Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
Some of you who know me might know I spent the last three years serving on the Iowa City Housing and Community Development Commission (HCDC). And I’ve been the chair of HCDC since July 2021. As I finish up my 3-year term, I wanted to write a bit about all that and about housing in Iowa City (and elsewhere!).
The short version: HCDC does great work on community problems, but it’s not built for solutions to deep or structural problems.
I’ve posted a few times on Jane McAlevey’s book No Shortcuts. Readers looking to catch up can read the most important of those posts here and here. But I find one other big lesson that McAlevey gives to us. That concerns the limit of mobilizing as a method and basis for an org.
Let’s explore that a bit.
I moved to Iowa City in 2007, and I got involved in Iowa City activist communities almost right away. That means I’ve had almost 15 years to see the good and the bad. I also find myself much closer to 40 years old than to 30. It’s left me in a position where I want to reflect on some of those experiences.
I wrote some time ago about Iowa City politics. And even there, I made a few remarks on local non-electoral activism. But I’d like to revisit that and say more.
I won’t review everything, and I’m not going to dig too deeply into details. At least not in this post. And I want to focus more on general lessons than on specific orgs. In short, I’m going to look at the big picture. What works well and what doesn’t? What strengths and weaknesses stand out in Iowa City activist communities?
I wrote my last update on the COVID-19 data near the height of the delta variant phase of the pandemic in late August. At the time, case numbers were still rising. Since then, they continued rising until September 2. And then they started an extended decline. Let’s revisit the topic of COVID-19 and see where we’re headed.
Readers looking for my full history of posts on the topic can find links here: March 2020, August 2020, January 2021, August 2021.
I live in Iowa City. Among other things, it’s (by far) the most liberal part of a purple state. Look, Iowa’s a lot more red than it used to be. But I grew up in Indiana. We’re still doing better here in Iowa than over there. And we’re doing better in Iowa City than anywhere else in Iowa.
Living in a liberal oasis of sorts affects our local politics. For one, the GOP is basically a non-entity. All serious politics at the city level takes place within a political space we might describe as ‘to the left of Joe Manchin.’ Within that broad space, we have all flavors of Democratic, leftist, independent, and even libertarian factions.
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