By Jerry Kellman
Director of Organizing, Gamaliel Metro Chicago

This is the second part of a talk delivered to the International Conference of the Association for the Advancement of Social Work with groups.  The talk was on the experience and learning gained from training Barack Obama as an organizer.  The first part of the talk emphasized how Barack had to decide, and all of us must decide, whether we are going to define ourselves or let others define us. The first part of the talk developed this by talking about the importance of story (narrative) and action for organizing.

There is another aspect to action in organizing, and in the presidential campaign that I want to highlight. Early in the campaign, journalists speculated that Barack Obama was not tough enough to triumph in the cutthroat world of a presidential campaign. His response was that he had been an organizer on the south side of Chicago and that nothing he encountered in the election was likely to demand as much toughness as that.  And indeed, Barack demonstrated a steely toughness again and again.

Community organizing teaches us that if something is important, it is worth fighting for.   Since the forces you are up against are likely to be ruthless and powerful, you need to decide what your ethical limits are then be willing to do what you need to do within those limits. This includes fighting fire with fire and compromise as needed.

Action changes us. It teaches us about risk, about solidarity, to get knocked down and get up again and to discover capacities we did not think we had.  It did these things for Barack when he first experienced action as an organizer and it did these things for the millions or people, particularly young people who put themselves out there for the campaign.  I think the lesson for group work here has to do with the power of modeling and of leadership by example.

For those of you who are not aware of a unique aspect of the campaign, it is important to know that unlike any other modern presidential campaign, this campaign allowed people to build their own campaign events, organizations, even strategies. Political campaigns at this level are about control. The local political powerhouses and workhorses are wooed and asked to register voters, identify who is favorable and turn them out.

In the primary, Hillary Clinton had most of the powerhouses and workhorses behind her. So the Obama campaign did the unthinkable. They opened up their website so people could use social networking to build their own team, gave them the basic tools of lists and suggestions and set them loose. How unprofessional !!!  Except it was the most effective and best organized campaign in American history.  But of course it was nothing new for organizers. What we do is give people some basic tools and set them free. We then bring them back to evaluate and learn from what went wrong and what went right.

I have talked at length about what Barack learned from organizing. I want to spend a few minutes talking about how organizing may need to change as the result of Barack’s election.

Other than Barack himself, two men are most responsible for Barack’s election. I am not talking about David Axelrod and David Plouffe, his strategist and campaign manager. Barack’s election simply could never have happened without the work of two other men.  Their names are George Walker Bush and Dick Cheney.

During eight years, America was deconstructed and Americans had become so demoralized that they were willing to rethink the previously unthinkable, the election of an African American to the most powerful position in the world. Our ethics had been so compromised, our economic well being so damaged, our budget so crippled, our place in the nations of the world so tarnished, our justice system so abused, that it was a kind of national death.

If we use William work on transitions as a guide Bridges (Transitions: Making Sense of Life’s Changes),  then there are always three parts to a transition.  Keep in mind that a transition is not simply the external changes, but the inner experience of these changes. There is an ending, a long period of confusion and then a new beginning.

The ending was the destruction visited upon a standard of public life and prosperity that had developed over several generations. The transition was the campaign and the beginnings of this presidency so mired in crisis.

The beginning has yet to come, but it will come.  In fact, it is organizers who will help create it.

What we now know more than ever is redemption is always possible on a national, not just a personal basis, and perhaps worldwide.  Destruction is painful but it does create an opportunity for new life and creation. Transitions, the in-between time, are a time of confusion, doubt and frustration, but they are often the most fertile time that we will ever experience. Organizers must now figure out how endings give rise to opportunities and how to maximize the possibilities inherent in the in-between times, the times of transition.

The changes keep coming. We plant our feet, only to have the earth shift.  The persons who will create and build something of value in an environment of constant change will be those who are committed to a lifetime of learning and who create what Peter Senge has called Learning Organizations.

Those who will make history will be those who work as teams and understand that no one person can ever be as smart as a group of persons fully collaborating.  Those who survive the inevitable mistakes and setbacks will be those who are willing to admit mistakes, and those who will be strong will be those who are willing to admit and even show the vulnerability which is part of their humanity.

Barack learned what Saul Alinsky taught us about self-interest, but also learned the importance of hope and a call to be part of something larger than himself.  I took a fifteen year sabbatical because I felt we needed to change hearts as well as structures. In the future, organizing will be about changing both.

Related Posts
Training Obama: Lessons for Organizing; Part One