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The White House released a list of five books that Barack Obama will take with him on vacation this year. A couple of urban thrillers written by folks that worked on The Wire, the McCullough biography of John Adams, Tom Friedman’s book on the need for America to invest in green technology and a novel about life in rural Colorado by Kent Haruf.
How does that stack up with mine?
Fortress of Solitude–Jonathan Lethem
A Short History of Tractors In Ukrainian–Marina Lewycka
Lord Jim–Joseph Conrad
Consider The Lobster–David Foster Wallace
Building a Bridge to the 18th Century–Neil Postman
I devoured “Short History of Tractors In Ukrainian” by Marina Lewycka in a day and a half of lakeside reading. A very funny and yet a disturbing meditation on the immigrant experience, as viewed through the prism of different generations. My favorite part–when a daughter confesses that she is disappointed that her father was not heroic in either WW2 or the post-war sorting of refugees, his comment is telling: “to survive is to win.” Yet, despite the rational/practical cast of mind of the older generation, the parents still exhibit more idealism about both the future and their past in Ukraine than their daughters, both raised in England, but pessimistic and lacking in all idealism.
I picked through the series of essays by David Foster Wallace like a chocolate assortment, over several days, even after returning from vacation. The meditation on the ethics of boiling lobsters alive (in the guise of a touristy piece for Gourmet magazine on the Maine Lobster Festival) is classic DFW: long, footnoted and totally unexpected. I can’t believe the yuppie/foodie mag actually printed the thing. My favorite essay was “Up, Simba”, writing about his experiences folowing the McCain campaign in 2000. DFW’s take was unhindered by any actual discussions with the candidate or his top staff and unpacks the chaos and inanity of typical press coverage of political campaigns. It is a nifty look at assessing a politician claims to leadership: “A real leader is somebody who can help us overcome the limitations of our own individual laziness and selfishness and weakness and fear and get us to do better, harder things than we can get ourselves to do on our own.”
The only other book I’ve cracked is Postman’s book on how the 18th Century (well, actually the age of the Enlightenment–so it spans both 18th and 19th) asked the questions whose answers will allow us to more successfully navigate our way in the future; especially since the 20th century was such a rot of holocaust, war, nuclear nightmares and general travesty. I’ve only finished the opening chapter–on the contest between rationalist/scientific belief in human progress and its critique by the Romantics and their belief in self-directed inner progress. The best line: Denis Diderot, the editor of the first encyclopedia and his exclamation that “man will not be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.” Promising.
I read half of my list and my vacation was only one week–half of Barack’s. I’m going to keep at it. I think my list is better–but then, Obama may be slightly more in need of some light reading than myself.
So you’ve been inspired by the Obama campaign (and abhorred by the Republican slanders) and you have decided you want to become a community organizer. What better job in the world can there be than helping others change their world? However, most people don’t really have an idea about what organizing is and how they could fit into that world. I’ve been an organizer for almost 15 years, but I still look for good writing about my chosen profession.
So, if you’re a bit of a bookworm like me and you want to figure out this organizing game, what should you look for? If you dig around a bit, you will probably run across Saul Alinsky and his two books, “Reveille for Radicals” and “Rules For Radicals.”
Saul Alinsky is the father of community organizing, he created the Back of The Yards neighborhood power group in Chicago in the 1930’s, created a network of community organizations that still exists today (the Industrial Areas Foundation) and tried to develop the methods to teach others how to organize. His two books, “Reveille for Radicals” and “Rules For Radicals” are considered the ur texts of organizing.
I also do not recommend that you read them right away. Reveille was written in 1946 and the more popular Rules was written in 1971. The books are important to read and once you start to get involved with an organization, both are inspiring and insightful. But the books are dated and do not give the kind of introduction to organizing I would recommend.
Instead, go with:
1) Altars In The Street by Melody Chavis.
This is a book that I tend to re-read every year. It was given to me by one of my leaders, the term organizers use for the resident/members of an organization. The story follows a woman who banded together with her friends and family in a low-income Berkeley, CA neighborhood to fight the increasing crime and violence that the crack epidemic brought to their street. The book details their victories, but doesn’t shy away from describing their troubles either. A strong community gardening program employing area children during summer vacations resulted from their work, however the author was forced to move from the neighborhood and crime continued to cause problems for families. The book gives great insight into the motivations of the people an organizer will work with and the problems facing organizations that rely entirely on volunteers.
2) Younger people should run, not walk, to pick up a copy of Calling All Radicals by Gabriel Thompson. This book is a flat-out recruitment pitch for organizing and has a lot of detail on the author’s experiences starting out as a young organizer in New York City. I was inspired by two facets of this book.. The first is Thompson’s belief in using the history of people’s movements to inspire people to action, as well as create bonds between groups that may otherwise view each other with suspicion.
The other is the cogent discussion on the role of political education in organizing. Since Alinsky started the Back of The Yards group, professional organizers have been trained to step out of the spotlight and help the members of the organization dedtermine the path they want to travel. But the very first community organizing group, started by Alinsky to help uplift the residents oppressed by their employers at the adjacent Chicago stockyards in the 1930’s and 1940’s, became a reactionary force in the 1960’s, fighting to keep blacks out of their neighborhood. Thompson argues in favor of groups educating their members about the poliical and ideological basis for their struggles.
3) At its heart, Community Organizing is about creating organizations of citizens whose collective power will allow them to be heard by politicians over the din of lobbyists and other influential folks. The best book about power and its effects on neighborhoods and everyday people is
Going Public by Mike Gecan.
Mike is the lead organizer for E. Brooklyn Congregations, a community group affiliated with Saul Alinsky’s original organizing network, the Industrial Areas Foundation. This group took a neighborhood that one visiting politician once called a “preview of the end of civilization” and transformed the area with the construction of over 1,000 affordable single family homes–all owner-occupied. This didn’t happen overnight, and the troubles aren’t all fixed, but Gecan gives a great introduction to the hard, person-by-person struggle to put together a powerful organization. By the way, check out the section dealing with Rudy Guliani and how he sought out the help of E. Brooklyn Congregations to help quell the tensions and potential for violence after the many instances of police brutality in N.Y.C.
Rudy does know what a community organizer does–they pulled his ass out of the fire.
