Originally Posted by smooth

Pan, I'm surprised that no one answered your question of what a community organizer does.
Community organizers get people from different, usually oppositional sections of communities and gets them to discuss their problems until they can figure out their common interests and what can be done to meet them.

So in Chicago, you have a pretty dire situation in that many traditional ways of controlling behavior have broken down.
The political system is notoriously riddled with corruption, legitimate job market is decimated, shops are boarded up, huge levels of gang violence, reduced funding for police, churches that can't keep their parishioners safe, fed, or clothed, addicts that can't get medical treatment, schools that can't teach effectively due to lack of funding, violence, and students who believe they have better chances running drugs than attending.

Then you take someone who believes he or she can make a difference.
That person has to figure out how to get police chiefs, politicians, health practitioners, gang leaders, church leaders, business leaders, union workers, and addicts to all sit down in one room and talk to one another about what they think their problems are and what kinds of solutions they can think of and then from there how to practically implement them.

A community organizer has to be able to talk to each of those groups and facilitate them talking TO (rather than AT) one another, and I would think that you more than most here would understand that a lot of people from those groups can smell an imposter from a mile away so it's not very likely you can do that for very long and maintain respect and authority among them without being genuine.

A lot of reasons for this, but Chicago has an incredibly rich history of community organization. Do you respect the work of people like Chavez or Jane Addams? I'm pretty sure you have a deep appreciation for Ralph Nader and MLK. They were all community organizers, Pan.