SIDE STREETS: Community organizers deserve praise, not mockery

Lately, some folks have been poking fun at the notion that being a "community organizer" is a steppingstone to becoming president. But in Colorado Springs, there is a proud tradition of community organizers accomplishing great things and becoming respected elected officials.

Just ask Margaret Radford, whose work opposing a bypass through her Constitution Avenue neighborhood led her to the City Council.

Or ask El Paso County Commissioner Sallie Clark, who fought to keep a neighborhood fire station, won a City Council seat then moved to the county.

Ask Jan Doran, who resurrected the Council of Neighbors & Organizations from about a dozen members and built it into a powerful voice for neighborhoods at City Hall.

Or ask the Rev. Promise Lee, whose work as a community organizer earned national acclaim and an "All America Community" designation for the Hillside neighborhood.

"I don't know why ‘community organizer' is being held up that way," Radford said. "It's certainly one of the many things I am."

Whatever you call them - community organizers, activists or leaders - they are people who get trails built, fight off gangs and drug dealers, defend zoning, rally people to preserve trees in the face of a strip mall and give voice to any number of issues.

"I'm a big believer in neighborhood leadership," Radford said. "Whatever you call it, it is the entry point to government for many people. It's the grass-roots level. And that's not something to be taken lightly."

Clark called it valuable experience.

"It taught me the value of collaboration," she said. "It gave me the ability to bring people together for a common good, regardless of their political background.

"I wish more legislators would work their way up through the local ranks. They'd be more sensitive to what is important to their constituents. There's no better way to get an understanding of the issues than working at the local level."

Doran said community organizing has always been a part of her life.

"It shows you have your heart in the place you live, the community, the country where you live," she said. "It shows you are concerned about what goes on around you."

Lee said the label "community organizer" applies to people like Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. and has roots going back thousands of years.

"Jesus Christ was a community organizer," said Lee, pastor of the Relevant Word Ministries in Hillside, southeast of downtown Colorado Springs. "I define it as somebody who has invested his talent, time and treasure in a cause much greater than themselves."

Lee is a good example. Starting in 1985, he organized residents of the 1,100-home Hillside neighborhood and created a neighborhood association to drive out the thieves, drug dealers and prostitutes who had overtaken the area. He said community organizers should be praised, not mocked.

"Because of community organizers, women have the right to vote," he said. "And because of them, we have laws protecting our civil rights."

Lee said community organizers often take on difficult issues from illiteracy to unemployment to crime and beyond.

"They are people who are most in touch with the grass-roots community," he said. "They take nontraditional approaches to traditional problems. They do with a dime what most agencies can't do with a dollar. We should not negate the work of community organizers."