To be sure, there are thousands of law-abiding, ethical, and effective organizations out there doing great work for little pay or recognition (the majority). In fact, despite the ineptitude of the workers in the sting videos and the above complaints, on balance ACORN does great work.   But there are others who are a heartbeat away from being the next national scandal. One such organization is the Gamaliel Foundation. You may have come across the organization thanks to the YouTube video of them supposedly praying to President Obama. I apologize in advance to my former colleagues who decided to stick it out in order to make the foundation a better place. The idea of an international, faith-based organization that brings together people of all colors and creeds is certainly a noble cause. But the organization's philosophy was flawed from day one. I worked for Gamaliel in the late 1990s up until 2001. This was about 8 years after Barack worked for them.

My former mentors, Greg Galluzzo and his wife Mary Gonzalez, took over the Gamaliel Foundation after breaking with the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), the organization founded by Saul Alinsky. Gamaliel's leadership system was built on notes obtained from the IAF. They eventually modified the system, but to my knowledge they have never credited the IAF even for the initial iteration of the so-called Gamaliel model.

I have never seen such a strange and warped culture anywhere. Staff were pitted against each other by Galluzzo and Gonzalez. Galluzzo told me that he wanted organizers to be tough bastards who could build power like the Conquistadors. His idea was not even Machiavellian (no virtù needed at all). He felt that organizers should fight fire with fire. In fact, Galluzzo used to give a cultish advanced training seminar titled "Walking the Edge of Immorality" where he repeatedly stated "the ends justifies the means" and nonchalantly told us that to have an impact on society we had to be willing to "lie, cheat, and steal for the greater good." His concept of doing the good was completely Platonic — we could be shady to get power but once we had enough power, knowing the Good would be enough for us to make the right decisions. Too bad Galluzzo, a former Jesuit seminarian, skipped the course on Aristotle where he would have learned that character is a function of habit — i.e. doing shady things makes you shady whether or not you grasp the Good. The final straw for me was when Galluzzo sent out a weekly report with a reflection that we organizers needed to promote a noble myth to our churches that our work was about justice, God, and peace even though we really knew it was about power.

Article Author: Rey Lopez-Calderon

For over 15 years, Rey López-Calderón has worked for the betterment of communities in Los Angeles, Orange County (CA), and Metropolitan Chicago. In addition to his work in community organizing with affiliates of both the Industrial Areas Foundation …

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