Tom Gaudette
Encyclopedia
Thomas A. "Tom" Gaudette (1923–1998) was a community organizer
who worked in the Austin
neighborhood of Chicago. Originally a businessman, Gaudette became interested in neighborhood organizing through his Catholic Church activism. Gaudette helped form a neighborhood group, along the lines of those organized by Saul Alinsky
, on the far west side of Chicago called Organization for a Better Austin. OBA was concerned with poor schools and neighborhood decline.
He also founded the Mid-America Institute for Community Organizations, and trained notable organizers like Shel Trapp
and Gale Cincotta
.
. His parents were Roman Catholic and his father a member of a railroad union, two critical influences on Tom Gaudette's later development as a community organizer. Gaudette served with distinction in the United States Army Air Corps
in World War II, surviving the famous raid on Ploesti, Romania, and by war's end earning the Distinguished Flying Cross
, the Air Medal
, and a Presidential Unit Citation. After the war, he graduated in 1949 from Boston College
.
By the 1950s Tom Gaudette and his wife Kay had settled in Chicago, where he worked as a vice-president for the Admiral Corporation. Here, he was introduced to community organizing, for his new home had become a center of community organizing because of the work of Saul Alinsky
and the Roman Catholic Church.
Experienced in labor organizing and trained in sociology
, Saul Alinsky
(1909–1972) inspired the community organizing movement in the United States. Alinsky-style community organizing
is dedicated to creating grass-roots organizations led by local people with the end of combating government bureaucracies or businesses or other powers unresponsive to local concerns. The organizer, in the classic Alinsky sense, does not assume leadership of community organizations. Instead, he or she may inspire local communities to action, but the organizer's real job is to identify leaders who can direct the community organizations, so that communities themselves can truly determine their own direction. The Alinsky maxim "Never do for the people what they can do for themselves" aptly expresses this approach to community organizing. Identified with neither socialist thought nor the New Left of the 1960s, community organizing is thus a populist movement possessed of a profound faith in the democratic abilities of local communities to control their destiny. A major correlative belief is that, when local communities themselves address their problems, social justice and true democracy are realized.
In 1939, Alinsky successfully organized the Back of the Yards neighborhood in the slums of the stockyards
area of Chicago. His Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council successfully fought for major civic improvements and stands as a landmark success in the history of Alinsky's organizing. It still exists today. An important reason for the success of Alinsky and the Back of the Yards Council was the strong support of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Chicago, with its advocacy of social activism. Auxiliary Bishop Bernard Sheil championed Alinsky's work in the Back of the Yards, and such other notable Chicago Roman Catholic Church leaders as Cardinal Samuel Stritch and Monsignor John Egan would continue to provide him with invaluable moral and financial support. In short, Alinsky's methods of community organizing would be rooted in socially active churches, most notably Roman Catholic.
It was in this context that Tom Gaudette entered community organizing in Chicago. Active in their Roman Catholic parish, Tom and Kay Gaudette's involvement in the Christian Family Movement
led to their joining the Chatham
-Avalon Park
Community Council in 1957. Tom Gaudette emerged as a leader of this organization, serving as its president and spokesman in fights over such issues as zoning restrictions and controls on taverns in Chatham-Avalon Park. Another key issue, dominant in the Chicago of the 1950s and 1960s, was the African-American integration of white, often ethnic, neighborhoods, with subsequent white flight to the suburbs. Through his work in these areas, Gaudette met Father Egan, who, as head of the Chicago Archdiocesan Conservation Council concerned with integration, was beginning his rise in the ranks of Roman Catholic social activism. Impressed with Guadette's character and leadership abilities, Egan believed him the right person to organize an area that the monsignor had targeted for such work: Chicago's West Town
, a Polish-American community. Saul Alinsky had refused Egan's earlier request to organize the area, citing the lack of money and an organizer to carry out the work. Egan responded by raising money for the project from the archdiocese and sending Gaudette to Alinsky to interview for the position of organizer for West Town. After an interview memorable for the profane give and take between the two, Alinsky hired Gaudette in 1961, leading to an eleven year association between the men. Alinsky schooled Gaudette in community organizing, making him one of the handful of organizers whom Alinsky personally trained.
Gaudette went to work for Alinsky on Chicago's west side, organizing the Northwest Community Organization (NCO), one of the hallmark Alinsky community organizations in Chicago. NCO, under Gaudette's tutelage, fought the extensive demolition of housing planned for the area because of urban renewal.
After working with NCO, Gaudette, at the request of Father Egan and other clergy, turned his attention to South Austin in south Chicago. His work here led to the Organization for a Better Austin (OBA), notable for the fact that it brought together African-Americans and whites in an area tormented by racial strife. OBA had its most effective results in the improvement of the neighborhood school system.
Despite efforts by Alinsky to have him undertake organizing efforts in other cities, Gaudette refused to do so. Chicago would remain his base of operations, even after Tom Gaudette founded the Mid-America Institute for Community Development in 1972, the same year that Alinsky died. Gaudette used the Institute (operated out of his Chicago home) for his work throughout the country and even Asia as an independent trainer and teacher of community organizers. Monsignor Egan credited Tom Gaudette with inspiring more community organizers than any other person, many of whom originally worked with him. These included Gail Cincotta, who was a member of OBA, and later would became one of the more successful organizers in the United States. She, along with Shel Trapp, founded the National Training and Information Center and the National People's Action. Cincotta's most remarkable accomplishment was her successful campaign for the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act
, which the United States Congress
passed in 1976. The Act banned the banking practice of "redlining
" poor neighborhoods. Another one of Gaudette's more important successes has been his work with John Baumann, S.J., and the Pacific Institute for Community Organization
, of Oakland, which stands as one of the more active community organizing groups in the United States today. Gaudette was also responsible for community organizations in Seattle, Kansas City
, and Baltimore
, among other places.
On his death in 1998, Tom Gaudette left a considerable legacy to the work of community organizing, attested to by the persons he trained, as well as by his philosophy of organizing summarized in this eloquent quotation:
Community organizing
Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest. A core goal of community organizing is to generate durable power for an organization representing the community, allowing it to influence...
who worked in the Austin
Austin, Chicago
Austin, located on the West Side of Chicago, Illinois, is the largest of the city's 77 officially defined community areas, followed by Lake View. Its eastern boundary is the Belt Railway located just east of Cicero Avenue. Its northernmost border is the Milwaukee District/West Line...
neighborhood of Chicago. Originally a businessman, Gaudette became interested in neighborhood organizing through his Catholic Church activism. Gaudette helped form a neighborhood group, along the lines of those organized by Saul Alinsky
Saul Alinsky
Saul David Alinsky was a Jewish American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, and has been compared in Playboy magazine to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left." He is often noted...
, on the far west side of Chicago called Organization for a Better Austin. OBA was concerned with poor schools and neighborhood decline.
He also founded the Mid-America Institute for Community Organizations, and trained notable organizers like Shel Trapp
Shel Trapp
Shel Trapp was a community organizer based in Chicago, co-founder of National People's Action , and author of several books and pamphlets on community organizing. Trapp and Cincotta are widely credited with writing the Community Reinvestment Act...
and Gale Cincotta
Gale Cincotta
Gale Cincotta , a community activist from the Austin neighborhood of Chicago, led the national fight for the US federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and the Community Reinvestment Act...
.
Biography
Thomas A. Gaudette was born in 1923, in Medford, MassachusettsMedford, Massachusetts
Medford is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, in the United States, on the Mystic River, five miles northwest of downtown Boston. In the 2010 U.S. Census, Medford's population was 56,173...
. His parents were Roman Catholic and his father a member of a railroad union, two critical influences on Tom Gaudette's later development as a community organizer. Gaudette served with distinction in the United States Army Air Corps
United States Army Air Corps
The United States Army Air Corps was a forerunner of the United States Air Force. Renamed from the Air Service on 2 July 1926, it was part of the United States Army and the predecessor of the United States Army Air Forces , established in 1941...
in World War II, surviving the famous raid on Ploesti, Romania, and by war's end earning the Distinguished Flying Cross
Distinguished Flying Cross (United States)
The Distinguished Flying Cross is a medal awarded to any officer or enlisted member of the United States armed forces who distinguishes himself or herself in support of operations by "heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight, subsequent to November 11, 1918." The...
, the Air Medal
Air Medal
The Air Medal is a military decoration of the United States. The award was created in 1942, and is awarded for meritorious achievement while participating in aerial flight.-Criteria:...
, and a Presidential Unit Citation. After the war, he graduated in 1949 from Boston College
Boston College
Boston College is a private Jesuit research university located in the village of Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts, USA. The main campus is bisected by the border between the cities of Boston and Newton. It has 9,200 full-time undergraduates and 4,000 graduate students. Its name reflects its early...
.
By the 1950s Tom Gaudette and his wife Kay had settled in Chicago, where he worked as a vice-president for the Admiral Corporation. Here, he was introduced to community organizing, for his new home had become a center of community organizing because of the work of Saul Alinsky
Saul Alinsky
Saul David Alinsky was a Jewish American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, and has been compared in Playboy magazine to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left." He is often noted...
and the Roman Catholic Church.
Experienced in labor organizing and trained in sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, Saul Alinsky
Saul Alinsky
Saul David Alinsky was a Jewish American community organizer and writer. He is generally considered to be the founder of modern community organizing, and has been compared in Playboy magazine to Thomas Paine as being "one of the great American leaders of the nonsocialist left." He is often noted...
(1909–1972) inspired the community organizing movement in the United States. Alinsky-style community organizing
Community organizing
Community organizing is a process where people who live in proximity to each other come together into an organization that acts in their shared self-interest. A core goal of community organizing is to generate durable power for an organization representing the community, allowing it to influence...
is dedicated to creating grass-roots organizations led by local people with the end of combating government bureaucracies or businesses or other powers unresponsive to local concerns. The organizer, in the classic Alinsky sense, does not assume leadership of community organizations. Instead, he or she may inspire local communities to action, but the organizer's real job is to identify leaders who can direct the community organizations, so that communities themselves can truly determine their own direction. The Alinsky maxim "Never do for the people what they can do for themselves" aptly expresses this approach to community organizing. Identified with neither socialist thought nor the New Left of the 1960s, community organizing is thus a populist movement possessed of a profound faith in the democratic abilities of local communities to control their destiny. A major correlative belief is that, when local communities themselves address their problems, social justice and true democracy are realized.
In 1939, Alinsky successfully organized the Back of the Yards neighborhood in the slums of the stockyards
Feedlot
A feedlot or feedyard is a type of animal feeding operation which is used in factory farming for finishing livestock, notably beef cattle, but also swine, horses, sheep, turkeys, chickens or ducks, prior to slaughter. Large beef feedlots are called Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations . They...
area of Chicago. His Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council successfully fought for major civic improvements and stands as a landmark success in the history of Alinsky's organizing. It still exists today. An important reason for the success of Alinsky and the Back of the Yards Council was the strong support of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Chicago, with its advocacy of social activism. Auxiliary Bishop Bernard Sheil championed Alinsky's work in the Back of the Yards, and such other notable Chicago Roman Catholic Church leaders as Cardinal Samuel Stritch and Monsignor John Egan would continue to provide him with invaluable moral and financial support. In short, Alinsky's methods of community organizing would be rooted in socially active churches, most notably Roman Catholic.
It was in this context that Tom Gaudette entered community organizing in Chicago. Active in their Roman Catholic parish, Tom and Kay Gaudette's involvement in the Christian Family Movement
Christian Family Movement
The Christian Family Movement is a national movement of parish small groups of families that meet in one another’s homes to reinforce Christian values and actively encourage other fellow Christian parents through active involvement with others...
led to their joining the Chatham
Chatham, Chicago
Chatham, located on the south side, is one of the 77 official community areas of South Side of the city of Chicago, Illinois. It includes the neighborhoods of Chatham and West Chesterfield...
-Avalon Park
Avalon Park, Chicago
Avalon Park, located on the south side of the U.S. city of Chicago, Illinois, is one of the city's 77 official community areas and a park. Boundaries are 76th St. to the north, South Chicago Ave. to the east and 87th St. to the south...
Community Council in 1957. Tom Gaudette emerged as a leader of this organization, serving as its president and spokesman in fights over such issues as zoning restrictions and controls on taverns in Chatham-Avalon Park. Another key issue, dominant in the Chicago of the 1950s and 1960s, was the African-American integration of white, often ethnic, neighborhoods, with subsequent white flight to the suburbs. Through his work in these areas, Gaudette met Father Egan, who, as head of the Chicago Archdiocesan Conservation Council concerned with integration, was beginning his rise in the ranks of Roman Catholic social activism. Impressed with Guadette's character and leadership abilities, Egan believed him the right person to organize an area that the monsignor had targeted for such work: Chicago's West Town
West Town, Chicago
West Town, located in Chicago, Illinois, northwest of the Loop, is one of 77 officially designated Chicago community areas. Its name may refer to Western Avenue, which was the city's western boundary at the time of West Town's settlement, but more likely was a convenient abstraction by the creators...
, a Polish-American community. Saul Alinsky had refused Egan's earlier request to organize the area, citing the lack of money and an organizer to carry out the work. Egan responded by raising money for the project from the archdiocese and sending Gaudette to Alinsky to interview for the position of organizer for West Town. After an interview memorable for the profane give and take between the two, Alinsky hired Gaudette in 1961, leading to an eleven year association between the men. Alinsky schooled Gaudette in community organizing, making him one of the handful of organizers whom Alinsky personally trained.
Gaudette went to work for Alinsky on Chicago's west side, organizing the Northwest Community Organization (NCO), one of the hallmark Alinsky community organizations in Chicago. NCO, under Gaudette's tutelage, fought the extensive demolition of housing planned for the area because of urban renewal.
After working with NCO, Gaudette, at the request of Father Egan and other clergy, turned his attention to South Austin in south Chicago. His work here led to the Organization for a Better Austin (OBA), notable for the fact that it brought together African-Americans and whites in an area tormented by racial strife. OBA had its most effective results in the improvement of the neighborhood school system.
Despite efforts by Alinsky to have him undertake organizing efforts in other cities, Gaudette refused to do so. Chicago would remain his base of operations, even after Tom Gaudette founded the Mid-America Institute for Community Development in 1972, the same year that Alinsky died. Gaudette used the Institute (operated out of his Chicago home) for his work throughout the country and even Asia as an independent trainer and teacher of community organizers. Monsignor Egan credited Tom Gaudette with inspiring more community organizers than any other person, many of whom originally worked with him. These included Gail Cincotta, who was a member of OBA, and later would became one of the more successful organizers in the United States. She, along with Shel Trapp, founded the National Training and Information Center and the National People's Action. Cincotta's most remarkable accomplishment was her successful campaign for the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act
Community Reinvestment Act
The Community Reinvestment Act is a United States federal law designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to help meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods...
, which the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....
passed in 1976. The Act banned the banking practice of "redlining
Redlining
Redlining is the practice of denying, or increasing the cost of services such as banking, insurance, access to jobs, access to health care, or even supermarkets to residents in certain, often racially determined, areas. The term "redlining" was coined in the late 1960s by John McKnight, a...
" poor neighborhoods. Another one of Gaudette's more important successes has been his work with John Baumann, S.J., and the Pacific Institute for Community Organization
PICO National Network
PICO National Network provides training and consultation and develops national strategy for its affiliated congregation-based community organizations. As of 2007 PICO had 53 local and regional affiliates, representing 150 cities in 17 states, with 1000 member institutions claiming to represent a...
, of Oakland, which stands as one of the more active community organizing groups in the United States today. Gaudette was also responsible for community organizations in Seattle, Kansas City
Kansas City, Missouri
Kansas City, Missouri is the largest city in the U.S. state of Missouri and is the anchor city of the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, the second largest metropolitan area in Missouri. It encompasses in parts of Jackson, Clay, Cass, and Platte counties...
, and Baltimore
Baltimore
Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...
, among other places.
On his death in 1998, Tom Gaudette left a considerable legacy to the work of community organizing, attested to by the persons he trained, as well as by his philosophy of organizing summarized in this eloquent quotation: