dre poetic: words by adrien salazar

I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer—except that you have actual responsibilities.
Governor Sarah Palin, at the Republican National Convention

Today is a Day of Blogging for Justice . Bloggers are writing in solidarity in honor of community organizing work and declaring “I am a community organizer.”

It deeply hurts and disappoints me that a candidate for vice president and other politicians would choose to disparage what Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change, calls the long-standing American tradition of community organizing, which many American’s choose to take part in every day in order to make a difference in their own lives.

I am at once saddened and grateful for the light the 2008 election campaigns have shed on community organizing. It comes at a timely moment for me, when I, having just graduated, am choosing the path of my life’s work. I was heavily involved in student organizing in the last several years and it comes upon me naturally to continue this work I have come to love. I believe in community organizing and I believe in its power to make real and long lasting change.

Feministing writes a litany of the tasks organizers have undertaken in the centuries of American history:

It is the community organizers who suffer  with the community when policies fail and promises are broken.
…
It will be community organizers who will fight for you when you cannot. It will be community organizers who stand by you when others walk away.

When politicians disparage the work of organizers they disparage those who have taken it upon themselves to participate fully in the Democtratic system. They disparage the work of dedicated citizens who have chosen to fill the holes the government and the private sectors leave behind in their communities. These are the individuals working most closely, most directly with their neighbors and those who are most in need.

Community organizing works. It helps people become more educated about their community. It gets people involved. A community organizer is the one who reaches out to the person who is unsure and makes them see that their actions matter. Most of all it changes the way people see themselves and their relationship to their world. I have seen it in the organizing I have done. And we can see it in this election.

Don’t Black Gay Me writes:

In this presidential race we have seen pockets of folks formerly immobilized politically now involved.

It honestly hurts me when some, politicians no less who claim to be advocates of the people, suggest that community organizers are not responsible for anything or don’t change anything.

Organizers are probably some of the most responsible people in the world because they do the work, not because it brings money into their pockets or fame to their names, but because they see this is the work that needs doing, this is work that I need to do.

I believe that for any presidential candidate, a deep understanding and respect for community organizing as an American tradition and means of social change is not only an asset but essential. I am glad that I am not the only one who believes this.

Today I personally extend my unending gratitude to those who consider themselves community organizers.  To all of you out there who have been doing the work — for social justice, for equity, for access to services, for civil rights — since before I was born, thank you. I thank you because you have ignited a discussion in the American psyche about why community organizing matters for this country.

As I continue to look for work, I now know with all my heart not to settle on my passions. A good friend told me “Anything worth having takes a lot of work to get.” It’s been tough trying to find a community organizing job as a fresh face out of college, but at least I know what I care about and that I need to do something about it, and that that can carry me exactly where I need to be. And now I know that there are a lot of us out there doing this work, proud to do it, and that I am not alone.

Thank you community organizers for putting this all in perspective for me. I know better now what I mean when I tell people I am a community organizer. I know that I stand in the arms of a long tradition of individual citizens working together to make the change they believe necessary happen.

I am proud today, and always, to be a community organizer.