Dr. Aaron Schultz (chair of the Department of Educational Policy and Community Studies at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee) has penned an essay that points out some critical differences between the type of community organizing that is widely associated with Barack Obama’s successful grassroots political campaign and the types of activities that are involved with traditional community organizing. This is important, he believes, because these fundamental differences cannot apply to community organizing in the way that everyone hopes they will. He believes that they work when the goal and idea are predefined but do not apply to general community improvement issues where the importance and priority of what to accomplish is up for debate. Lucky for most of the Internet activism that occurs today, the goal is predefined and Obama’s principles can be put into action.

Leave it Open

“Traditional organizing seeks to create local groups whose direction is determined by local leaders. Leaders elicit stories about the desires of many potential members, creating a broad network of relationships based in common goals. Obama’s approach is essentially the opposite. Leaders go out in the community to tell people their stories in an effort to bring them over to Obama.”

In this case, the clearly defined goal that they’re bringing people over to is the change that is associated with an Obama presidency. This is what makes them very effective, they don’t have to convince people to switch because they fully support Obama, they simply have to convince them to switch because they don’t like the present state of things. The bonus is that they reach people who are willing to switch for either reason.

Let People Relate to It

In the same way that people need options to get behind something, people who are spreading your message need to be given the freedom to relate to what they’re speaking about. The Obama campaign does this by reinforcing the message with organizers but letting them use their own stories to spread it.

“In a narrow sense, Obama’s effort does seem to give a range of flexibility to local volunteer leaders. They seem to be given wide leeway in how they will organize themselves, and how they will approach their task of reaching voters…In other ways, however, the campaign looks much like any other campaign. Volunteers are given mostly pre-programmed scripts to use during canvassing, and are given pretty clear instructions about how to engage the voters they meet.”

Message in Minutes

Another key take away from the article is that whatever your story is it must be able to be quickly absorbed. Much in the same way that businesses need elevator pitches, campaigns need to be able to get their ideas across immediately to the people they meet. If you’ve spent any time on the web you understand how short some attention spans can be.

“Participants worked on telling their story about how they came to support Obama in the correct way, using “materials and worksheets” that gave “structure and flow to the story telling process.” The aim was to be able to “tell their ’story of self’ in less than two minutes.” Or 30 seconds if a person is phone canvassing. Or a “couple key ideas” if someone is canvassing.”

To read more of what Dr. Schultz had to say, check out the original article or visit his website: www.educationaction.org

-Filed in Ideas