Know Your Role: The Organizer

As I travel over 30,000 feet in the air back to Connecticut from Chicago I am strategizing, reading, and learning how to be the best organizer I can be. That can mean a variety of different things on any given day, but today I am finishing up Rules for Radicals, written by Saul Alinsky many years ago. I recently came to the point where Alinsky lists the ideal elements organizers need to have in order to be successful. I felt some resistance rising for me at this part of the book, slightly unwilling to see a list that I wouldn't be able to identify with. I was insecure in those moments; nervous those next pages would tell me. "Sorry sis, this isn't for you". However, that only lasted for about 10 seconds…if I really felt that way I would not have gone into organizing, nor would I have stayed. So, I read on. The list did exactly 3 things: 1) Shined light on my strengths within organizing, 2) Uncovered traits I would not have thought initially to be beneficial for organizing, 3) Illuminated gaps of strength within my work as an organizer.

Just to name a few, some of the characteristics are:

• Curiosity

• Humor

• Imagination

• Irreverence

• Organized Personality

• Creator

This list Alinsky came up with is a list that he also recognizes may very well be romanticized. He mentions it may very well be unlikely that these traits all exist and show up as strengths within one person. That is why community is also so crucial. We hold each other down and fill in the gaps when our neighbors and friends need support, and vice versa. 

For Cultivating Justice I organize for changes to the criminal justice system and agricultural landscape to strengthen our community foundation, however an organizer I met in Chicago (let’s call her E), organizes artists, singers, actors, and other creatives in her community to build space together, network, and exist safely to create openings to discuss current societal, environmental, economic, and racial conditions. Born and raised in Chicago, E strengthens her community's safety social net through an avenue that an organizer in my space may not be able to.

I connected with E through an Organizing 101 training in the Pilsen neighborhood during my visit and through talking with E I learned that the Organizing 101 event was one of the last in a series organized by her and others that had been taking place over the last few weeks. Some of the events were performative with that show being the first time some members participated or were on stage. That is building power. As an organizer, the constant and unwavering rule is to not do for others what they can do for themselves, even if they haven't necessarily done it before. It makes sense to me, how else will those in our communities push themselves, transform happenings into experiences, and experiences into bases for responsibility and leadership when not given the opportunity to grow in order to do so. 

As Alinsky has pointed out to me on this flight back home, that is the difference between organizers like E, myself and those labeled leaders. Organizers do not want the power to wield for themselves. If you do, you may be in the wrong place. We do not want to leverage power for our own self-interest, instead our self-interest lies in providing the foundation, the motivation (or agitation), and the tools needed to push those wanting change into action. Our real strength interest is giving people the ability to get what they want, and maybe what they deserve. Our real strength lies in the optimism that humanity can strive towards better, towards a blurred vision of a better world. We use that to power our communities, and to give our people a voice and a chance.