What's Wrong with Palin Sneering at Community Organizers?
Sneered Sarah Palin in her Republican Convention speech that dripped with gleeful sarcasm, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."
Palin was, of course, referring to Barack Obama's early years working with churches to help low-income communities in Chicago.
FYI, Ms. Palin: Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., recipient of the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize and of the 1965 American Liberties Medallion by the American Jewish Committee for his "exceptional advancement of the principles of human liberty," was a community organizer.
King worked with communities to secure jobs, economic parity and labor rights for disenfranchised African-Americans, as well as for the right to vote and other basic civil rights. King was paid little for his work, which was the mission of his life.
And Cesar Chavez, posthumous recipient of the U.S. Medal of Freedom, was a community organizer for his entire adult life.
A decade after joining the Community Service Organization, Chavez founded the United Farm Workers Association in 1962, which still works to obtain decent wages and humane working and living conditions for migrant farmworkers and their families, most of them Latinos.
Community service was also the life mission of Cesar Chavez, who never owned a home, and never earned more than $6,000 in a year.... unlike mayors, Ms. Palin, who earn a decent salary, great benefits, and rarely work more than a forty-hour week.
Who are Community Organizers? What Do They Do?
Most community organizers, though, are unrecognized, unsung heroes. They volunteer, or earn low wages, helping the downtrodden to improve their own community conditions in areas as education, jobs training, employment, health care, neighborhood clean-up, and starting small businesses.
Community organizers are social workers and teachers, nurses and doctors, and yes, pastors, rabbis, priests, nuns, and other religious leaders. Community workers are usually ordinary people who reach-out to help others help themselves.
Community organizers commonly work with those in need in homeless shelters or living on the streets, in migrant farm camps, on Skid Row, and in blighted and low-income neighborhoods.
The rich irony in Republicans dissing community workers is that the purpose of community organizing is to teach self-help to the down-and-out, and to encourage them to stand-up for themselves. To become more self-sufficient, and less passively reliant on the government.
What's Wrong with Palin Sneering at Community Workers
There's nothing inherently wrong with Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin being unfamiliar with the concept of community organizing.
While her unfamiliarity does betray a lack of deep understanding of U.S. history, her home state of Alaska may have little need for community organizers. Alaska is the third least-populated U.S. state, and per Wikipedia, is about 70% white, with 85% of all Alaska households speaking English at home.
What's wrong with Sarah Palin arrogantly mocking community organizers is that she's sneering at something she admittedly doesn't understand, rather than first making an effort to find out what the term means.
Sarah Palin's "shoot first, look later" approach smacks of someone who doesn't do their homework, despite her lack of knowledge. And she does so solely for political gain.
And after eight devastating years of the "shoot first, look later" Bush Administration, the U.S. doesn't need another "go-it-alone" leader who prides himself or herself on governing from the gut rather than doing their homework. Or rather than working collegially, respectfully with others.
Ms. Palin, if you need another example of community organizing, one more relevant to your own life, try this one skyrocketing around the internet:
Jesus Christ, the central figure of your Christian faith, was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate, who ordered Christ's crucifixion, was a Roman governor.
(Photo taken on March 18, 1966: National Archive/Getty Images)
Comments
AMEN AND THANK YOU! This woman is WORSE than Bush.
The *real* backlash that she’s been getting for that insult are from leaders of the Religious Right – the very people that she specifically caters to – since many of them are community organizers. What I found particularly odd about her comment was that she said it against the backdrop of the RNC’s theme of “Service”. It sort of reminded me of the Republicans denigrating the service of Vietnam war vet John Kerry only to elevate the service of Vietnam war vet John McCain…four years later. Hey, maybe the next Republican presidential nominee will have started his career as a community organizer?
Now, to be perfectly fair, Deborah, Barack Obama can’t claim the same “humble wages” of Martin Luther King or Cesar Chavez. He lived a very affluent life even before he made it in the Senate.
Robert, I totally agree with both your points here.
First, Pat Robertson’s organization may be the largest community organizer in the U.S. Then follow the Catholic and Lutheran churches, and many more.
For instance, my Lutheran congregation, in which conservatives likely outnumber liberals by 2-to-1, heavily supports (both hands-on service and monetarily) a local homeless shelter which is a second-start program, mainly for families. Adults must be actively looking for a job, taking job training, and are required to take budgeting and other life-skills classes. The local library sends tutors over in the evenings to help the kids with homework while their parents take the classes.
That is a prime example, on a local level, of community organizing. And it entails NO government monies. You’re correct: weirdly, this is exactly what Republicans promote, and what their “Service” convention signs were all about.
It’s puzzling…
Second, be assured I don’t confuse Obama with King or Chavez. I admire Obama greatly and agree with his policy proposals… but if I had any doubts before that he was mainly a politician, not something higher, those doubts were dispelled with his comments behind closed doors in San Francisco about people clinging to their religion and guns.
Have to admit, when Palin took her shots at Obama for those comments, I thought he deserved it.
amen!! thanks deb. that was one of the more aggravating moments in her speech, in my opinion. i would venture to say an america without responsible community organizers would be an america i wouldn’t want to live in.
get a hair cut
Yea she sneered!
She looks down on others but just like your article her own followers will be just as offend as anyone. She will be found out. As the song says, ‘time, time, time is on our side, yes it is’.
The fodder going around is that “Jesus was a community organizer and Pilate was a govenor” is a mistatement, It should say, “Jesus was a king,(look at his ancestry and his actuality) and Pilate just a “puppet” govenor and a bad one at that!
Well your (N)Obama is no King. GO PALIN!!!!
when it comes to Vietnam and the service and heroism….. JOHN KERRY WILL NEVER BE JOHN MCCAIN!! What was it..he was there how long??? and then came back to bash those still serving!?!?! Yea..real HERO!
Oh..ans stop sare bumper stickers…very typical immature liberal move! GO SARA!!
I thank you Deborah for speaking the truth, and I love it. Keep doing what you do but be truthful about it. Thank you for your honesty, insight and wisdom. By the way I was a grassroot organizer during college, these are some of the community people depend on, because we keep it real.
Love ya,
Angel
You righties kill me. Josh, get a friggin life….. Barb,…were you there? Have you ever heard of “Singing McCain”? Look it up?All notable heros that I know of don’t go around blowing their own horn…
Hockey moms and PTA officers are community organizers too. Typical of how she talks out of both sides of her mouth and doesn’t really know aht she is saying and how dumb she sounds! OMG a heartbeat away….that’s way too much to think about!
What is with these “NObama” people? Is there anything clever at all about that? I guess you need to cling to any little phrase you can when there’s no real ammunition in your shot.
The thing is Sarah Palin possibly wouldn’t have been up where she is if it weren’t for the community organizing of Susan B Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She (and others in her party notably Guiliani) shouldn’t be so quick to sneer at those who made it possible for her to have a chance.
Maybe they didn’t mean it quite as it came out. But maybe it shows how they feel about us “commoners”.
Hello admin, nice site you have!,
Your last two lines at the bottom: THE icing on the cake!
Good news! Thanks!,
Odd. Republicans maintain that we aren’t supposed to turn to government to solve problems (which begs the question, “Then why are we paying them so much?”). Yet, they are the first to condemn those people who accept personal and civic responsibility, getting their butts out of their easy chairs to work toward improving the quality of life for their fellow citizens, doing what we should all be doing.