Camp Obama
by Sara on November 12th, 2008
Hi all,
I attended a lecture today organized by graduate students at the Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. The speaker offering the lecture was Harry Boyte, who is a long-time community organizer and Co-Director for the Center for Democracy and Citizenship, where I work.
The lecture focused on how community organizing has evolved over the years, and how the concept of community organizing has finally reached the mainstream media with the Barack Obama campaign. The intent of this post is to summarize what Harry Boyte discussed, and also to offer my own insight into his words and the concept of community organizing.
Harry began by mentioning that Obama began his career as a community organizer in the mid 1980s in Chicago, as a lot of America is now aware. A career in community organizing, according to Harry, is focused upon giving citizens the tools to learn to define problems and work to solve them. Harry also mentioned a variety of early community organizers, starting with Jane Addams and culminating with Barack Obama.
Harry also emphasized the importance of “Everyone is embedded in a particular history”. I’ve heard this same concept rephrased in another way: “Everyone has a story”. It’s fascinating to think about how the history that I’ve grown up in, the context that my life fits into, shapes who I am and what my passions are. Harry suggested that this is the foundation of building relationships with others, and that this is a key reason why Barack Obama’s campaign strategies were so successful: Obama (and the thousands of volunteers and organizers working for him) took the time to listen to the stories of others.
Harry also drew a contrast between mobilizing and organizing. While the notion of mobilization was developed by progressives in order to address threats like taxation and toxic waste, it lacks substance capable of change. In mobilization, a target enemy is defined; everyone knows who’s in and who’s out. Because of this mentality, everyone’s either good or bad. And, depending upon who you’re dealing with, you have a script that you stick to: “Come to the good side. This is what you should be mad about.” Mobilization takes the approach that we as Americans need rescuing, and that the only one who can provide adequate rescue is the government. The practice of mobilization has dominated politics (look at the campaigns of John McCain and Hillary Clinton).
A strong contrast to this is the notion of community organizing. Organizing focuses upon values, not issues. Organizing sees issues as a means to an end, not the end. Organizing, as Harry puts it, focuses upon “building community power to empower values”. Instead of focusing on developing an enemy and convincing Americans that they need rescuing, organizing strives to promote the values of respect (that is, respect for all political leanings/voters); empowerment (through the aim of skill-building); and inclusiveness (no “us vs. them” mentality).
Harry also discussed how to continue the momentum that Obama’s election victory has created. To get community organizing models in the strategies of government, it’ll take organizing. Everything comes back to organizing. Recognizing that work is necessary to make organizing successful is also a key notion to understand. The key difference between mobilizing and organizing is empowerment; while mobilizing strives to tell us we can’t rescue ourselves, organizing convinces us we can (hence the “Yes We Can” mantra).
An interesting statistic: according to NPR, in the state of Florida, the Obama campaign created 19,000 neighborhood teams led by 500 paid organizers. Other efforts, much like this one, was also replicated in battleground states. To adequately train all of these volunteers, Marshall Ganz, an experienced organizer who developed models for the Obama campaign, created Camp Obama, a weekend retreat where volunteers found their “story” and learned to use it to garner attention and support for Obama in their neighborhoods.
Question: What if we had Camp Obama’s accessible to young people to teach the skills of community organizing? How drastically different would our nation be?
It was a fascinating lecture. If you’re interested in more information about Harry Boyte, please read his book, The Citizen Solution.
Thanks for letting me praise community organizing; I’m so fascinated by it. It’s change at its finest.
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