[COMM-ORG] query: are more students interested in community organizing?
Discussion list for COMM-ORG
colist at comm-org.wisc.edu
Tue Apr 14 10:18:35 CDT 2009
[ed: thanks to Ben for the contribution.]
From: benshepard at mindspring.com
Well, I love to see it.
But it also ebbs and flows.
When I was in grad school,
our community org group was
the smallest concentration.
But I have seen organizing
become a hot fad with AIDS
activism and then fade,
with post-Seattle organizing,
and then fade, before the
War and the Republican
convention 2003 and 4
and then fade, and now.
It ebbs and flows. I think
the challenge for us, is to
help people learn to stick
with it, even during sticky
points or set backs, such as
9/11 or Bush's re election,
etc when organizing stops feeling
as sexy.
On 4/12/2009 9:18 AM, Discussion list for COMM-ORG wrote:
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> [ed: thanks to Marybeth and Richard for their responses and Peter for
> the followup
>
> From: Marybeth McNamara <marybethmcnamara at gmail.com>
>
>
> Mr. Dreier,
> I'm not sure if the Times is focusing on ONLY undergrads, but I am a
> graduate student at the UConn School of Social Work and my concentration
> is Community Organizing.
> The University offers MSW students 5 concentrations for students to
> choose from -Casework, Groupwork, Policy Practice, Adminstration and
> Community Organization.
>
> The Community Organization concentration has the highest number of
> students out of the 5 options.
> I am not sure if this is always as it has been or a new phenomenon.
> Maybe someone on the faculty/staff there could shed light on this topic?
>
> Thanks,
> Marybeth McNamara
>
> ****************************
>
> From: Richard Wood <rlwood at unm.edu>
>
>
> Great piece posted here by Peter Dreier. After years of studying and
> writing about community organizing, I am finally teaching a full course
> for undergrads on that topic, subtitled "theory and practice". I
> certainly detect a new tone and tenor among my remarkably diverse
> students (diverse ethnically/racially, socio-economically, politically,
> and religiously) at a public university in a poor state, which Peter
> captures well here.
>
> For that course, would value seeing syllabi from similar courses others
> have taught (and related materials: readings, assignments, practicums,
> etc.).
> Rich Wood, University of New Mexico, author of _Faith in Action:
> Religion, Race, and Democratic Organizing in America (University of
> Chicago Press, 2002)
>
> *****************************
>
> From:
> "Peter Dreier" <dreier at oxy.edu>
> Date:
> Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:46:26 -0700
> To:
> "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
>
>
>
> On 4/6/2009 10:03 AM, Discussion list for COMM-ORG wrote:
>
>> --------
>> This is a COMM-ORG 'colist' message.
>> All replies to this message come to COMM-ORG only.
>> --------
>>
>> [ed: please feel welcomed to copy COMM-ORG with replies to Peter's query.]
>>
>> From: "Peter Dreier" <dreier at oxy.edu>
>>
>>
>> Colleagues:
>>
>>
>>
>> I have a question for those of you who teach undergraduate courses in
>> Community Organizing: Is interest in your classes – or in community
>> organizing more generally – increasing among students on your campuses?
>> I hope you will respond quickly to this question. Here’s why:
>>
>>
>>
>> A New York Times reporter is writing a story about this phenomenon. Her
>> thesis -- which I agree with (and even wrote a few articles about last
>> year (http://dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1215;
>> http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/dreier) -- is that the Obama
>> campaign, and his presidency, has not only heightened awareness of
>> community organizing as a job/career/vocation, but accelerated the trend
>> of student activists looking for work as organizers upon graduation.
>> This was happening BEFORE the Obama campaign (ie the campus
>> anti-sweatshop and campus living wage movements began in the late
>> 1990s), but I think his campaign (which put heavy emphasis on recruiting
>> young people and training volunteers as organizers,) accelerated it.
>> Plus, any progressive movement requires a sense of hope and possibility,
>> and I think Obama’s campaign and election provided some of that. Groups
>> like Wellstone Action, Campus Progress (an offshoot of the Center for
>> American Progress), United Students Against Sweatshops, the AFL-CIO’s
>> Organizing Institute, and other groups that recruited and trained
>> students also contributed to this.
>>
>>
>>
>> I teach a Community Organizing course every fall, which includes an
>> internship with a community organizing group, a labor union, an
>> environmental group, or another group that does organizing work. I
>> usually have 20-25 students. Already, 42 students have registered for my
>> course for next fall. I don’t think this is because I’ve all-of-a-sudden
>> become a more popular professor. I think it has to do with the political
>> climate, Obama, the growing visibility of organizing (not only because
>> of Obama, but also because of the Palin/McCain attacks on organizers
>> that triggered a huge backlash).
>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/palin-attacks-on-communit_b_129568.html
>>
>>
>>
>> My friends who work for unions, ACORN, PICO, IAF, and other organizing
>> groups tell me that they are getting more and more applicants for jobs
>> and internships. I think this is all part of the same phenomenon.
>>
>>
>>
>> Are you seeing the same trend on your campus? Please let us all know. I
>> can relay that to the NY Times reporter, who is doing the story for next
>> week, so please respond ASAP.
>>
>>
>>
>> Thanks.
>>
>>
>>
>> Peter
>>
>> ____________________
>>
>> Peter Dreier
>>
>> E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics
>>
>> Director, Urban & Environmental Policy Program
>>
>> Occidental College
>>
>> Los Angeles, CA 90041
>>
>> Phone: (323) 259-2913
>>
>> Email: dreier at oxy.edu
>>
>> 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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