Even before I define it, let's start with the first community organizer in our history:
Benjamin Franklin
Franklin... helped launch projects to pave, clean and light Philadelphia's streets. He started agitating for environmental clean up. Among the chief accomplishments of Franklin in this era was helping to launch the Library Company in 1731. During this time books were scarce and expensive. Franklin recognized that by pooling together resources, members could afford to buy books from England. Thus was born the nation's first subscription library. In 1743, he helped to launch the American Philosophical Society, the first learned society in America. Recognizing that the city needed better help in treating the sick, Franklin brought together a group who formed the Pennsylvania Hospital in 1751. The Library Company, Philosophical Society, and Pennsylvania Hospital are all in existence today.
Fires were very dangerous threat to Philadelphians, so Franklin set about trying to remedy the situation. In 1736, he organized Philadelphia's Union Fire Company, the first in the city. His famous saying, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," was actually fire-fighting advice.
Here's a definition:
Community organizing is a process by which people are brought together to act in common self-interest. While organizing describes any activity involving people interacting with one another in a formal manner, much community organizing is in the pursuit of a common agenda. Many groups seek populist goals and the ideal of participatory democracy. Community organizers create social movements by building a base of concerned people, mobilizing these community members to act, and developing leadership from and relationships among the people involved.
Let's look at a few more community organizers.
Samuel Adams
By 1761, Adams was an active member of Boston town meetings. Adams soon joined the "Whipping Post Club," as well as Boston's South End Caucus, which was a powerful force in the selection of candidates for elective office. Adams first became a major figure in the movement against colonial taxation. To pay off debts incurred by the sudden expansion of British territories such as India and the costs of the French and Indian War, Britain looked to the colonies as a potential source of income. On April 5, 1764, George Grenville, Britain's First Lord of the Treasury, led Parliament to pass the Sugar Act. At first, there was no real protest from Bostonians, or other colonists. The tax was already included in the price of the products, leading to a significant lack of concern over the tax measure. Adams, however, was appalled, both by the Sugar Act itself and by the lack of public outcry against what he perceived as England's unauthorized actions. Adams contacted James Otis and Oxenbridge Thacher, two of Boston's delegates in the Massachusetts general assembly. He tried to convince them that the Sugar Act was a violation of the colonies' rights, and that such actions could not be issued without colonial involvement. Adams believed that the lack of defiance would lead to more taxes and more royal officials, and render the colonial government useless. Adams continued to garner support for his cause at town meetings. Eventually, he gained the support of many Boston residents, and he was subsequently appointed to prepare instructions for Boston's four delegates to protest the tax in Massachusetts' general assembly.
Let's move to the post-colonial period.
William Lloyd Garrison.
In the very first issue of his anti-slavery newspaper, the Liberator, William Lloyd Garrison stated, "I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. . . . I am in earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will not retreat a single inch -- AND I WILL BE HEARD." And Garrison was heard. For more than three decades, from the first issue of his weekly paper in 1831, until after the end of the Civil War in 1865 when the last issue was published, Garrison spoke out eloquently and passionately against slavery and for the rights of America's black inhabitants.
...Though circulation of the Liberator was relatively limited -- there were less than 400 subscriptions during the paper's second year -- Garrison soon gained a reputation for being the most radical of abolitionists. Still, his approach to emancipation stressed nonviolence and passive restistance, and he did attract a following. In 1832 he helped organize the New England Anti-Slavery Society, and, the following year, the American Anti-Slavery Society. These were the first organizations dedicated to promoting immediate emancipation.
Susan B. Anthony
Susan's first involvement in the world of reform was in the temperance movement. This was one of the first expressions of original feminism in the United States and it dealt with the abuses of women and children who suffered from alcoholic husbands. In 1849, Susan gave her first public speech for the Daughters of Temperance and then helped found the Woman's State Temperance Society of New York, one of the first organizations of its time. In 1851 she went to Syracuse to attend a series of antislavery meetings. During this time Susan met Elizabeth Cady Stanton, became fast friends and joined Stanton and Amelia Bloomer in campaigns for women's rights. In 1854, she devoted herself to the antislavery movement serving from 1856 to the outbreak of the civil war,1861. Here, she served as an agent for the American Anti-slavery Society. After, she collaborated with Stanton and published the New York liberal weekly, "The Revolution" (1868-70) which called for equal pay for women.
In 1872, Susan demanded that women be given the same civil and political rights that had been extended to black males under the 14th and 15th amendments. Thus, she led a group of women to the polls in Rochester to test the right of women to vote. She was arrested two weeks later and while awaiting trial, engaged in highly publicized lecture tours and in March 1873, she tried to vote again in city elections. After being tried and convicted of violating the voting laws, Susan succeeded in her refusal to pay the fine. From then on she campaigned endlessly for a federal woman suffrage amendment through the National Woman Suffrage Association (1869-90) and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (1890-1906) and by lecturing throughout the country.
Nobel Laureate Jane Addams
In 1889 she and [Ellen G.] Starr leased a large home built by Charles Hull at the corner of Halsted and Polk Streets. The two friends moved in, their purpose, as expressed later, being «to provide a center for a higher civic and social life; to institute and maintain educational and philanthropic enterprises and to investigate and improve the conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago»1.
Miss Addams and Miss Starr made speeches about the needs of the neighborhood, raised money, convinced young women of well-to-do families to help, took care of children, nursed the sick, listened to outpourings from troubled people. By its second year of existence, Hull-House was host to two thousand people every week. There were kindergarten classes in the morning, club meetings for older children in the afternoon, and for adults in the evening more clubs or courses in what became virtually a night school. The first facility added to Hull-House was an art gallery, the second a public kitchen; then came a coffee house, a gymnasium, a swimming pool, a cooperative boarding club for girls, a book bindery, an art studio, a music school, a drama group, a circulating library, an employment bureau, a labor museum.
As her reputation grew, Miss Addams was drawn into larger fields of civic responsibility. In 1905 she was appointed to Chicago's Board of Education and subsequently made chairman of the School Management Committee; in 1908 she participated in the founding of the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy and in the next year became the first woman president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections. In her own area of Chicago she led investigations on midwifery, narcotics consumption, milk supplies, and sanitary conditions, even going so far as to accept the official post of garbage inspector of the Nineteenth Ward, at an annual salary of a thousand dollars. In 1910 she received the first honorary degree ever awarded to a woman by Yale University.
Moving to the Twentieth Century:
Dorothy Day
Surrounded by people in need and attracting volunteers excited about ideas they discovered in The Catholic Worker, it was inevitable that the editors would soon be given the chance to put their principles into practice. Day's apartment was the seed of many houses of hospitality to come.
By the wintertime, an apartment was rented with space for ten women, soon after a place for men. Next came a house in Greenwich Village. In 1936 the community moved into two buildings in Chinatown, but no enlargement could possibly find room for all those in need. Mainly they were men, Day wrote, "grey men, the color of lifeless trees and bushes and winter soil, who had in them as yet none of the green of hope, the rising sap of faith."
Many were surprised that, in contrast with most charitable centers, no one at the Catholic Worker set about reforming them. A crucifix on the wall was the only unmistakable evidence of the faith of those welcoming them. The staff received only food, board and occasional pocket money.
The Catholic Worker became a national movement. By 1936 there were 33 Catholic Worker houses spread across the country. Due to the Depression, there were plenty of people needing them.
Need more? Let's see. There's
Frederick Douglass. Harriet Tubman. Nobel Laureate Martin Luther King. Cesar Chavez. Jan Barry. Lois Gibbs. Erin Brockovich. Hell, you want a conservative community organizer? Try Phyllis Schlafly:
By the time Schlafly began campaigning in 1972, the amendment had already been ratified by thirty of the necessary thirty-eight states. However, Schlafly was successful in organizing a grassroots campaign to oppose further states' ratifications. Five more states ratified ERA after Schlafly launched her opposition campaign... The amendment was narrowly defeated, having already been passed in 35 states.
Here's the thing. Community organizing, despite the dog-whistle sneer of Sarah Palin's speechwriters, is an honored tradition in our country; in fact, as we're a republic, not a pure democracy, grassroots organizations are the one pure piece of democracy we have. Republicans in power may not believe they serve any purpose, but our history says they're essential to the functioning of our country; indeed, we wouldn't have become the United States without them. By cavalierly dismissing community organizers, the GOP tells most of America that their contributions are neither needed nor wanted. That's a slap in the face of everyone who volunteers for a local board, or sets up an organization to fight crime, or joins in any civic activity beyond meekly voting for the GOP. Come to think of it, since Sarah Palin served on numerous boards and commissions throughout the state prior to taking office, she might once have been called a community organizer too. I imagine she feels much better now that she's moved on -- and I type that with a sneer, Governor.