Community Organizing

The New York Times has a story up this weekend exploring the increased popularity of community organizing work as a profession-of-choice for college graduates.

A job that has not been all that alluring to college graduates is in resurgence, according to leading community organizers and educators. Once thought of as a destination for lefty radicals committed to living lives of low pay, frustration and bitter burnout, community organizing is now seen by many young people an exciting career.

With their jobs, students envision helping communities address urgent issues — economics or the environment, education or social justice — while developing leadership skills. And these jobs, students say, can actually lead to ... well, you know.

“Community organizing has become cool,” said Marshall Ganz, who dropped out of Harvard in 1964 to join the civil rights movement in Mississippi and spent 16 years with Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. Of course, a tough economy helps attract people to professions they might not have otherwise considered, as does a crusading time when Wall Street has become a symbol of greed, arrogance and irresponsibility.

Peter Dreier, the Professor of Politics at Occidental College who was quoted in the article, wrote an accompanying post over at TPM Cafe discussing community organizing among young people, focusing on the Millennial generation and what he sees as needed policy for this country.

Perhaps because so many of them get practical experience while still in college, working with off-campus groups, today's student activists are much more pragmatic, savvy, and patient than their counterparts in the 1960s. They are skeptical but not cynical. They are not paralyzed by old ideological battles or identity politics. They respect differences of opinion, including religious beliefs, as well as the right to dissent. They understand that they can disagree with their government and still love their country and its ideals. They want major changes in our institutions and policies, but they know that people need to win stepping-stone reforms before they can envision a different kind of world.

For sure, student interest in political activism and community organizing was going on long before the Obama campaign. In the 1990s, students mobilized against sweatshops and for "fair trade" consumer products, in support of "living wages" for university employees, and around global warming and "greening" America's college campuses. The AFL-CIO began the Organizing Institute, a summer internship program for college students who want to learn about union organizing. After years of watching the conservative movement spend millions of dollars to recruit and train activists on campuses, and plug them into jobs with politicians, think tanks, and right-wing publications, liberal groups like the Center for American Progress, Wellstone Action, Democracy Matters, the Student Environmental Action Coalition and others began to focus more attention on college students -- to invest in the next generation of progressives. In addition, over the past decade, a growing number of colleges and universities embraced the idea of "service learning," linking classrooms and the community.

I quoted Dreier because of his deeper discussion of the movement among young people to sacrifice their lives for the benefit of others, and because his writing excerpted above deeply (and rightly) contradicts a point the New York Times reporter Sara Rimer tried to make in the main article:

And unlike the 1960s, many of these students don’t seem motivated by partisanship. Drea Chicas, 21, the daughter of Salvadoran immigrants, is a graduating senior at Occidental, where she has taken Professor Dreier’s course and worked with teenage girls.

But politics? “That to me is just a distraction,” she said. “When I’m with my girls, that’s the last thing they have on their minds. They’ve seen their boys shot in their faces, violence against women. Democratic, Republican — that’s not even relevant.”

I was feeling this story until I got to the excerpt above, which came out of nowhere. I disagree with these two paragraphs because service and politics, when both are at their best, are inextricably linked. There is no separating the two, because to practice politics effectively, one must serve others; to serve effectively, creating positive, sustained social change, one must practice politics. Rimer's differentiation between the two appears to stem from a common association of "politics" with a more Machiavellian connotation, more along the lines of "bitter partisanship" than the actual political process.

What Rimer may have been trying to say by including that student's quote is that young people today don't like strict, unyielding ideology, and that I would agree with. As Dreier noted above, youth today believe that in order to pursue many of the imposing, systemic issues we face today, we can't afford to scream at each other and participate in symbolic acts and back-and-forth bickering that don't accomplish anything. Those squabbles are irrelevant in our current political environment. Instead, our preferred style of activism involves embarking on a long-term construction job, building our ideal society brick by brick, which, to be most effective, must involve the machinery of the government.

The primary definition of politics in the dictionary is "the art or science of government." When youth service rates surged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the political side of change-making still left a lot to be desired. In the 2000 election, only 41 percent of 18-29 year olds voted, compared with 2008's 52 percent. But starting in 2003 and moving forward, the numbers increased: more youth immersed themselves in the political process, either by voting, volunteering for candidates, working in government offices/departments, attending rallies, and yes, working as community organizers.

So yes - the politics (irresponsible partisanship) that Rimer writes of is not liked by Millennials. But the legitimate definition of politics -- "the art or science of government" -- has become an essential piece of the Millennial brand of activism. This version of politics is combined with the service that Millennials are known for, and together, they create the positive social change we need to solve our largest problems and, consequently, inspire a surge in community organizing.

In an executive order Thursday following the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama announced the revamping of the White House's Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships.

After the breakfast he announced an executive order establishing the new White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, and talked about the role faith-based and secular community organizations will play in our economic recovery.

"People trust them. Communities rely on them. And we will help them," he said.

The President named Joshua DuBois to lead the office, and also announced the creation of the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships -- a group of 25 religious and secular leaders, listed below.

"Whether it's connecting groups that are training people to do new jobs, or figuring out the role of faith-based organizations in combating global climate change, this office creates those partnerships in a way that's responsible, constitutional, and -- bottom line -- helps those in need," DuBois said.

DuBois continues to talk about the new office in this video, provided by the White House.

Working with Faith from White House on Vimeo.

It looks like President Obama will continue to develop opportunities for Americans to serve their respective communities, this time by energizing churches and faith-based communities. This move completes a campaign promise, in which Obama pledged to create a commitment to a "real partnership -- not a photo-op."

I'm curious as to whether this might create an opportunity for churches to revitalize efforts to court younger members for their congregations by embracing service and community work. With the Obama brand and community work popular among Millennials, perhaps President Obama is providing churches and faith-based communities some assistance in evangelizing younger members. Any thoughts?

The Obama campaign fact sheet regarding this office/policy can be found here.

Frances Moore Lappe wrote a piece on Huffington Post amid the inauguration festivities this week asking whether "service" is really the best word/tool to use when intensifying national civic engagement efforts.

My own hesitation about the service frame is simple: If I serve, someone else is being served. If I serve, I act, but the other -- the beneficiary -- does not. Making ourselves servants, we might also ignore our own legitimate needs as well as be tempted to imagine we already know what others' needs are. In any case "service" seems to create two classes: the givers and the receivers.

And that's a big problem. Doesn't this dichotomy help blind us to the reality of the human condition that Martin Luther King, Jr. called us to see? In his "Letter from Birmingham Jail," he wrote, "We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly."

Lappe goes on to point out that serving is about more than the "helper's high" that 95 percent of volunteers reported feeling in a recent study, as a result of helping others. Creating King's "network of mutuality" leads to developing a "liberation of talents," that, once relieved from oppression, can bolster our society.

So, instead of "serving" others, which continues the oppression of the receivers' skills, Lappe argues that we should be sure that a partnership exists that uses the talents of all stakeholders -- group problem-solving instead of service.

Lappe cites Obama in this post, given his example as a community organizer with an affiliate of Gamaleil, a large Chicago-based advocacy network, supporting activist leaders of low-income communities. What's intriguing to me is that I saw Obama's experience with this approach come into play when he was in Erie last April.

A gentleman asked Obama a question in the town hall portion of the event in which he laid out the problems he was having in his life and essentially asked, "What are you going to do for me?" Instead of providing a litany of policy prescriptions, Obama first asserted that the appropriate first question was, "What are you going to do for yourself?" and then he went on to speak about responsibility, much like he did in his inaugural address.

In a world with rapidly growing technology that breeds an efficiency-first approach, Lappe's argument and Obama's philosophy reminds us that even though fixing another's problem might make us feel good, it doesn't do anything long-term for society. We should be doing all that we can to collaborate, pool resources, skills, and gifts, and tackle our challenges together.

One thing to remember, despite the political community's near obsession with all things Obama and the national political scene, is that local decision-making is sometimes more important. While it's every young political junkie's dream to go to Washington D.C. and work on the hill, many of us can be in even more influential roles right at home.

Suzanne Morse at Smart Communities has an encouraging post up on young leaders who are attempting to make a difference in their local communities. Morse is involved with the Pew Partnership for Civic Change, which sponsors a program called the LeadershipPlenty Institute. Morse discusses the program and the many success stories and signs of hope she has seen within the program thus far.

...Despite the economic, energy, and health care issues we face, there are signs of hopefulness. We saw that hopefulness in real time these last two weeks at our LeadershipPlenty trainings in Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Virginia. By the end of this week in these four sites alone, we will have trained 175 people from 60 communities to offer this skill-based leadership program in their communities. We concluded the training in Roanoke, VA (our partnership with Virginia Tech) yesterday afternoon. The roster of that training speaks volumes about who is interested in community change in our country. Among the participants in this train-the-trainer institute were two current (and one former) elected officials, a Chamber of Commerce executive and a Chamber board member, non-profit leaders from a variety of community development, arts, and economic development organizations in rural and urban communities, a person representing extension, three community college staff people, a community foundation staff person, two pasters (sic), a person who trains Vista and Americorps volunteers, a college professor, a Main Street director, a local business person, and two state government community developers. Now if you are looking for a pattern here--don't. This group represented our communities in the best possible way. From a variety of perspectives, all of these folks want to make a difference, want to engage more people in the community and the region, and want to build on the incredible assets that exist everywhere. As we listened to their plans for implementation, we heard college students, churches, senior citizens, arts organizations, rural regions, and small cities.

Again, more collaboration, more pragmatic problem-solving, and more influence.

Kevin has really focused on User-generated Government and next steps for youth activism in recent weeks, and one of the most important aspects of this movement in my opinion is increasing the number of young elected officials starting locally. School boards, county-level offices, city councils, and mayoral offices are all crying out for new, innovative leadership that target youth as a major constituency while governing. And while winning is of course the goal, the mere presence of a Millennial in local political dialogue is a boon for the innovation we're going to need as all of our communities try to tackle new challenges.

Of course, running for public office isn't the only way to get involved, as Morse listed several other organizations that are dying to get new blood. But the most important thing is to be involved in as many community-affecting decisions as possible and the conversations that surround them. In a very short time, we'll be taking the reins of these efforts, building institutions, and creating new opportunities for collaborative problem-solving. We've proven our electoral mettle; now we need to try governing and citizenship.

• Marc Ambinder continues his question to educate us about the difference between VANs and VoteBuilders, Catalist and MyBo. Meanwhile, Sarah Lai Stirland at Wired thinks that all these databases pose a privacy problem for Obama supporters.
• Meanwhile, K Street Cafe has some interesting ideas on how Obama can continue to capitalize on MyBo/his supporters while in the White House. The most feasible option, according to the author, would be a leadership PAC.
• You voted. Now what? WireTap has the answers.
• The Christian Science Monitor notes the rise of a new kind of values voter:
  

  Nearly three-quarters of voters (and of religious voters) said people of faith should promote the common good, not protect their own views. Even groups most active in the religious right said a broader faith agenda would best reflect their values.

  Only 1 in 5 white Evangelicals and 1 in 8 Catholics said an agenda focused on abortion and same-sex marriage best expressed their values. A majority of both Evangelicals (55 percent) and Catholics (51 percent) opted for a broad agenda that also includes poverty, the environment, and the war in Iraq. The survey involved a nationally representative sample of 1,277 voters and had a margin of error of 3 percent.

  h/t to Zack Exley

• Does the Ohio GOP face a future without the youth vote? I think that's a question that all smart, conservative operatives are asking now.
• Nicholas Kristoff celebrates youth activism. As in 10 year olds.
• John Dickerson, Slate's political correspondent and host of the rather excellent Slate Political Gabfest, thinks that Obama's YouTube "Fireside Chats" are the opposite of transparent.

Bumped. --Mike

I would think that the introvert in me would love America's coffeehouses (when I use this term, I am referring to the shops that most Americans experience -- places like Starbucks, Caribou Coffee, Dunkin' Donuts). They're small, usually fairly quiet, lounging customers usually have headphones on typing on a laptop, and no one talks to you until you go get a cup of coffee or a refill. But I don't love them. Let me count the ways.

1.) When I describe them as "usually fairly quiet," that's ignoring the sound of making the lattes and smoothies which, at worst, can be severely irritating.

2.) I like being left alone to some degree, but in today's coffeehouses, I can't avoid noticing the missed storytelling opportunities. Each person has an intricately woven set of experiences that every other person in the world can learn from. Where else in society do we have the opportunity to organize these experience-based exchanges?

3.) These chain coffeehouses are usually surrounded by strip malls, big box stores and found on four lane highways. This restricts the building of any kind of community, and it deteriorates the economic health of our small town walking districts.

When I was first thinking about this topic, I consulted a book titled The Great Good Place by Ray Oldenburg. The book reviews the importance of the "third place" in our civic health, a place apart from home and work that allows us to relax and enjoy the company of others. In addition to coffeehouses, we do have other places like hair salons and taverns that serve as third places, but, as Oldenburg writes in the book, coffeehouses have always had the intellectually social side to them. Most of the chain coffeehouses that we have today do fit some of Oldenburg's "third place" characteristics.

But what if we tinkered with some things?

For example, what if the focus of the coffeehouse was not the beverage, but the conversation? What if the "coffeehouse" became a "commons"? Starbucks initially was started with its focus on the environment within the store (after realizing selling just coffee beans was a bit bland). Howard Schultz, the founder of the company, got the urge to start Starbucks when he visited the streetside Italian cafes, was impressed with their environments, and wanted to bring it back to the United States. But the difference between this idea and between Schultz's wish is the injection of interpersonal communication into this mission. This commons should be a place that welcomes everyone into the collective conversation. Oldenburg writes a bit about these qualities found in the London coffeehouses of yesteryear in his book.

In the era of its reign . . . the coffeehouse was often referred to as the Penny University. A penny was the price of admission to its store of literary and intellectual flavors. Twopence was the price of a cup of coffee; a pipe cost a penny; a newspaper was free. The coffeehouse of the seventeenth century was the precursor of the daily newspaper and home delivery of mail . . . Whether on a regular schedule or not, many Londoners dropped into the coffeehouse several times a day in order to keep abreast of the news. Customarily, the literate would read aloud from the house's newspapers, tracts, and broadsides so that the illiterate could digest the contents and discuss the issues of the day (185).

The focus definitely was centered on the dialogue. The conversation, as you read, was set up like a course (the Penny University). You got the news, but you also had the opportunity to digest it, to play with it, with other people just as interested as you. I emphasized "discuss" above because it was not enough even for the illiterate to know the news -- they were expected to discuss it too. The newspaper was free, so there was an obvious focus on substantive conversation. How much better could our society be if we had discussions about public events that happened more frequently? We'd be more educated, more prepared to perform our civic duties. And because the focus is centered on the dialogue and not the beverage, the fancy drinks of Starbucks and Caribou Coffee turn to a more quietly made coffee.

What if this outlet was more centrally located? What if it sucked more people into the plighted downtown areas many rust belt communities are stuck with? What if this "commons" served as an incentive to live in these areas? These commons could be the heart of "walking districts," the downtowns of tomorrow. With a burgeoning emphasis on green behavior, these districts could take off and restore the promise of smalltown America. Improved public dialogue and civic health could result in better school systems, as citizens become more involved in the town's institutions. Better education brings more corporations to these towns to set up shop. It also infuses energy into the town leading to entrepreneurs who are dedicated to the town's future.

I realize this is a very rough, brainstormy entry. But when we look at the "common good," I think we should start in our local communities. The "common good" can only be appreciated, targeted, and pursued when people are talking, and while we have these fancy technological tools (like this blog), the best communication continues to be face-to-face. Coincidentally, Mike offers this tidbit about Clay Shirkey's "cognitive surplus" thesis in a comment on the recent volunteerism entry. It fits in quite nicely with this discussion. This "commons" could find incentives that would enable us to get youth to take one more step and invest some of the time spent on the internet in these grounded, substantive conversations.

What do you think of this commons idea? Is there anything else we can do to reinvigorate the hearts and restore the civic health of our small communities?

Three things to check out today:

• The Youth Shall Set You Free: Cincinnati’s 2006 Person of the Year
• Five Under 35
• Are you getting shafted on student loans?

The first story is something I came across while checking out The League’s new website (which makes some pretty good, and consistent use of audio and video).

It’s about Gavin Leonard, the 27 year old executive director of Citizens Organizing Neighborhoods to Regain Our Liberation (CONTROL), the political arm of Elementz, a hip-hop community center in Cincinnati. What Gavin has done is pretty impressive, and its very much a realization of what Alex and I were talking about way back in the day when we wrote this: a plan for a dual for-profit/nonprofit concert space for independent music and progressive activism. He’s created a sustainable (financially) space that is rooted in local culture (the four pillars of Hip Hop), and which awakens and channels the political consciousness of its members for the betterment of that community. It’s a realization of one of the ideas we had while working at MFA, and what Fred blogs about all the time - third places.

Amazing.

Today, Campus Progress published my article about the unique pension plan program created by the National Organizers Alliance. NOA is an association for community organizers and non-profit workers, and the pension is its flagship project -- probably the only plan of its kind.

By pooling together the resources of its thousand-plus members, and scores of member organizations, NOA was able to secure a deal that's as desirable a pension benefit as any employee could hope to see. All members, regardless of their place on the staff ladder, have access to a employer-matched 5% contribution towards a secure and accessible savings fund.

When I spoke with Patrick Masterson, acting director of NOA, I mentioned that this seems to be a smart way to fix one of the market failures in the activist industry. Patrick laughed to hear the phrase "activist industry"--saying that he'd never quite thought of it like that--but it would seem that this is exactly the insight that prompted NOA to take up the plan. In the world of cash-strapped community work, employees' main benefit is "psychic income"--but while no one does it to get rich, those who do want to stay committed for the long-term often find themselves approaching a future that's actually financially insecure.

NOA's plan was not just about a sweet benny--it was a deliberate and measured reaction to a widespread problem among community organizers and activists: no matter how committed they were to the cause, most progressive organizations have been failing to invest in their future. Is yours?

You can read more about it in "Private Pensions, Public Good":

The notion that non-profit employment benefits should have an “ideological frame” is, in itself, somewhat unusual. "So often in social change work, we don’t practice what we preach,” [Cathy] Howell says. “We say right off the bat that we don’t have enough money, and what ends up happening is that we don’t cover people’s basic needs. [NOA] wanted to set a standard to show that it is the responsibility of social justice organizations to invest in their employees."

At the end of the article, Cathy shares a particularly interesting insight into the way that the mindset of social justice work has changed from the 70s (when it was first widely professionalized) to now (when the "industry" is led by people from that first generation, who might not be in tune with the realities of today's youth).

Update: I realize I should have given this a little more introduction. This podcast is about a book - Applebee's America - co-authored by a republican strategist, a democratic strategist, and a journalist for the AP. The book tackles the idea of "values consumers" and how corporations like Applebee's have exploited community values to lure in customers and create profit. It then extrapolates how the political parties can use these practices to reach voters. What it's really talking about isn't necessarily values in the Republican "Family Values" sense, but rather the idea that you need to talk to people where and how they live - in the communities and lifestyles in which they move and operate. This podcast looks at the book from the Republican perspective. (Take this description with a grain of salt. It's in the mail, but I've yet to read the book).

Hat tip to Kevin, who managed to send this to me even though he's vacationing in Turkey. Why he's reading GOP.com in Turkey is beyond me . . .

Applebee's America (10 minutes)

This podcast is complementary to Fred's podcast of a Robert Putnam speech (below), as well as a conversation the two of us are having about "Living Liberally," or organizing the progressive movement by lifestyle and community involvement rather than policy issues.

The podcast is sort of a mash-up of Putnam and Malcolm Gladwell. Its interesting to hear the conservative take on these new (or rather very old) social trends and organizing tactics. Especially since, in some quarters - voter datafile integration of "lifestyle" factors and organizing faith communities - they are way ahead of progressives.