"Will Obama Inspire a New Generation of Organizers?"

[Discussion list for COMM-ORG]

From: "Peter Dreier" <dreier at oxy.edu>


For those who might be interested....My article, "Will Obama Inspire a 
New Generation of Organizers?" appears on the Dissent magazine website 
(http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1215), and was posted on 
both the Huffington Post website 
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/obamas-new-generation-of_b_110321.html) 
and CommonDreams website 
(http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/01/10006)
Will Obama Inspire a New Generation of Organizers?
By Peter Dreier

Americans are used to voting for presidential candidates with 
backgrounds as lawyers, military officers, farmers, businessmen, and 
career politicians, but this is the first time we've been asked to vote 
for someone who has been a community organizer. Of course, Barack Obama 
has also been a lawyer, a law professor, and an elected official, but 
throughout this campaign he has frequently referred to the three years 
he spent as a community organizer in Chicago in the mid-1980s as “the 
best education I ever had.”

This experience has influenced his presidential campaign. It may also 
tell us something about how, if elected, he'll govern. But, perhaps most 
important, there has not been a candidate since Bobby Kennedy and Eugene 
McCarthy who has inspired so many young people to become involved in 
public service and grassroots activism.

Through his constant references to his own organizing experience, and 
his persistent praise for organizers at every campaign stop, Obama is 
helping recruit a new wave of idealistic young Americans who want to 
bring about change. According to surveys and exit polls, interest in 
politics and voter turnout among the millennial generation (18-29) has 
increased dramatically this year. But Obama isn’t just catalyzing young 
people to vote or volunteer for his campaign. Professors report that a 
growing number of college students are taking courses in community 
organizing and social activism. According to community organizing 
groups, unions and environmental groups, the number of young people 
seeking jobs as organizers has spiked in the past year in the wake of 
Obama's candidacy.

Whether or not he wins the race for the White House, Obama, through his 
own example, has already dramatically increased the visibility of 
grassroots organizing as a career path, as well as a way to give 
ordinary people a sense of their own collective power to improve their 
lives and bring about social change.

Obama's Organizing Experience

In 1985, at age 23, Obama was hired by the Developing Communities 
Project, a coalition of churches on Chicago's South Side, to help 
empower residents to win improved playgrounds, after-school programs, 
job training, housing, and other concerns affecting a neighborhood hurt 
by large-scale layoffs from the nearby steel mills and neglect by banks, 
retail stores, and the local government. He knocked on doors and talked 
to people in their kitchens, living rooms, and churches about the 
problems they faced and why they needed to get involved to change things.

As an organizer, Obama learned the skills of motivating and mobilizing 
people who had little faith in their ability to make politicians, 
corporations, and other powerful institutions accountable. Obama taught 
low-income people how to analyze power relations, gain confidence in 
their own leadership abilities, and work together.

For example, he organized tenants in the troubled Altgelt Gardens public 
housing project to push the city to remove dangerous asbestos in their 
apartments, a campaign that he acknowledges resulted in only a partial 
victory. After Obama helped organize a large mass meeting of angry 
tenants, the city government started to test and seal asbestos in some 
apartments, but ran out of money to complete the task.

Obama often refers to the valuable lessons he learned working "in the 
streets" of Chicago. "I've won some good fights and I've also lost some 
fights," he said in a speech during the primary season, "because good 
intentions are not enough, when not fortified with political will and 
political power." (Recently, right wing publications, radio talk shows, 
and bloggers, such as the National Review and the American Thinker, have 
sought to discredit Obama as a “radical” by linking him to ACORN and 
other community organizing groups.)

The American Organizing Tradition

The roots of community organizing go back to the nation's founding, 
starting with the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party. Visiting the 
U.S. in the 1830s, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy 
in America, was impressed by the outpouring of local voluntary 
organizations that brought Americans together to solve problems, provide 
a sense of community and public purpose, and tame the 
hyper-individualism that Tocqueville considered a threat to democracy. 
Every fight for social reform since then—from the abolition movement to 
the labor movement's fight against sweatshops in the early 1900s to the 
civil rights movement of the 1960s to the environment and feminist 
movements of the past 40 years—has reflected elements of the self-help 
spirit that Tocqueville observed.

Historians trace modern community organizing to Jane Addams, who founded 
Hull House in Chicago in the late 1800s and inspired the settlement 
house movement. These activists—upper-class philanthropists, 
middle-class reformers, and working-class radicals—organized immigrants 
to clean up sweatshops and tenement slums, improve sanitation and public 
health, and battle against child labor and crime.

In the 1930s, another Chicagoan, Saul Alinsky, took community organizing 
to the next level. He sought to create community-based "people's 
organizations" to organize residents the way unions organized workers. 
He drew on existing groups—particularly churches, block clubs, sports 
leagues, and unions—to form the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council 
in an effort to get the city to improve services to a working-class 
neighborhood adjacent to meatpacking factories. Alinsky's books, 
Reveille for Radicals (1945) and Rules for Radicals (1971), became the 
bible for several generations of activists. including the civil rights 
movement, the environmental movement, and many other reformers.

There are currently at least 20,000 paid organizers in the United 
States,according to Walter Davis, executive director of the National 
Organizers Alliance. (Nobody knows for sure, since "organizer" is not an 
occupation listed by the Census Bureau). They work for unions, community 
groups, environmental organizations, women's and civil rights groups, 
tenants organizations, and school reform efforts. Unlike traditional 
social workers, organizers' orientation is not to "service" people as if 
they were clients, but to encourage people to develop their own 
abilities to mobilize others. They identify people with leadership 
potential, recruit and train them, and help them build grassroots 
organizations that can win victories that improve their communities and 
workplaces. According to organizer Ernesto Cortes, they help people turn 
their "hot" anger into "cold" anger—that is, disciplined and strategic 
action.

The past several decades has seen an explosion of community organizing 
in every American city. There are now thousands of local groups that 
mobilize people around a wide variety of problems. With the help of 
trained organizers, neighbors have come together to pressure local 
governments to install stop signs at dangerous intersections, force 
slumlords to fix up their properties, challenge banks to end mortgage 
discrimination (redlining) and predatory lending, improve conditions in 
local parks and playgrounds, increase funding for public schools, clean 
up toxic sites, stop police harassment, and open community health 
clinics. A key tenet of community organizing is developing face to face 
contact so people forge commitments to work together around shared 
values. (The Internet has become a useful tool to connect people in 
cyberspace and then bring them together in person).

For years, critics viewed community organizing as too fragmented and 
isolated, unable to translate local victories into a wider movement for 
social justice. During the past decade, however, community organizing 
groups forged links with labor unions, environmental organizations, 
immigrant rights groups, women's groups, and others to build a stronger 
multi-issue progressive movement. For example, the Los Angeles Alliance 
for a New Economy (LAANE) has created a powerful coalition of unions, 
environmental groups, community organizers, clergy, and immigrant rights 
groups to change business and development practices in the nation's 
second-largest city. At the national level, the Apollo Alliance – a 
coalition of unions, community groups, and environmental groups like the 
Sierra Club – is pushing for a major federal investment in "green" jobs 
and energy-efficient technologies.

Although most community organizing groups are rooted in local 
neighborhoods, often drawing on religious congregations and block clubs, 
there are now several national organizing networks with local 
affiliates, enabling groups to address problems at the local, state, and 
national level, sometimes even simultaneously. These groups include 
ACORN, the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), People in Communities 
Organized (PICO), the Center for Community Change, National People's 
Action, Direct Action Research and Training (DART), and the Gamaliel 
Foundation (the network affiliated with the Developing Communities 
Project that hired Obama). These networks as well as a growing number of 
training centers for community organizers—such as the Midwest Academy in 
Chicago, the Highlander Center in Tennessee, and a few dozen 
universities that offer courses in community and labor organizing—have 
helped recruit and train thousands of people into the organizing world 
and strengthened the community organizing movement's political power.

The "living wage" movement is an example of both coalition-building and 
linking local and national organizing campaigns. In 1994, BUILD—a 
partnership of a community organization and a local union—got Baltimore 
to enact the first local law, requiring companies that have municipal 
contracts and subsidies to pay its employees a "living wage" (a few 
dollars above the federal minimum wage). Since then, more than 200 
cities have adopted similar laws, helping lift many working families out 
of poverty. Most of their victories grew out of coalitions between 
community organizing groups, labor unions, and faith-based groups. These 
coalitions have gotten more than 20 states to raise their minimum wages 
above the federal level. These efforts helped build political momentum 
for Congress' vote last year to raise the federal minimum wage for the 
first time in a decade.

Organizing and the Obama Campaign

Although he didn't make community organizing a lifetime career—he left 
Chicago to attend Harvard Law School—Obama often says that his 
organizing experience has shaped his approach to politics. After law 
school, Obama returned to Chicago to practice and teach law. But in the 
mid-1990s, he also began contemplating running for office. In 1995, he 
told a Chicago newspaper, "What if a politician were to see his job as 
that of an organizer—as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not 
sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before 
them?" Since embarking on a political career, Obama hasn't forgotten the 
lessons that he learned on the streets of Chicago.

This is reflected in his campaign for president. Community organizers 
distinguish themselves from traditional political campaign operatives 
who approach voters as customers through direct mail, telemarketing, and 
canvassing. Most political campaigns immediately put volunteers to work 
on the "grunt" work of the campaign—making phone calls, handing out 
leaflets, or walking door to door. According to Temo Figueroa -- Obama’s 
national field director and a long-time union organizer—the Obama 
campaign has been different. “When I came on board what attracted me was 
his history as an organizer,” says Figueroa, who was working as AFSCME's 
assistant political director. “At the time I wasn’t sure I was joining 
the winning team. Most of us thought we were jumping on the little 
engine that could. We were believers. We wanted something bigger than 
ourselves. A movement.”

Obama enlisted Marshall Ganz, a Harvard professor who is one of the 
country's leading organizing theorists and practitioners, to help train 
organizers and volunteers as a key component of his presidential 
campaign. Ganz was instrumental in shaping the volunteer training 
experience.

Many Obama campaign volunteers went through several days of intense 
training sessions called "Camp Obama." The sessions were led by Ganz and 
other experienced organizers, including Mike Kruglik, one of Obama's 
organizing mentors in Chicago. Potential field organizers were given an 
overview of the history of grassroots organizing techniques and the key 
lessons of campaigns that have succeeded and failed.

“Organizing combines the language of the heart as well as the head,” 
Ganz says, reflecting on his experiences as an organizer with SNCC in 
the civil rights movement and as a key architect of the United 
Farmworkers’ early successes. Not surprisingly, compared with other 
political operations, Obama's campaign has embodied many of the 
characteristics of a social movement—a redemptive calling for a better 
society, coupling individual and social transformation. This is due not 
only to Obama's rhetorical style but also to his campaign’s enlistment 
of hundreds of seasoned organizers from unions, community groups, 
churches, peace, and environmental groups. They, in turn, have mobilized 
thousands of volunteers—many of them neophytes in electoral 
politics—into tightly knit, highly motivated and efficient teams. This 
summer, the campaign created an “Obama Organizing Fellows” program to 
recruit college students to become campaign staffers.

This organizing effort has mobilized many first-time voters, including 
an unprecedented number of young people and African Americans during the 
primary season. Now that Obama is the presumed Democratic nominee, he 
faces pressure to resort to more traditional electoral strategies, but 
so far Obama and top campaign officials have continued to emphasize 
grassroots organizing. It is evident in Obama's speeches, his continued 
use of the UFW slogan, "Yes, we can/Si se puede," his emphasis on "hope" 
and "change," and the growing number of experienced organizers drawn 
into the campaign.

Obama's stump speeches typically include references to America's 
organizing tradition. "Nothing in this country worthwhile has ever 
happened except when somebody somewhere was willing to hope," Obama 
explained. "That is how workers won the right to organize against 
violence and intimidation. That's how women won the right to vote. 
That's how young people traveled south to march and to sit in and to be 
beaten, and some went to jail and some died for freedom's cause." Change 
comes about, Obama said, by "imagining, and then fighting for, and then 
working for, what did not seem possible before."

In town forums and living-room meetings, Obama says that "real change" 
only comes about from the "bottom up," but that as president, he can 
give voice to those organizing in their workplaces, communities, and 
congregations around a positive vision for change. "That's leadership," 
he says.

Organizer-in-Chief?

If elected president, will Obama's organizing background shape his 
approach to governing?

Obama can certainly learn valuable lessons from President Franklin 
Roosevelt, who recognized that his ability to push New Deal legislation 
through Congress depended on the pressure generated by protestors and 
organizers. He once told a group of activists who sought his support for 
legislation, "You've convinced me. Now go out and make me do it."

As depression conditions worsened, and as grassroots worker and 
community protests escalated throughout the country, Roosevelt became 
more vocal, using his bully pulpit—in speeches and radio addresses—to 
promote New Deal ideas. Labor and community organizers felt confident in 
proclaiming, "FDR wants you to join the union." With Roosevelt setting 
the tone, and with allies in Congress like Senator Robert Wagner, 
grassroots activists won legislation guaranteeing workers' right to 
organize, the minimum wage, family assistance for mothers, and the 
40-hour week.

After his election in 1960, President John Kennedy encouraged baby 
boomers to ask what they could do for their country. At the time, JFK 
meant joining the Peace Corps and the VISTA (Volunteers in Service to 
America) program. He could not have anticipated the wave of protest and 
activism—around civil rights, Vietnam, and later feminism and the 
environment—that animated the sixties and seventies.

President Lyndon Johnson was initially no ally of the civil rights 
movement. However, the willingness of activists to put their bodies on 
the line against fists and fire hoses, along with their efforts to 
register voters against overwhelming opposition, pricked Americans' 
conscience. LBJ recognized that the nation's mood was changing. The 
civil rights activism transformed Johnson from a reluctant advocate to a 
powerful ally. LBJ's "Great Society" program—although criticized as too 
tame by United Auto Workers leader Walter Reuther and other 
progressives—provided some community organizing positions with 
anti-poverty agencies, job training groups, and legal services 
organizations in urban and rural areas. Many of today's veteran 
activists got their first taste of grassroots organizing in the 
anti-poverty, civil rights, and farmworker movements.

Now comes Obama, a one-time organizer, who consistently reminds 
Americans of the importance of grassroots organizing. If he's elected 
president, he knows that he will have to find a balance between working 
inside the Beltway and encouraging Americans to organize and mobilize. 
He understands that his ability to reform health care, tackle global 
warming, and restore job security and decent wages will depend, in large 
measure, on whether he can use his bully pulpit to mobilize public 
opinion and encourage Americans to battle powerful corporate interests 
and members of Congress who resist change.

For example, talking about the need to forge a new energy policy, Obama 
explained, "I know how hard it will be to bring about change. Exxon 
Mobil made $11 billion this past quarter. They don't want to give up 
their profits easily." Another major test will be whether he can help 
push the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA)—a significant reform of 
America's outdated and business-oriented labor laws—through Congress 
against almost unified business opposition. If passed, EFCA will help 
trigger a new wave of organizing that will require enlisting thousands 
of young organizers into the labor movement.

If Obama wins the White House, progressives within his inner circle will 
look for opportunities to encourage his organizing instincts to shape 
how he governs the nation, whom he appoints to key positions, and which 
policies to prioritize. Meanwhile, a new generation of volunteer 
activists and paid organizers will be looking to join President Obama's 
progressive crusade to change America. But if it appears that is veering 
too far to the political center, they will—inspired in part by Obama's 
own example, and perhaps with his covert support—mobilize to push him 
(and Congress) to live up to his progressive promise.
Peter Dreier is professor of politics and director of the Urban & 
Environmental Policy program at Occidental College, where he teaches a 
course on community organizing. He is coauthor of The Next Los Angeles: 
The Struggle for a Livable City, Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 
21st Century, and several other books.
_____________________________________
Peter Dreier
Dr. E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics
Chair, Urban & Environmental Policy Program
Occidental College
1600 Campus Road
Los Angeles, CA 90041
Phone: (323) 259-2913
FAX: (323) 259-2734
Website: http://employees.oxy.edu/dreier

"The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great 
moral crises maintain their neutrality" - Dante