This just in: Valerie Jarrett, recently appointed White House senior adviser, and Melody Barnes, the next director of the Domestic Policy Council, will meet with 2,000 community organizing leaders at "Realizing the Promise: A Forum on Community, Faith and Democracy" on Thursday, December 4.Why is that big news? Because these community organizers are working for a kind of change that's radically different from what the Wall Street veterans on Obama's economic team have in mind. Consider what the organizers are telling the administration they want, according to the websites of the Gamaliel Foundation and the Center for Community Change, co-sponsors of the Forum:
- All policies should favor cooperative ventures over individual ownership
- Universal access to affordable, quality health care for all residents of the United States. ... expose the harmful role of the private market in our health care system
- Public funding for families and individuals to access decent affordable homes....all communities within a metropolitan area shall include their fair share of the region's low income and affordable housing
- Comprehensive Immigration Reform ... legalization of the current undocumented population ... work permits and a path to citizenship for those here
- Two million living wage construction jobs for low-income people, minorities, women and ex-offenders
- Working people should be encouraged and educated about their right to organize, so as to engage in collective action or bargaining
That's a rather radical agenda, by the standards of Obama's economic team. They aren't likely to give community organizers the time of day, much less any time out of their precious days working to rescue the capitalist elite.
Read the rest here.
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