Community Organizing Matters!

I try not to get to worked by politicians - hype and hysteria just come naturally to them -- but last night, I heard politicians criticize Barack Obama for his work as a community organizer and that hurt. You see, I did that too. When Governor Sarah Palin and former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani disparaged community organizing efforts, they belittled my efforts and those of countless others too.

It's a pretty cheap politician that uses a national television audience to criticize neighborhood organizing and volunteers working to change neighborhoods and improve lives. Last night, I saw a neighborhood's hard work held up as a punch line to an insider politician's joke. Community organizers make a difference and politicians who criticize organizers and neighborhood volunteers don't deserve my vote.

Community organizers work to help neighborhoods identify important unaddressed needs -- priorities that are absent in a neighborhood -- and require help to get them done. It's a response to the inability of government that calls for people to do things themselves, cut through the roadblocks and red tape and make things work. In my case in the Broadway/Slavic Village neighborhoods on Cleveland's southeast side, neighbors were wrestling with poorly performing schools and very low levels of computer access and computer skills, despite the need for computers in virtually every job of the 21st century. We created a computer lab from from cast-off equipment and upgraded as often as we could. We taught classes to each other, we helped people get donated, refurbished computers for families in their home and assisted in after school programs for kids. When the after school program was evaluated by the Education Department experts at Cleveland State University, we found we boosted school attendance, grades and test scores.

The criticism of community organizing that I heard last night were cheap shots by career politicians. If government did its job, community organizing might not be necessary, but until then, neighborhoods benefit from community organizers and neighborhood volunteers. In many neighborhoods hit hard by crime, poorly performing schools, foreclosures and low levels of economic opportunities, community organizers are a positive and welcome force for neighborhood rejuvenation.