What does he/she do, organize communities? Is that like organizing a sock drawer? Or organizing your thoughts, or desktop contents? What exactly did Obama do during those three years in Chicago?

Community organizing is a process by which people are brought together to act in common self-interest. While organizing describes any activity involving people interacting with one another in a formal manner, much community organizing is in the pursuit of a common agenda. Many groups seek populist goals and the ideal of participatory democracy. Community organizers create social movements by building a base of concerned people, mobilizing these community members to act, and developing leadership from and relationships among the people involved.

The father of community organizing is generally considered to be Saul David Alinsky (January 30, 1909, Chicago, Illinois - June 12, 1972, Carmel, California). He was a social activist who taught and wrote about radical activities. Following are two of his books:

Reveille for Radicals (1946). 2nd edition 1969, Vintage Books paperback: ISBN 0-679-72112-6

Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (1971) Random House, ISBN 0-394-44341-1, Vintage books paperback: ISBN 0-679-72113-4

Some notable community organizers were:

Saul Alinsky

César Chávez

Jesse Jackson

Martin Luther King, Jr.

And, Barack Obama.

So, how’d Obama do as a community organizer?

He moved to Chicago in 1985, a little more than a year after he graduated from Columbia University in NYC. Thirteen years after Alinsky died, a former Alinsky student recruited 24-year-old Barack Obama as an organizer.

He was hired by Jerry Kellman, a Chicago organizer, to a $13,000 a year job, plus $2,000 for a car, as a community organizer in South Chicago. Obama was trained to work in the Alinsky method of community organizing.

At the heart of the Alinsky method is the concept of “agitation”–making someone angry enough about the rotten state of his life that he agrees to take action to change it; or, as Alinsky himself described the job, to “rub raw the sores of discontent.”

He was to lead the Developing Communities Project (DCP), which would target African American neighborhoods on Chicago’s South Side by working with African American churches in the area. During Obama’s time as a community organizer, Harold Washington was serving as Chicago’s first black mayor.

Obama described the work of a community organizer in a chapter he wrote for a 1990 book called After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois.

He wrote, in part: “Over the past five years, I've often had a difficult time explaining my profession to folks. Typical is a remark a public school administrative aide made to me one bleak January morning, while I waited to deliver some flyers to a group of confused and angry parents who had discovered the presence of asbestos in their school.”

"Listen, Obama," she began. "You're a bright young man, Obama. You went to college, didn't you?" I nodded. "I just cannot understand why a bright young man like you would go to college, get that degree and become a community organizer." "Why's that?"

"Cause the pay is low, the hours is long, and don't nobody appreciate you." She shook her head in puzzlement as she wandered back to attend to her duties.

In terms of concrete accomplishments, Obama and “hundreds of other organizers” were not able to transform the South Side neighborhoods or bring in new industries to provide jobs. Obama’s most commonly cited achievement was in forcing the city to begin testing for asbestos in all city apartments.

As a mentor to public housing residents, Obama says he initiated and led efforts that thrust Altgeld's asbestos problem into the headlines, pushing city officials to call hearings and a reluctant housing authority to start a cleanup.

But others tell the story much differently. They say Obama did not play the singular role in the asbestos episode that he portrays in the best-selling memoir 'Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.' Credit for pushing officials to deal with the cancer-causing substance, according to interviews and news accounts from that period, also goes to a well-known preexisting group at Altgeld Gardens and to a local newspaper called the Chicago Reporter. Obama does not mention either one in his book." [Los Angeles Times, 2/19/07]

Dissatisfied with his lack of success and faced with frustrations, after three years in Chicago, Obama decided to apply his skills in the wider world. In 1988, at 27, he left Chicago and entered Harvard Law School.

One thing that remains from Obama’s community organizing days,

remember this paragraph?

At the heart of the Alinsky method is the concept of “agitation”–making someone angry enough about the rotten state of his life that he agrees to take action to change it; or, as Alinsky himself described the job, to “rub raw the sores of discontent.”

That pretty much describes Obama’s presidential political campaign. Looks like he is attempting to use the Alinsky method on us right now, doesn’t it?