community organizing
In Honor of Community Organizing
A brief history of Community Organizing:
Jane Addams: The first woman to win the Nobel Peace prize and founder of the Hull House in Chicago, a program which provided social services for people in need.
Saul Alinsky: Author of Rules for Radicals, which laid the foundation for grassroots organizing in the 60s.
César Chávez: Civil Rights activist and labor leader. Eight states currently celebrate his birthday as a holiday.
Martin Luther King, Jr.: Civil Rights activist, co-founder of the Southern Christian Leadership Council, and the youngest winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.
These are just a handful of the people that Sarah Palin and Rudy Guilliani shat on last week when they saw fit to disparage the honorable work that community organizers do.
Now, these are some outstanding examples, to be sure. Community organizing takes place at a much smaller level as well. Community organizing is at the heart of the work that churches do, that everyday people trying to make the lives of everyday people like themselves do, that the PTA does, that voter outreach organizations do. It’s ironic that Palin, Guilliani and the rest of the GOP would make fun of community organizing because community organizing is the epitome of one of the central mantras of conservatism: pick yourself up by your bootstraps. That’s what community organizing is all about. It’s about people taking control of their lives and their communities and trying to make things better for themselves. It’s recognizing that no one is going to do for you what you won’t do for yourself. You can talk about “actual responsibilities” all you want, but the truth of the matter is that community organizing is taking the ultimate amount of responsibility–not only to yourself, but to everyone in your community.
We should all know, however, that that wasn’t what Palin and Guilliani were talking about. Picking yourself up by your bootstraps is just fine if your looking to place that same boot on the necks of people once you’re standing straight. Helping others, particularly people of color and low-income folks, to achieve what often amounts to the most basic of human needs? Well, why would anyone do that? There’s no money, no glory, no fame in that. And that is at the root of the attacks on community organizing that we’ve seen. It’s not that community organizing is bad. To be sure, Sarah Palin has done her own amount of community organizing. The problem is that many of those community organizers out there aren’t out for personal gain, aren’t out there to keep their boots on peoples necks for profit and glory. The problem is that Sen. Barack Obama was out there organizing black folks and low-income folks. And when those that traditionally have a boot against their necks start to get organized, start to get a little power, well, that’s a serious problem for some folks.
ETA: Thanks to the Afrosphere Action Coalition for organizing this Day of Blogging For Justice.
How to get Started in Community Organizing
Community Organizers Fight Back
We Are All Community Organizers
Community Organizers Against Sarah Palin
Bloggers taking part in the Day of Blogging for Community Organizing (I’ll keep updating. Leave links in comments):
African American Political Pundit
Radical Russ via Pam’s House Blend
Young Black Professional Guide
Where the Revolution’s Gonna Begin
Solidarity
Kick Ass Bloggers
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