Community organizers

[Anonymous]

This is from Feministing:

http://www.feministing.com/archives/010839.html

[Anonymous]

I'm am wondering if "community organizer" is code for something. Can only democrats and independents be "community organizers"?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:I'm am wondering if "community organizer" is code for something. Can only democrats and independents be "community organizers"?

My absolute favorite blogger is a guy named Billmon who, unfortunately, stopped blogging. However, he has been posting diaries on Daily Kos. He addressed this issue last night:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/4/02739/39108

He argues that "community = ghetto and organizer = activist" hence, "community organizer" is a euphemism for "poverty pimp."

He got push back from commenters and updated to add another interpretation:

"community organizer = radicals" and "It looks like the game plan is to keep trying to paint Obama as the scary black radical".

The two theories are not incompatible.

With all the talk of patriotism, one would have thought that Palin and the others would have remembered that the founding fathers were "community organizers"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm am wondering if "community organizer" is code for something. Can only democrats and independents be "community organizers"?

Nope. But I think perhaps there is an effort to tar the phrase as partisan.
Here's the fundamental difference between organizing and activism, which are two totally different things but both important, IMO:

Activism has a concrete objective/goal, sometimes before community buy-in. It's there, it's shiny, and all efforts are towards it, sometimes regardless of the self-interests of anyone involved in the work: Eliminate racism. End abortion. Protect access to abortion. Save the whales, gate the community, ungate the community, etc. Organizing can be part of this, but often isn't.

Community organizing doesn't have that luxury of a goal from the get-go. It's helping people articulate their own issues and set their own goals based on common self interest, and working to develop leadership within that group to help acheive those goals: group of residents decides they need rent control, want to open a charter school, need to do something about the high asthma rates in the community. Activism comes into play after the community identifies the issue. Using the asthma example, let's say that a group of leaders and potential leaders do some ground work and investigation and discover that the asthma is being triggered by a) emissions from a local incinerator, or b) a community-wide peanut allergy.

Stay with me here. This is just an example.

The community, with the help of the community organizer, then comes up with possible solutions and strategy: close the incinerator altogether, get pollution control installed, move everyone to a giant bubble, eliminate peanuts from the school, etc. Then they go about figuring out the best way to use their power collectively to acheive this. Could be a "carrot" approach, "Hey, this polution control will save the county X amount of money,"...or a "stick" approach, e.g, "Hey, we're going to move everyone to a giant bubble and take our money with us."

[Anonymous]

Concerning community organizers, see the thread "Biblical slant".

[Anonymous]

Can someone tell me who pays community organizers like Barack Obama? Foundations? Members? Seems like an expensive social experiment.

[Anonymous]

Depends.

When I was a community organizer in Chicago, the organization I worked for consisted of members organizations who paid dues. It was a mix of congregations, local businesses, ethnic organizations, and non-profits.

Sometimes it's via a grant. Expensive? Consider that I made $10 an hour.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Can someone tell me who pays community organizers like Barack Obama? Foundations? Members? Seems like an expensive social experiment.

..and it's about a 2000 year old "social experiment."

[jsteele]

Joe Klein (the guy is on fire lately) has a great article on this:

http://www.time-blog.com/swampland/2008/09/what_a_community_organizer_doe.html

[Anonymous]

Great article.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:
My absolute favorite blogger is a guy named Billmon who, unfortunately, stopped blogging. However, he has been posting diaries on Daily Kos. He addressed this issue last night:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/4/02739/39108

He argues that "community = ghetto and organizer = activist" hence, "community organizer" is a euphemism for "poverty pimp."

He got push back from commenters and updated to add another interpretation:

"community organizer = radicals" and "It looks like the game plan is to keep trying to paint Obama as the scary black radical".

The two theories are not incompatible.

With all the talk of patriotism, one would have thought that Palin and the others would have remembered that the founding fathers were "community organizers"

Thanks for the article. I wasn't imagining things. I wasn't feeling the connection and I wondered why. I'm a mom. I'm involved in the parents group at my daughters pre-school - had to band together to save the school and all. I didn't like the "shouldn't she be home raising the kids" attacks on Sarah Palin. So why wasn't I feeling the love fest. Then it hit me - I was born in a "community" not South Side of Chicago but Queens. When her appeal is to the everday person just like you and me - well they didn't really mean me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Great article.

Agreed. Thanks, Jeff for sharing the link. This issue has REALLY gotten under my skin.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm am wondering if "community organizer" is code for something. Can only democrats and independents be "community organizers"?

My absolute favorite blogger is a guy named Billmon who, unfortunately, stopped blogging. However, he has been posting diaries on Daily Kos. He addressed this issue last night:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/9/4/02739/39108

He argues that "community = ghetto and organizer = activist" hence, "community organizer" is a euphemism for "poverty pimp."

He got push back from commenters and updated to add another interpretation:

"community organizer = radicals" and "It looks like the game plan is to keep trying to paint Obama as the scary black radical".

The two theories are not incompatible.

With all the talk of patriotism, one would have thought that Palin and the others would have remembered that the founding fathers were "community organizers"

How can Obama be BOTH a scary black radical type AND an ivy league educated cultural elite? Don't these two stereotypes bring entirely different pictures to mind? And yet I believe Giuliani and Palin attempted to conjure up both images in a single speech. Ugh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
How can Obama be BOTH a scary black radical type AND an ivy league educated cultural elite? Don't these two stereotypes bring entirely different pictures to mind? And yet I believe Giuliani and Palin attempted to conjure up both images in a single speech. Ugh.

Logical inconsistency may lose you points in a debate contest, but in politics, appeal to emotion is what counts.