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Will Obama Inspire a New Generation of Organizers?
Peter Dreier, Common Dreams
Americans are used to voting for presidential candidates with backgrounds as lawyers, military officers, farmers, businessmen, and career politicians, but this is the first time we’ve been asked to vote for someone who has been a community organizer. Of course, Barack Obama has also been a lawyer, a law professor, and an elected official, but throughout this campaign he has frequently referred to the three years he spent as a community organizer in Chicago in the mid-1980s as “the best education I ever had.”
This experience has influenced his presidential campaign. It may also tell us something about how, if elected, he’ll govern. But, perhaps most important, there has not been a candidate since Bobby Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy who has inspired so many young people to become involved in public service and grassroots activism.
… The roots of community organizing go back to the nation’s founding, starting with the Sons of Liberty and the Boston Tea Party. Visiting the U.S. in the 1830s, Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville, author of Democracy in America, was impressed 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 Tocqueville considered a threat to democracy. Every fight for social reform since then-from the abolition movement to the labor movement’s fight against sweatshops in the early 1900s to the civil rights movement of the 1960s to the environment and feminist movements of the past 40 years-has reflected elements of the self-help spirit that Tocqueville observed.
Historians trace modern community organizing to 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, took community organizing to the next level. He sought to create community-based “people’s organizations” to organize residents the way unions organized workers.
Peter Dreier is professor of politics and director of the Urban & Environmental Policy program at Occidental College, where he teaches a course on community organizing. He is coauthor of The Next Los Angeles: The Struggle for a Livable City, Place Matters: Metropolitics for the 21st Century, and several other books.
(1 July 2008)
I wonder if we will see a resurgence of community organizing, as Peter Dreier opines in this long piece? In the peak oil and climate change arenas, all the excitement seems to be at the local level. In contrast, national-level institutions seem inert and unresponsive. Is there anybody who is really excited about the Republicans or Democrats? Who sees them as a fount of new ideas or meaningful action? -BA
Real change happens off-line
Sally Kohn, Christian Science Monitor
Today’s American young people feel a deep connection to people in Tibet and Darfur, want to hold corporations accountable to environmental standards and worker justice, and value the role of government in meeting our shared needs. Yet the Internet tools that help Millennials appreciate our interconnectedness may actually erode the community values they seek.
The Millennials, or the cluster of young folks born roughly between 1980 and 1995, were raised between two conflicting phenomena. On the one hand, they have grown up with new technologies that have helped the world connect more easily; on the other hand, they have been raised alongside the rise of hyperindividualism in American culture that has isolated us from each other and the world around us.
… Technology allowed the Millennials not only to imagine the children in Ethiopia, but to actually see them and, eventually, become their friends on Facebook. Changing demographics made the new generation more comfortable with difference and diversity than their parents. Plus, technological connectivity opened the door to economic interdependence.
… The political aims and vision of the Millennials clearly buck the Reagan “rugged individualism” in favor of the community values of connectedness, inclusion, and mutual responsibility.
But social movements are based on collective action.
(30 June 2008)
Grassroots Lobbying: Use Ideas, Not One-Click Campaigns
Heather MacIntosh, World Changing
Are you an American? Want to influence Congress? Do more than vote. Give them solutions.
In the United States, now is the time for the grassroots to grow. But in the age of mouse-click communication, it’s important to grow smart as well as strong.
Public comment vehicles, like form letters and one-click online campaigns, allow grassroots efforts to increase dramatically in volume by reducing the amount of time volunteers spend supporting a cause. But volume can actually work against grassroots interests.
… We need to feed the system with fresh ideas — directly. And we can’t make change without taking a critical look at grassroots advocacy.
Lobbying in the Nonprofit Sector
I work in this environment every day.
… hiring pros is often unnecessary, and can even be less effective than utilizing the people already invested in your organization. To compel our federal government to embrace solutions that make sense to us, we must focus our engagement locally, at the source of both the problem and opportunity.
The best lobbyists are often constituents who not only know their issues, but also maintain an ongoing direct relationship with their member of Congress…
Heather MacIntosh is President of Preservation Action, the 501c4 grassroots lobby for historic preservation policy based in Washington, DC. She is certified by the American League of Lobbyists.
(24 June 2008)
Printable Flyers for Use in Community Organizing
Bob Waldrop, Energy Conservation News and Resources
I have recently revised my “Printable Flyers” to take into account developments and new information over the last few years.
This community resource consists of 8 flyers promoting sustainable and frugal living, and 7 flyers providing information that would be useful in the event of a fast-acting, long-lasting disaster resulting from peak oil, climate instability, terrorism, or military action.
These flyers may be freely copied and distributed. Download and copy now while the electric grid is still up and running and the copy shops are open.
This resource is located at http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/printflyers.htm
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Printable flyers for promoting frugal living
(Nov 2007): Managing Winter Energy Bills.
(Winter 2006-2007) For exceptional situations, including information on what to do in case of utility cut-offs or prolonged power outages during the winter, see Keeping warm in a winter emergency
June 25, 2007: How to stay comfortable and safe in the hot summer
Saving money on energy in the winter
Family Food Security
… Cover Sheet – this makes a handy intro to the concept of “printable disaster flyers” and could be included as a first page in sets that you decide to go ahead and give away now. PDF version.
The Seven Habits of Personal, Family, and Community Resilience | PDF version
(30 June 2008)
