[Oe List ...] Last Night

[Janice Ulangca]

This just in from an ICA colleague.  Note the link to a 1990 Obama paper about community organizing - so mocked last night. I thought Sarah Palin's speech last night was very, very well done - though I strongly disagree with her's and McCain's policies.  The male analysts need to check with women colleagues to pick up on all the subtleties or they'll be left behind.  This will be a horse race - and need work from all concerned folks.  
Janice
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: John Montgomery 
  To: OE at wedgeblade.net ; Dialogue at wedgeblade.net 
  Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2008 6:10 AM
  Subject: [Oe List ...] Last Night


  Dear Friends,

   

  A colleague of mine posted a blog the other day pointing out that there were no minorities to be found in any significant numbers at the current Republican convention. Actually, one explanation is that all those Blacks, Latinos, Asians and youth are all there, it is just that perverse liberal media that keeps the cameras from revealing their presence. I did see two black men and one black woman. There was one Asian man but I really did not see anybody obviously Hispanic. I am sure they were there.

   

  Not much else needs to be said. I will be glad when our two candidates actually debate each other. Maybe we can move beyond the cute side shows. 

   

  The most telling event of the evening was both Giuliani's and Palin's apparent ignorance about the time honored strategy of change and empowerment represented by community organizing.  Needless to say, community organizing is about all those people who were not present at the Republican convention tonight. So I hope everybody had a great laugh. It's one reason; I can't and won't vote Republican. It is the reason that tonight I made another donation online for Obama's campaign.

   

  Perhaps, a little background will help here. In the late 80s, following my graduation from seminary, I was hired as the Executive Director of the Institute on the Church in Urban-Industrial Society (ICUIS) in Hyde Park. Perhaps I will come back to this work soon and talk about some of my research, but I thought I would share a paper written by young Obama on the subject. Maybe if Giuliani had read the paper, he wouldn't have looked so elitist tonight.

   

  http://www.edwoj.com/Alinsky/AlinskyObamaChapter1990.htm

   

  During the four years I was director of ICUIS, we focused on documenting a new trend in the traditional community organizing strategies of persons like Saul Alinsky and the work of the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF). During that time, I was able to do research on the more than 100 "congregation-based community organizing efforts" across the country and publish several studies. In Chicago, one of the key groups facilitating such organizing was the Gamaliel Foundation that helped organize The Developing Communities Project and GREAT on Chicago's Southside. 

   

  Obama was right in the middle of these efforts. And it is his instinct as an organizer that makes me so interested in his candidacy. I have paraphrased his comments more than once where he says, "What people don't get is that it is not about me, but it is about we." 

   

  That is a community organizer talking!

   

   

   

   

  John C. Montgomery

  monkeyltd at comcast.net

  john.montgomery at acfb.org

  678-468-4913 (personal)

   

  Visit My Blog - Notes From the Balcony

  www.monkeyltd.blogspot.com

   

   

   



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