Barack Obama on community organizing of disenfranchised

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MindFreedom News - 20 January 2009
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    Why "community organizing" is relevant to
    very disenfranchised people -- including
    mental health consumers and psychiatric survivors.

BELOW is a chapter written about two decades ago by a community  
organizer who is getting inaugurated as President of the USA today:

Barack Obama.

It's about the role of the little-known job of "community organizing"  
in the empowerment of, by and for extremely marginalized people, in  
this case impoverished inner city people addressing multiple problems.

Forwarding this essay to others isn't necessarily an endorsement of  
all or part. But he does have helpful lessons that can apply to other  
disempowered groups of "everyday people," including psychiatric  
survivors and mental health consumers.

He warns that simple economic "self-help" is not enough.

He also warns against relying on "a 'consumer advocacy' approach,  
with a focus on wrestling services and resources from the ouside  
powers that be."

~~~~~~~~~~~~

[First published in 1988 in Illinois Issues]

"Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City"

By Barack Obama

Illinois Issues, Springfield, Illinois

Over the past five years, I've often had a difficult time explaining  
my profession to folks. Typical is a remark a public school  
administrative aide made to me one bleak January morning, while I  
waited to deliver some flyers to a group of confused and angry  
parents who had discovered the presence of asbestos in their school.

"Listen, Obama," she began. "You're a bright young man, Obama. You  
went to college, didn't you?"

I nodded.

"I just cannot understand why a bright young man like you would go to  
college, get that degree and become a community organizer."

"Why's that?"

" 'Cause the pay is low, the hours is long, and don't nobody  
appreciate you." She shook her head in puzzlement as she wandered  
back to attend to her duties.

I've thought back on that conversation more than once during the time  
I've organized with the Developing Communities Project, based in  
Chicago's far south side. Unfortunately, the answers that come to  
mind haven't been as simple as her question. Probably the shortest  
one is this: It needs to be done, and not enough folks are doing it.

The debate as to how black and other dispossessed people can forward  
their lot in America is not new. From W.E.B. DuBois to Booker T.  
Washington to Marcus Garvey to Malcolm X to Martin Luther King, this  
internal debate has raged between integration and nationalism,  
between accommodation and militancy, between sit-down strikes and  
boardroom negotiations. The lines between these strategies have never  
been simply drawn, and the most successful black leadership has  
recognized the need to bridge these seemingly divergent approaches.  
During the early years of the Civil Rights movement, many of these  
issues became submerged in the face of the clear oppression of  
segregation. The debate was no longer whether to protest, but how  
militant must that protest be to win full citizenship for blacks.

Twenty years later, the tensions between strategies have reemerged,  
in part due to the recognition that for all the accomplishments of  
the 1960s, the majority of blacks continue to suffer from second- 
class citizenship. Related to this are the failures — real, perceived  
and fabricated — of the Great Society programs initiated by Lyndon  
Johnson. Facing these realities, at least three major strands of  
earlier movements are apparent.

First, and most publicized, has been the surge of political  
empowerment around the country. Harold Washington and Jesse Jackson  
are but two striking examples of how the energy and passion of the  
Civil Rights movement have been channeled into bids for more  
traditional political power. Second, there has been a resurgence in  
attempts to foster economic development in the black community,  
whether through local entrepre neurial efforts, increased hiring of  
black contractors and corporate managers, or Buy Black campaigns.  
Third, and perhaps least publicized, has been grass-roots community  
organizing, which builds on indigenous leadership and direct action.

Proponents of electoral politics and economic development strategies  
can point to substantial accomplishments in the past 10 years. An  
increase in the number of black public officials offers at least the  
hope that government will be more responsive to inner-city  
constituents. Economic development programs can provide structural  
improvements and jobs to blighted communities.

In my view, however, neither approach offers lasting hope of real  
change for the inner city unless undergirded by a systematic approach  
to community organization. This is because the issues of the inner  
city are more complex and deeply rooted than ever before. Blatant  
discrimination has been replaced by institutional racism; problems  
like teen pregnancy, gang involvement and drug abuse cannot be solved  
by money alone. At the same time, as Professor William Julius Wilson  
of the University of Chicago has pointed out, the inner city's  
economy and its government support have declined, and middle-class  
blacks are leaving the neighbor hoods they once helped to sustain.

Neither electoral politics nor a strategy of economic self-help and  
internal development can by themselves respond to these new  
challenges. The election of Harold Washington in Chicago or of  
Richard Hatcher in Gary were not enough to bring jobs to inner-city  
neighborhoods or cut a 50 percent drop-out rate in the schools,  
although they did achieve an important symbolic effect. In fact, much- 
needed black achievement in prominent city positions has put us in  
the awkward position of administer ing underfunded systems neither  
equipped nor eager to address the needs of the urban poor and being  
forced to compromise their interests to more powerful demands from  
other sectors.

Self-help strategies show similar limitations. Although both laudable  
and necessary, they too often ignore the fact that without a stable  
community, a well-educated population, an adequate infrastructure and  
an informed and employed market, neither new nor well-established  
compa nies will be willing to base themselves in the inner city and  
still compete in the international marketplace. Moreover, such  
approaches can and have become thinly veiled excuses for cutting back  
on social programs, which are anathema to a conservative agenda.

In theory, community organizing provides a way to merge various  
strategies for neighborhood empowerment. Organizing begins with the  
premise that (1) the problems facing inner-city communities do not  
result from a lack of effective solutions, but from a lack of power  
to implement these solutions; (2) that the only way for communities  
to build long-term power is by organizing people and money around a  
common vision; and (3) that a viable organization can only be  
achieved if a broadly based indigenous leadership — and not one or  
two charismatic leaders — can knit together the diverse interests of  
their local institutions.

This means bringing together churches, block clubs, parent groups and  
any other institutions in a given community to pay dues, hire  
organizers, conduct research, develop leadership, hold rallies and  
education cam paigns, and begin drawing up plans on a whole range of  
issues — jobs, education, crime, etc. Once such a vehicle is formed,  
it holds the power to make politicians, agencies and corporations  
more responsive to commu nity needs. Equally important, it enables  
people to break their crippling isolation from each other, to reshape  
their mutual values and expectations and rediscover the possibilities  
of acting collaboratively — the prerequi sites of any successful self- 
help initiative.

By using this approach, the Developing Communities Project and other  
organizations in Chicago's inner city have achieved some impressive  
results. Schools have been made more accountable-Job training  
programs have been established; housing has been renovated and built;  
city services have been provided; parks have been refurbished; and  
crime and drug problems have been curtailed. Additionally, plain folk  
have been able to access the levers of power, and a sophisticated  
pool of local civic leadership has been developed.

But organizing the black community faces enormous problems as well.  
One problem is the not entirely undeserved skepticism organizers face  
in many communities. To a large degree, Chicago was the birthplace of  
community organizing, and the urban landscape is littered with the  
skeletons of previous efforts. Many of the best-intentioned members  
of the community have bitter memories of such failures and are  
reluctant to muster up renewed faith in the process.

A related problem involves the aforementioned exodus from the inner  
city of financial resources, institutions, role models and jobs. Even  
in areas that have not been completely devastated, most households  
now stay afloat with two incomes. Traditionally, community organizing  
has drawn support from women, who due to tradition and social  
discrimination had the time and the inclination to participate in  
what remains an essentially voluntary activity. Today the majority of  
women in the black community work full time, many are the sole  
parent, and all have to split themselves between work, raising  
children, running a household and maintaining some semblance of a  
personal life — all of which makes voluntary activities lower on the  
priority list. Additionally, the slow exodus of the black middle  
class into the suburbs means that people shop in one neighborhood,  
work in another, send their child to a school across town and go to  
church someplace other than the place where they live. Such  
geographical dispersion creates real problems in building a sense of  
investment and common purpose in any particular neighborhood.

Finally community organizations and organizers are hampered by their  
own dogmas about the style and substance of organizing. Most still  
practice what Professor John McKnight of Northwestern University  
calls a "consumer advocacy" approach, with a focus on wrestling  
services and resources from the ouside powers that be. Few are  
thinking of harnessing the internal productive capacities, both in  
terms of money and people, that already exist in communities.

Our thinking about media and public relations is equally stunted when  
compared to the high-powered direct mail and video approaches success  
fully used by conservative organizations like the Moral Majority.  
Most importantly, low salaries, the lack of quality training and ill- 
defined possibilities for advancement discourage the most talented  
young blacks from viewing organizing as a legitimate career option.  
As long as our best and brightest youth see more opportunity in  
climbing the corporate ladder-than in building the communities from  
which they came, organizing will remain decidedly handicapped.

None of these problems is insurmountable. In Chicago, the Developing  
Communities Project and other community organizations have pooled  
resources to form cooperative think tanks like the Gamaliel  
Foundation. These provide both a formal setting where experienced  
organizers can rework old models to fit new realities and a healthy  
environment for the recruitment and training of new organizers. At  
the same time the leadership vacuum and disillusionment following the  
death of Harold Washington have made both the media and people in the  
neighborhoods more responsive to the new approaches community  
organizing can provide.

Nowhere is the promise of organizing more apparent than in the  
traditional black churches. Possessing tremendous financial  
resources, membership and — most importantly — values and biblical  
traditions that call for empowerment and liberation, the black church  
is clearly a slumbering giant in the political and economic landscape  
of cities like Chicago. A fierce independence among black pastors and  
a preference for more traditional approaches to social involvement  
(supporting candidates for office, providing shelters for the  
homeless) have prevented the black church from bringing its full  
weight to bear on the political, social and economic arenas of the city.

Over the past few years, however, more and more young and forward- 
thinking pastors have begun to look at community organizations such  
as the Developing Communities Project in the far south side and GREAT  
in the Grand Boulevard area as a powerful tool for living the social  
gospel, one which can educate and empower entire congregations and  
not just serve as a platform for a few prophetic leaders. Should a  
mere 50 prominent black churches, out of the thousands that exist in  
cities like Chicago, decide to collaborate with a trained organizing  
staff, enormous positive changes could be wrought in the education,  
housing, employment and spirit of inner-city black communities,  
changes that would send powerful ripples throughout the city.

In the meantime, organizers will continue to build on local  
successes, learn from their numerous failures and recruit and train  
their small but growing core of leadership — mothers on welfare,  
postal workers, CTA drivers and school teachers, all of whom have a  
vision and memories of what communities can be. In fact, the answer  
to the original question — why organize? — resides in these people.  
In helping a group of housewives sit across the negotiating table  
with the mayor of America's third largest city and hold their own, or  
a retired steelworker stand before a TV camera and give voice to the  
dreams he has for his grandchild's future, one discovers the most  
significant and satisfying contribution organizing can make.

In return, organizing teaches as nothing else does the beauty and  
strength of everyday people. Through the songs of the church and the  
talk on the stoops, through the hundreds of individual stories of  
coming up from the South and finding any job that would pay, of  
raising families on threadbare budgets, of losing some children to  
drugs and watching others earn degrees and land jobs their parents  
could never aspire to — it is through these stories and songs of  
dashed hopes and powers of endurance, of ugliness and strife,  
subtlety and laughter, that organizers can shape a sense of community  
not only for others, but for themselves.

- end -

[bio] For three years Barack Obama was the director of Developing  
Communities Project, an institutionally based community organization  
on Chicago's far south side. He has also been a consultant and  
instructor for the Gamaliel Foundation, an organizing institute  
working throughout the Midwest. Currently he is studying law at  
Harvard University.

above is from Chapter 4 from "After Alinsky: Community Organizing in  
Illinois" ISBN: 0-9620873-3-5

First published in the August/ September 1988 Illinois Issues  
[published by then-Sangamon State University, which is now the  
University of Illinois at Springfield].

http://www.edwoj.com/Alinsky/AlinskyObamaChapter1990.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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