He Absolutely Had To Be A "Community Organizer"

By Hakim Bellamy, November 19, 2008

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Opinion: Community organizers didn't just sprout up overnight for the Obama election victory, they've been in the trenches for years.

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My good friend Tomas Garduno over at SouthWest Organizing Project articulated this entire article for me the eve of the election on Vote Like A Rockstar: The After School Special, which aired on Channel 27. In talking about the work that SWOP does in the community he said, "Groups like SWOP have been doing the work in the community long before Senator Obama made it popular to be a 'community organizer'." In that one sentence he beat me to the punch. Not the punchline, or even the storyline, but the "fist extended into the air" as we, the community organizers, are now recognized for the work we did to make this historic candidacy possible, as well as the work we'll continue to do long after Senator Obama is president-elect.

What do I mean? The Obama Campaign was brilliantly strategized. Hats off to Chairman Dean, David Axelrod and David Plouffe. Their brilliance lies in the fact that they did not try to reinvent the wheel. At the same time, they didn't "parachute campaign" either. Unlike previous Republican campaigns, Democrats, and the Obama team specifically didn't just drop into towns to stump issues and plant seeds of fear or misplaced nationalism only to ransom votes and leave right after they've won the race. That was the old "successful" model, now referred to as the "last campaigns of the 20th century," while the Obama camp ushered in the first campaign of the 21st century.

How so? Because they were smart enough to realize that they needed to use people already on the ground in real American communities all across the nation. People who have already enacted change in their communities on a local level and have a history of holding public officials accountable. People who have already had change they could believe in, because they are the agents of change in their communities. They have seen it, lived it and on a national level, waited for it for a very long time.

But perfect smiles, shiny shoes and fancy-shmancy check signing pens don't, easily sway those who are already in the trenches and fighting the wars at home. These folks have a certain disdain for the type of authority and government that has often said they've come to "help," only leave the place worse off than they found it.

Why Obama? Because he is the first candidate that knows where we, these people, are coming from. He had to be one of us. He needed our buy in to give his campaign legs in the community and in order to get that, he needed us to believe. His story was one that folks in groups like SWOP, Common Cause, New Mexico Youth Organized, NM Hip Hop Congress, Young Women United and many others could believe in. Primarily because we lived it and we can smell when someone is falsely depicting or trying to capitalize off of our "everyday." It's like when you're from the streets and you hear someone talking about said "streets" and three sentences in, you know for sure that they have never spent a day on the "streets" in their life. That's not gangsta at all.

Why did the campaign work? Because we already had networks established. We had and have our own grassroots ground games. We already cultivated an organized, informed and active base of citizens who will get up out their homes and do what it takes to carry their neighborhoods, communities, families and schools forward. Tapping into these networks was essential for the Obama Campaign to get to this point.

We are the ones out registering the record numbers of voters, convincing our gangbanging cousins to register, walking our neighbors with felonies down the path of re-enfranchisement. We are the opinion leaders in our social circles and personal relationships talking the issues with those we care about because their future is important to us. And that carries more weight than billions of dollars in TV commercials. It means more when it comes from someone you have suffered side by side with in the same economically depressed neighborhood for the past eight years than from someone flown in from Boston to canvas your block for the past eight weeks.

The Obama campaign understood this. Why? Because Obama understands this and quite frankly, "birds of a feather..." So stand up and take your bow community organizers. No matter what race, sex or nationality you are, one of ours has made it to the eleventh hour of the presidential race because of you. Because of us. We've been the change we wanted to see in the world for some time and now, finally, the world is starting to look like us.

Our work is not in vain, and as President-Elect Obama will realize on November 5, neither was his. And maybe, just maybe, you, me and Tomas Garduno will all have to get bodyguards and paparazzi protection because after Tuesday, it will be damn sexy to be a "community organizer."

Hakim Bellamy is a two-time National Champion in the Poetry Slam scene. He was a member of the 2005 National Poetry Slam Champs Team Albuquerque in his first year of poetry slam, 6 months after his first ever slam, which he also won. The following year he was a member of the 2006 College Unions Poetry Slam Invitational Champs Team UNM. One Albuquerque City Championship (2005). He is currently working for the New Mexico Office of African American Affairs and is a board member for Poetic Justice Institute and Black Cowgirl Productions. In January, Bellamy was recognized as an honorable mention for the University of New Mexico Paul Bartlett Re Peace Prize for his work as a community organizer and journalist.