The Organizing of the President: An Action Plan

By Al Giordano

And now, the real work begins, not just for the new President of the United States and his employees but also and very meaningfully for all of us.

Never before have community organizers been more popular (and are about to be less stigmatized and persecuted). The population of the United States suddenly looks like a shiny new car just begging to be taken out for a test drive.

Vroom!

If we, as individuals, don't strike at this moment when the objective conditions are so favorable to grassroots organizing at the local level, it will be our folly, not President Obama's.

This morning I opened my email box and enjoyed a first-in-this-lifetime moment: an email from the White House. I'm sure it wasn't sent to me just to decorate my inbox, but, rather, it was meant to be shared with all of you. It was brief, and it said:

At 8:35 AM, the President arrived in the Oval Office and spent 10 minutes alone in the office.  He read the note left to him by President Bush that was in an envelope marked "To: #44, From: #43".  At 8:45 AM, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel came in to discuss the schedule of today's events.  The First Lady came into the Oval Office at 9:10 AM.  We will release a picture shortly.

And since one good announcement deserves another, I'm pleased to make one of my own.

In the worthy work of "organizing the organizers" I'll be hosting a weekend-long conference in April at the Rowe Conference Center in the Berkshire Mountains of Western Massachusetts:

The Organizing of the President: Making Political Change in the Age of Obama

April 24 - 26, 2009

at The Rowe Conference Center

Rowe, Massachusetts

Here's the conference center's blurb about the event:

27 years ago, at the age of 21, Al Giordano met Abbie Hoffman at Rowe Conference Center. For several years they collaborated on community organizing campaigns from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, from Canada to Nicaragua. Hoffman, in his final book, called Al "the best under-30 community organizer in the United States," in part due to his seminal organizing in the New England anti-nuclear movement, including founding the campaign to close the late Rowe nuclear plant.

Al Giordano's journalism has brought him back to his roots as a community organizer. Taking a leave of absence from his newspaper, he reported extensively on a fellow community organizer's successful campaign to become president of the United States. Through his blog, The Field, he covered the Obama movement through the grassroots organizing lens and called the results, in advance, of 51 out of 55 primary and caucus contests, earning the term "prescient" from Vanity Fair. He reported the presidential campaign from twelve swing states and emerged as the go-to journalist and online mentor for a new generation of community organizers.

 "Obama has done America the great favor of having organized us," says Al. "Now is the time for us to return the favor and organize him: to change the context by which he governs through organizing our own cities and towns for real and lasting change."

Al will share the nuts and bolts techniques of organizing and of utilizing new media to increase its chances of success. Weather permitting, some of these sessions will be held outdoors and be smoker-friendly. Al has reported extensively on the social movements in Latin America and a session will be devoted to their advanced techniques, from which US organizers have much to learn. In the same vein as Al's 2003 retreat at Rowe, guests will enjoy a Saturday night concert and party with some very special guests.

2009 brings new opportunities to make political change from below: No matter your level of organizing experience, if you want to change the political landscape you will finish this workshop better trained, fired up, and ready to go.

Before journalist Al Giordano headed South of the Border in 1997, he had been political reporter for The Boston Phoenix and had "cut a wide swath" in Massachusetts journalism and politics, according to The Boston Globe. Publisher of the online newspaper Narco News (www.narconews.com), reporting on democracy and the drug war from Latin America, Giordano was the first journalist to win First Amendment protections for the internet from the New York Supreme Court, and has trained more than 100 young reporters through its School of Authentic Journalism.

Here's the link to register online. The Rowe Conference Center, enviably, offers a sliding scale based on income for attending its events.

And I have a special favor to ask of Field Hands and local Field Hands chapters: Many of the best up-and-coming community organizers are young and don't have the money to travel to a session like this. If you know somebody that fits that description, it would be so very worthwhile for you to sponsor him or her, and to organize with other Field Hands to pass the hat or hold a fundraising event to raise a little bit of dough to send him or her to the conference.

That's exactly how the 21-year-old version of I got to the aforementioned conference there 27 years ago and began the training that serves me and my causes well to this day: somebody pushed me to go and sponsored the costs. And life has been quite the roller coaster ride ever since.

Likewise, if you are that individual with the fire in your belly to dedicate your life to organizing (including of course the work of organizing authentic media), don't be shy: Organize your local Field Hands chapter to help get you to Rowe on April 24 - 26.

Head on over to the Field Hands pages, find (or start) your local group (those with ten members or more are linked on the right-hand sidebar here at The Field), join if you haven't already (it's free), and post a message telling your fellow and sister Field Hands why you want to attend this upcoming event and what you'd like to do in the future with any knowledge or training you get from it. (Then use the comments section here to link to your message and alert others to it.)

Of course, you don't have to be an organizer or aspire to be one to attend this weekend conference. It's open to all that are interested. And it's in a strikingly beautiful place at an ideal time of year. I look forward to meeting some of you there.

There you go... an action plan - the first of many ahead - for the new era.

Now let's get to work so that we do not squander the extraordinary opportunities that begin on this day.