Friday, November 07, 2008

I know a man who knows Obama! (name drop)

I recently attended the best training course I have ever attended, covering so many life-changing ideas and issues in a four-day period. It was led by the man who trained Barack Obama in community organising, and it was a rollercoaster ride! We already see the fruits of the method, with Obama having not only become the first black President of the US, but having done so through building a broad-based coalition of people, many of whom had never given to any such campaign or who had never thought politics was about them. Politics is about everyone. I knew this before, but I meet many people who doubt that it has much to do with them. In fact, as the training course made clear, we have been led over several decades to retreat from the public arena, our lives preoccupied with almost anything other than public/political engagement - after all, power is dirty, isn't it, and corrupting, and politics is always disappointing, so why get into such a world? Well, because it's where things change. So I am thinking more and more that I should reclaim a public life, that my commitments and values should be demonstrated publicly - and I don't just mean the things of faith, but support for Amnesty, or fairtrade, or sustainable bio-diversity - all these things are matters of public concern. And, even more frightening, I recognise that it is Ok to have ambitions for public influence: that we are entitled, and called, to want to build public relationships, and broad-based coalitions of people, with a view to making changes for the sake of justice and peace. Too many people believe such talk is naive, or 'getting above ourselves', because of countless disappointments or how we are conditioned to be cynical, but progressive values, and progressive Christian values, need to be realised in the public realm - but what this means for me, or you, or our communities, I'm not yet quite sure, but watch this space, because, in answer to the questions, 'can we really do it?', all we can say is, 'Yes we can.'