The challenge

After decades of decline in the timber industry and the collapse of the dotcoms that once powered Portland, Oregon suffers from one of the nation’s highest unemployment rates and some of the deepest cuts in education funding. A decade of ballot initiatives and anti-tax measures has further weakened services and infrastructure across the state. Marcy Westerling believes that these actions have produced yet another alarming effect: a shift of focus away from corporate or government irresponsibility to what she calls “straw-man” targets: gays and lesbians, feminism, and secular humanism. Conservative groups have stepped up their organizing efforts in the small towns and rural regions of the Northwest. These are areas that progressive organizations in Portland and other cities have traditionally ignored—at their peril—Westerling warns.


Seeds of commitment

Westerling grew up listening to her father’s stories of his adolescence in Nazi-occupied Holland. Particularly compelling were the tales of how his family hid Jews in their home and how the Nazis arrested Westerling’s grandfather for his role in the Dutch resistance movement. But even that level of bravery never quite satisfied young Marcy; she recalls that as a child she often asked her family, “Why didn’t you start the resistance earlier?” Heroic as her family’s stand was, she felt haunted by that question. As a young adult, she vowed never to hesitate in “fighting back.”

She kept that vow by learning direct-action approaches to grassroots organizing during the two years she spent working with the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Then, in 1979, Westerling herself became a victim: While visiting a small town in Italy, she was abducted and raped. When she pressed charges, she says, “an underground network of women quickly came to my aid. In the subsequent nine months, I learned principles of organizing under fire as these women stayed by my side at great personal risk to themselves.”

Her support system, Westerling says, not only addressed her immediate needs but also produced a “standing room only turnout” for the trial, which resulted in a landmark rape verdict for Italy. Returning to the United States, Westerling channeled her commitment to justice into building a small rural women’s

crisis network. With that project, she helped guide a statewide network of women’s anti-violence organizations and eventually turned her energies to the creation of Oregon’s Rural Organizing Project.



Accomplishments

Westerling has been a leader in advancing democratic, progressive values in the rural communities of the Northwest for over two decades. While there have always been courageous rural activists willing to speak out, ROP, founded in 1992, has created an organizational structure that channels action and gives voice to progressive rural citizens, establishing “human dignity groups” in over 50 rural communities and small towns in Oregon.

Drawing on the American tradition of the small town church or town hall, these groups are forums
that encourage people to engage in face-to-face political discussion. The network that has resulted has become an important organizing tool for ROP, producing the rural leadership that helped the organization realize its first victory: the defeat of Proposition 9, an anti-gay initiative advanced in 1992. ROP anticipated that the political targeting of homosexuals by religious conservatives “was a precursor
to more comprehensive attacks on communities of color, civil rights and democratic liberties,” Westerling says.

Not that gay civil rights are the only issue for ROP; the organization also has built strong bridges to Oregon’s farm worker unions, the state’s immigrant rights coalition, and other groups. ROP activists helped defeat English-only and anti-affirmative action initiatives. Most recently, ROP helped defeat a ballot measure in Columbia County, Oregon, which would have required parental permission for minors seeking to use all county services. The measure—which may return to the ballot in November, 2003—was seen by opponents as part of a nationwide strategy by religious conservatives against abortion choice, safe-sex education, and public health department efforts to prevent unwanted pregnancies. ROP organized that opposition by activating and building a base in all 36 of Oregon’s counties.


Her Leadership style

Westerling says her leadership style weaves together “the best from two models”: ACORN-style training for direct-action organizing and the feminist movement’s use of consciousness-raising as a political tool. “Both models affirmed my belief in grassroots power and confirmed that money is a less critical resource than informed, motivated people,” she says. ROP’s strategy gives priority to the smallest, most isolated communities, fostering a feeling of solidarity in rural Oregon. Westerling herself enjoys identifying individuals who not only hold values of inclusion and justice themselves but spread those beliefs. “I love being able to affirm and broaden their values while helping them to develop their skills, analysis, and commitment to become proud, progressive leaders,” she says.

ROP’s annual Rural Caucus and Strategy Session gathers delegations from each human dignity group and showcases the accomplishments of rural leaders. In addition, the caucus plans joint strategy and action for the coming year. Westerling says she organizes by “nagging and cheerleading.” Her aim, she explains, is to help new leaders integrate social justice work into their lives and to remain engaged through the peer support, skills-building and leadership development support that ROP provides. “People respond positively to the fact that there is almost nothing that I ask others to do that I don’t do myself,” Westerling says.



The future

Westerling anticipates funding difficulties, safety concerns, and the need to be personally flexible and strategically bold over the next few years. By using bold stands to compensate for slim budgets, Westerling predicts that ROP will continue to expand its presence in rural America. “I’m starting to see our work, and that of allied organizations, as an embryo of a modern resistance movement,” she says.


More about Marcy Westerling and ROP

“Going to a meeting with Marcy Westerling was radically different from the experience I had come to expect from progressive politics: being used as a body count, mailing list or foot soldier in a mass campaign. Marcy actually listened to my ideas and challenged me.”
— Mike Edera, chair of the West County Coalition for Human Dignity, Scappoose, Oregon

“Marcy has moved a constituency of people from ‘identity politics’—gay and lesbian issues—to a whole set of broader issues. When you talk to anyone at ROP about ‘human dignity’ issues they understand it in the broader framework of economic justice, health care, and progressive issues. Moving people to that place is a real achievement. ”
— Deb Ross, national field director for Public Campaign, a national a nonprofit organization dedicated to campaign finance reform

“In campaign work, we are often on the three-month plan. We hope we can get to the three-year plan. Marcy is on the 30-year plan.”
— Roey Thorpe, executive director of Basic Rights Oregon