New Orleans       If there are superstars in pop culture, then Taylor Swift is a supernova.  She just set a record for 4 million sales of her new album, “Life of a Showgirl.”  In a music business hat trick of sorts, she released 38 different versions of the album across every platform other than the raised decks of fishing camps along the Gulf.  When you think of a showgirl, normally a footworn hoofer comes to mind who hits the boards and then mends their costumes and the runs in their stockings in the dressing room after the show.  Swift catches the camera at NFL games with her fiancé.  She graces the cover of magazines.  The critics, not wanting to end up being namechecked in a revenge song from Swift, were careful in their criticisms, but reading between the lines it was clear none of them thought this album was anywhere near her best.  Heck, she’s worth more than a billion dollars, and that hardly sounds like a working stiff.

I thought of Swift as I jumped out of bed at 4 AM, thinking this is another “day in the life of an organizer” and shaking my head at the expanse between Swift and the rest of us.  8AM meant a call with all of ACORN’s African organizers.  Call over, time to get the daily peoples’ news ready for our radio stations.  9AM get the microphone working again for a Zoom call with ACORN’s organizers in India.  The call ends earlier than usual, so I can grab copies of Social Policy’s current issue and the Campaigns book, and drive to the warehouse district where the staff of the Anthropocene Alliance is meeting to run a two-hour session on organizing campaigns to win power and deliver on the issues.

Having trouble finding the hotel, right off of Poydras Street, I finally find a parking place at a meter three blocks away.  I get the maximum two hours for $6.00, seeing that it will flash “warning” at 11:45 AM, so I know it will be a race to not get a ticket.  At the end of the session, the A2 team offers me lunch, so having been raised right, I sit with them for a bit over some red beans and rice, before finally hitting the sidewalk close to 12:45 PM.  I know I’m an hour late, so, I was dreading the big fat ticket that will invariably be waiting for me.  A block away, I see the meter reader going car by car.  Twenty feet away, I see her coming up to my truck.  I yell, “I’m here.”  No reaction.  I get to the truck and see she’s standing by the hood.  I get break.  I see she’s gotten a phone call, and it’s pressed against her ear.  Wordlessly, I hotfoot it around to the driver’s door, jump in, fire up the engine, and pull into the street, escaping the ticket by seconds.  In a day in the life of an organizer, this might be the highlight reel.

This is only half of the day.  Office by 1 PM, do payroll, answer emails, work on the chief organizer’s report, and then do a staff call at 230PM, so I can push rocks up a hill until 7PM when we’ll meet the A2 staff again to talk about our ongoing partnership over dinner.  Somehow, I can’t see Taylor Swift on this routine.  Not because she doesn’t work hard.  But, she’s a show horse, and frankly, we’re more like mules pulling the wagon.  No doubt she loves her audience, and they love her, but it’s different when you’re working for others, as opposed to yourself and your so-called brand like a package of cereal.

Truth be told, I wouldn’t trade a minute of being an organizer for being the star of the show.  I’m betting that’s true of most of us.  Ok, maybe I’m wrong, Gen Z, so let me say that’s true for a lot of us.  No way will I pity Taylor Swift and feel sorry for her “hard life,” nor will I ask for any for mine or any of ours.