"Will Obama Inspire a New Generation of Organizers?"

[Discussion list for COMM-ORG]

[ed:  thanks to Kathy for adding to the discussion.]

From:
Kathy Partridge <interfaithfunders at yahoo.com>


Hello Comm-Org:

Continuing this discussion on Obama and community organizing, I 
conducted a interview on independent community radio KGNU Boulder/Denver 
with three seasoned organizers: Mike Kruglick of Gamaliel (a trainer of 
Obama in his organizing days and current campaign volunteer), long-time 
Denver organizer Richard Male, and Marissa Graciosa of the Center for 
Community Change, a lead organizer of the Heartland Forum.  I believe 
their comments, experience and perspective are a thoughful contribution 
to the discussion, contextualizing the Obama phenomonon within community 
organizing practice.  You can access a podcast on the radio station website:

http://kgnu.org/cgi-bin/programinfo.py?time=1215734400
 
Cheers,

Kathy Partridge
Executive Director
Interfaith Funders
www.interfaithfunders.org <http://www.interfaithfunders.org/>
2719 Denver Ave.
Longmont, CO  80503
Voice 720-494-9011
Fax 708-585-6434  Cell 303-594-6434
 




Discussion list for COMM-ORG wrote:
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> [ed:  thanks to Alice for the added resource.]
>
> From:
> Alice Chasan <achasan at nhi.org>
>
>
> Hello, all--
>
> Peter Dreier wrote a wonderful analysis of Obama's organizing worldview.
>
> But he omitted a link to the terrific article by David Moberg in the 
> Spring 2007 issue of Shelterforce, titled "Obama's Third Way," examining 
> Obama's roots in community organizing.
>
> You can read it at http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/149/obama.html
>
> Shelterforce was way ahead of the MSM on this one!
>
> Alice Chasan
>
> Editor and Associate Publisher
>
> Shelterforce: The Journal of  Affordable Housing and Community Building
>
> The National Housing Institute
>
> 111 Dunnell Rd., Suite 102, Maplewood, NJ 07040
>
> (973) 763-0333 (tel)
>
> (973) 763-6331 (fax)
>
> ___________________
> Announcing the relaunch of www.shelterforce.org and our new blog, 
> www.rooflines.org  -- blogging beyond bricks and mortar
>
> Shelterforce, a publication of the National Housing Institute, is 
> dedicated to providing resources and information to those working to 
> create and preserve affordable housing and thriving communities.
>
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>
> Discussion list for COMM-ORG wrote:
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>> [ed:  thanks to Aaron for the additional links.  The New York Times also 
>> had an article on Obama's organizing background yesterday.]
>>
>> From: "Aaron Schutz" <schutz at uwm.edu>
>>
>>
>> FYI, with respect to Drier's article, readers might also be interested
>> in this blog post on Open Left
>>
>> http://openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6111
>>
>> discussing Obama's organizing approach during the campaign.  (It was
>> also reprinted at Black Agenda Report).
>>
>> It is part of an ongoing series on "Core Dilemmas of Community
>> Organizing" (http://openleft.com/userDiary.do?personId=3384).  The
>> attached discussion is interesting as well. 
>>
>> Note that this was a blog post and not a carefully researched article,
>> as evidenced by the updates at the end.
>>
>> Aaron Schutz
>> Associate Professor & Chair
>> Dept. of Ed. Policy & Comm. Studies
>> University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
>> P.O. Box 413
>> Milwaukee, WI 53201
>> Office: (414) 229-4150
>> Fax: (414) 229-3700
>> Website: educationaction.org
>>
>>
>> Discussion list for COMM-ORG wrote:
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>>> 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
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