I’m sorry. I thought it was the Annenberg Foundation.
Seriously, I am more impressed with the nature of what he did as a CO than I expected to be. I couldn’t have done that sort of stuff ages 23-26, or now for that matter. Heck, I thought it probably was more in the realm of political organizing than actually doing something meaningful. That the projects he worked on haven’t had resounding success is not something to blame him for. A lot of projects servicing underclass populations aren’t going to have great success because a significant percentage of them probably are never going to rise out of that population (I’m not saying many or even most won’t or can’t, but I would bet around one-third won’t/can’t.)
I’m still voting for McCain over Obama because of where they stand on the issues I care about. But I won’t dis what Obama tried to do.
I’ve just read that report and it does not say that it put forward the plans. It indicates (but does not explicitly state) that organisations came to it for funding for their ideas, but did specify the management of those plans.
Pages 17-18, a list of supported projects, also indicates this. What the Annenberg Challenge did prescribe was that the individual projects be separate from the schools so that local politics not interfere, and that the additional funds not be subsumed into the general school budget.
And there’s no mention of Obama. Presumably, he was involved in this one:
Question: Do you understand the scale of the project? How about how difficult it would be to gauge one man’s efficacy for the entire project. I’m wondering why you seem enjoy prodding for his ineptitudes.
Obama was a single man part of a whole, to me he used superior judgement in putting his efforts towards this, it is a step in the right direction, and this is a multi-modal evolving program, benefits for it won’t be seen until a decade from now. The DARE program took almost a decade to get results, and even then not all kids stayed away from drugs. But the program as a whole was a successful one because it helped some kids
Encapsulating Obama’s community organizing by using this program is not only inadequate but down right falsely representing his contribution to the whole of the project as being somehow not on par with being on the right side of the truth.
So if Obama’s work had been successful, we wouldn’t have heard jeering from the RNC about his “community organizing”?
Yeah, that’s rich.
The only conservative on this board who has expressed disapproval with all the “community organizer” jokes is Huerta88. Perhaps there are others and I just haven’t seen them, but I know I haven’t seen condemnation from the most vocal champions of the Right, who seem too busy desperately grasping for straws, trying to find some way to make Obama look less honorable than he is.
What were you doing to uplift the community when you were 23, Sam? Is it better to be idealistic and fail, or be cynical and not even try?
McCain fought bravely in Vietnam, sacrificing several years of his life for our freedom (or so the narrative goes). But you know what? He fought and suffered all for naught, since we LOST the war. Has anyone criticized McCain because of this? No, because we realized it was honorable for him to fight anyway.
Why shouldn’t Obama be given the same grace?
Christian Republicans must need “No Child Left Behind” policies at their Sunday Schools or something. There’s no other way for me to explain why they don’t see how their politics contradict the teachings of their lord and savior.
I started up and ran after school programs, summer day camps, tutoring and mentoring programs to try to keep inner city kids in school and out of gangs. Kids still drop out of school and still join gangs. I guess that proves I’m an asshole for trying and all community organizers are scum.
Seriously, Sam, this line of attack is garbage. Community organizations are not measured by their “success,” but by the fact that they try at all. This is a really slimy way to go after Obama. Obama himself spoke about his frustration about how hard it was to bring about significant change at that grassroots level. He was hired by a faith based organization called the Developing Communities Project (DCP) in Chicago. It was an affiliation of local churches trying to rebuild neighborhoods after the closing of steel mills had left people out of jobs and sometimes homes.
Some things he tried worked, some didn’t. He was not able to perform a miracle and transform a depressed community at 24 years old. So what is your point? Are you under the impression that community organizers are usually wildly successful at eliminating entrenched social and economic problems?
Let me tell you, it is going to be an absolute loser of an issue if Republicans contnue to try to shit all over community organization – something I get the impression a lot of the rich ones don’t know the first thing about. For one thing, it shows a stupid lack of awareness about the signicant role that churches and church-goers play in these organizations. When I did it, partisan politics never came up. I never had any idea who the people I worked with or got contributions from, or recruited as volunteers voted for. I never asked them, they never asked me. I do knew that a lot of them were very religious, though, and that the curches in the communities were driving forces behind these organizations. If country club Republican snobs like Guiliani and Palin continue to disparage community organizing, it’s going tobite them in the ass. They’re largely insulting their own base without even knowing it.
The message I’m getting is that it’s better not to try at all if you can’t claim 100% success. This ties in nicely with the various Bricker threads, as well. Create a standard no one can reach, then jeer when they don’t reach it.
I’ll just cut and paste what I put into the Palin speech thread, since it’s the same topic:
And to double down:
Charity, it appears, is so much better than government, only let’s sneer, jeer, mock, and belittle people who actually work for the organizations, faith-based and otherwise, that are trying to do the work.
I’m getting the hell out of here before the Queen of Hearts shows up.
13 grand a year and a used car? Pretty good for a recent graduate of some podunk law school, given his barely adequate performance. I mean, this “law review” thing, doesn’t that mean he had to take remedial classes? And the Annenberg Foundation? Don’t they fund PBS? OK, its not working for Commissar Soros or the ACLU, but pretty unsavory associations, don’t you think?
I agree. And I don’t really see Obama touting his Community Organizing work all that much anyway. I think we can look at his work as a state legislator and Senator to judge his record.
There are two separate issues getting conflated here.
(1) Was Obama a chump for getting involved in community organizing? Given that conservatives want to reduce the size of government partially on the premise that charities, communities, churches, etc. should and will take up slack for local needs, obviously that criticism is a non-starter coming from the right.
(2) How much responsibility does Obama bear for the failures of the projects he worked with? I would like to hear people say more about this, since obviously this is the relevant question to ask. It doesn’t sound like he bears a lot of the blame, but since threads like these generate a lot more heat than light, I can’t say this question has been decisively answered yet.
Diogenes is right…most of the work community organizers do IS done through churches, and a lot of good and necessary work is done. I have no problem whatsoever with Obama’s background as a CO, and I find it admirable that he started out his career this way. I think it’s silly for either side to hold this up as somehow relevant to whether or not he is qualified to be president. I think it shows a commitment to the brand of politics that he espouses, which is great. I don’t expect any of these community organinzing projects to work miracles.
However, the examples Sam Stone gave in my mind raise much more important questions.
What does the failure of a large-scale project like the Annenberg project tell us about the ability of government to implement similar large-scale projects and be successful? Is this an indication that Obama’s brand of politics may be well-intentioned, and still be ill-advised?
What is the connection between the developers of Grove Parc Plaza and the campaign donations Obama received? I have said before on this board that I simply do not believe anyone involved in Chicago and/or Cook County politics isn’t at least knee-deep in corruption, if not more so, and I have never seen a politician here before that I would support on a Presidental ticket, for this reason (ok, one, a very popular Congressman. But he quit because he couldn’t live with the dirty politics). All indications that I have seen point to Obama being involved in dirty deals. Rezko is a crook, and he’s a developer who worked on projects that Obama pushed, and he donated money to Obama’s campaign, as well as did him other favors. And people think that Sarah Palin ought to prove her own baby is hers due to circumstantial evidence!
Jesus, I’m basically agreeing with you here. I take back liberal-leaning if it bothers you that much (not that there is anything wrong with a guy who is liberal working for a cause that can be characterized as, or is associated with people who may identify as, progressive).
I think he was a Community Organizer before he went to law school.
But to put his salary in perspective, he graduated from college in 85, and I graduated in 89. His starting salary in 85 was 13K plus a used car, which was needed for the job. Mine in 89 was 16K plus no car, even though I needed one for my job, too (was a regional manger of a small local company with several locations which I had to travel between). Of course, he graduated from Coumbia, and, much like Sarah Palin, I only went to a lowly state school, but still, his starting salary in those days wasn’t out of the range of normal.
I don’t mean to be belligerant or unreasonavle about it, but I’ve done it, and I know these kinds of people and the characterization as progessive or left-leaning just isn’t accurate. Once again, these are mostly church people – lots of them are social conservatives. Obama’s organization was exactly the kind of faith-based organization advocated by GWB.
First, the project did not fail, as I showed above. It was a fact-finding mission, an experiment that tried a variety of things to see both what worked and what did not. It succeeded in gathering tons of data that are still being studied. Second, Obama has said clearly and plainly and often that government alone cannot solve any of our problems, including education. He has called on people to exercise greater personal responsibility and has praised American entrepreneurship as a foundation of prosperity and progress.
And that, to me, is very valuable experience. Many people simply want to wave their hands and say that someone else should take care of it. I think working closely with these organizations can demonstrate what works, what doesn’t, what shows promise, what is a waste of time, what needs more hands, what should be abandoned, and what works to support the people trying to do all this work?
Who is supposed to do it if governments are allegedly incompetent and charities are, according to this line of reasoning, useless? I’ve seen so many people claim that the government shouldn’t be putting out safety nets because that’s what charities are for. Now, suddenly, we’re all supposed to sneer at charities and kick sand in their faces.
I will remember this the next time anyone claims that problems should be handled locally by private organizations. I always thought it was a cop-out. Now I know that those saying it don’t believe it either. If you know (or think you know) community organizations are worthless but still try to claim that’s where the struggling and desperate should turn, it’s beyond cruel.
I think I’m learning things about people I didn’t want to know.
