Barack and Organizing

Ok, the obvious is that Barack is a black man, a son of an immigrant, a Christian and a politician. In some ways, Barack’s candidacy looks similar to your average post civil rights politician. What is interesting to us about Barack is not just his demographics, but in fact the path he has taken to get to where he is. Barack Obama is an organizer. An Organizer is a person who brings together a group of people for the purposes of challenging those that influences and impacts their lives so that they may gain control over those decisions. Organizing is often used to leverage the power relationship between common-folks and people in power. Organizing has been responsible for changing the political culture of a community as well as getting a relatively unknown person elected like in Bolivia. The indigenous people of Bolivia put together an organizing plan that shocked the world and elected an organizer to be President of Bolivia.

It is our belief, which will be explored through the blog in the upcoming weeks, that Barack’s candidacy is making a strong connection to the profession of organizing to not only let everyone know that he has been in the trenches with the people, but in fact that he is re-introducing to the American people, specifically to those that are down-trodden and marginalized, the importance of organizing in holding government accountable, gaining political power and access and to make and create meaningful change. You see signs of this in Barack’s speech to the culinary unions where he says in an unprecedented fashion, that as President he would come down and walk the picket line with the workers.