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Organizing Principles
Experience. In the 2008 presidential election, it’s been a campaign slogan, a debating point and a subject of endless column inches and talk show hours. John McCain and Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin — whose life experiences offer the best preparation for the presidency and vice presidency? Does it help to be a naval aviator? A community organizer? A senator? A small-town mayor? Does one trump another? To answer those questions, the Op-Ed page asked people whose résumés overlap with the candidates’ to explain how the qualities they’ve needed to draw on for their jobs and their lives would come in handy in the White House.
This op-ed piece also appeared in the September 14th edition of the New York Times.
What do community organizers do? Well, consider Hugh Espey, an organizer with Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement. On a typical day, he might help low-income residents of Des Moines organize to keep a neighborhood grocery store open or work with family farmers to persuade a state agency to deny a permit for a proposed factory farm, or meet with Mexican families in Marshalltown about ways to advance immigration reform. He brings various constituencies together to find common ground, build relationships and support each other’s causes.
It’s important to emphasize that organizers like Mr. Espey aren’t there to solve people’s problems for them — they’re there to teach people how to help themselves: to learn how to speak in public, to run a meeting, or to hold their own in a negotiation with an employer, a landlord or a policy maker. Organizers teach people to work with — and challenge — politicians of every party.
How do they do this? Every effective organizer I’ve ever known has had this talent: the ability to listen to people, rather than spin them or demonize them. Organizers don’t seek personal glory, they help other people lead and be recognized for that leadership.
Any president would do well to adhere to the community values, often rooted in religious faith, that inspire organizers. They believe that problems are best solved through cooperation, that every person is part of the American family and that no individual can do well while others are suffering. A president familiar with community organizing would seek out diverse views to formulate policy rooted in the realities of ordinary life. He would know how to build coalitions to overcome the entrenched interests that block progress.
Most important, a president with community organizing skills might engage ordinary Americans in the practice of democracy every day — not just at election time.
Organizing to grown and empower communities