groups working for social change -- teaching and consulting on administration, public relations, fundraising and other organizational needs.
Those interested in changing institutional behavior opperate in a different area. Some groups choose to work through the judicial system, using the courts to challenge government or corporate conduct. Others use the legislative system: they lobby federal, state and local lawmakers for progressive legislation. Consumer advocacy groups frequently publicize patterns of consumer complaints to force business or government to develop remedies. Other organizations provide social or legal assistance to low-income persons often cut off from these vital services.
A final approach of groups working for social change is developing alternative institutions. These include consumer cooperatives -- businesses owned and democratically operated by consumers that can make the marketplace both more competitive and more responsive to people's needs.
Salaries vary -- not nearly enough to make you well-to-do but comfortable enough to live on.
Usually there is a high degree of cooperation and informality in the offices of organizations working for social change.
Weekly hours on the job tend to be slightly longer than the traditional 40 -- but then most people who enjoy and believe in their work, whatever it is, don't stop at eight hours a day. Fresh into the job, many newcomers to citizen work will often lose track of the clock -- letting a vacation or a weekend go by, a novel go unread, a friend go one more week without a letter or a phone call. However, many learn to pace themselves, recognizing that their work -- for all the urgency they feel -- is an enduring commitment best integrated with their other interests.
The opportunities for learning and for acquiring new skills are vast. A rule of thumb is that the smaller the staff -- and many social change groups are fairly small -- the less specialized job definitions will be, since each individual will need to cover a range of functions.
A fundraiser, for example, may also be expected to handle press and public relations. And many organizaitons, regardless of size, are very open to individuals suggestions for new projects.
If the organization decides to issue a leaflet and there isn't a graphics person on staff, someone is going to have to learn computer graphics or layout and pasteup. If the organization decides to take on a timely new issue area, someone's going to have to be well informed in that area. In fact, some people who may not be committed to social change as a vocation spend several "training" years in it to acquire skills they might wait much longer to develop in more traditional jobs.
Yet no matter what their motivations or level of commitment, those who sample social change work find -- often to their surprise -- that they can acquire valuable insights that continue to influence their perspectives and actions over the rest of their lives. In fact, many who plan to make a commitment of a few years like the Peace Corps before getting on with they careers never leave. They find that social change provides an opportunity, ultimately, to express one's values, help others and influence the shape of some corner of the world -- rare attributes for any career.
When students, about to plunge into the job market, go to their college placement offices to gather information on social change opportunities, they are often disappointed: few placement offices have available information about career options that fit the bill. Instead, such offices inundate job-seeking students with recruitment materials from corporate and government employers.
College career offices, by definition, have a responsibility to enrich a student's sense of career alternatives. However, the near absence of information about careers in social change leaves many students in the dark about these opportunities. Some progressive career offices have sought to remedy the career information imbalance by holding Alternative Career Fairs, establishing public interest speakers' series and forums, hiring public interest career counselors, surveying area social change organizations for news of jobs and internship openings and creating public interest internships and fellowships to help students on financial aid do initial work with social change organizations.
Another way to provide balance would be for career offices to ask corporations to contribute to a placement fund to absorb the traveling expenses of public interest recruiters who could not otherwise afford to visit campuses. (When this was proposed by Ralph Nader before the Eastern College Personnel Officers convention in 1978, one corporate recruiter came up and volunteered to contribute to such a travel fund on behalf of his company.) Counselors should also make students aware of the wide variety of social change careers and the broad span of talents such work can utilize.
The problem is not only in college placement offices, however. The independent career counseling publications currently available offer little guidance to the student seeking social change work. Books depicting employment possibilities in industries such as banking or communications are expansive on traditional business opportunities. There's no mention in the banking category, however, of the alternatives open to someone interested in helping blighted urban neighborhoods overcome bank redlining, nor any discussion in the communications chapter of opportunities for someone interested in increasing the average citizen's access to the airwaves.
The career literature that lists generic jobs works similarly -- it has no place for scientists who want to work for a solar future or writers who would edit newsletters for community organizations. To college students whose vocabulary of job possibilities is frequently acquired at the college placement office and through these guides, such alternatives remain, consequently, invisible.
This book helps bring those career opportunities to the fore. By interviewing activists, providing facts on over 1000 organizations now engaged in this work, and listing resources for further reference, we wish to furnish students with information they need to find social change careers on their own.
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