Obama For America to teach 'getting paid to cause trouble'

If you log into Obama's web site, you can find a list of Organizing for America (OFA) events in your area. Curious, I signed into the site and came up with a list of over thirty events within 200 miles, in the next two weeks.

The only intriguing one is this: On April 4, at Roosevelt University's downtown Chicago campus, there will be a workshop entitled ‘Getting Paid to Cause Trouble: Careers in Organizing for Social Change (Community Service)':

"Organizers from Illinois AFSCME, UNITE HERE, UFCW, Communities for an Equitable Olympics (CEO), Center for Community Change and other unions and community groups will be here to talk about jobs and internships available NOW!"

AFSCME, UNITE HERE, and UFCW are all unions. The other two groups are ‘progressive' Alinsky-model advocates for low-income people. Listed as a sponsor is the Chicago Center for Working-Class Studies, also a labor-oriented group.

"Come meet organizers from local community organizations and unions ‘walking the walk'," the page encourages. "Learn about careers in grassroots organizing."

Since when is training union organizers, or recruiting people into a union organizer training program, ‘community service'? [snip]

All I can say is that I expect it to expand and become more effective. The Stimulus bill contained $5.2 billion for ‘community development' and ‘neighborhood stabilization', and that money will pay salaries of new ‘community organizers' and ‘labor organizers'. The professional organizers will call on the grass-roots volunteers as needed:

"Hey, we're taking a busload of folks to protest at a banker's house. Care to join us?"

[FYI: this AT article by Lola Manning casts a critical eye on the group, including its creepy similarity to past personal cults. ]

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