[COMM-ORG] A New Wave of Community Organizers for the Obama Era

[Discussion list for COMM-ORG]

From:     Peter Dreier <dreier at oxy.edu>



Friends and Colleagues:
 
I usually have about 20 students in the Community Organizing course I 
teach each year at Occidental College. So far, 42 students have 
registered for next fall's class.  I haven't all of a sudden become a 
more popular professor. There's clearly something happening on American 
campuses and in the broader culture that's tapping the pent up idealism 
of today's students. An important element of that new mood on campus is 
Barack Obama, but this phenomenon is bigger than one person. That's the 
subject of my latest blog, "A New Wave of Organizers for the Obama Era," 
for the Talking Points Memo (TPM) Cafe, linked here: 
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/peter_dreier/2009/04/a-new-wave-of-community-organi.php.   
(I've also pasted the essay below)

That's also what reporter Sara Rimer learned when she interviewed 
college students  (including some of mine) and some professors 
(including me) for her article in this Sunday's New York Times,  
"Community Organizing Never Looked So Good."  
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/12/fashion/12organizer.html?ref=style
A New Wave of Community Organizers for the Obama Era
April 10, 2009, 10:40PM

I usually have about 20 students in the Community Organizing course I 
teach each year at Occidental College in Los Angeles. So far, 42 
students have registered for next fall's class.

I haven't all of a sudden become a more popular professor. There's 
clearly something happening on American campuses and in the broader 
culture that's tapping the pent up idealism of today's students. An 
important element of that new mood on campus is Barack Obama.

More and more college students want careers where they can help make 
society more humane, fair, and environmentally sustainable. They want to 
put their skills, their idealism, and their energy to work promoting 
social justice. My colleagues around the country tell me that the same 
thing is happening on their campuses. A growing number of students who 
are asking faculty and staff about internships, summer jobs, and careers 
working with non-profit, advocacy, and grassroots organizing groups. Why 
wait on tables when you could be changing the world?

That's what reporter Sara Rimer learned when she interviewed college 
students  (including some of mine) for her article in this Sunday's New 
York Times, "Community Organizing Never Looked So Good."

Given that title, and the fact that appears in the Fashion & Style 
section, you might think that Rimer asked students what they were 
wearing to the next protest demonstration. But, in fact, hers is a 
serious piece of reporting about what today's student activists want to 
do when they graduate. Many of them want to become community organizers, 
inspired by our new president.

Fortunately, there are many more opportunities today to work for social 
change than there were when I was in college in the 1960s or even when 
Obama was in college (at Occidental and Columbia) in the 1980s. The 
number of nonprofit organizations engaged in the struggle for justice - 
community groups, unions, environmental and consumer groups, public 
health and food justice groups, civil rights organizations, women's and 
gay rights groups, fair trade and anti-sweatshop groups, groups 
advocating for children, for the disabled, for the elderly, and for 
immigrants -- has mushroomed dramatically. In addition to the thousands 
of issue-oriented advocacy groups, there are many publications, think 
tanks, and, of course, websites that promote progressive causes, most of 
which didn't exist even 20 years ago.

As Rimer discovered, community organizing groups and networks like 
ACORN, PICO, DART, the Center for Community Change, the Industrial Areas 
Foundation, National People's Action, U.S. Action, Gamaliel Foundation 
(whose Chicago affiliate hired Obama after college) and others are 
getting more applicants from college students and recent graduates. Many 
of them already have some organizing experience through college 
internships, summer jobs, or volunteering for a political campaign like 
Obama's presidential crusade.

Perhaps because so many of them get practical experience while still in 
college, working with off-campus groups, today's student activists are 
much more pragmatic, savvy, and patient than their counterparts in the 
1960s. They are skeptical but not cynical. They are not paralyzed by old 
ideological battles or identity politics. They respect differences of 
opinion, including religious beliefs, as well as the right to dissent. 
They understand that they can disagree with their government and still 
love their country and its ideals. They want major changes in our 
institutions and policies, but they know that people need to win 
stepping-stone reforms before they can envision a different kind of world.

For sure, student interest in political activism and community 
organizing was going on long before the Obama campaign. In the 1990s, 
students mobilized against sweatshops and for "fair trade" consumer 
products, in support of "living wages" for university employees, and 
around global warming and "greening" America's college campuses. The 
AFL-CIO began the Organizing Institute, a summer internship program for 
college students who wanted to learn about being a union organizer. 
After years of watching the conservative movement spend millions of 
dollars to recruit and training activists on campuses, liberal groups 
like the Center for American Progress, Wellstone Action, Democracy 
Matters, the Student Environmental Action Coalition and others began to 
focus more attention on college students. Over the past decade, a 
growing number of colleges and universities embraced the idea of 
"service learning," linking classrooms and the community.

But there is no doubt that Obama's campaign and his victory, lit a 
spark, accelerating student interest in politics in general and 
grassroots organizing in particular. Millions of young people, including 
college students and recent graduates, got involved in the Obama 
campaign. Thousands learned organizing skills at Camp Obama training 
sessions. The efforts of young people - as well as the youth vote - made 
a big difference in his triumph last November. Many of the students who 
volunteered in the campaign got a taste of organizing and now want to 
pursue it as a career.

In many ways, Obama has given community organizing a new cache. He has 
described the three years he spent after college as a community 
organizer in Chicago after college as "the best education I ever had."

Obama has provided enormous visibility and credibility to organizing as 
a career and profession. Obama's campaign stump speeches typically 
included 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." His campaign slogan - "Yes, We Can" - was borrowed from Cesar 
Chavez and the United Farmworkers movement

Credit must go, too, to Sarah Palin, who attacked Obama's community 
organizing experience during her Republican National Convention speech 
in St. Paul last August, and then, along with John McCain, went on the 
warpath against ACORN, one of the nation's largest and most effective 
community organizing groups. The GOP assault triggered a huge backlash 
not only among community organizers all over the country (who were happy 
for the free publicity) but also among newspaper columnists, editorial 
writers, readers who wrote letters to the editor, and bloggers. In the 
aftermath of that attack, more newspapers and magazines wrote stories 
about community organizing describing and praising the activists who 
improve communities by bringing people together and giving people the 
confidence and leadership skills to promote change - than had been 
written in the previous decade.

Despite our serious economic crisis, the country's mood has changed for 
the better.  Americans are worried about their jobs and their families, 
but they still give the new president high marks for moving quickly to 
address our problems.  This is important, because significant 
improvements only occur when people believe that things should be 
changed and that they can be changed. Obama has restored a sense of 
possibility and hope to American politics.

Even so, if Obama has any chance to be a transformational President, it 
will require a powerful progressive movement that aligns itself with, 
but isn't controlled by, the young president and progressive forces in 
Congress. There is plenty of evidence that Americans want a more 
activist government to address the problems of economic insecurity, 
health care, the environment, and U.S. military intervention in Iraq and 
elsewhere. To win universal health care, labor law reform, or 
legislation to reduce global warming - and to stimulate the troubled 
economy to promote shared prosperity and green jobs, and rescue people 
from foreclosures -- Obama will confront fierce resistance from powerful 
forces in the business community and their friends in Congress.

The Millennial generation - Americans now under 30 - voted 
overwhelmingly for Obama. They are  also ready to follow Obama's lead 
and join the growing ranks of progressive activists.

They also know, however, that grassroots organizing is only one way to 
bring about change. Increasingly, for example, students who go to law 
school want to use their legal talents to right wrongs rather than 
represent banks, corporations, and developers. Fortunately, there are a 
growing number of public interest law firms around the country that link 
lawyers to social movements concerned about the environment, housing, 
consumer protection, immigrant rights, and other issues.

Likewise, students interested in medicine and health care can take many 
paths to help change our failing health care system. A growing number of 
students pursuing careers in public health, where they can combine their 
concerns about the environment, medicine, social justice, and creating 
livable communities. Or they can go to medical, nursing, or nutrition 
school and use their skills by working in community clinics that serve 
low-income people and agitate for change with such groups as Physicians 
for a National Health Program and Physicians for Social Responsibility.

Whatever profession they pursue - architect, city planner, teacher, 
biologist, engineer, nutritionist,  accountant, aide to an elected 
official, child care provider,  lawyer, or physician, among them - they 
can use their talents to help move society in a more progressive 
direction or to protect and defend the status quo. They understand that 
it isn't simply a matter of having skills. It's a question of what 
values those skills will be used to promote -- and what kinds of 
organizations they work for.

Obama has already helped change the nation's mood - and helped to 
inspire a new generation of organizers and activists. More and more 
young people want to pursue a career with a conscience.

But will the nonprofit groups that help advocate and organize for change 
have the resources to employ them? Many environmental, community, and 
other groups that do this work are facing difficult times, since they 
depend on members' dues, foundation grants, bake sales and other 
fundraisers to keep their organizations afloat. And will today's young 
people be able to pursue their ideals if they can't afford to stay in 
college, or if they are saddled with college loans that they can't 
afford to pay back on an activist's salary?

Here's another way that Obama, and Congress, can help. They have already 
expanded the federal budget for AmeriCorps, the nation's major community 
service program. But what's needed is a major commitment to providing 
students in two- and four-year colleges with financial assistance - 
allowing them graduate debt-free -- if they pursue careers in the many 
forms of public and community service. This means encouraging doctors 
and nurses to work in clinics serving the poor, architects and planners 
who work for nonprofit groups building mixed-income housing, engineers 
and technicians who help design and install "green" technologies in our 
homes and workplaces, and community organizers who help people help 
themselves, through their faith-based institutions, neighborhoods, and 
schools, in the great American tradition of voluntarism.

A character in George Bernard Shaw's play, Back to Methusaleh, says, 
"You see things and you say, 'why?'  But I dream things that never were, 
and I say, "why not?'"

That's the essence of an activist -- someone who doesn't just criticize 
awful conditions, but tries to change them, not on his or her own, but 
with others.  We endured eight years of White House contempt for the  
practical idealism that makes change possible.  Obama has restored 
Americans' faith in themselves.  You can find that new  mood on almost 
every college campus today.   When a skeptic asks me if the students in 
my communityorganizing class have what it takes to change the world, I'm 
proud to say: Yes, They Can.

Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban & 
Environmental Policy program at Occidental College.
 

_____________________________________
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
 

-- 
Randy Stoecker

Professor
e-mail:  rstoecker at wisc.edu

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