COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...
COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...
COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...
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Chapter 7<br />
CONCLUSION<br />
While driving down 32 nd<br />
Street I noticed two young boys cross the street to pick<br />
up a basketball that bounced on the other side of the road. I stopped in the<br />
middle of the street to let them pass and one of the boys quickly ran across the<br />
street, picked up the ball, and waved for me to continue along. I slowly passed by<br />
and the boy smiled, leaned forward, and held up a peace sign.<br />
Through an ethnographic encounter with neighborhood activism, I have attempted<br />
to explore the conflicting ways that community groups define agendas for social change<br />
and have attempted to explain how their agendas for change shape claims, or resident’s<br />
rights, to the city. This work explores the conflicts in the ways community groups define<br />
agendas for social change and attempts to reveal how different perspectives on “change”<br />
and strategies for neighborhood improvement help shape residents’ claims to the city.<br />
This thesis attempts to demonstrate that, sometimes, efforts to facilitate social change are<br />
counterproductive in that they work to reproduce systemic causes of poverty. In other<br />
words, the work of community groups can sometimes be counterproductive in their<br />
efforts to help the poor.<br />
In this study, I focused on community groups and non-profit organizations and<br />
their agendas for change in the neighborhood of Oak Park. In particular, I examined 1)<br />
the manner in which each group hopes to achieve change and 2) the social, political, and<br />
economic transitions those proposed changes entail for the neighborhood. I attempted to<br />
explain the manner in which the agendas of community groups and non-profit<br />
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