4
street roots
May 13,2011
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P H O T O B Y K E N H A W K IN S
Marcy Westerling, the founder of Rural Organizing Project, in her garden in Southeast Portland.
M arcy
Westerling,
founder o f R u ra l
Organizing
Project, reflects
on the flow o f
com m unity
organizing in
Oregon, as her
own life takes a
new direction
BY JOANNE ZUHL
STAFF W R IT E R
A fter 30 years, Marcy Westerling
/ \ recently returned to Saul Aliqsky’s
X
Rules for Radicals,” the famous and
controversial book on community organizing
used by. both the Left and the Right. In
those years between, however, the book and
its principles never gathered dust under
Westerling’s stewardship.
After years with ACORN, and later
creating a rural women’s crisis network,
Westerling founded the Rural Organizing
Project, or ROP, taking her brand of
grassroots organizing and turning it into a
galvanizing force among pro-democracy
groups operating in small towns across
Oregon. ROP created a structure through
which groups from all background^ could
organize around common causes. It created
human dignity groups in 50 ru ra l.
communities throughout the state that
brought divergent perspectives and agendas
into political discussion.
Its first target was 1992’s Proposition 9,
the anti-gay ballot measure put forward by
the well-heeled conservative group Oregon
Citizens Alliance, which claimed its roots in
rural, right-wing Oregon. ROP organized the
opposition, and the measure was defeated.
In the nearly 20 years since, ROP has
addressed farm workers’ rights, immigration
issues and economic justice, organizing
strategic caucuses to move forward.
In 2009, Westerling accepted a fellowship
with the Open Society Institute to take the
tactics of community “mapping” nationwide;
to create a toolkit in essence that people
could adapt for their community. She was •
just getting started on the work when in the
spring of 2010 she was diagnosed with
Stage IV ovarian cancer. She has had to
scale back her work with the Open Society
institute, and she and her husband Mike
moved from their beloved farm in
Scappoose to Southeast Portland to be
closer to her health care. She continues
working on the mapping project and with
ROP, working to keep the dialogue going
from all sources. She remains committed to
bridging false, cultural divides, as she has
called them, and staying healthy, even
though she is quite frank about the odds.
She embodies the progressive movement in;
fighting, the right-wing takeover of rural
America, and she can handle just about
anything someone wants to dish out — just ,
don’t call her a liberal.
M arcy Westerling: Liberal has never
been a word I’ve been comfortable with.
Joanne Zuhl: Why not?
M.W.: I’m more interested in the content
of the belief system. We believe in the
words of every human being. We Relieve
that every zip code no matter where it’s
located is important We believe that every
issue is connected. And we believe that ho
rights supersede the rights of others. It’s a
little more nuanced and value-based, but
we’ve been able to have a lot of members
who maybe are riot comfortable with the
next issue we will approach or the last issue
we did approach. Our umbrella has to be big
enough.
J.Z.: Most people think of Oregon in general
as being fairly progressive, and certainly
Portlanders feel confident in their liberal
identity. You’ve worked all over the state.
What’s your take on that?
M.W.: Well, I feel a little like a refugee at
the moment I moved entirely as my best
strategy for staying alive, so it wasn’t really
a choice.
But I’ve always felt like my organizing is
about community and place based,,whether
it’s zip code by zip code or hamlet by
hamlet
•
I do come home and say, “you know,
honey, this is not that different from
Scappoose.” Everrthough the metropolitan
area in Oregon has that kind of vote you can
count on, the numbers that swing elections
to a safety place, there are still a whole lot
of people who live here who are not part of
that set. Celebrate diversity — that’s never
been a bumper sticker that’s worked for me.
I don’t think you celebrate diversity, you
celebrate whatever you want in the privacy
of your own home, but democracy is about,
“it’s not your fucking business.” Tolerance is
the first step, and people may or may not
get to a place of celebration, but that
actually doesn’t matter in a civil society, and
in fact, if you ask people to celebrate, it can
get really superficial. No, celebrate on your
own time, when you’re here, everyone’s
equal.
J.Z.: Are your amplifying isolation when
you celebrate diversity?
M.W.: I think it’s very false. Especially
when those same people aren’t willing to
celebrate the diversity of thought within a
neighborhood, which hopefully means that
there’s a whole lot of people who vote
totally in opposition to the Way you think,
and are you really celebrating that diversity?
So I just think it’s so liberal... (laughter!
J.Z.: I read where you said that political-
battles in small towns have a tenor all their
own. Can you explain that?
M.W.: I think the value of organizing jn a
smaller town community is you’re forced to
look at organizing versus being an activist
And to me I would define being an activist
as really just being willing to agitate around
a cause. Really agitate around the
restrictions of people’s minds. We need
activism, we need agitation, but in a small -
town, if you want to stay there, as opposed
to moving on, you have to figure out what’s L
going to keep you in a conversation. I just
feel like with Alinsky, he’s got a really long
See TRUE BLUE, page 5