Community Organizing: A Balm for Tired Souls

Between now and January 19th, we’ll feature a series of guest bloggers on USAservice.org.  Today we’re pleased to share a post by Pam McMichael, Highlander Center.
In 1957, Martin Luther King Jr. gave the keynote address at the 25th anniversary of the Highlander Center, a gathering focused on integration, and said: “The future is filled with vast and marvelous possibilities. This is a great time to be alive. Let us not despair.  And let us go out and work with renewed vigor to make the unfolding work of destiny a reality in our generation.” King spoke these words during a critical and challenging time in our country’s history, and they are appropriate today as we prepare to celebrate the Inauguration of President-elect Obama and answer his call to service.
 Community organizers understand this call, and are, in fact, already heeding it. Whatever gains have been made toward fairness and justice in this country have always included community organizers pushing from the bottom up. The eight-hour work day. Minimum wage increases. Voting rights. Civil rights. The American Disabilities Act. Non-discrimination ordinances. Environmental protections. Just to name a few of the ways we have come so far.  We are clear we have far still to go. We need each other to do so. Dr. King’s address also included special greetings from the 50,000 citizens of Montgomery, who, in boycotting the segregated buses, decided “to walk in dignity rather than ride in humiliation, substituting tired feet for tired souls.” Trading ‘tired feet for tired souls’ well describes community organizers who work to make the promise of democracy real. Being a community organizer means being able to hold conflicting sentiments at the same time: grief for the many lives our society has thrown away in the gap between the promise of America and the reality of America; hope for the vision of what our society could be if based on values of fairness, justice and inclusivity; and courage to make that vision real. For us to transform our communities to ones of equity, opportunity and sustainability, our service to relieve suffering must be connected to organizing to change the systemic conditions that created the suffering. For over 76 years, community organizers have come together to share strategies and develop skills and analysis at the Highlander Research and Education Center, a popular education center in east Tennessee that builds grassroots leadership in the South and Appalachia. Highlander’s legacy is around labor, Civil Rights and environmental justice. Today, Highlander is still on the cutting edge, connecting people across issues, race, language, culture and generations, and working with groups addressing such issues as youth incarceration, education, immigration, the environment and the economy.
As director, I am most excited that President-elect Obama’s call to service on the King Holiday is not a call for a single day of service, but the launching of an ongoing call to commitment and action for transformation. At Highlander, we believe in getting involved with other people to address issues in the community, and USAservice.org can play a critical role in the process of linking people to such opportunities.Our staff will be part of MLK Day events in Knoxville and Maryville, TN, Atlanta, GA, and Washington, DC including a candlelight vigil call to nonviolence. We invite you to be part of this national growing effort to renew our communities, the country and the world. What better balm for tired souls or tired feet than to get involved in the work for meaningful change toward just, fair and sustainable communities.