Driving out of Minneapolis yesterday, I browsed the AM dial for a while and found myself listening to Mark Heaney's local talk radio show. Until the signal faded, I heard a string of livid Minnesota residents calling in to express their disgust with Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani's denigrating comments about community organizers during the RNC proceedings Wednesday night. One listener pointed out that, in these months leading up to the election, it's the community organizers on all sides who are spearheading voter registration drives and focusing on large turnout this November. And now, thanks to Palin and Giuliani, those organizers on the left side of the spectrum are pissed off and ready to work even harder to hit back.
Locally, Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights director Josh Hoyt had this to say to the AP:
"I don't like seeing the really hard work that goes on in really poor communities being demeaned by cheap politicians," said Joshua Hoyt ... "Community organizing is as American as democracy. It believes that ordinary people can do extraordinary things."
Meanwhile, in New York City:
“I have ‘actual responsibilities,’” said Jacqueline del Valle, a community organizer in the Bronx. “If Mayor Giuliani and President Bush cared more about working people instead of just people who can hire high-powered lobbyists, maybe I wouldn’t have so much responsibility. Maybe working people would have an easier time in America today. But that’s not our reality, and they don’t have to mock us while we’re trying to clean up their mess.”
And the liberal punditry is also fired up. Here's Time's Joe Klein:
This is what Palin and Giuliani were mocking. They were making fun of a young man’s decision “to serve a cause greater than himself,” in the words of John McCain. They were, therefore, mocking one of their candidate’s favorite messages. Obama served the poor for three years, then went to law school. To describe this service–the first thing he did out of college, the sort of service every college-educated American should perform, in some form or other–as anything other than noble is cheap and tawdry and cynical in the extreme.
I suppose it's not surprising that Republican politicians aren't enthused about community organizers since often they're the ones who are getting their ass kicked by them. (Just ask Rudy.) Also, I'm assuming they didn't read The Nation's forum on just this topic in the last issue.
But this kind of hits me where I live, since my dad is a community organizer, so lemme spell this out: the difference between a community organizer and a politician is that a community organizer can't tell anyone what to do. They have to listen. So they can't order books banned from a library to indulge their own religious sensibilities. They can't fire someone because they didn't follow orders to fire an estranged family member. They can't ram through a $15 million dollar sports complex that leaves their local town groaning underneath the debt. Unlike politicians, they don't have any power other than the power of people who want to see something changed.
When Giuliani sneered about community organizers on the “South side” of Chicago, it’s pretty clear what he’s saying: Barack Obama spent his time rabble-rousing among black people. It’s no different then when the RNC called him a “street organizer.” It’s fairly clear what they’re trying to evoke. No reason anyone should help them mask it. A community organizer can be a PTA member or a Christian Coalition lieutenant. But that’s really not what Palin and Giuliani are getting at. Obama organized poor black people. That’s change you can fear.
On last night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart dropped this great line (as the screen showed the RNC crowd waving signs labeled "SERVICE"):
By the way, if it seemed odd that the GOP was denigrating community service the night after making "service" their slogan, you're confused. Those Republicans were not praising service with those signs -- they were demanding it from the waitstaff.
Finally, Barack Obama himself responded effectively yesterday:
Look — I would argue that doing work in the community to try to create jobs, to bring people together, to rejuvenate communities that have fallen on hard times, to set up job training programs in areas that had been hard-hit when the steel plants close, that is relevant only in understanding where I’m coming from. Who I believe in. Who I am fighting for, and why I’m in this race.
The question I have for them is — why would that kind of work be ridiculous? Who are they fighting for? What are they advocating for? Do they think that the lives of those folks who are struggling each and every day, that working with them to try to improve their lives is somehow not relevant to the Presidency? I think that as part of problem, may be why they are out of touch and do not get it, because they haven’t spent a lot of time working on behalf of those folks.
Ironically, hours later, McCain concluded his acceptance speech by stating: "Fight with me. Fight for what's right for our country. ... Fight for justice and opportunity for all." As one NPR anchor stated after the address, that final message seemed a bit out of sync with the previous night's attacks.
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