Obama: The Organizer and the Movement

[killbotfactory]

What if a politician were to see his job as that of an organizer?
- Barack Obama, quoted in the Chicago Reader 12/8/95

As many of you know, Barack Obama started his political journey far away from the confines of the Beltway. As a community organizer on the streets of Chicago's South Side, he mobilized people who had been hit hard by the closing of steel plants, fighting for new jobs and housing rights. Working on a grassroots level -- not above, but side by side with ordinary people -- Barack's political identity was forged on those streets.

It's critical to understand that community organizers don't tell people what to do, or even offer to directly help them. Community organizers empower people to help themselves. They inspire people to come together, build power in numbers, and fight for an improved set of conditions, a shift in the status quo, a new, better society.

That's what Barack Obama has done throughout his life, and that's what this whole campaign has been about. Barack has always been an organizer, and he still is an organizer -- that's how he's inspired millions of people, from myriad social positions, to come together and fight for change.

(snip)

Real change doesn't happen because politicians promise it -- it doesn't happen when it comes from the top. Real change happens when it comes from us -- and Barack understands this better than any other candidate.

Much more at: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/3/113815/4403/461/429748