The Listen, Organize,
Act! Podcast

In this and the final episode of this second series, I discuss the relationship between the Bible and organizing. The turn to Scripture to imagine and narrate politics is often assumed to be the preserve of the authoritarian theocrats. But since the formal development of community organizing in the 1930s, and long before that, texts from the Bible are consistently used to both teach democratic organizing and envision the need for radical, democratic change. The use of Scripture in this way builds on a long standing Jewish and Christian traditions of thought and practice.

In these last two episodes I talk to four organizers, from a variety of backgrounds and faiths about how and why they turn to the Hebrew Scriptures and New Testament. I then invite each of them to exegete a passage that they have drawn on in their work.

I begin this episode by talking to Ernesto Cortes who was featured in episode 7 of the first series. In that episode he discusses his own formation as an organizer. Here he reflects on why he consistently turns to Scripture to envision his own work and to train others in the work of building a more democratic society. The passage he unpacks is the story of Jethro and Moses in Exodus 18, which he reads as a way of envisioning democratic forms of leadership. In doing so, he self-consciously builds on Saul Alinsky's (S2.E2) use of Moses as a model for the role of the organizer.

In the second part of this episode I talk to Marshall Ganz, another hugely influential figure in the contemporary development of grassroots democratic organizing. Marshall currently teaches at Harvard in the Kennedy School of Government. But he has a much storied career in organizing before that. He tells me about his involvement in various democratic movements as a way of narrating the role of Scripture and religion in his own life and the movements he contributed to. These include his involvement in the Civil Rights movement (and the role of the Black Church) and the United Farm Workers movement (and the role of the Catholic Church). He begins by reflecting on his Jewish upbringing. Later he talks through his re-engagement with Judaism and how this shaped the development of his influential public narrative approach which involves telling a story of self, us, and now. As a complement to Ernesto Cortes’s meditation on leadership through the story of Jethro and Moses, Marshall reflects on the story of David and Goliath as a way of teaching strategy.

Guests

Ernesto Cortes, Jr. was National Co-Director of the Industrial Areas Foundation and executive director of its West / Southwest regional network. Beginning in the United Farmworker Movement, he has been organizing in one form or another for nearly half a century, helping to organize or initiate innumerable organizing efforts and campaigns. The organizing work he did in San Antonia in the 1970s in many ways set the template for community organizing coalitions in the IAF thereafter. The fruits of his work have been much studied, and he has been recognized with numerous awards and academic fellowships, including a MacArther Fellowship in 1984, a Heinz Award in public policy in 1999, and an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Princeton University in 2009.

Marshall Ganz is Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. He grew up in Bakersfield, California where his father was a Rabbi and his mother, a teacher. He entered Harvard College in the fall of 1960. He left a year before graduating to volunteer with the 1964 Mississippi Summer Project. He found a “calling” as an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and, in the fall of 1965 joined Cesar Chavez in his effort to unionize California farm workers. During 16 years with the United Farm Workers he gained experience in union, political, and community organizing; became Director of Organizing; and was elected to the national executive board on which he served for 8 years. During the 1980s he worked with grassroots groups to develop new organizing programs and designed innovative voter mobilization strategies for local, state, and national electoral campaigns. In 1991, in order to deepen his intellectual understanding of his work, he returned to Harvard College and after a 28-year "leave of absence" completed his undergraduate degree in history and government. He was awarded an MPA by the Kennedy School in 1993 and completed his PhD in sociology in 2000. He has published in the American Journal of Sociology, American Political Science Review, American Prospect, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Stanford Social Innovation Review and elsewhere. His newest book, Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization and Strategy in the California Farm Worker Movement was published in 2009, earning the Michael J. Harrington Book Award of the American Political Science Association. In 2007-8 he was instrumental in design of the grassroots organization for the 2008 Obama for President campaign. In 2010 he was awarded an honorary doctorate in divinity by the Episcopal Divinity School. In association with the global Leading Change Network of organizers, researchers and educators he coaches, trains, and advises social, civic, educational, health care, and political groups on organizing, training, and leadership development around the world.

Resources for Going Deeper

Walter Brueggemann, Hopeful Imagination: Prophetic Voices in Exile (Fortress Press, 1986)

Marshall Ganz, Why David Sometimes Wins: Leadership, Organization, and Strategy in the California Farm Workers Movement (Oxford University Press, 2009), 3-21.