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"This isn't my community, how can I care about whether there is crime in the community?- we heard an organizer quoted as saying recently. "It is not my issue, therefore, I don't have the resources or the passion or the desire to do it." The quote goes on to speak about the need for people being involved and that it is their passion and desire that carries the issue.

Although there is truth in the speaker's words, there's something very wrong about these words, too. They ignore the fact that an organizer doesn't just need the skills to build the organization, but also needs white hot anger to respond to people being screwed.

The first part of the quote was spoken like a technician, not an organizer. The technician brings a removed, detached observation of the issue, which an organizer must have. But if that is all that organizers bring to their work, then they are like the doctor who says, "Sorry, you have terminal cancer. Next patient please, nurse."

If the organizer does not bring a white hot anger to any issue where people are being screwed, then they bring only half of the ingredients to the recipe. Even with my limited cooking abilities I know you can't make anything worth eating with half a recipe. The organizer who brings the skills of a technician, but not the anger, presents the issue in an entirely different manner than the organizer who brings the skills of a technician and the white hot anger at people getting screwed.

The technician comes in to the community, gets a meeting together and starts the meeting by saying, "The school district spends $4,500 per pupil a year in your area, but in the rich area of the district it spends $7,500 per pupil a year. Does that upset you? Would you like to do something about it?"

I would expect a variety of responses from the residents of the community where the school district spent less per pupil. The responses might range from "I'm mad as hell!" to "Well, that is the way it always has been," to "They pay more taxes than we do, so I guess that more should be spent there." The meeting then probably degenerates into an argument about the right to be angry and whether the rich have the right to have more money spent in their community because they pay more taxes. After two hours the group decides to meet again next week to see if something can be done.

But the organizer who brings to the room the combination of technician and white hot anger at people being screwed doesn't just come in and present the figures. The organizer then adds comments like, "What that means is the school board says those rich kids are worth twice as much as our kids. Who here thinks those rich kids are twice as important than ours?"

The organizer goes on: "This means that our tax dollars are subsidizing the rich so they can go to college and become doctors and lawyers, while our kids will end up flipping hamburgers. Who here has the dream for their kid that they will be hamburger flippers all their lives? So what are we going to do?"

The discussion now moves immediately to how we are going to stop our kids from being screwed.

Organizers bring not only their technician skills, but also white hot anger at people being screwed, to whatever situation they face. For the good organizer knows that people need not only technical skills, but the freedom to express and act on their anger. The good organizer's task is to frame the issue in such a way that people not only recognize they are being screwed, since they probably know that already, but that it is OK to be mad about it and OK to put that anger into action.

So the issue becomes not only is the school board spending almost twice as much per pupil in another district--the technical part of the issue--but equally important the issue becomes that the school board thinks those kids are worth twice as much as our kids, the emotional part of the issue. Emotions like anger are part of being a human being that were put there by our Creator. The good organizer celebrates anger's presence and gives people the liberty to express it and act on it.