"WHAT MAKES OBAMA RUN?"

"WHAT MAKES OBAMA RUN?" That's the title of an article I was e-mailed yesterday. But it didn't refer to Obama's presidential hopes. The dateline on the article was December 8, 1995. It appeared in the Chicago Reader. at the time Barack Obama was first running for state senate in Illinois.Obama, the article reminds us, began as a community organizer. And a community organizer in Chicago, the birthplace of community organizing. Traditionally, organizing has had, at best, a tense, and often a completely arms-length relationship to electoral politics. The Alinsky tradition treats electoral politics not as a vehicle for change, but as an external fact, with elected officials responsive only to pressure and organized power, such as the "accountability sessions" at which organizers put officials on the hot seat. This is a broad statement, as there are various schools of thought about organizing, and some believe that the constituencies they organize need to work within the electoral process as well as push it from the outside. Over time, I think the gap between community organizing and electoral politics has narrowed, but in 1995, it was still wide.And not only was Obama a community organizer in Chicago, he began this work in the shadow of Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago whose four years in office and tragic death shortly after his reelection were one of the most important but incomplete moments of black empowerment. Anyone who argues that Obama is somehow not "really" black or properly connected to traditional black politics should try to think of him in the context of post-Washington Chicago. With those two thoughts in mind, read this passage:

"[Washington] was a classic charismatic leader," Obama said, "and when he died all of that dissipated. This potentially powerful collective spirit that went into supporting him was never translated into clear principles, or into an articulable agenda for community change."The only principle that came through was 'getting our fair share,' and this runs itself out rather quickly if you don't make it concrete. How do we rebuild our schools? How do we rebuild our communities? How do we create safer streets? What concretely can we do together to achieve these goals? When Harold died, everyone claimed the mantle of his vision and went off in different directions. All that power dissipated."Now an agenda for getting our fair share is vital. But to work, it can't see voters or communities as consumers, as mere recipients or beneficiaries of this change. It's time for politicians and other leaders to take the next step and to see voters, residents, or citizens as producers of this change. The thrust of our organizing must be on how to make them productive, how to make them employable, how to build our human capital, how to create businesses, institutions, banks, safe public spaces--the whole agenda of creating productive communities. That is where our future lies."The right wing talks about this but they keep appealing to that old individualistic bootstrap myth: get a job, get rich, and get out. Instead of investing in our neighborhoods, that's what has always happened. Our goal must be to help people get a sense of building something larger."The political debate is now so skewed, so limited, so distorted," said Obama. "People are hungry for community; they miss it. They are hungry for change."What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer," he wondered, "as part teacher and part advocate, one who does not sell voters short but who educates them about the real choices before them? As an elected public official, for instance, I could bring church and community leaders together easier than I could as a community organizer or lawyer. We would come together to form concrete economic development strategies, take advantage of existing laws and structures, and create bridges and bonds within all sectors of the community. We must form grass-root structures that would hold me and other elected officials more accountable for their actions."The right wing, the Christian right, has done a good job of building these organizations of accountability, much better than the left or progressive forces have. But it's always easier to organize around intolerance, narrow-mindedness, and false nostalgia. And they also have hijacked the higher moral ground with this language of family values and moral responsibility."Now we have to take this same language--these same values that are encouraged within our families--of looking out for one another, of sharing, of sacrificing for each other--and apply them to a larger society. Let's talk about creating a society, not just individual families, based on these values. Right now we have a society that talks about the irresponsibility of teens getting pregnant, not the irresponsibility of a society that fails to educate them to aspire for more."

We've never had a major political leader who struggled with those challenges -- not just of how to get elected but the more fundamental question of how to make a difference. We've never had anyone with real roots in the complicated, rich tradition of community organizing. That's one thing that's amazing about this passage. The other is that it's not very different from Obama's rhetoric today, including the argument for "collective action" and the strong sense of how the political right derives its power. Also recommended: This 1990 article by Obama, Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City-- Mark Schmitt