http://blogs.rj.org/rac/2008/11/what_does_it_mean_to_have_a_co.html
http://www.israelforum.com/blog_article.php?aid=1785502
Rabbi Jonah Pesner is the Founding Director of the Union for Reform Judaism's Just Congregations.

Shortly before he began his presidential campaign, Senator Barack Obama sat down for most of an afternoon with Mark Pelavin and me. We were struck at the time by the intensity with which he listened, and by the probing nature of his questions about Just Congregations. We were happily surprised that he had read the materials on our website (not every elected official does their homework for a routine meeting!). The Senator wanted to know not just about our mission and goals, but also about me. He wasn't satisfied with what; he wanted to know why. Why did I believe in the work I was doing?

I believe that Obama's inquisitiveness is directly related to his experience as a community organizer. Among the most critical qualities of an effective organizer is an authentic curiosity about others. When Obama was only twenty-four, he learned in organizing training that to be powerful in public life, a leader needs a strong, vast network of people who will follow him or her. Consequently, he knows that people only follow a leader if he or she understands them; their values, concerns, interests and motivations. (I received my own training as a community organizer from the same group that trained Obama: the Industrial Areas Foundation, founded by the late Saul Alinsky. In fact, Obama and I were both trained by the same organizer, Arnie Graf, who now mentors me in my role as Director of Just Congregations.)

I have given considerable thought to the question: what will it mean to have a community organizer serve as the President of the United States? The answer is interesting to me as an organizer, of course, but it has significant implications about the way President Obama will govern; about our ability to have an impact in Washington over the next four years and beyond; and more broadly about what organizing can teach us about being an effective force for social justice, as the Jewish tradition calls us to be.

One can begin to understand how Obama leads in the way he ran his campaign. The pundits referred to the "ground-game" with a heavy emphasis on field offices and voter turnout efforts. What the press rarely explained was the person-to-person nature of the effort. The campaign field organizers reached out to thousands of volunteers and treated them like leaders. Rather than assign them tasks, like phone calls and leafleting, they trained them to recruit friends, family and neighbors to join an Obama team. They were given training and support, and then allowed the freedom to develop a strategy to get commitments from voters to support Obama. In this way, the campaign built a grassroots movement. They trained leaders who recruited new people, identified new leaders, and spread the campaign across the country, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Our President-Elect understands the core organizing principle that the power to make real change comes from people acting together. He knew his campaign would have to bring together a broadly and deeply engaged constituency to support his candidacy. Local efforts by an army of volunteer leaders who hosted house parties, campaign events, and various Internet-based activities were every bit as important to the Obama campaign as were television advertisements. In fact, the television ads were only possible because of effective, grassroots fundraising. Thousands and thousands of local leaders hosted fundraisers and forwarded seemingly endless emails to their friends and neighbors.

Community organizers like to distinguish between "action" and "activity." Often, they teach, we engage in activity and are busy, but nothing really changes. Action however causes a reaction - a change in the world. On the streets of Chicago, Obama was held accountable by the people he was organizing in a very straightforward way: did our lives improve? Did the city remove the asbestos from public housing? Obama ran as a "change" candidate because a community organizer believes that the purpose of bringing people together is to act effectively to make a real change that will improve people's lives.

Just as Obama ran his campaign by emphasizing local leadership and engaging a broad constituency to fight for his candidacy, he will need to govern the same way. Whether it is in passing significant legislation to reform health care, address the economic crisis, or shift course in foreign policy, Obama understands the importance of an organized, energized constituency to fight for the change. Saul Alinsky had a story he liked to tell about Franklin Roosevelt. After a White House meeting with advocates, the president said, "OK, you've convinced me. Now go on out and bring pressure on me!" All Presidents depend on organized people to apply enough pressure to overcome resistant forces - perhaps the best example was the failure of the Clinton health plan. For Obama to pass large-scale health reform, his administration will have to organize the American people to put pressure on Congress and fight back special interests and resistant forces.

Perhaps this is where we fit in. The Reform Jewish movement is an organized constituency. We are 1.5 million people clustered in more than 900 congregations in fifty-states. We have a shared set of Jewish values that bind us, and give us the capacity to influence the direction of the nation. For decades, the Religious Action Center has been the Prophetic voice of our Movement in Washington. More important, the RAC and the Commission on Social Action have had an influence on American civil and religious rights, foreign policy, and a variety of other causes.

The Obama presidency creates an enormous opportunity for Reform Jews. This administration will keenly understand the need for organized constituencies to support its agenda. This challenges us to do more than speak out on compelling issues of social and economic justice. We must organize around those issues. Just as Obama saw his volunteers as leaders who would build his base of constituents, we see our member congregations as the networks of leaders who have the ability to organize local Jewish communities to advocate for the issues of social and economic justice that reflect our most deeply held Jewish values.

The current health care reform initiative launched by Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Yoffie at the last Biennial is a powerful example. Across the country, our congregations are fighting for health reform on a statewide level. Though we are supporting their efforts, we are trusting them to determine the best strategy on a local level. When President-elect Obama puts forward a proposal on health reform, we won't just be another interested group in Washington - we will be an organized constituency that is willing to fight for quality, affordable health care for all.

It is worth concluding with a reflection on the spirituality of the next president. Obama became a committed religious person in his twenties while he was organizing in African American churches in Chicago. It was there he discovered the power of organized people to make real change in the world. He also discovered the power of religious traditions to inspire those people, and articulate their shared values, their most deeply held beliefs.

I believe Obama understands community organizing as redemptive, because through organizing local people take responsibility for transforming their own lives and communities. I also believe he sees it a religious pursuit. I felt this most keenly the night he spoke after his very first primary victory, in Iowa back in May. In defending his campaign theme of hope Senator Obama said:

"Hope is the bedrock of this nation. The belief that our destiny will not be written for us, but by us, by all those men and women who are not content to settle for the world as it is, who have the courage to remake the world as it should be."

I was stunned when I heard that powerful phrase, in part because its also in the mission statement of Just Congregations which reads, "Our purpose is redemption: the sacred transformation of the world as it is -- parched by oppression-- into the world as we know it should be -- overflowing with justice." The President-Elect and I both learned the language of the "transformation of the world as it is into the world as it should be" at our training as community organizers. In truth, Saul Alinsky and the Industrial Areas Foundation didn't make it up either - they learned it from the biblical language of redemption.

On the eve of this new era for the United States of America, let us look no further than ourselves to find the leadership to transform the world. That's where the power lies.