“Teamwork to Make the Dream Work”

Abstract

By tracing coalition building among grassroots community organizations, chapter 4 identifies the high level of mistrust among the lead agencies, the intermediary, and grassroots groups unaffiliated with the New Communities Program. Still, this chapter explains, these organizations collaborated and shared ideas, resources, and information. Goal-focused collaborative relationships—what the author terms networks of opportunity—provided benefits to both local residents and community organizations, but rather than working toward building trust, grassroots groups in these networks used their collective skepticism of the New Communities Program, the lead agencies, local politicians, and other external organizations as a tool to ensure a more careful evaluation of what they could accomplish. They thus assessed the information they shared with a more critical eye toward project outcomes. As this chapter explains, such an approach to networking, while potentially difficult and time-consuming, allows organizations to connect their local causes to broader national issues and is particularly useful in networks that contain unequal power relations. Within Greater Englewood and Little Village, two unique approaches emerged—partnering with local agencies and partnering with a broad network.