Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea
by Meena Harris
“When we cast our bread upon the waters, we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from that grantor’s gift.”
–Maya Angelou
There is the obvious reason we chose this book: as tribute to Kamala Harris, our new Vice-President elect and author Meena Harris’ aunt. Kamala Harris has broken one glass ceiling after another and will be “first” in multiple categories: first woman VP, first Black VP, first Asian-American VP. Harris, like Barack Obama, is a cultural signifier of the best of America: diverse, multi-cultural, and built on the dreams of immigrants. Meena Harris’ sweet story of how her mom and aunt got a playground built in the courtyard of their apartment building is an actual tale of the power of community organizing, which is what I want to focus on for the rest of this write-up.
I live in Boulder, CO, which is a predominantly white and relatively wealthy community. It still has serious poverty issues, struggles to provide sufficient low and income-housing, and a significant homelessness problem, along with race and class issues. The people in my community who never cease to amaze me are the activists and community organizers who have made these issues front and center in their lives. I want to honor some of them here: Darren O’Connor, who mid-life, went and got a law degree and now represents clients who were mistreated by the police; he also devotes a huge amount of time to trying to find solutions to the homeless problem in our community. Rabbi Deborah Bronstein is another community activist. She spent many years of her time as rabbi of Congregation Har HaShem working with other organizations in Boulder to bring Sudanese women to live here, after they had spent years in a refugee camp after fleeing a civil war. Now retired, Rabbi Bronstein continues to remain actively involved with the Sudanese community (which we will talk about more in relation to another book we’ll be featuring in 2021!), and working alongside Darren and others in helping to come up with solutions for homelessness. Susan Pfrezschner, NAACP Boulder chapter’s spokesperson, is another community activist working extensively on these issues. There are also all the wonderful activists at SURJ – Showing Up For Racial Justice -- who push white people to recognize that until there is “collective liberation” – i.e., until all people are free, until Black lives matter as much as anyone else’s – none of us are free. They do phenomenal work in multiple communities across the United States.
Look at the powerful Black women organizers behind so many chapters of Black Lives Matter. I am continuously astounded by the energy and heart the Black women working at BLM 5280 expend on helping families – and especially women and children -- in the Denver community. I will give just one small example. I recently posted a GoFundMe about a Sudanese woman who was really having some economic struggles due to Covid and housing issues. Within hours of me posting the fundraiser on Facebook, BLM5280 made a sizeable donation. This is the true expansive notion of community, and it is important to always acknowledge the incredible work that goes on behind the scenes, and makes it possible for a group in Denver to be able to help out a woman they’ve never met in a different locale. (Please consider making a donation to support the work of BLM5280 or the local BLM chapter where you live).
The powerful thing about community organizing is its ripple effect, which is lovingly depicted in Kamala and Maya’s Big Idea. Someone comes up with a good/ big idea, and then runs with it – dreams big! – and by getting other people involved, makes that big idea a reality. Some of you may be familiar with the old Kevin Costner baseball movie, Field of Dreams, with its famous line: “if you build it, they will come.” (Take three minutes to watch this preview, just for the pleasure of listening to James Earl Jones’ voice!)
Community organizing obviously entails significantly more than just the dream or the vision – it requires an extraordinary amount of work to turn that vision into something real on the ground. But that initial dream is key, that audacity to hope that something can be better than it is. And community organizers are the heroes on the streets, sometimes the ones making children’s dreams a reality. Community organizers can be of any age. Look at the phenomenal power of Greta Thunberg, of her reach. She started in her own community with a mission, and then that mission expanded outwards so that when she showed up to lead protests for climate change, she had thousands and thousands of people behind her.
“Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.”
–Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Martin Luther King, Jr., did an extraordinary amount of community organizing, as did Malcolm X, first with the Nation of Islam, and then with the organization he established shortly before he was assassinated, The Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). John Lewis, of course, was another famous civil rights organizer, and the reason why we call this initiative Good Trouble For Kids. Barack Obama started out as a community organizer. The lesson here for our kids is that the grassroots work being done in community is essential to the antiracist and social justice work being done in the world today. There are community organizers in cities across this country working to insure that low-income school children get meals every day; that homeless people have shelter; that food banks function; etc. You can see some of these people out in the streets, no matter the weather, handing out sandwiches. You can see them at long drawn-out City Council meetings where they line up people to speak about the causes that matter to them. You can see them knocking on door after door making sure citizens are registered to vote.
Here is Obama citing the core principles of community organizing in a 1988 piece he wrote for Illinois Issues:
“Organizing begins with the premise that (1) the problems facing inner-city communities do not result from a lack of effective solutions, but from a lack of power to implement these solutions; (2) that the only way for communities to build long-term power is by organizing people and money around a common vision; and (3) that a viable organization can only be achieved if a broadly based indigenous leadership and not one or two charismatic leaders can knit together the diverse interests of their local institutions.”
The work of Saul Alinsky, the so-called “father of community organizing,” influenced both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.
The notion of people power is one we can introduce very early on to children. This children’s book is testament to that. As can be seen from today’s protests, that power of community — and young people especially! — may well end up being what finally changes the racial dynamics of this country.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly!”
— Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From A Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963