COMMUNITY ACTIVISM IN OAK PARK: COMPETING AGENDAS ...

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