The Sustainable Communities Organizer in Chief

During the eighties Barack Obama was a community organizer in distressed communities at the South Side of Chicago when major steel plants closed down and putting thousands out of a job, creating hopelessness.

Now, the president-elect can become the sustainable communities organizer in chief reducing unemployment and creating hope.

Given his grassroots emphasis with its self-organizing capacity and the smart use of the social networking capability of the Internet, his campaign has set in place a network in all fifty states to be used in crafting his policies and implementing them, even in post-party fashion.

In www.change.gov he invited Americans to present their vision of the future and tell their American story. One of the four elements of my vision for America that I submitted one or two days after the website was launched deals with him doing community organizing on a national (even international) scale by using the sustainable communities development (SCD) paradigm which contains a method of community development that is based upon the vision and integration of social and ecological values of the Earth or Community of Life Charter.

I am working on an article that spells out the context, contours, challenges and constraints of this SCD approach which is applicable to communities in the global North and South. It is a paradigm of sustainable development whose time has come as part of the sustainability revolution which also includes less inclusive movements such as the smart growth, new urbanism and eco-village movements.