http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/41608A New Wave of Community Organizers for the Obama Era
By Peter Dreier
I usually have about 20 students in the Community Organizing course I teach each year at Occidental College in Los Angeles. So far, 42 students have registered for next fall's class.
I haven't all of a sudden become a more popular professor. There's clearly something happening on American campuses and in the broader culture that's tapping the pent up idealism of today's students. An important element of that new mood on campus is Barack Obama.
More and more college students want careers where they can help make society more humane, fair, and environmentally sustainable. They want to put their skills, their idealism, and their energy to work promoting social justice. My colleagues around the country tell me that the same thing is happening on their campuses. A growing number of students who are asking faculty and staff about internships, summer jobs, and careers working with non-profit, advocacy, and grassroots organizing groups. Why wait on tables when you could be changing the world?
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Obama has already helped change the nation's mood - and helped to inspire a new generation of organizers and activists. More and more young people want to pursue a career with a conscience.
But will the nonprofit groups that help advocate and organize for change have the resources to employ them? Many environmental, community, and other groups that do this work are facing difficult times, since they depend on members' dues, foundation grants, bake sales and other fundraisers to keep their organizations afloat. And will today's young people be able to pursue their ideals if they can't afford to stay in college, or if they are saddled with college loans that they can't afford to pay back on an activist's salary?
Here's another way that Obama, and Congress, can help. They have already expanded the federal budget for AmeriCorps, the nation's major community service program. But what's needed is a major commitment to providing students in two- and four-year colleges with financial assistance - allowing them graduate debt-free -- if they pursue careers in the many forms of public and community service. This means encouraging doctors and nurses to work in clinics serving the poor, architects and planners who work for nonprofit groups building mixed-income housing, engineers and technicians who help design and install "green" technologies in our homes and workplaces, and community organizers who help people help themselves, through their faith-based institutions, neighborhoods, and schools, in the great American tradition of voluntarism.
A character in George Bernard Shaw's play, Back to Methusaleh, says, "You see things and you say, 'why?' But I dream things that never were, and I say, "why not?'"
That's the essence of an activist -- someone who doesn't just criticize awful conditions, but tries to change them, not on his or her own, but with others. We endured eight years of White House contempt for the practical idealism that makes change possible. Obama has restored Americans' faith in themselves. You can find that new mood on almost every college campus today. When a skeptic asks me if the students in my community organizing class have what it takes to change the world, I'm proud to say: Yes, They Can.
Peter Dreier is professor of politics and chair of the Urban & Environmental Policy program at Occidental College.
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