Organizing For Change - Part IV

BIMBO CABIDOG

Is community organizing still heard now?

The CO initials are probably familiar. But the CO referred here is not commanding officer, or carbon monoxide. It is community organizing.

The phrase has been a word of mouth among non-government organizations and even government line agencies in recent past. CO was particularly popular in the immediate post-Edsa revolution period of the late 80s and 1990s. Yet, though popular, community organizing would be misconceived.

In the heyday of its application – rightly or wrongly, the phrase Community Organizing was used to label almost every activity that had to do with gathering folks in the barangay. Some of the activities ironically were intended to use them for money-making or for preempting organizing by forces that indeed advance genuine social change.

The term CO means the building of the organ of empowerment by the people thereby making them capable of changing the situations and conditions of their existence. It is meant to unite the community for collective action under a different structure and mechanism than what used to be. In the fulfillment of objectives, it applies strategies and methods different from those of the mainstream or traditional institutions of society.

Such wasn’t the practice labelled/identified as CO that found its way into official governance. In many instances, certain CO practice bastardized the original concept. The bastardized version went against the true mission and goals of community organizing: to effect fundamental change in society.

Part of the distortion of its meaning was CO becoming Community Organizer, a job designation. This happened in the decade after the popular uprising at Edsa that ousted the Marcos regime.

Still fresh from the non-traditional and extra-constitutional means of changing a regime by people power, the country pivoted towards offering greater participation and wider institutional leverage in governance to the basic sectors as well as their non-state partners. Official development assistance from foreign donors awarded largess to organizations implementing development programs outside the government. An offshoot of this was the opening of the position of Community Organizer for hiring by NGOs receiving assistance, and even government line agency projects with foreign funding.

Is community organizing simply a job? The CO recruiters must have thought so. They offered it like a wanted labor ad, attracting applicants with high pay. But the drawback was the qualification: must be college graduate, pass exam and interview, and have at least two-year experience. Was CO already a course in college with a bachelor’s degree? Could work experience that may be said as CO be presented in Curriculum Vitae and validated, like a stint in a company from year blank to year blank?

The real political workers or activists who have done it may not have imagined how community organizing could be something they would apply for. You do it simply as a matter of course, or as the logical sequence of fighting for a cause. You do not do it to earn a living or blaze a career.

Organizing is the primary function of leadership. Leaders organize or have to organize to lead. That is how to bring their people to the port of destination. They do not apply for it. They make it their job. 

Supposedly to help the people, the system of hiring Community Organizers however fosters the same exclusionism against them who never have had the economic opportunity to better their lives. Only college grads with dependable experience and impressive CV may get it?

The irony is clear. It is like saying, only the degree holders can arouse and mobilize the masses for change, which of course they can’t, for their bachelor’s degrees had nothing to do with those tasks or such commitment.

On the other hand, the original ones didn’t need educational credentials, because they did not thought anyway of getting paid. They only thought of doing something they should do, even if nobody offers a salary. They just wanted to be counted in the fight to end oppression and champion their kind’s liberation. They weren’t there for the opportunity to have a high-paying job.

Ironically, the hiring would often be under programs that consequently prolong the masses’ agonizing poverty and its root problem of underdevelopment. The newly hired workers inculcate mindsets and practices that perpetuate powerlessness, debt bondage, and aid dependence.

They themselves provided the best example. Their role and function in the aspiration of the people for a better life must show to be indispensable. Otherwise, why hire and pay for them? But no matter how important, their role and function still depend on aid. Without it, those are not going to happen at all. Wasn’t this Exhibit A for gross dependence and powerlessness?

These are the conditions that the original community organizers fought against. But they are what the hired CO workers help perpetuate with the implementation of programs, projects and initiatives that confine or direct the people to growth formulas dependent on external assistance.