In light of my recent blogging streak in support of Gov. Sarah Palin, it might come as a surprise to readers that I would write something about community organizing. Here is why I am doing it; it's very simple really -- no one on the Right seems to know anything about community organizing. So I thought I'd offer my two cents.
Wikipedia gives a nice, concise definition: Community organizing is a process by which people are brought together to act in common self-interest. Community organizing is a process that works to identify common needs and common dreams within a community (generally a city neighborhood), and then strives to build a structured organization within that community in order to help its members fulfill their needs and realize their dreams. It is a lengthy, complicated endeavor, and the process of turning a community around can take decades.
Community organizing is also unique because it does not depend on a command or hierarchical structure. Community organizations have directors and board members, but they generally do not have executives. In other words, the success or failure of a community organizing project usually does not rest on the shoulders of one person. This is deliberate, so that power continues to reside within the community rather than in the hands of a few elite individuals.
The word most often associated with community organizing is empowerment. A common maxim is, a lone person is a troublemaker; one hundred people is power. Community organizing has been most successful in poor communities, where the usual tools of power (money and political clout) do not exist. Without some type of organization among their residents, these communities often receive little consideration from city governments, which translates into poor police protection, poor schools, poor public services like trash cleanup and street repairs, and little incentive for urban renewal except for imminent domain seizures and total demolition of existing neighborhoods. Community organizing teaches residents how to cultivate a new type of power -- the power of voices united for a common cause -- and then use this power in a positive and influential way.
A superb example of community organizing is the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, founded in 1984 in a blighted section of Boston that had become a haven for drug dealers, prostitution, and illegal urban dumping. Over the span of 10 years, DSNI cleaned up the garbage (including a protest that culminated with garbage being moved from one of their vacant lots and dumped at City Hall), acquired land from absentee owners through imminent domain powers (a first for a neighborhood organization) and then built parks, renovated storefronts, drove out the drug dealers and prostitutes, and constructed a brand-new housing addition featuring homes priced for middle income families. You can learn more about DSNI by visiting their website.
Now, here's the "so what" part of this post -- what does this have to do with Barack Obama? I'd say the answer relates to simple commitment. Obama was involved in community organizing in South Side Chicago for three years, beginning in 1985. He has often told how meaningful those three years were to him, and how his experiences as a community organizer changed the direction of his life. But apparently Obama was impatient with the slow and frustrating process of community organizing. He left after three years with no real accomplishments to show for his service, save for persuading the City Council to test apartments in the Altgeld Gardens neighborhood for asbestos contamination. A colleague said, ""It wasn't end-all. He wanted to be part of the end-all, to get things done."
Barack Obama's experience with community organizing is only one chapter in his life-long saga of virtually immediate successes in a variety of vocations, no doubt spurred by abundant natural gifts, that seemed to rather quickly produce a frustrating type of ennui. The only way, it seems, for Obama to stay interested in politics was to move quickly from one position to the next, or from one elected office to the next, without having ever stuck with any of them long enough to become a respected or tenured public servant.
I believe that this is a valid and important critique of Barack Obama, but it should not be used to denigrate the process of community organizing, which is a noble effort.
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I'll conclude with a little disclosure. As a result of my involvement with the JustFaith program, I have elected to join a team of Christian congregations working in partnership with the Industrial Areas Foundation to start a community organizing program here in Oklahoma City. This has been an interesting experience, since the majority of the people involved with this project are very progressive politically, and are staunch Democrats. Still, the things we plan to accomplish are very worthwhile, and I am honored to have the opportunity to work with so many fine people.
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As I suspected, conservative blogs have been writing negatively about community organizing. Or perhaps I should say ignorantly. Read what JayTea has to say over at WizBang, then read the comments. Not surprisingly, names like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and ACORN turn up frequently.
And here's Rush Limbaugh today, "advising" the Obama campaign:
Keep bringing it up. Keep trying to defend it. Keep trying to explain it. Keep saying, "Twenty years ago, working with people fired from a steel plant, Obama's qualified." What did he do for them? Where are they now? "Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out of touch politicians and their failed policies." (laughing) Okay, so we got a great new definition of what community organizing is about: "Ordinary people respond to out of touch politicians and their failed policies." Well, then who is the community organizer interfacing with? If the out of work people talked to the community organizer, who does he then go to to fix the problem? In Obama's case I'll guarantee you it's another lawyer or it was Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright or maybe some state or national congressman. I mean, you talk about out of touch? Ordinary people run for city councils and become mayors! Ordinary people do not become community organizers! That's why it's so rare!
How many of you in your town, if you wanted to become a community organizer, where would you go to apply? To whom would you give your resume? What would be your qualifications if you sought to be a community organizer? You gotta be a community organizer? Don't give me social programs. Don't give me Meals on Wheels. Those are handled by other people. Don't give me all this other stuff, homeless shelters. It's not community organizer. What the hell is it? How many of you people in your town know where to go to apply for that job? How many of you in your town know a community organizer? And how many of you have known a community organizer who went on to something big and great? Not that they haven't, but how many of you know of one? Well, yeah, okay. Al Sharpton organized the community with Tawana Brawley. I mean, what are we talking about here?
Added 9-5-08: Here's more community organizing skepticism from Michelle Malkin, who wastes no time tying Obama to ACORN, its financial shenannigans, and voter fraud.
Lori Byrd at WizBang notes that the new Left meme is "Jesus was a community organizer," which is the intellectual equivalent of "Mary and Joseph were 'homeless.'" Please, just don't go there. Jim Treacher snarks, "Way to get rid of the "He thinks he's the Messiah" meme, geniuses." Heh.
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