The Obama Victory, Asset‐Based Development and the Re‐Politicization of Community Organizing

Abstract

In this commentary, I argue that Obama's victory in the recent Democratic primary was largely a consequence of his early experiences as an Alinsky‐style community organizer in Chicago. I compare the nature of the broad‐based organizing that Obama was trained in to a newer model of “community building” called Asset‐Based Community Development (ABCD). ABCD promotes the belief that communities suffering the effects of economic restructuring, such as abandoned housing, crime, and deindustrialization among others, can “heal themselves” by looking within for resources—or “assets”—rather than by making demands on the state, a stance its proponents stigmatize as evidence of a “client” mentality. I argue that however chimerical its promises of redemption are, ABCD illustrates an important shift in contemporary understandings of citizenship, away from the possibilities for collective action that characterize Alinsky‐style organizing and toward a view that is both radically neoliberal and potentially totalitarian in its homogenizing notions of its two key concepts—”community” and “assets.” I suggest that the grassroots nature of the Obama campaign may have the potential to reanimate an interest in broad‐based organizing toward the end of creating a more just distribution of resources.

Teacher-Student Reflections: A Critical Conversation about Values and Cultural Awareness in Community Development Work, and Implications for Teaching and Practice

“…Other approaches are more radical, such as Alinsky's [7] community organising, which involves working with communities to help them strategically apply pressure to decision-makers, including politicians, business owners, and property owners, to bring about change. This method is applied by community activists all over the world and has been used by human rights activists, including Obama, during his tenure as a community organiser [8]. Commonalities between the different approaches to Community Development became apparent to me, which enabled me to develop my own understanding.…”

“…Historically, community development was identified as a process that involved whole communities in ensuring economic and social progress. Implicit, though, is the belief that communities identified for such projects lack the ability to bring about positive change without help from external agents [8]. It is impossible to deny that many communities in Scotland and across the globe have been affected by multiple factors that have left them struggling in day-to-day existence.…”

Reclaiming the social in community movements: perspectives from the USA and Brazil/South America: 25 years after Ottawa

“…In nations including the USA, health promotion frequently is reduced to a focus primarily on 'the holy trinity of tobacco use, diet, and physical activity' [ (Nettleton, 1997), p. 318; see also (Raphael, 2008(Raphael, , 2010]. With the highest level of unequal income and wealth since the great Depression in the USA (Reich, 2011) and in the difficult economic times that followed the Great Recession of 2008, we cannot expect poor and low-resource communities to thrive without substantial external resources and support (Hyatt, 2008;DeFilippis et al, 2010). Therefore, how do we accompany 'individual responsibility for health' with community 'response-ability' by refocusing on social determinants and healthy public policies (Minkler, 1994)?…”