Notes on the life of an Organizer

There is some buzz in the Community Organizing world around the Movement Vision Project coming out of the Center for Community Change [CCC]. When CCC has an idea, people listen, mainly because they’ve got some cash to throw around thanks – in part – to the big Mott Foundation hook-up. The project aims to bring a bunch of organizations with a base around the country together to try to coordinate their agenda so that progressives can team-up in a big way over the next few years.

It sounds so nice to you, I bet.

CCC is saying that we are in the midst of a giant opportunity, that opportunity being, namely, everyone hates President Bush. So let’s all put our heads together and fight a lot of crime. Go, team.

It all sounds nice, but we here at The Organizer aren’t too crazy about working with national organizations or getting “coordinated” by them. Team Organizer has a fair amount of experience working with D.C. organizations – we may or may not have been a part of one at some point (though we intend to keep working hard to maintain our anonymity so maybe we just had some really good friends who did and we feel like we were there. Will you ever know?). We are especially unexcited about working with a national organization that isn’t “us.”

I mean, if I were the Organizer for a local chapter of ACT-UP, say, I would probably be much more inclined to get some direction from the national organization or even other ACT-UP’s in my region than I would be to work with some big organization that wants to network with every organizer under the sun. That’s sort of the CCC approach.

Here’s one example of organizing work I’ll give you. I’ve served on coalitions with People For the American Way. I mean, who hasn’t? They are one of the most profoundly annoying groups to work with that you are ever likely to come across. By annoying, I mean they completely throttle the spirit of good organizing. They come into coalitions that they learn about that form around issues in which PFAW shares an interest (i.e., anything that might help a Democrat get elected President). They instantly start pushing people around and shoving whatever line their obnoxious press staff is shoving down the junior staff’s throats that week.

Organizing works when people come together, build on each other’s ideas and move forward on the stuff they agree on. People find disagreement frustrating and disagreement tends to undermine liberal coalitions. That’s why it’s best for liberals to keep their coalitions simple, with finite goals. There are two situations in which local groups don’t mind national groups shoving a gameplan down their throats.

1. When it’s something that such huge news and it’s so simple that it’s easy for tons of folks to glom on. Like the spontaneous protests around Bush’s first election by the Supreme Court.
2. When the national organization has lots of money to throw around. The Immigration Protests last summer? Bought and paid for by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Thank God they did it, but let’s not pretend that they were really evidence of a movement.

Otherwise, what happens is that the pushy national organization slowly drives others away who become frustrated by the way the national organization undermines their ideas and plans, and then whatever they are involved in fizzles out.

I have no doubt that the staff at CCC have a very clear idea of what they want the local groups around the country to do, when they want them to do it and what it should look like. I hope they have a lot of money to throw around because the conversation is only going to last so long and then local people are going to get annoyed because they’ll realize that they don’t want to completely rewrite their gameplan for the year because some suit in D.C. called them up and asked them to on a conference call.

Which brings us to one of the real weaknesses of liberals: we accept everyone and give everyone a chance. When we want to work together, it would all work so much better if we turned each other away from time to time. It doesn’t make sense to have some people involved in certain groups. Great example: when it’s protest planning time – the lawyers need to leave. Sure, they might be able to answer some questions, but you can also write those down and ask them together. If you try to make an organizing plan with lawyers in the room then you’re going to spend the whole meeting arguing about what you want and never get to what you’ll do.

When a national organization asks you to skip a day and go to their meeting: you probably shouldn’t. Don’t give them the benefit of the doubt. They wasted your time before, they’ll waste it again.

If you want to work with other organizations like yours around your state or region or country, do it the way we do it when we want to make it happen around our city: pick up the phone and call them. If they’re into it, ask them if they’ll call a few people.

If you end up reaching a critical mass, organize you’re own damn conference call. FreeConference.com will host it for you for free. And you’re an Organizer, my son, you don’t need some Inside-the-Beltway schmuck to write an agenda for you.