Wade Rathke: Chief Organizer Blog » Obama

Where is Community Organizer in Chief?

jstuart — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 17:12:59 +0000

Baltimore Catching up on reading on the plane was disturbing in big and small ways. How in the world has Obama so badly lost his groove?

What happened to the understanding and instincts of an organizer, being able to listen, forge the rap and flyer that works, and lead through others? A piece by George Packer in the March 15^th edition of the New Yorker on Obama’s lost year was troubling and devastating on the President’s inability to connect with the American people. In an editorial coup the Packer article followed a profile on Treasury Secretary Geithner, who seemed committed to not listening, not hearing, and not caring about the impact on people and politics, as a matter of policy. Hauntingly the Packer piece seemed to echo some of the same themes where “responsibility” as policy was replacing the need to communicate and gain support of the public. Egads! This is fatal!!

Perhaps more devastating was Packer’s thrust that the President’s advisors seemed more committed to the man than the policies and a sense that he had no core. The comparisons to Reagan were depressing, but one admiring quote after another from fawning Democratic strategists like Paul Begala expressing not just admiration, but a clear reckoning that you could only make change if you had an ideology. Obama in one critique was spending too much time and energy hoping to cast himself as Roosevelt and not enough thinking about what he really wanted to achieve at rock bottom.

There is irony here of course. The right is constantly attacking him for his supposed ideology, yet unmistakably it seemed clear that part of the problem was his relentless, tone deaf search for the middle, lacking any central, personal convictions and principles, which is another way of thinking about ideology. How many wake up calls do they need here? What happened to the organizer.

In a small way I was also reminded of this problem while reading a story in the Times about the credibility problem President Caulderon of Mexico is having in Juarez and elsewhere because his military-might anti-drug strategy, bankrolled by more than a billion by first Bush and now Obama was not bringing security. In a footnote almost the reporter talked about a visit by a Mexico-based official of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) who was in Juarez this week meeting with community groups to talk about how to support community development, essentially some butter where guns were not working.

At the least we could have expected an ex-community organizer and now President to have known that and directed such programs at home and abroad as matters of policy, and maybe even as part of his personal ideology that community empowerment and development make sense in all situations.

Obama Feeling Heat on Immigration Reform

jstuart — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 18:12:19 +0000

Washington There is finally hope for comprehensive immigration reform if only because the inside-the-beltway strategy is crumbling and the anger and hurt if finally forcing itself into the open and driving the debate. Many activists and advocates have been pleading for a rally, march or some show of strength and purpose since exactly such an event was squelched for Inauguration Day 2009. Now a year later with some small progress in tone, but mostly some severe disillusionment with the lack of progress on the local vigilantism sanctioned by 287g, the increased punitive enforcements and senseless family breakups from unnecessary deportations, and the thousands pushed out of jobs the base knows the score no matter what lipstick DC players might put on this pig.

Not surprisingly on the eve of the March 21^st Rally and March, the President and his people summoned a dozen advocates for a meeting Thursday at the White House to try to soften some of the blows. Parsing the statements after it was over from participants was no easy task, especially reading the snarky line in the Times claiming the advocates were mainly happy to have had the President there for an hour of the session. I’m sure there’s a way that could have been written more patronizingly, but I’ll have to think about it. An hour from the President is frankly no big deal when dealing with the problems of 12 million plus undocumented immigrants and what this means to a core part of the progressive – and Democratic – constituency among Latino voters in this country.

There seemed to be little in the way of concrete progress from the meeting though. The President asking advocates to deliver Republican votes for the bill is a wild piece of “blaming the victim.” We can’t get there from here. From all reports of people in the meeting the President was testy and sparky in the meeting. He reportedly is chafing at being the target of the Rally and March. He was supposedly uncomfortable hearing about how bad a problem DHS is under Secretary Napolitano who has cranked up the enforcement without any relief and justice for immigrants. One participant claimed that Obama said he would meet with her.

From what I heard the biggest crack opening for relief on the way to reform was a tense exchange around the issue of whether or not the Administration is deporting immigrants without criminal records. The advocates placed the issue squarely on the table demanding that this be stopped. Reportedly the President claimed that they were not engaging in such deportations. This is not opinion but fact. These deportations are happening. If the President says they are not, this is something he can fix today by stopping such deportations and family breakups.

Realistically a bill seems unlikely for 2010 and pretty sketchy for next year as well, especially if it depends on reformers mustering bipartisan support, as I mentioned.

The odds improve if the movement is finally unleashed and allowed to put the pressure on not only the President but the other institutions and individuals standing in the way of reform. With DREAM marchers getting great traction and publicity by showing courage on their march up the East Coast and hundreds of young people and their supporters standing up in Chicago in an action yesterday where they declared they were “undocumented and unafraid,” the pressure is finally on the “by-and-by” folks caught in the DC lobbying strategies.

If we stop advocating and start organizing and leading the movement that is once again emerging, then real reform is possible. Maybe the events of these coming weeks are finally going to unleash the real forces of change?

Shooting Straight as Pressure Increases

jstuart — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:57:26 +0000

Washington It’s not spring here, but finally there is a briskness in peoples’ step. Tomorrow there is a major rally for heath care reform called by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), and on Sunday, March 21^st, the forces in favor of comprehensive immigration reform are rallying, praying, and marching on the Mall, hopefully with significant numbers. There are front page stories wondering how the Obama administration got so off message, and there’s a real race in Arkansas with Senator Blanche Lincoln dying in the middle of the road. Something good is bound to come of the reemergence of progressives from the lassitude of mindless hope and passivity. Hooray!

But…increasingly there seems to be blood in the water as the Administration becomes the gang that can’t shot straight. Evidence is piling up:

◦ Weatherization strategy for creating jobs and helping working families seems to be nowhere after more than a year. Energy Secretary frustrated, but how hard could this have been?

◦ Teachers all fired in Rhode Island to take the blame for god knows what, probably just to take the blame and the President of the United States weighs in with a gut punch. Why in the world is Obama in this picture?

◦ Big talk about increasing school hours to better education the kids, but school districts strapped for money are cutting down to 4 days per week. Mr. President?

◦ A year after a new administration, don’t ask me about post-Katrina recovery.

Why pile on? The list could go on and on. Maybe if people get their legs moving and voices louder it won’t breakthrough the Congressional logjam, but at least people will start remembering that we only win, when we fight.

Hunkering Down for Reform

jstuart — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:33:29 +0000

Washington Being around the DC area gave me an opportunity to ply friends and associates for information on what might be happening to some other critical efforts for reform now that health care is at center stage. The votes still don’t seem there for labor law reform and there’s no push to have it jump over health care in the queue of course.

More interestingly were the tidbits I gathered from my friends in the immigration reform movement. There seems to be an emerging consensus that this will be a longer fight than anyone would have wanted and that there needs to be a re-engagement tactically and strategically with the base to rebuild the momentum.

Importantly, there seems to also be two other important recognitions. One is that the anger and disappointment of the base about increased enforcement (like 287g) can’t be ignored or rationalized, especially in the absence of any positive steps towards reform by the Administration. The other is a recognition that to get this job done may require some real leveraging of the elections in 2010 and 2012, and in my view a much clearer quid pro quo about votes following reform, rather than hope.

This all is disappointing but at least seems like a dose of real politick that might mean that immigration reform is real when it comes and that we are finally girding for a fight rather than depending on the White House, which seems a disappointment for sure.

A professor I know well said something to me on the phone recently that put all of this in perspective. He observed that we now seemed to be getting the “Clinton Administration without the economic expansion!” That hurts, but sadly we may have to reckon with that being the truth as great expectations continue to dissolve.

A 9th Ward Welcome for Obama

jstuart — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:54:23 +0000

Delhi I can’t be everywhere, but I wish I were going to be home in New Orleans when President Obama finally makes good on his promise to visit and step up his role in rebuilding. Of course from halfway around the world, it’s hard to understand most of what’s happening on the home front.

There seems to have been a whole lot of excitement when the President’s visit was finally announced and the great New Orleans ACORN leader in the Lower 9^th Ward Vanessa Gueringer, who has been a tiger in making sure the lower nine would be rebuilt and supported, said simply, that she thought an Obama visit was great, but sure hoped he was planning on visiting the 9^th Ward to see how much still needed to be done or words to that effect. This is light stuff and virtually nothing more but a polite invitation. Gueringer could hardly have said anything else.

But, reading between the lines way over here, it looks like some folks in the White House communications department went on red alert at even this simple 9^th Ward welcome, which was nothing but sugar and spice compared to what Obama has seen before on the South Side of Chicago back in the day. My guess is a call went out to ACORN’s DC office asking them to cool it down, and once this message reached New York, they thought they had an opportunity to curry a little favor with the White House, especially since they were still wiping bus tracks off of their shirts given the President’s anti-ACORN adlibs around the organization’s recent snafus.

The White House quickly amended its schedule (as note in the Times Picayune) and added a stop in the lower 9^th, thanks to Gueringer’s pointed plea and invitation. ACORN’s national management was left once again outflanked and out of synch, talking in New Orleans about suppression of the local chapters involved in Katrina recovery while contradicting one of the leaders of Katrina recovery doing the job that any great ACORN local leader would do: advocate for her members!

And, there’s no doubt that the President needs to not only visit but to step up. His Katrina anniversary conversations with VP Biden about using stimulus money for Katrina rebuilding is hollow since that money is under the vise grip of Republican ideologue, governor, and presidential wannabe, Bobby Jindal, and is not coming to New Orleans. There needs to be a real Katrina lift by the federal government, but a head fake towards a recalcitrant state government in Baton Rouge.

There was something I saw in one of the stories about them not caring if the chapter was talking about Mayor Nagin, but it was different with the President. Hardly! The local ACORN chapter has led the way for four years in dealing with President Bush and every major presidential candidate, Democratic and Republican, who came to New Orleans either for a photo op or to register a real pledge or promise from Hilary Clinton to John Edwards to John McCain to even Barack Obama.

In Delhi and Jakarta and even recently in Bangkok, there are still questions I get all of the time about the progress of rebuilding in New Orleans in the wake of Katrina more than four years ago. People who have been displaced, evicted, and homeless and fighting for the chance to return home understand and identify with New Orleans and the fierce fight that New Orleans ACORN has fought with its thousands of members in the recovery. Certainly this is not part of daily reality in New York or DC, but it still is very much the struggle in New Orleans.

The President can handle the pressure and when he feels it, will do the right thing. We all need to stand behind Vanessa Gueringer and the people of New Orleans, and stop playing petty politics with Katrina victims.

Mr. President, please help New Orleans!

Presidential Scold

jstuart — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 15:34:44 +0000

New Orleans Paul Krugman in the New York Times makes the dead-on point that the President needs to be a little more “populist” – appealing to the masses rather than the elites – about the gross excesses of Wall Street pay and reining in the bankers. There his comments would be welcome because the federal government, which he heads, has huge skin in that game. Krugman says President Obama is uncomfortable being a populist.

Is he? Not when it comes to scolding his core constituency. In recent months we have seen the President weigh in on police behavior in Cambridge with Professor Henry Louis Gates ending up in the “beer summit.” We have seen him do a slap down on Kanye West as a “jackass.” We have reports of him trying to thrown the first African-American governor of New York State under the bus long before the voters are able to have their play. Now, we even have him cracking wise about the need for some kind of investigation by someone or another into the ACORN videotape stings, according to an AP story in my hometown paper.

These seem like political cheap shots reminiscent of the Sister Souljah tongue lash by Clinton in an earlier era. These are bullet shots across the mass of America that are racially coded. These are Bill Cosby in the White House moments.

Is this the politics of change? I don’t think so. Did we expect the Bushes to weigh in and out on a daily basis about white people? Of course not! So, why does the first African-American President still have to be the scold when it comes to an organization that is heavily identified by its black and Latino membership and leadership?

A “just the facts, ma’am” would be a comforting stance from the White House, and I for one believe we are all better served when President Obama is in the pulpit, rather than when he is being the bully.

Obama Immigration Drop-in Drop-Out

jstuart — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 14:56:50 +0000

New Orleans One of the Obama pop-ups yesterday that was NOT in the news, probably for obvious and deliberate reasons, was President Obama’s drop by at a meeting between Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and an array of people who are strongly committed to comprehensive immigration reform from business, religion, labor, and immigrant rights. The meeting agenda did not specifically say, “let’s get together in order to tamp down the pressure for immigration reform now,” but it seems clear from talking to a number of people going in and out of the meeting that that was the real purpose and message of the event.

Napolitano has ignited sparks from reformers (I would have liked to have written “firestorm,” but it would have been a lie) for increasing the pressure on immigrant families, ignoring violations of human rights, and advancing rather than stopping the abuses of 287(g) which subcontracts la migra to local law “enforcement” types like the notorious Sheriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County (Phoenix), Arizona. This meeting was a “who’s who.” Representatives were there from the AFL-CIO, SEIU, HERE, UFW, CASA de Maryland, National Immigration Forum, the Center for Community Change, America’s Voices, the National Day Laborers’ Organizing Network, the National Council of La Raza, LULAC, and others, but also from Wal-Mart, IBM, McDonalds, the Chamber of Commerce, and other businesses.

Talking to people there seems to have been several takeaways from the meeting. One is that they are VERY sensitive to the problems with 287(g). The President specifically mentioned it, but he also said they were sticking with it. The gesture was a little like him saying, “…you have beautiful eyes,” and then popping his finger in your eye. Another by all of the White House folks, was essentially that, “…the President can NOT get this done.” I’m sure they added “without you,” but given the stunted capacity of the field operations for immigration reform and the atrophied “movement” for reform in recent years and what has turned out to be false and misplaced hopes that the White House could win this and “our” contribution could be handled in the beltway, this was sobering and bad news.

Given the messages of hate and polarization that we are seeing in the healthcare fight and the right mobilizations in many town halls, the real message of the meeting seemed to be that immigration reform has no real chance until late 2010, and without a huge surge from the base and a rekindling of the grassroots movement for real change here, it may have no chance at all.

Obama on Faith Call

jstuart — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 14:43:34 +0000

New Orleans There were technical problems and it was a weird experience, but I have to say, of the millions of conference calls I do in a year, it’s still special to have the President of the United States pop on to one. What a powerful political tool with such huge potential – I want to figure out how to do this NOW!

Ok, let me back up. You may ask yourself, what I was doing on a conference call of what they call “faith leaders?” I know that doesn’t fit easily with my usual image or the current effort of the right to position me squarely between Attila, the Hun, and Karl Marx, but it just shows how little you know!

My friends at the PICO National Network keep me up to date through their email lists, and dutifully sent me (and all the rest of the gang!) a message that we had an opportunity to join a call yesterday with the President about health care reform. What a good idea, I thought, so I signed up.

I waited for the text message on the call in number, and I did get a couple of strange messages that were firing blanks, so I know they were trying. At the appointed hour I was finishing a meeting with a young man helping on the Organizers’ Forum reading list for our trip in October to Thailand, so I hurried on the right PICO website to figure out how to get on. It said I could go on via the web, but I found myself scratching my head and unable to figure that out, so I tried three or four times to call the 347 long distance number without success. I’m not happy. I went back to the website and stumbled on this too small widget on their site, which was obvious in retrospect, double clicked, and by damn, I was on the call via the internet with a great connect and free as a bird. This rocked!

The call was heavily scripted, as you would expect. I recognized an excellent PICO leader who had been at an Organizers’ Forum dialogue in Chicago this spring. Our friend Jim Wallis did the bridge introduction to Melody Barnes from the White House to answer some questions. She was smooth. She sincerely thanked everyone for their questions, which was more memorable than the answer. But, mainly the call was authentic. There were real people, some of whom were real nervous, with real questions, and a big-time issue about the need for health care reform. President Obama was on message, pointed, and essentially tried to rally the troops in the faith community to help push health care reform in Congress.

The list of sponsors for the call was dozens of denominations and religious groups. I saw both our friends at the Gameliel Foundation and PICO from faith based community organizations, and that was wonderful. I also got a text late last night that did come through from PICO saying that 140,000 people were on the call, and they were apologizing that so many people were NOT able to get on.

This is what really moves me: if we have the technology to let 140,000 people come onto a phone call with the President – or anyone else! – that is a wildly powerful communications, organizing, and mobilization tool! I want to figure out how to do that on our websites, too, and I bet I’m not just one of thousands trying to figure out this great idea!

Healthcare Reform by Email

jstuart — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:16:59 +0000

Baltimore An email comes from the POTUS or President Obama as he’s more widely known, and you think, gee, something’s up. Maybe they are taking this fight seriously for a change? But, then you remember this is just an email, which is different from a real fight.

Nonetheless those who are intent of fear mongering and sowing misinformation were none too happy about even the emails. According to a story by David Herszenhorn and Robert Pear, Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, urged Mr. Obama to “cease this program,” adding, “I am not aware of any precedent for a president asking American citizens to report their fellow citizens to the White House for pure political speech.” Why the upset? Well, someone named Macon Phillips with “new media” in the White House asked for help in his blog and wants folks to report examples of mess to the government: “If you get an e-mail or see something on the Web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”

That’s a flag we can all salute to!

Of course you start emailing out and some people are going to make the mistake of also thinking that you want some input on what you are doing – or not doing – to really fix the health care system. A friend and long time comrade of mine from Miami, proving that once an organizer, you never forget some of the skills, seized on that email to sizzle a steamer back to the White House and the POTUS about why he thought the proposal was less than half a loaf already and needed more baking.

He talked about being felled by a life threatening problem, saved by a good doc, held in ICU for 2 months, and then getting out to find a life of hell in dealing with nearly 20 different companies and collectors trying to dun him for bills, dreading the phone calls, and finally negotiating away thousands and thousands of a payment plan that totals almost a lifetime obligation of nearly $300 per month on top of the fact that he and his wife have to pay for special insurance (employer pre-existing problem), etc, etc, etc…this is not an unusual story, just one penned on a computer and sent back to the President. The difference is that if the President or any of the folks reading the emails read the whole message it still comes down to the fact that under the current diluted compromise, my friend would not be in much different shape from his reading AFTER “winning” the current health care “reform” than he is now.

He was gentle with the President. He didn’t want him to blow it, but the whole exchange made me wonder yet again, if we are fighting for real reform or just something a little better than the mess we are in now. Reading the whine from million dollar drug lobbyist (and ex-south Louisiana Congressman Billy Tauzin) that the drug industry has “cut a deal” with the Administration and wants to make sure that they don’t have to save “more than $80 billion” in overcharges gives me real pause. [Did he have to make the front page just because the health insurance lobbyist was touted as the kingpin the day before in the paper? Come on, Billy?!?] I get it and I’m sure Jim Messina, our old friend from Montana, was doing what he was told in trying to work with Senator Baucus, his ex-boss, to please his new boss, Obama, but still…is this the best deal? And how much more might have been on the table?

Send those questions to flag@whitehouse.gov. Let me know what they reply.

Napolitano Bringing Heat on Obama

NoorinLadhani — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:47:59 +0000

Silver Spring A Sunday feature in the Washington Post had Obama rating his initial chances at election as 25-30%. He was wrong then, but he could be right now about re-election if he continues to alienate the burgeoning Hispanic base that was key to his victory. A professor in today’s Times called the situation for immigrants the “worst of both worlds,” meaning that immigrants were facing escalating enforcement with no concrete prospects for reform.

The front page article on the Times was based on the virtually below the radar actions, which they labeled “small” butsignificant by immigrant reform advocates in Los Angeles and New York City targeting Homeland Security andtherefore immigration chief copy, Janet Napolitano, as the problem. She danced around the issue of Arpaio in the Times, by pretending that the 287g subcontracted immigration enforcement to cities and counties might be too onerous for the Sheriff, who has publicly just scoffed at them thus far.

More devastating as a time bomb for the President and Napolitano might be the eruption of hunger strikes in a private prison in Louisiana that holds detainees who have been swept up in the immigrant bashing. Reports from the Saket Soni, director of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice as covered by Chris Kromm at the Institute for Southern Studies, hit the wire services and elsewhere this week about the sub-human conditions being allowed detainees in these private Homeland Security compounds.

I was shocked to read about Guantanamo conditions existing in Louisiana.

The lack of progress on reform and the steady tightening of the screws on immigrants that is now being allowed and encouraged by the Administration is no longer a well kept secret, and will not long be something that the Secretary can keep from bringing the President down unless there is action on all fronts now.

These kinds of reports will guarantee that the response will not be “small” for long!