I‘m beginning to suspect that community organizers are organized on a level somewhat larger than the "community."
The first letter on tomorrow’s editorial page sticking up for community organizers as a breed. Last week, within a day after Sarah Palin’s remark about their ilk vis-a-vis being a mayor, I got TWO e-mails sticking up for community organizers. Then, when I got home Friday, there was a panel discussion on PBS, and the person speaking when I walked into the room was defending community organizers.
The two e-mail releases came in within two hours of each other on Thursday. Here’s the first one:
Leading National Organization Responds To Attacks On Community Organizing Statement from the Center for Community Change
Washington, dc- Recently, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and several commentators and surrogates surrounding the presidential contest have attacked and misrepresented community organizing. The following is a statement from Deepak Bhargava, Executive Director of the Center for Community Change, a 40-year-old national organization that builds the field of community organizing with hundreds of local organizations nationwide:“When Sarah Palin demeaned community organizing, she didn’t attack another candidate. She attacked an American tradition — one that has helped everyday Americans engage with the political process and make a difference in their lives and the lives of their neighbors.
"All across the country, in every state and every community, there are community organizers helping people find shared solutions to the shared problems they face. The candidates for President and Vice President should be working to solve our shared problems, too, rather than attack others who are trying to do the same.
"From winning living wages to expanding affordable housing to improving the quality of public schools to getting health coverage for the poor and elderly, community organizers have made and will continue to make our communities and our country better for all of us.
"The values that community organizers and grassroots leaders represent are not Washington values or Wall Street values but American values–that we care for each other and look out for each other and know we’re all interconnected and have a valuable role to play in making our country work for all of us. Candidates should be courting these Community Values, not condemning them.”
Since 1968, the Center for Community Change has strengthened the leadership, voice and power of low-income communities nationwide to confront the vital issues of today and build the social movements of tomorrow. The Center leads the Campaign for Community Values, a national movement of more than 300 grassroots, community-led organizations mobilizing voters in this election and beyond to demand policy changes that reflect our nation’s founding principles of shared responsibility, inclusion and interconnectedness.
###
Here’s the second one:
America is Built on the Contributions of Community Organizers
Statement of Wade Henderson, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights“The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights is a coalition of nearly 200 organizations, much of whose work is done through community organizers. These advocates have provided the leverage for Americans to organize themselves into unions, get the five-day work week, voting rights for every citizen, paid maternity leave and the curb cuts used by people with disabilities and young mothers with strollers.
We’re a nonpartisan coalition but we do take exception when anyone disparages the vast contributions of community organizers to American society.
The United States has had a long and proud history of contributions made by community organizers, from Benjamin Franklin who organized the first volunteer fire department in this country to Clara Barton, who organized assistance for soldiers during the Civil War, to Martin Luther King, Jr., who helped our great nation correct a historic wrong. Over the years, many more community organizers have brought changes to American society that benefit all of us.
Nothing is done in a vacuum. Someone has to organize it to get it done. That is the simple and great role of a community organizer.”
# # #
The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) is the nation’s oldest, largest, and most diverse civil and human rights coalition. For more information on LCCR and its nearly 200 member organizations, visit www.civilrights.org.
So, however you define "community," one can’t say that these folks aren’t organized.
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The attacks are just one more sign that a segment of the Republican party is mean and selfish rather than just conservative.
The best line I’ve seen to date:
“Jesus was a community organizer; Pontius Pilate was a governor.”
I always thought John McCain was better than this– the GOP has become Orwellian in its use of lies and misinformation.
Obama is far from perfect and can be legitimately criticized for his record or lack of experience. But mocking him for working as a community organizer, or for having written two books, as Palin also did, is just sad.
And for Palin to lie so emphatically about earmarks and the “bridge to nowhere” shows no shame…but that’s another topic.
I’m saddened that Republicans would belittle the good work of community organizers across the nation.
Quite a headline: “America is built on the contributions of community organizers.”
Interesting those paragraphs of propaganda, too. I don’t recall Ben Franklin, Clara Barton or Martin Luther King Jr. running for president or vice president.
I don’t think any of them would have listed community organizer as their profession, either.
I hope this is no attempt to equate Barack Obama, Franklin, Barton and King.
I will say this, though. Barack Obama and Deepak Bhargava would have made one heck of a ticket.
It’s a good line, but was Jesus really an organizer? Seems like Peter and James and Paul did the organizing part after the Resurrection, right?
And Simon Zealot was the party politician in the group.
The Democrats are having a hard time finding something to attack Gov. Palin about. She is almost perfect isn’t she? Gov. Palin did not bad mouth the Community Organizers. She was just comparing the responsibility and experience associated with two different job positions. That nice gentleman that goes all over the community, helps with voter registration, informs everyone of all the other services available, bless him. Its an important job and I wish there were many more like him. But you cannot say that his job has the same responsibility as Mayor Coble’s does.
Yeah, “almost perfect” except for that trooper firing investigation McCain’s campaign is trying to obstruct, the earmarks she secured that turned up on McCain’s naughty list, and the bridge to nowhere that she was for until she was against it. The hits just keep coming.
In fact, here’s one I just now saw for the first time: the police chief she hired opposed legislation which would stop sexual assault victims for having to pay for tests used in investigations.
Every word that comes out of that woman’s mouth is a lie.
And just wait for her deposition. She’s lied repeatedly about her scandal.
Community organizers don’t charge state government a per diem to stay at home like the Queen of Pork did in Alaska.
The previous governor, a Democrat, spent $463,000 for travel vs. $95,000 for Palin.
She fired the chef and saved the state money, by comparison to the latest Democrat that crawled up out of the mud.
Appears to me that, certainly moreso than in the case of Palin, every word that comes out of your mouth is a lie, Guero.
She charged the state a per diem for staying at home. FACT.
She fought for The Bridge to Nowhere. FACT
She hired lobbyists for the town and the state to beg for earmarks. FACT
She left the town in debt. FACT
She lied about troopergate. FACT
Sorry, pm, you flunk. FACT
Did you see Palin’s stand-up routine in that nutcase Wasilla church. She actually prayed to have a pipeline built in Alaska! This woman is a lunatic.
The per diem for staying at home was not only legal, but also undermines the desperate Democrat contentioin that she can’t raise her children and be vice president at the same time. FACT
She spend less than her Democrat predecessor on such expenses. FACT
She has the Democrat MSM machine quaking in its communist boots because she’s the real grass roots of America and because she gave McCain a bigger bounce than Obama got from the Democrat hog wallow before the faux colonnade. FACT
You see, Guero, no matter what mistake Democrats find that Palin might have made, her character’s evident enough in her being to overcome it.
Eventually, the conflict of interest involved in Biden’s son being a top partner at a Washington law firm that has lobbied his father’s office will prove more embarrassing to the Democrat ticket that has positioned itself as fighting lobbyists and special interests in Washington.
The emperor has no clothes. He should quit crying like a baby to draw the world’s eye.
Let’s see, bud. Palin prayed to have the pipeline built in Alaska, Obama’s preacher told God to damn America from his pulpit, and Palin’s a lunatic?
Keep talking, Democrats. Palin picks up more votes every time one of you flaps your gums.
Really p.m. this is like shooting a fish in a barrel. It was Obama’s PREACHER who said God Damn America. Again, it was Obama’s PREACHER, NOT OBAMA, who said God Damn America. Words that Obama condemned. Palin HERSELF prayed to God to build the pipeline, a completely inappropriate, politicized prayer. Palin is a lunatic, McCain is McSame, Biden is experienced and Obama is a genius.
Palin’s chef wasn’t fired. She was reassigned. She works for the Legislative Lounge now. Did the reassignment really save the taxpayers of Alaska any significant money?
http://www.adn.com/news/alaska/story/288561.html
It would seem that attacking a person’s faith or prayer life is fruitless. I don’t presume to speak for God or how He reveals His truth and plan to believers (except for His plan for me). Palin’s call for prayer for a pipeline and for the war in Iraq sounded odd to my ears, but to claim it was insincere or inappropriate puts the accuser in the position of presuming to know God’s will in those things. I don’t. I’m reminded of Tom T. Hall’s Faster Horses
“…it don’t do men no good to pray for peace and rain. Peace and rain is just a way to say prosperity…”
For the record, I have no problem praying for peace, rain and propserity.
Bud, there’s nothing wrong with a politician praying. There’s nothing in the Constitution that prevents it. Millions of Americans pray every day. That might be an anachronism to the left, but’s it probably real life to MOST of America.
Sitting in a church and listening to a madman pray to God to damn America, however, is something else again, particularly for a man who would be president. It’s perilously close to treason.
You couldn’t shoot a fish in a barrel with an AK-47, bud. By the time you asked them how they felt about the occupation of Iraq and national health care, they would have formed a school too smart for Democrats.
The problem with Obama is that he has no normal friends or associates.
No one but his wife spoke at the convention about how they have known him. No one vouches for him. His resume if empty, and there are huge stretches of his life he refuses to explain.
All Obama’s friends are terrorists, swindlers, crooked Chicago political operators and Muslims of some ilk –
his radical communist Muslim father,
his stepfather,
his Wahabe Muslim teachers,
Black Muslim “community organizers”,
Louis Farakan,
“former Muslim” Jeremiah Wright,
Percy Sutton,
Kahlid Monsour,
Prince Alweed of Saudi Arabia funding his education,
and the endorsements and donations to his campaign from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Momar Kadaffi.