[Grovenet] More on what an organizer is

[Katie Allnutt]

For those who have not met an organizer and for those who are curious  
about what they do...


GOP Mocks Public Service at its Peril

by PETER DREIER & JOHN ATLAS

For the first time in American history, a major political party  
devoted a substantial portion of its national convention to attacking  
grassroots organizing.


Speaking Wednesday at the Republican National Convention, former New  
York Governor George Pataki sneered, "[Barack Obama] was a community  
organizer. What in God's name is a community organizer? I don't even  
know if that's a job."

Then former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani delivered his own snickering  
hit job. "He worked as a community organizer. What? Maybe this is the  
first problem on the resumé," mocked Giuliani." Then he said, "This  
is not a personal attack. It's a statement of fact. Barack Obama has  
never led anything. Nothing. Nada."

A few minutes later, in her acceptance speech for the GOP vice  
presidential nomination, Sarah Palin declared, "I guess a small-town  
mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have  
actual responsibilities."
The party of Ronald Reagan was touting government experience over  
civic engagement.
At a convention whose theme was "service," GOP leaders ridiculed  
organizing, a vital kind of public service that involves leadership,  
tough decisions, and taking responsibility for the well-being of  
people often ignored by government.

But the controversy surrounding these snide remarks may have  
backfired. Within hours, Obama sent an e-mail to his supporters,  
challenging the Republicans who "mocked, dismissed, and actually  
laughed out loud at Americans who engage in community service and  
organizing" and soliciting funds for his campaign. His campaign  
manager David Plouffe sent another fundraising e-mail, saying, "Let's  
clarify something for them right now. Community organizing is how  
ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed  
policies."

Palin, Giuliani and Pataki denigrated not only the tens of thousands  
of community organizers who help everyday citizens to participate in  
shaping their society and the millions of Americans who volunteer as  
community activists, but also a long American tradition of collective  
self-help that goes back to the Boston Tea Party.

Visiting the United States in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville  
observed in his Democracy in America, how impressed he was 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 de Tocqueville  
considered a threat to democracy. In the same speech in which Palin  
ridiculed Obama's organizing work, she touted her own experiences as  
a PTA volunteer and "hockey mom"--the very kinds of activities that  
de Tocqueville praised and that community organizers support.

The Republicans' nasty attacks on grassroots organizing reflect  
another longstanding tradition in American politics--the conservative  
élite's fear of "the people." Some of the founding fathers worried  
that ordinary people--people without property, indentured servants,  
slaves, women, and others--might challenge the economic and political  
status quo. In The Federalist Papers and other documents, they  
debated how to restrain the masses from gaining too much influence.  
To maintain their privilege, the élite denied them the vote, limited  
their ability to protest, censored their publications, threw them in  
jail, and ridiculed their ideas to expand democracy.

But grassroots activists wouldn't give up. Every fight for social  
reform since colonial times--including battles to abolish slavery,  
promote workers' rights, fix up slum housing, strengthen civil  
rights, clean up the environment, expand women's rights, and protect  
consumers--has reflected elements of that self-help tradition.

Modern community organizing, an important strand of grassroots  
activism, began with 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, sought to organize  
residents the way unions organized workers. Drawing on existing  
groups--particularly churches, block clubs, sports leagues, and  
unions--he formed the Back of the Yards Neighborhood Council to get  
the city to improve services to a working-class neighborhood adjacent  
to meatpacking factories.

A half-century later, in 1985, 23-year old Barack Obama moved to  
Chicago to work for the Developing Communities Project, a coalition  
of churches on the city's South Side. His job was 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  
improve their communities.
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."

There are at least 20,000 paid organizers in the United States,  
according to Walter Davis, executive director of the National  
Organizers Alliance. They work for community groups, environmental  
organizations, unions, women's and civil rights groups, tenants  
organizations, churches, and school reform efforts--touching the  
lives of millions of Americans every day. They work long hours,  
usually for low pay. Organizers 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.
They force cities to put up stop signs at dangerous intersections,  
organize crime-watch groups and make sure their churches or  
synagogues shelter the homeless. They force slumlords to fix up their  
properties, challenge banks to end mortgage discrimination 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. They even help  
parents organize hockey and soccer leagues and get local governments  
to let them use municipal fields and rinks.

As mayor of New York, Giuliani had many confrontations with community  
organizations. One was East Brooklyn Congregations (EBC), an  
affiliate of the Industrial Areas Foundation network of community  
groups. In the 1990s, EBC, comprised primarily of religious  
congregations and their working-class members, pressured Giuliani to  
provide city-owned land so the group could expand its nonprofit  
Nehemiah housing development of affordable single-family homes.

Giuliani agreed to provide a large swath of vacant public land in a  
neglected part of Brooklyn. At the groundbreaking ceremony for the  
Nehemiah homes [depicted in the documentary film, The Democratic  
Promise Giuliani, surrounded by hundreds of EBC activists, lavished  
praise on the group. "Most of the political establishment in this  
city opposed them [and] tried to undercut them," he said. Then he  
lauded EBC because "they do not pay homage to political  
figures...They require you to answer their questions. They remind you  
that you are a public servant."

Giuliani has since forgotten those words of praise, but he was  
correct. Community organizers make democracy work by mobilizing  
people to inject long-ignored issues onto the public agenda and hold  
politicians accountable. They help give people the confidence they  
need to use the tools of democracy. In a society where wealth and  
income is concentrated in a few hands, grassroots organizations make  
it possible for ordinary Americans to find their civic voice and  
exercise influence in politics.

Our democracy works best when people come together to solve problems,  
not simply by voting every few years, but also by participating in a  
wide array of voluntary organizations--the "civil society" that  
serves as a mediator between the power of business and money and the  
authority of government. Politicians need to listen to people's  
problems, help them forge solutions, and give voice to their hopes,  
rather than stoke people's fears and prejudices.
At critical moments, presidents have embraced activist movements and  
helped propel them forward.

To win the right to vote, the suffragists combined decades of  
dramatic protest marches and hunger strikes with lobbying and appeals  
to the consciences of legislators--some of them the husbands and  
fathers of the protestors. Woodrow Wilson, no friend of feminism,  
reluctantly changed his position and supported women's suffrage.
During the Depression, Franklin Delano Roosevelt recognized that his  
ability to push New Deal legislation through Congress depended on  
pressure generated by 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."

Lyndon B. Johnson, initially unsympathetic to the civil rights  
movement, later recognized that the nation's mood was changing  
because of 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. That activism  
transformed Johnson from a reluctant advocate to a powerful ally.
To win significant reforms, organizers and politicians need each  
other. Voter drives, boycotts, strikes, civil disobedience, and mass  
marches help inject new issues on the agenda, dramatize grievances,  
generate media attention, and get people thinking about things they  
hadn't thought about before.

Today, we need grassroots organizing more than ever.
"The last thing we need is for Republican officials to mock us on  
television when we're trying to rebuild the neighborhoods they have  
destroyed," said John Raskin, a community organizer in New York.  
"Maybe if everyone had more houses than they can count, we wouldn't  
need community organizers. But I work with people who are getting  
evicted from their only home. If John McCain and the Republicans  
understood that, maybe they wouldn't be so quick to make fun of  
community organizers like me."
Now comes Obama, a one-time community organizer, who consistently  
reminds Americans of the importance of community activism. If he's  
elected president, 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.
Republicans thought they were being smart mocking community  
organizing. But what they didn't understand is that their smug  
comments weren't simply an attack on Barack Obama, but on the entire  
grassroots chain of change that has, for over 200 years, made America  
a more democratic and humane country.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080922/dreier_atlas