We Make Change: Community Organizers Talk About What They Do--and Why

5. What Makes a Good Organizer?

93 5 What Makes a Good Organizer? So what makes a person a good organizer? What personality traits, what skills, what attitudes do you need to do this job well? These questions generated a lot of different kinds of answers. “I think lots of different people can be good organizers, and be organizers in somewhat different ways,” said Kim Fellner, who has written about and trained organizers across the country for many years. “It’s hard to know what the defining characteristics are that you have to have. And while I think the organizing skills and techniques can be taught, I do think that there is also a gift to organizing . Often you see someone and you say, ‘This person will just never be an organizer .’ It’s almost like pornography: you know it when you see it.” But there are some basic things that most organizers agree help a lot in doing this job. “I think there are two things that can’t be taught and that you really need to figure out if you have them before you go into organizing,” said Emily Gruszka. “One is a passion for social justice—that whole ‘fire in the belly’ slogan. The second is a real genuine love of people.” There’s got to be something inside a good organizer—a powerful drive to want to do this—that’s more than just, “I want to do a job.” . . . A good organizer is not afraid to challenge people. Someone who can think larger picture, strategically, who has a bigger vision of what’s possible. Someone who’s not afraid to engage with people; someone who is not afraid to talk, open up with people and build relationships with folks. Someone who is not afraid to make a mistake; someone who’s not afraid to reflect on a mistake and learn from it. I think one of the key ingredients is action-reflection in organizing. And every situation is different, dealing with people is dealing with all kinds of personalities and every situation is going to be a little different. You have to go and do it, but smart organizers learn from each situation and build on that. —Patrick Sweeney 94   We Make Change What is fire in the belly? Well, it’s anger, but anger tempered with purpose. It’s passion, but passion directed at a goal, and with a plan for getting there. First of all, I think you have to have a lot of passion. You have to be a passionate person. And I think that probably there is some passion in all of us, it’s just a matter of what irks us. But you have to be a person who cares and is willing to go somewhere with that. I think most people care, but they just tuck that away some place and don’t know quite what to do with it. —Pennie Vance You have to be really driven by that passion to be persistent and not give up in spite of the many obstacles and challenges and frustrations and time demands. I think you need a core fire-in-the-belly passion for justice and social change. You need to have a vision for the world as it should be. —Robert Owens Someone who’s passionate about things and yet tempered. I think the passion has to be tempered because of the role I see a community organizer playing: motivating and encouraging people. You need to be able to reach folks and appeal to them in the way you talk about issues and ask questions. And yet it’s the people in the organization that really need to be the leaders and the movers and the pushers on things. So to have an organizer be passionate but contained, so that there’s space for other folks to feel passionate and move to the front. —Brett Kelver I don’t think you can do this job and not care about what you’re doing. You can graduate from college with an English degree and go become a computer programmer, and stay there for a couple years, and not care about what you’re doing. I don’t think you can be a community organizer and say, “Well, it’s just a job for now. Something better will come along later.” Organizers tend to have a real passion for what they are working for. —Kelly (Corley) Pokharel I think that a good community organizer must, above all...