Just What Is Community Organizing Anyway?

FARAI CHIDEYA, host:

This is News and Notes, I'm Farai Chideya. For some in politics, community organizing is a derogatory term.

Governor SARAH PALIN (Republican, Alaska, Vice Presidential Candidate): I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.

CHIDEYA: That's Republican vice-presidential nominee, Sarah Palin, taking a dig at Senator Barack Obama's past. But in bigger terms, what is community organizing? How has it shaped to help people in black communities especially vote? For more we have Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr., dean of the School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles. Hi, Doctor Gilliam.

Dr. FRANKLIN GILLIAM (Dean, School of Public Affairs, University of California): Hi.

CHIDEYA: So, community organizing. It's been around for a long time, and it's now really being tossed around in this election. But give me a framework for what community organizing really means in America from a historical perspective.

Dr. GILLIAM: Well, I think the father of community organizing in certainly - in 20th-century America, was Saul Alinsky. Known in Chicago, Upton Sinclair's very famous novel, "Stockyards in Chicago."

Now Alinsky's both been the theoretical sort of grandfather of this movement, but also really provided the roadmap for how community organizing and activism took place, and having a heavily influence on Cesar Chavez.

Interestingly enough, Hillary Clinton wrote her Wellesley senior's thesis on Alinsky. So, he's really been (unintelligible), and Obama himself, influence in the southside of Chicago.

CHIDEYA: What did he do?

Dr. GILLIAM: Well, he's - the sort of first starting position was to sort of critique main- stream liberalism as being too passive. And for Alinsky, community organizing was really about the power of the masses, so it was very much a bottom-up strategy, so it's not too surprising that the American right sees this as something foreign and quite frankly, threatening.

CHIDEYA: Now, when you put this in the context of black, political life, particularly from the civil-rights movement forward. What is community organizing come to mean in a modern sense for mobilizing African-American voters.

Dr. GILLIAM: Well, it's typically meant organizing, as I say, from the bottom up at the local level, like the neighborhood level, and around neighborhood and local issues. And one of the strategies of empowerment and talk - of community organizing on top of advocating for particular things, is to empower the community, and to bring in regular citizens and regular folk into the political process.

CHIDEYA: What are the upsides and downsides? I mean, I'll give you an example of - there are groups that do community organizing, and who may, you know, have that as part of their name, their mission, their title. And then there are community-based organizations that just organize people anyway.

I know of some head-start programs that are really trying hard to register people to vote. That's not technically part of their mission, but that's a community-organizing function. They serve, because they see it as part of their overall vision.

But it's - that's kind of an individual basis. So how much are we talking about people who are community organizers, who are - that's their job, versus people who organize?

Dr. GILLIAM: Well, I think what you're getting at is sort of the imprecision with which we use a term, community organizing. Alinsky meant it in a very specific way, meant it that this was a way to go outside of the mainstream, and a way to grow local leaders, and to create real empowerment at the local level.

Lots of groups say that they engage at the community level, the United Way organizes at the level of community and does a fine job. But the fact of the matter is, it's not truly about what Alinsky meant, and that's to wrest power from an elite, and have it reside with people in the grassroots.

CHIDEYA: You have said today that this is something with ideological implications left and right. But what about something like say, the Christian Coalition, which is not as powerful today. But at one point had a very grassroots structure of dealing through the faith community, through churches with a right agenda, not a left agenda. Is that community organizing?

Dr. GILLIAM: Sure. That they take on the tactics and basic - you're right about the one thing, is that community organizing in this sense is ideologically-based historically and was left base. But as with many, strategies and tactics are employed by lots of groups.

And that the right does it, and I'm sure they think that the evangelical movement does it. I'm sure they think they are empowering local groups. So, it can be ideological if you wish, but historically, it's meant (unintelligible), by the way, that was a mocking tone that the Republicans used, and, Governor Palin, you're in your opening piece.

So, it's meant to be sort of leftist out of touch, out of the mainstream. And by the way, implicitly communist or socialist. And there was some of that in the early parts (unintelligible).

CHIDEYA: What has typified this election, you know, we brought up the - you know, the remarks by Governor Palin, but, you know, we're going to speak in a second with someone from ACORN. ACORN has faced a lot of scrutiny in this election. In some ways it's raised the profile of community organizing, but not necessarily in the way that was intended. What's the state of play with community organizing around the 2008 election? And at this point, particularly since many places have stopped with registration, with things that are not registration, things are that Get Out the Vote. What's the state of play?

Dr. GILLIAM: Well, I think that interestingly enough, it starts with Obama himself being a community organizer. And that that was considered a way to indicate his bona fides on the street, that he knew something about ordinary people's lives.

The rightists - the Republicans have dug up this ACORN business. So there's a way to try to delegitimize community activity, and because their basic stock and trade is vote suppression, that of course they would land on an organization like ACORN. Although, Senator McCain praised them as late as 2006 publicly.

CHIDEYA: All right. Well, we're going to have to leave it there, but we're got a couple of more folks who we're going to bring into this conversation. But Dr. Gilliam, thank you very much.

Dr. GILLIAM: Thank you.

CHIDEYA: Franklin Gilliam, Jr., is the dean of the University of California Los Angeles's School of Public Affairs, and he spoke to us here at NPR West. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.