Tom Wolfe on Community Organizers in the 1970s

"Everybody but the most hopeless lames knew that the only job you wanted out of the poverty program was a job in the program itself. Get on the payroll, that was the idea. Never mind getting some job counseling. You be the job counselor. You be the "neighborhood organizer." As a job counselor or a neighborhood organizer you stood to make six or seven hundred dollars a month, and you were still your own man. Like if you were a "neighborhood organizer," all you had to do was go out and get the names and addresses of people in the ghetto who wanted to relate to the services of the poverty center. That was a very flexible arrangement. You were still on the street, and you got paid for it."

From Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers via Steve Sailer

For an update after nearly 40 years see: When America's Communities Need Organizing, America's Community Organizers Will Be There to Organize Them by Iowahawk.

Posted by Vanderleun at September 5, 2008 3:14 PM | TrackBack
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