Community organizer-in-chief: Barack Obama’s foreign policy potential

Daniel Noah Moses

JERUSALEM -- “Read it when you get the chance,” my friend said, as he handed me Barack Obama’s memoir, “Dreams from My Father.”

Having read the book, I’m more hopeful about the prospects for peace in the Middle East.

During the presidential campaign, Fox News pundits ridiculed Obama’s youthful experience in Chicago as a “community organizer.” Yet after working with educators on the ground for the last 10 years in Palestine, Israel, Jordan, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan, I would argue the reverse: Obama must tap into what he learned as a community organizer (which has also won him a Nobel Prize). Nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Community organizing and “international development” are often perceived as two totally separate disciplines. But successful international development -- including “peace-building” and “nation-building” -- is community organizing on a global scale.

Governments and nongovernmental organizations enter Palestinian and Israeli communities much as the young Obama entered Chicago. They will succeed or fail depending on the support they earn in the communities where they work.

When the young Obama moved to Chicago to work in struggling African-American communities, he found a pervading sense of powerlessness. Most of the people he met believed the future offered more of the same. He did not come with a predetermined plan to save them. As a community organizer he was an outsider with authority based only on the trust that he earned. His first objective was to listen, to get to know the neighborhoods, to learn about the people, what moved them, what they needed. He learned how the local communities worked, how information was passed along, whose opinions had weight, who could be trusted, who had leadership potential. His objective at that point: to build confidence, community and capacity.

Obama and his allies needed to show how they could achieve something positive by working together. They succeeded when they were able to mobilize around the issue of asbestos behind the walls of housing projects where poor people lived. Such success was part of the larger objective of organizing, of engaging citizens in the active direction of their own lives.

President George W. Bush, a self-styled “decider,” approached foreign policy with a mindset that he may have picked up in business school. Community organizing is different. A community organizer cannot just order neighborhood people around. “Who is this guy?” they would ask. “What gives him the power, and what does he know about us anyway?” A successful community organizer works with community leaders. He or she approaches the work with humility. The organizer responds to the needs of the people. Of course the organizer has objectives beyond the specific needs expressed, yet he or she meets people where they are. There is a delicate balance. The organizer can support and guide -- but he or she cannot push things too far.

In the Palestinian-Israeli relationship, there is deadlock along with festering hopelessness and rage. My advice to President Obama: remember Chicago. As he and his staff members listen to the Palestinians and Israelis, they will find a familiar sense of powerlessness. They will also find active community leaders, Palestinian and Israeli, with tenacity and vision.

Take the lead from trusted locals. Earn their trust. Meet local needs. Enough about some kind of distant “peace.” Palestinians and Israelis want tangible benefits. For example, educators on both “sides” want workshops that focus on how to be more effective in their schools and communities. They want tools and resources for dealing with overwhelming local needs now. They want to meet other motivated people. They want support. They crave hope and inspiration.

The people-to-people experiences that inspire us must be rooted in a sustained way in the community. To make an impact, it is necessary to take local opinion seriously, and to work through the structures of power on the ground. Success requires the active involvement of Palestinian and Israeli educators, of community leaders, of students, of parents, of government officials, who are ready to work today for positive change. Such people will work for a more peaceful future with the kind of determination displayed by those in Chicago who mobilized with young Obama to remove the asbestos from behind the housing project walls.

Mr. President, congratulations on the Nobel Prize. Now please trust those Chicago-honed instincts: focus on the good hard work of community organizer-in-chief.


* Published in Turrkey's TODAY'S ZAMAN on OCt. 19.