Social Welfare assistant professor wants research to inform future community organizing, social movements

The Kansas City Metro area made a lasting impact on Tadeo Weiner Davis (he/him). He was born in La Paz, Bolivia but moved to Kansas City when he was 8 years old and grew up there.  

Weiner Davis was exposed to the communities and social movements in Kansas City and Chicago, and his effort toward a social work education led him on a path toward research that could inform the political work of marginalized groups in Kansas City. 

For Weiner Davis, urban politics and policy issues continue to be a focus for him as an assistant professor of social welfare at the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare. He dedicates his research to learning more about community organizing and social movements, urban politics, and the dynamics of race and class in urban settings.  

Weiner Davis, who received his Master of Social Work and Ph.D at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, wants people to see the power they possess when they come together.  

He recognizes that taking those steps isn’t easy.  

“Being able to turn individual folks into a collective actor is challenging because you’re dealing with folks who are dealing with house and job security. And they are dealing with family,” said Weiner Davis, who teaches Intro to Social Policy and Advocacy as well as Community and Advocacy Practice at the school. “On top of that, asking them to become political leaders is a big ask.”  

Weiner Davis said his research confirmed that to make both short and long-term change, it’s essential to engage in the policy and the electoral realm.  

His most recent project, titled Stand Up KC Community Archive, focuses on archiving labor history in the Kansas City Metro area and capturing the history of those organizations. This project was one of four selected for the 2023 KU Racial Equity Research, Scholarship & Creative Activity Awards.  

Not all community and labor organizing is the same. One of Weiner Davis’s goals in his research is to present what works, what doesn’t, and how. This involves critiquing strategies and approaches and cataloging the wins and losses.  

“I hope it captures the work that a lot of these organizations are doing because oftentimes they’ll do great work, but it’ll either go unnoticed or it’ll be written up in pretty summarily fashion without enough detail or analysis,” said Weiner Davis, who is a faculty affiliate for the Toni Johnson Center for Racial and Social Justice at KU. 

The findings of Weiner Davis’ continued research could help communities of people who need assistance. Weiner Davis wants to write a book building on his dissertation study, which he tentatively titled "Obama Yes, Displacement No": Challenging Benevolent Development on Chicago’s South Side. One of the significant takeaways Weiner Davis got from that research was the quality of neighborhood protections and benefits a community receives when change is made through the local government level instead of through private development agreements.  

Weiner Davis wants to use the successes and failures of previous movements to help inform future movements. His current research focuses on how marginalized groups respond to urban development processes that increase the risk of residential displacement, neighborhood gentrification, and the privatization of public goods.  

He wants his community archives to function as a tool for community groups that are often misrepresented in mainstream culture, and for the archives to help them with self-determination.  

An important part of this is showing people just how much organization it takes to make changes. For issues that are more intractable like affordable housing, Weiner Davis said there is a need to organize not at the neighborhood level, but at the city level and beyond.  

While this work is challenging, Weiner Davis still sees the reward.  

“I think the beauty of organizing is that it should be informed by what the people themselves want,” Weiner Davis said.