Zack Exley's 2nd installment in his series investigating the history of Field Organizing

[illinoisprogressive]

Friday night in Atlanta, about 200 Obama supporters from around the South gathered at the Morris Brown College student center to kick off an intensive three-day training program called "Camp Obama". Everyone sitting in the chairs had been interviewed and selected for their willingness to commit serious time to the campaign, leadership skills and past experience.

Most of the six regional Camp Obamas held so far have been lead by Harvard Professor Marshall Ganz. Coincidentally, Ganz began his political career 43 years earlier at a seminary right across the street from the weekend's training. He and fellow Harvard undergraduates had driven from Boston to join Freedom Summer. Expecting to find a late night strategy session in progress when they arrived, they instead walked in on a raucous "preach off" among young civil rights activists. And so began a lifelong career in applying story telling, emotion and faith to politics.

From the civil rights movement, Ganz joined the United Farm Workers as an organizer in his home state of California. He was there when Robert Kennedy was shot, organizing immigrants who could not vote to turn out citizens who could. Ganz, who's father was a Rabbi and army chaplain in occupied Germany and whose language is often laced with Bible allusions, says that for America it's been 40 years in the desert since that time. But he says he's beginning to see an out.

Almost every sentence Ganz speaks is at the same time intensely intellectual and intensely emotional. His introductory session Friday night was interspersed with the latest on brain research, experiences growing up in post-Holocaust Germany, Steven Jay Gould's theory of time and the question of where hope comes from.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zack-exley/stories-and-numbers-a-c_b_62278.html