First I would Like to start with an overview of Gamaliel.
Gamaliel is an interfaith national community organizing organization. The
word Gamaliel is the name of the rabbi in the bible
who taught Paul. Gamaliel is heavily based in Saul Alinksky.
The Organizer training was located at University of St. Mary
of the Lake in Mundelein Illinois and lasted seven days. The mass of
people was broken into three groups of roughly 40 people. We spent most of our
time in the classrooms. The teaching method was Socratic, meaning it
mostly consisted of dialog. The first several days the trainers focused on
personal question the attendees motivation. (i.e. why are you here? what what
do you want?) The key word for the two day was Self Interest, which
Gamaliel defined as "self with others." Something we Socialist call
solidarity. Anyway, self interest is to be opposed to selfishness and
selflessness. The point being that acting our of selfishness or selflessness
are ineffective perspectives for an organizer because both look at the
situation from only one angle. Self interest being a perspective
where you see yourself in the same problem or on the same level as those who
are working with.
To give a little perspective, as a social work student we are
trained to make a very sharp distinction between the client and the social
work. One of the problems of this client/professional relationship has when it
enters the public arena of community organizer is that it instantly sets up a
power dynamic where the social worker is one with the power to speak for the
client (i.e. advocacy means "speaking for"). Instead of speaking with
the client towards mutual goals. The inability for the social work profession
to see themselves in the same situation as the client for the sake of
"Professionalism" is a failure to
reach mutual self interest and/or solidarity with fellow humans
a social worker is working with.
The next concept we focused on was Power. Gamaliel defined it as
"the ability to" do something. Power was a pretty rough concept for
most of the people there. I didn't have any issues with it.
The last few days focused on what is Gamaliel (which for some
reason they waited till near the end to get to), what projects Gamaliel is
working on, and tactics and strategies of campaigns and
actions.
Also, on the second day we started doing one on ones. We
were allotted an hour for each meal and a 3 hour break in the
afternoon to schedule appointments with the other people who
attended. The goal of the one on ones was to learn to agitate people and build
relationships. Agitation was also a Huge over arching them for the whole
training. Trainers were
very aggressive on challenging people on the things they
said. There was at least one person per room that broke down crying.
One even that stood out to me was an exercise we did where we
did a role play where we acted as concerned citizens of a crime
infested low income apartment building, who was going to have a power- one on
one with the landlord. The first attempt was a mess, lots of egos in the room
fighting for authority, the planning discussion was chaotic and
unclear. There was a point where I snapped for about 15 minutes and demanded
that we clarify what ever the hell we were planning to do and take a vote on
it. The end result was that about 6 or so people asked to play key members in
the community screamed and yelled at the guy who was acting as the landlord,
and in the end we hand sign and were screaming chants. In the other room, they
must have came to the same conclusion because we could hear screaming from the
first floor (my group was on the second). Anyway, epic failure. But then we got
a second attempt, where we decided that those who lead the first time had to
sit out for the second round, and this one minister dude organized us like
magic. It was something else to watch. And we had a more or less calm
conversation where we built a relationship, and made some grounds on the
demands that we were asking for.
Personally for me the training opened up the fact that I have not
built very good relationships with people in my life and more specifically
within the ACSCS. So, I have a couple ideas and something that looks like a
plan for our next meeting.
So...
What was it like to be some atheist dude in the middle of a
seminary surrounded by religious folk? Well, I found the symbolism
pretty oppressive the first couple days. There were crosses on the
door knobs and crosses in all the rooms. The dorm area where we were staying
was built forever ago, and reminded me of The Shining. Door Squeals, and heavy
footsteps. In the building where the training was held were HUGE paintings of
people being tortured (i.e. violent scenes of suffering from the bible.) When I
stated that I was an atheist during one of the moments I was being verbally
agitated. Several people found it a pretty curious thing, and set
up appointments with me to talk about it via one-on-one's. Nor was I
the only atheist in attendance in my group alone there was about 5, if that's
an average that reflects the other two groups. Then atheist's might
have been the highest single group in attendance.
On the last day I gave a video testimonial. It should be put on
the internet at some point, and I'll post it. I pretty much said
that I said that I was awestruck by the power of the
church. Not that that this insure about my lack of belief. But about the powers
of people in churches to change the world they are in. Which was pretty much
contrary to my experience with Church and religious folk.
I had a lot of fun at the training. Although on
the first day, when answer the question, "why are you here." With the
witty response, "It sounded like fun." I was ripped at. Little did he
know how serious I take my fun!
