Recently,  Joe Rizoli, a notorious anti-immigrant racist cable TV host in Framingham, MA, where I am an organizer, falsely accused a priest and one of our local leaders, of “assault and battery.”  It was a publicity grab by Rizoli.  When I asked a local Framing ham Selectman (Town official) to pass a resolution praising Father Pranzo (the priest), he told me he thought it best to just ignore the Rizoli’s.  I disagree.  And so we held a rally and prayer vigil outside the District Court the day of the priest’s hearing.  About 40 people came, including two State Representatives, several pastors, priests and rabbis.

All the clergy wanted to come, even though it was the one day off a week several of them had.  They came in the cold and snow to speak out for all immigrants, whom Father Pranzo has been defending.  Many immigrants are members of his Catholic church.  It was a blessing for Father Joe to see so many people supporting him, and it gave the clergy and elected officials an opportunity to say in public where they stood.  Standing up in public for what is right made people feel good and built morale in our organization. 

If we had done nothing, ignored the Rizoli’s, as the Selectman had suggested, we would have missed an opportunity to mobilize our power and an opportunity for people to do the right thing.  Organizing gives people an  opportunity to say in public what they believe in private, and when they see ...   more »

Tom Dashle’s withdrawal from the head of HHS highlights the need to rely on powerful organizations rather than particular individuals to achieve our goals. Certainly, individuals matter, but the over-reliance on one person to achieve our goals only points out how much more we need strong, on-going organizations to fight for universal health care.  When organizations rather than individuals are the foundation of our success, then the withdrawal of one person does not doom the whole project.

We saw in the Civil Rights Movements, how over-reliance on one charismatic leader caused problems when he was killed.  Yes, specific individuals can inspire us.  Yes, we can have only one President at a time.   But if we are always building powerful organizations and developing new leaders, then the loss of one does mean the loss of everything.

Like unemployment insurance and Social Security, a right to health care on a universal level will be a major step forward and a big step toward alleviating the anxiety so many of us feel who are threatened with losing our health insurance.  Let us keep our eyes on the prize.

Organizers often focus in action on getting a large number of people in the room to confront someone in authority, the assumption that only a show of great numbers will convince someone in authority (say an elected official) that the group has the power to lead the authority to do what the group wants.

In this week’s Torah portion, we have the story of Judah approaching his brother Joseph, a great authority in Egypt.  In looking at this story (of someone without power approaching someone with great power), some rabbis explain that HOW he approaches him matters.  So I reflect that HOW we approach someone in power matters.  If we do it in a way that is “prayerful,” honest, and connected with our truth, we might be in a better position to gain what we and our community want.

We are praying to some omnipotent God who may or may not grant our wish, like some magic fairy.  We are recognizing our own power and our own truth and speaking it out loud.  Only in speaking it out loud can we learn and then know what the truth is.  Telling our story out loud is part of that process.  When we say in public what is in our hearts, then might connect with a power way beyond our numbers.  This may be what Abraham Joshua Heschel meant when he said, during a civil rights march that he was “praying with his feet.”  In the action, in the march, we find ...   more »

.  “Michael Jacoby Brown’s Building Powerful Community Organizations is a splendid “how to” book on community organizing.   I used it this semester in my community organizing class at the University of Connecticut, and the students found it tremendously helpful and highly accessible.”

-- Professor Robert Fisher, University of Connecticut

From Vol 16 (1), 2008, by Mitchell Kahn, MSW, Ramapo College of New Jersey, VP and Director of Organizing, New Jersey Tenants Organization. (excerpts):

“This no nonsense, user-friendly guidebook is replete with sound organizing advice…The book is creatively designed to actively engage the reader with the material being presented…There is a lot to chew on her, and a reader new to organizing might feel overwhelmed by this soup to nuts approach, but the book’s nicely illustrated, jargon-free, pragmatic and skilled pedagogical format makes it a wonderful textbook for teaching community organizing.”

As a teenager, I remember standing in front of the Alabama State Capitol Building, with a line of blue shirted state troopers guarding the doors, in a crowd of thousands, at the end of the Selma to Montgomery march.  I had taken a bus down from New York where I grew up and slept on the floor between the pews of a Black church in Montgomery.

Last week I walked along Back River Road in Dover, New Hampshire with a friend and our eight year old daughters, knocking on doors for Barack Obama.  Hard to believe the headlines today, and see a Black family as the first family.  It brought tears to my eyes, as I am sure it did to many. 

It is real. I know it took an amazing amount of hard work.  It took people believing, hoping, and being willing to work together for something they all knew would make a difference.  Now Barack Obama is President. Or come January 20, 2009, he will be.  Now our real work begins: to make the hope a reality.  As they say, freedom is a constant struggle.