There are very few books about community organizers, especially in their own voices. Joe Szakos, executive director of the Virginia Organizing Project, interviewed 81 community organizers from across the country and his wife and writer, Kristin Layng Szakos, put together a terrific book, We Make Change: Community Organizers Talk About What They Do – and Why, available from Vanderbilt University Press. You can contact him – and learn more about the book – at www.wemakechange.org
Will Work for Change
By Joe Szakos
I cheer every time that someone mentions that presidential hopefuls Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had ties to community organizing. He actually worked as a community organizer in Chicago; she wrote her undergraduate thesis on the famous organizer Saul Alinsky. Maybe, just maybe, more people will become familiar with the work of community organizers!
I’ve been a community organizer for almost 30 years. Most of the time when I get the question, “What do you do?” and I respond, “I’m a community organizer,” I get the “deer in the highlights” look.
As Kristin Szakos (my wife), writes in her introduction to our recent book, “Community organizers are the people who work, often behind the scenes, to help people come together to effect meaningful change in their communities by building effective community organizations. They are there with the neighborhood group working to bring bank loans to low-income homeowners, they are there with immigrant women organizing to get medical insurance for their families, with small-town environmentalists keeping a toxic waste plant out of their community, with parents trying to get schools to respond to the needs of children with dyslexia, with gay and lesbian students striving to create a safe space in their schools, with groups working to reduce the ravages of racism in their towns and institutions. Wherever there is a well-organized group agitating for progressive social change, chances are there is a community organizer nearby.”
Some community organizers work with congregations, some work with membership-based organizations, some work with coalitions, alliances or federations. Some organizers work with a single constituency, such as low-wage workers or public housing residents, some work with multiple constituencies. Some community organizers focus on a single issue while others tackle many issues at once; some work at a neighborhood lever, others work in multiple counties, statewide or regionally.
Three years ago, I interviewed 81 organizers from around the country. One of the things I asked them was how they define what they do. I think their answers are instructive.
“An organizer brings people together to sort out specific changes they want to see in the life of the community, develop strategies to get there, and then move into action to make the changes happen,” long-time organizer Ellen Ryan said.
“In many ways, I’m a teacher, not in a traditional classroom but in congregations and schools and neighborhood centers and union halls,” said Perry Perkins. “We teach people about public life and how to claim an active citizenship, living out the democratic notions of civic participation and the republican notion that there are civic virtues that have to be taught.”
Guillermo Quinteros puts it this way: “I’m changing the world. I’m making the world a just place. That’s what organizing is about. There are many ways of doing it, but in the end that’s what it’s about. We’re helping people change their reality. We’re facilitating so that people can create a better world.”
Being a community organizer allows me to work with groups of people to make specific, tangible changes in a community while helping individuals learn important leadership skills. I love having the opportunity—every day— to help people raise their voices about the concerns they have in their communities, especially when it leads to major systemic changes.
I hope that reporters keep asking the presidential hopefuls about their experiences with community organizing, and I hope that the American people will continue to learn about what community organizing is.
Comments