“What do you mean by that?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know what exactly. But something. Don’t get me wrong-anger’s a requirement for the job. The
only reason anybody decides to become an organizer. Well-adjusted people find more relaxing work.”
He ordered more hot water and told me about himself. He was Jewish, in his late thirties, had been reared in New
York. He had started organizing in the sixties with the student protests, and ended up staying with it for fifteen years.
Farmers in Nebraska. Blacks in Philadelphia. Mexicans in Chicago. Now he was trying to pull urban blacks and
suburban whites together around a plan to save manufacturing jobs in metropolitan Chicago. He needed somebody to
work with him, he said. Somebody black.
“Most of our work is with churches,” he said. “If poor and working-class people want to build real power, they have
to have some sort of institutional base. With the unions in the shape they’re in, the churches are the only game in town.
That’s where the people are, and that’s where the values are, even if they’ve been buried under a lot of bullshit.
Churches won’t work with you, though, just out of the goodness of their hearts. They’ll talk a good game-a sermon on
Sunday, maybe, or a special offering for the homeless. But if push comes to shove, they won’t really move unless you
can show them how it’ll help them pay their heating bill.”
He poured himself more hot water. “What do you know about Chicago anyway?”
I thought a moment. “Hog butcher to the world,” I said finally.
Marty shook his head. “The butcheries closed a while ago.”
“The Cubs never win.”
“True.”
“America’s most segregated city,” I said. “A black man, Harold Washington, was just elected mayor, and white
people don’t like it.”
“So you’ve been following Harold’s career,” Marty said. “I’m surprised you haven’t gone to work for him.”
“I tried. His office didn’t write back.”
Marty smiled and took off his glasses, cleaning them with the end of his tie. “Well, that’s the thing to do, isn’t it, if
you’re young and black and interested in social issues? Find a political campaign to work for. A powerful patron-
somebody who can help you with your own career. And Harold’s powerful, no doubt about it. Lots of charisma. He has
almost monolithic support in the black community. About half the Hispanics, a handful of white liberals. You’re right
about one thing, though. The whole atmosphere in the city is polarized. A big media circus. Not much is getting done.”
I leaned back in my seat. “And whose fault is that?”
Marty put his glasses back on and met my stare. “It’s not a question of fault,” he said. “It’s a question of whether any
politician, even somebody with Harold’s talent, can do much to break the cycle. A polarized city isn’t necessarily a bad
thing for a politician. Black or white.”
He offered to start me off at ten thousand dollars the first year, with a two-thousand-dollar travel allowance to buy a
car; the salary would go up if things worked out. After he was gone, I took the long way home, along the East River
promenade, and tried to figure out what to make of the man. He was smart, I decided. He seemed committed to his
work. Still, there was something about him that made me wary. A little too sure of himself, maybe. And white-he’d
said himself that that was a problem.
barré
(Barré)
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