So you want to be a community organizer.  You could do worse - after all, President Obama cut his political teeth as a community organizer.

What exactly does a community organizer do? In broad terms, the community organizer engages with an identified group of people, facing specific issues, and who individually have no voice in the political/economic process.

While community organizing is a sub-section of the skills taught to social workers, most organizing efforts that are familiar to us have been led by ministers, lawyers, or other self-proclaimed leaders.Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson come to mind when discussing contemporary organizers. Historically, the names of Susan Anthony and Martin Luther King are well known community organizers.

What makes the activities of community organizing different from most other social organizations is that community organizers generally assume that social change necessarily involves conflict and social struggle in order to generate collective power for the powerless. And it is the organizer who helps his or her community first recognize that there is an issue, that someone or something out there is responsible for the perceived injustice, and that collectively, the people can create change. All noble beliefs.

Often overlooked is the radical underpinnings of community organizing. The accepted premier mentor of community organizing is Saul Alinsky, who, interestingly enough was based in Obama’s own backyard: Chicago.

Alinsky’s influence on Obama is unmistakable. His commitment to the poor, radical action for change, a government that is responsive to the issues as being the solution and the appearance of transparency all become an ingrained view of the world. The role of being a community organizer is a heady job. He or she often find themselves being able to excerpt influence on the upper echelons of political power. Gaining favor and favors in return for blocks of votes.

But the main feature of a trained community organizer is the world view that any “… revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future. This acceptance is the reformation essential to any revolution.”

A close examination of the skills and tactics of Barak Obama seems to reflect that his roots as a community organizer remain a cornerstone of his approach to power and politics.