How does an unelected private person get recognized by city administrators as a spokesperson for a “community”? Why do dramatic confrontations between “organizers” and officials end in a genial distribution of government funds?
Tom Wolfe follows these mechanisms from organizing strategy to disbursement in his 1970 essay “Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers,” a satire of San Francisco’s antipoverty bureaucracy and its relations with organizations like Mission Rebels.
Wolfe distinguishes between a confrontation, which intimidates individual civil servants, and a demonstration, like the 1963 March on Washington, which challenges “power” in the abstract but gives administrators little guidance on who to deal with.
In a mau-mau confrontation, the organizer’s ability to harangue and humiliate an official qualifies him to receive a grant. The relationship is both antagonistic and symbiotic, since the organizer needs the administrator’s funds, and the administrator needs someone to recognize as the community’s representative.
Officials already have procedures for petitions and contingency plans for armed assaults. The confrontation must make ordinary business impossible while making forcible removal look like Bull Connor turning fire hoses and police dogs on children.
Funding a community program run by the organizer offers officials a way out—and strengthens their counterparty’s standing in the next negotiation. Administrators recognize him because he can bring followers to City Hall, while the jobs they fund keep those followers attached to his organization and available for the next visit.