Progress Illinois

In response to Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin's mocking of community organizers at the Republican National Convention last week, Bob Reed profiles some of Chicago's own:

As Sarah and Rudy chided Chicago activism, I recalled scores of community organizers who've made huge contributions by following in Jane Addams footsteps.

I thought of the late Florence Scala. This daughter of an Italian tailor gave the first Mayor Richard Daley fits when he set out to bulldoze her West Side neighborhood and build the University of Illinois.

Scala didn't prevail against the mighty machine and took some knocks during her tussle with City Hall. But she also scored some important victories. Along the way, this brave yet modest woman--who later in life refused to have libraries or parks named after her--left a legacy and blue print for taking on the powerful and vested interests.

Then there's Gail Cincotta, a feisty and formidable fair housing advocate who dueled with the downtown banking giants over their redlining practices. Cincotta, who died a few years ago, was instrumental in forming a coalition of housing advocates that forced the banks--which were closing inner-city branches and heading for the suburbs--to end the exodus.

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In a recent mailer from his GOP campaign for states attorney, a photograph of Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica appears alongside that of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, above the words: "U.S. Attorney's Office Needs Help Fighting Corrruption In Cook County."  See the pic below:

Not surprisingly, Fitzgerald didn't take too kindly to the use of his image in campaign materials.  The Sun-Times' Abdon Pallasch reports:

U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald has asked Republican Cook County state's attorney candidate Tony Peraica to stop passing out a campaign flier that looks to Fitzgerald like Peraica is claiming his endorsement. [...]

Fitzgerald said in his letter he had never even met Peraica. "The flier creates the misleading assumption that I have endorsed your candidacy. . . . That is by no means the case. I have never endorsed any candidate in any race for anything (much less someone I do not believe I have yet had occasion to meet.)"

Fitzgerald's letter asks Peraica how many of the fliers he has sent out "and where they have been distributed and what efforts have been made to retrieve them."

Peraica said he will make no efforts to retrieve them.

"I don't think the flier is inappropriate," Peraica said. "I think any objective examination of that door-hanger piece would show that no endorsement is stated or implied."

UPDATE: Read Fitzgerald's letter here (PDF).

Yesterday, Media Matters caught the Tribune's Mark Silva simply repeating GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's claim in a fundraising letter that "Obama/Biden Democrats" leveled "vicious" attacks at her family.  From his September 4 post on the newspaper's Swamp blog:

Democrats have criticized Palin for her pointed remarks about Obama, deriding his experience as a community organizer for isntance [sic]. But in a fundraising letter issued today, Palin maintained that "the Obama-Biden Democrats have been vicious in their attacks directed toward me, my family and John McCain. The misinformation and flat-out lies must be corrected."

Meanwhile, some other reporters actually questioned Palin's accusations and found their wasn't much to support them.  From Media Matters:

[I]n a September 4 entry on his Political Punch blog, Tapper wrote, "I asked spokespeople of the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee just which 'Obama/Biden Democrats' they're referring to. The response I got was that Obama spokesman Mark Bubriski erroneously attacked Palin as a supporter of Pat Buchanan. That's it. That's the evidence. An attack on Palin herself. In other words, they can't name one person affiliated with the Obama-Biden campaign who attacked the Palin family."

Below is the ad produced by the Chicago Federation of Labor that has been running on local television stations in recent weeks:

When the CFL announced plans for the ad campaign, leader Dennis Gannon drew a direct connection between the PR effort and reports that Mayor Daley is considering laying off some unionized city workers to help trim the Chicago's budget deficit:

"The public needs to know our people are out there, doing this work for the citizens," Gannon said. "People need to know the services will suffer if there are layoffs."

Interestingly enough, Gannon previewed the above ad, as well as a similar radio spot, at one of the Illinois DNC delegation's breakfast meetings last week.  As with all the speakers, Mayor Daley introduced Gannon and was sitting barely a foot away from him during his remarks.

John McCain in late August when asked by Time's Jay Carney what it means to have his two sons in uniform:

"We don't talk about our sons."

Cindy McCain last night at the RNC:

Our son, Jack, will graduate from the United States Naval Academy next year, fourth generation, ready to do his service.

And our son, Jimmy, a lance corporal in the Marine Corps, served honorably in Iraq.

Jimmy served honorably in Iraq, as hundreds of thousands of other young men and women just like him are doing for America and freedom everywhere.

The stakes were never more clear to me than the morning I watched my son, Jimmy, strap on his weapons and board a bus headed for harm's way.

Today, Debbie Halvorson's 11th District congressional campaign released her first paid television advertisement.  While GOP candidate Marty Ozinga and the independent expenditure arm of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have both run ads on cable channels in the district, this is the first TV spot to run on the local network stations.  The Daily Journal reports that this "move will put the Halvorson ad in more than 80 percent of the district."

Watch the ad below: 

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. 

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Today, 75 women from Illinois' 10th Congressional district sent a letter to GOP Rep. Mark Kirk lambasting his vocal support for vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin:

We are writing to you to express our disappointment with your effusive praise of Republican Vice Presidential Nominee Sarah Palin. Just one month after you cast a vote against equal pay for equal work, your strong support for Palin demonstrates your lack of interest in standing up for the values of the 10th District.

Soon after John McCain announced that he had chosen Palin to be his vice presidential nominee, you praised her candidacy, saying that you were "encouraged" by her candidacy and that she is a "reformer." To the women of the 10th District, there is nothing encouraging about Palin's extreme political views, including her opposition to  a woman's right to choose even in the cases of incest and rape, equal pay for equal work, and gun control. Nor is her support for abstinence-only sex education, teaching creationism in our schools, and banning books from our public libraries.

Just as we are dismayed by her extreme positions on the issues, we are also offended by the patronizing and cynical view that because she is a woman, she will automatically earn our support. While some of us supported Hillary Clinton's candidacy for President and believed that her election would be a victory for women across the country, Sarah Palin's slim qualifications and radical right-wing views would only set back the causes we hold dear.

Once again, Congressman Kirk, your support for Sarah Palin shows that you are more concerned with supporting the Republican Party and continuing with more of the same disastrous policies of the last 8 years than standing up for women in the 10th District.

You can view the full letter here.

I noted the relative emptiness in the Xcel Center in a post yesterday.  This morning, WBEZ's Ben Calhoun reported that the Republicans again failed to fill the stadium last night, even with all the hype preceding Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's vice presidential acceptance speech:

CALHOUN: There are questions hanging out there.  If there is one question I think that remains out there from last night -- there were a lot of empty seats in this arena last night.  There have been for the last three nights.  And there's a distinct difference from Denver, where there was just a swarm of excitement that took over the city for that Democrat convention. I think that last night she [Palin] showed that she could stir the Republican base, but there are big questions about whether or not this is the ticket that can draw people in and not just stir the people who are here -- the party faithful -- but fill empty seats in the larger sense come November. 

Now, one could respond that the Xcel Center attendance isn't really an accurate barometer of Republican enthusiasm or nationwide sentiment.  And taken by itself, this is true.  But what I find relevant about all those empty seats is that they reflect the broader data.  Sure, Palin was able to rev up the GOP base; however, that base is a good deal weaker than it was the last time around. Indeed, the Democrats edge over the GOP in party affiliation has been growing in recent years.  As Rasmussen explained earlier this week, the Dems "enjoy a much bigger [party ID] advantage today than they did when votes were cast in Election 2004 and an advantage almost identical to their edge in January. In fact, other than the past six months, the current 5.7 percentage point advantage is one of the biggest on record."

Meanwhile,  we have some early evidence that Palin's speech didn't leave independents and undecided women ready to fill those theoretical "empty seats."

The Detroit Free-Press assembled a "voter panel" to respond to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's speech at the RNC last night accepting the GOP vice presidential nomination.  The Republicans on the panel loved her.  The Democrats found her divisive.  But the most interesting responses came from the five independents, who were unanimous in their dislike for Palin's speech:

“I was completely underwhelmed. She was a Republican novelty act with a sophomoric script. It was not even a speech I would expect for a someone running for the local PTA, much less for vice president.” -- George Lentz, 66, Southfield independent

“Who is Sarah Palin? I'm sorry but I still don't know anymore about this young lady tonight than I did last night ... The way it looks to me, she's the Republican vice presidential nominee for one reason: because Hillary wasn't selected.”  -- Mike Kosh, 38, West Bloomfield independent

"Sarah Palin is a self-described ‘pitbull with lipstick.’ She spent little time helping Americans learn who she is. She is a cool, poised speaker, but her speech contained few statements about policy or the party platform. … I am not convinced that Palin's experience as a mayor or governor in Alaska meet the qualifications to be vice president much less one stroke or heart attack away from being commander in chief.” -- Ilene Beninson, 52, Berkley independent

“Nothing worked for me. I found her barrage of snide remarks and distortions to be a major turn off. She is not a class act. The most important point she made is that she will be an effective attack dog.” -- Jan Wheelock, 58, Royal Oak independent

“Sarah got as much applause as Hillary did, and had a friendly, appealing appearance. Her delivery style reminded me of a high school valedictorian who also might have been a cheerleader. I thought she would appear more professional, more stateswomanly. She's no match for Joe Biden.” -- Joellen Gilchrist, 64, Beverly Hills independent

(H/T Ezra Klein)