By Radhika Bynon
He’s one of us! Barack Obama worked as a low-paid community organiser in the mid-80s. For a paltry $10,000 a year, he campaigned in challenging housing estates in Chicago’s South Side, where black families struggled to get basic services. It was the unglamorous work typical of all community work - getting asbestos removed, getting landlords to undertake repairs, but with an explicit focus on helping local people to be the agents of change, not doing it for them. “It’s your community” he is reported to have insisted.
Obama has spoken of the huge impact of those years in community work. “It was on these neighbourhoods that I received the best education I ever had” he said in the speech announcing his candidacy. It “taught me a lot about listening to people as opposed to coming in with a predetermined agenda.” Community workers are collaborators, we work to bring people together around shared goals, and his commitment to those values have resonated throughout the campaign – and will be sorely needed in the coming months.
