Can a paper topic be worse than paternalism (DIE! DIE!)? Yes, my friends, it can be. It can be community organizing, about which I know little and in which I have no interest, and thus, nothing to say. I already vomited up 8 pages of crap for my first draft last week, which was a mess (in the words of my TA: "obviously still somewhat disjointed, and without a conclusion"), and now it's 10.5 hours before the final draft is due, and I have an additional two pages of disjointed paragraphs, no thesis, no conclusion, and no idea how to make it better.

Shoot me now. Please.

Sob.

So the basic idea is that community organizing is a way to solve a community's problems while simultaneously building up the capacity of community members to identify, mobilize and implement their own solutions to their problems. Community empowerment is the name of the game. Why should I care about this? Why should lawyers do this? I have no freaking clue. They shouldn't. The status quo is fine. Forget the whole "we're already in hell" thing -- let's just leave things as they are. The disempowered will continue to get fucked over, the power elite will continue to dine on artistic slivers of carrots at the latest $75-per-head restaurant du jour, the crunchy Birkenstock-wearing types will continue to howl soundlessly into the wind, and I will get to go to bed. After I take a shower. Because for some reason I smell awful. Is it possible to suddenly develop really foul B.O. for no apparent reason? Maybe it's a health problem. Maybe I'm becoming diabetic. God, I hate this paper.