Community Organizing 101

After sitting on the sidelines, opining and frustrated for a long time, I ventured in to the trenches of community organizing. Discontentment about the crescendo of the right wing noise machine has fueled my desire to make a difference and to stop being a drowned-out spectator. With just over 2 months until the mid-term elections I am growing increasingly anxious about a pendulum swing that may set us back to the failed ways of the previous administration.

This weekend I volunteered to take part in a phone blitz put on by Organizing for America. OFA is a project of the DNC and the successor organization of President Obama's 2008 campaign. The August 28th rallying effort was given the banner of Moving America Forward Day of Action.

I have a desire to do something. As I discovered, this is not it, but it's a start and will hopefully lead to network connections that will help me identify a role that is more appropriately suited to my particular strengths. My task for this day was to call registered voters and ask for support in the upcoming mid-term elections. I was provided a script that included an introduction of myself as an OFA volunteer, a brief description of OFA and a request for support.

The plan was to contact 600 people in our county. Each of the volunteers was given a list of names, numbers and a response log. My list had 61 names. I spoke with 13 people. 10 said they would vote and the others were uncertain or unwilling to discuss the topic with me.

In 2008 there was a big push to get people registered to vote. More than 30% of the people on my list were under 26 years old. I was able to speak directly to only one of the young people on the list. He was uncertain as to whether he would vote, and had no idea who he might vote for, but he was polite and thanked me for urging him to get informed and to vote.

My efforts yielded a response rate of slightly more than 16%. After 15 unanswered or wrong-number calls, I confess to being somewhat disillusioned. To be fair I was calling on a Saturday, early in the afternoon when many people would be shopping, gardening or spending time with their friend and family. It seems to me that the best time to call might be from 7-9 pm, on a week night, after dinner, before prime time TV shows start. That said I'm not keen on taking random survey calls during my evening decompression hours.

My personal views notwithstanding, this kind of grass roots effort is important and is undertaken across the country by volunteers whose motivations vary. When we met for an organizing meeting I had the chance to speak with several of the other volunteers. For some it's very personal. There's a cause or an issue that has moved them to become involved. For others it's more of a big picture issue and a desire to be part of something bigger than themselves. For me it's about integrity and credibility. I don't want to be the guy that just rants and complains about the state of the world and who does nothing. I don't want to be THAT guy!

Mosque... Ow! On the Hudson?

To a degree, I can appreciate the upset over “the mosque” issue. I have family members in Connecticut who were close to some of the families directly affected by the events of 9/11.

The debate over this issue makes me sad and the hyper-ventilating, fear-mongering makes me even sadder.

Opposing “the mosque” seems to defy all that America is about, and all that our troops are fighting and dying for….freedom.

Allowing “the mosque” at Ground Zero, can be seen as a direct affront to the people who lost loved ones, some of whom now have a deep-seated fear and hatred of the Muslim world. Fear and hatred are counter-productive, tending to have a longer-lasting, negative impact on the hater than on the hated. I think the other point that’s being overblown here is that IT IS NOT ACTUALLY A MOSQUE, but an Islamic Cultural Center, and IT”S NOT AT GROUND ZERO.

It’s curious that The Burlington Factory Building is being referred to as hallowed ground. For goodness sake, it’s not actually at the WTC site and WE haven’t even built anything on the actual hallowed site, after 10 years. How close is too close and how far is far enough. Calling it a mosque adds fuel to the fire. It’s not, so don’t call it that and most of the ginned-up controversy goes away.

I think that as Americans we are compelled to defer to the freedom argument. It is the very core of our being, as a society. To do otherwise, would be to lose something of great value.

Actual mosques, like churches, were once built on “conquered” lands. Often the churches were purchased for conversion to mosques and new churches were built. This is especially true in Syria and Turkey, that still have Christian churches sitting beside mosques.

The Cordoba argument (postulated by Newt Gingrich and carried along by Glenn Beck) has no merit, and misses the mark completely in terms of historic accuracy and context. I’m no expert on the history of Cordoba, or the inferred referential meaning, but this guy is, and he does a pretty good job of providing a fact-based argument as a counter to Newt’s fear-mongering. Read it for yourself and decide.

http://gotmedieval.blogspot.com/2010/08/professor-newts-distorted-history.html