COURTESY OF BOB WOODSON
BREATHING
FIRE
campaign made this a cornerstone
of its ground game, building tech
tools as a means of enabling supporters to reach out and influence
their friends by phone or through
social media. While much of the
talk on the right has centered
on tactics and techniques, there
are a few voices pointing out the
importance of building actual
human relationships.
One of them is Bob Woodson,
a unique figure among African
Americans involved in grassroots
anti-poverty work. Woodson
worked in the civil rights movement in West Chester, Pa., in the
1960s, and then went to work
for the Urban League, the venerable civil rights organization. But
he quickly grew tired of the poverty “industry,” as he referred to
it, and decided that he wanted
to advocate a more conservative
form of anti-poverty work, with a
focus on building up people’s capacity and self-reliance.
Woodson worked closely with
Romney’s running mate, Rep. Paul
Ryan (R-Wis.), during the presidential campaign, and was key
to putting together the audience
for Ryan’s speech in Cleveland on
poverty just two weeks before the
election. Woodson is now getting
HUFFINGTON
01.20.13
fresh attention and respect from
some conservatives for the first
time since he worked closely with
President Ronald Reagan in the
‘80s, and with Rep. Jack Kemp
when he was in Congress and then
served as the head of the Department of Housing and Development. At a dinner in December
honoring Kemp, Ryan mentioned
Woodson in his speech twice.
“When you ask people in neighborhoods, ‘Who are their heroes?,’
they don’t identify with Michael
Jordan or ... Colin Powell. They
don’t identify with people who
are so removed from their reality,”
Bob Woodson
works with
conservatives
to help them
further
address
the issue of
poverty and
reach out to
low-income
constituents.