Community Leadership

Community Leadership Excerpts from a Community Organizer's Tale (Mike Miller, 2009) The article by Miller is a classic and practical example of the daily challenges that organizations dealing with the community face on a day-to-day basis. It highlights the various challenges that are not necessarily universal but peculiar to each society and that may change due to the prevailing environmental, social and political realities of the time.

The writer puts to the fore the unpredictable manner in which the community may react to the activities or approaches of the organizers or the organization. For instance Miller highlights the case of Mayor Alioto who was quite uncreditable hence an elite that jeopardized the operations of the organization. Initially the organizer expected him to offer resistance to the accusations and requests made to him, he never did and indeed agreed to work with the organization and visit the Mission District.

On the material day the mayor never showed up which almost threw the achievements of the organization into disarray but the media came to their rescue, hence a very unpredictable situation. The article also highlights that challenges faced by organizers are both internal and external, for instance the employment policy of the organization cane greatly influence the success or failure of an organization.

The writer also shows that not all who work for a community organization may necessarily have the policies at heart, such as was displayed by the members of CMO who opted to accept the cash offered by those who were compromised by the money fro Model Cities and this went even to the leadership of CMO hence weakening and breaking it ultimately.

My view however diverges from that of Miller since he suggest at the end of his article that there is hope in the political class offering solution to the community and that the results are dependent on the assumption of office by Obama, he is not disturbed by the fact that community based approaches and solutions are dependent on politics of the day and the prevailing leader. My approach would be that there need to be well structured approaches that are devoid of political inclination or dependency.

Handbook of Community Movements and Local Organizations (Cnaan, n.d) Community movements are often geared towards the underprivileged of the society and the funds that are sent or committed by the supporters and sponsors of these community programs often expect that the funds will be sued under the decision of the lowly people within the society as they are the targets.

However, Cnaan notes that the decision making over the programs and even funding of these community programs has moved from the lower class to the elite and to some extent to the business community and not the local community as should have been the case. Unfortunately, the author notes that the elite are everywhere and even within the community organization or group, there is the elite in here who influence decisions more within the community group.

The elite in the community are hence inevitable and they are intimately interwoven from the societal level, to the communal level, to the business and even political levels all making decisions on behalf of the community, some of which may not be to the good of the community. Chapter 21 This chapter highlights the community organizing process and one thing that stands out from the onset is that the basis of community organizing is the existence of a common problem among the community members.

This then calls for varied approaches to community.