Community Organizers Fight Back
By lshapiro • Sep 5th, 2008 • Category: FeaturesCommunity organizers across America, taken aback by a series of attacks from Republican leaders at the GOP convention in St. Paul, came together today to defend their work organizing Americans who have been left behind by unemployment, lack of health insurance and the national housing crisis. The organizers demanded an apology from Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for her statement that community organizers have no “actual responsibilities” and launched a web site, http://organizersfightback.wordpress.com, to defend themselves against Republican attacks.
“Community organizers work in neighborhoods that have been hit hardest by the failing economy,” said John Raskin, founder of Community Organizers of America and a community organizer on the West Side of Manhattan. “The last thing we need is for Republican officials to mock us on television when we’re trying to rebuild the neighborhoods they have destroyed. Maybe if everyone had more houses than they can count, we wouldn’t need community organizers. But I work with people who are getting evicted from their only home. If John McCain and the Republicans understood that, maybe they wouldn’t be so quick to make fun of community organizers like me.”
Though many people are unfamiliar with community organizing, the job is both straightforward and vital: community organizers work with families who are struggling–because of low wages, poor health coverage, unaffordable housing, and other community problems–so that collectively, they can fix those problems and make government respond to their day-to-day concerns. Organizers knock on doors, attend community meetings, visit churches and synagogues and mosques, and work with unions and civic groups and block associations to help ordinary people build power and counter the influence of self-interested insiders and highly paid lobbyists at all levels of government.
Scorn for community organizers has been a prominent feature of this week’s Republican convention. On Wednesday, three Republican leaders mocked community organizers:
-Former Governor George Pataki said: “[Barack Obama] was a community organizer. What in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job.”
-Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani said: “On the other hand, you have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a community organizer. What? [Laughter]…I said, OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume.”
-Governor Sarah Palin said: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”
Community organizers were quick to fire back.
“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.”
The community organizers launched a new web site, http://organizersfightback.wordpress.com, to defend themselves against Republican attacks. They emphasize that their work will be necessary as long as lobbyists have undue influence over American government and the economy continues to fail people who work hard and still struggle to provide for themselves and their families.
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We can’t let the GOP get away with besmirching the name of organizers! Not to mention, you gotta wonder if they’re appealing to white Americans’ fear of organized, urban people of color demanding what is rightfully theirs, like decent health care, housing, jobs, etc.
No, we don’t have to wonder — that’s EXACTLY what they’re doing.
I really want to thank Lucas and the other authors and this piece and their website. My family was watching the RNC when we first heard Giuliani’s demagogic comments. My father, who had been a tenant organizer, rolled his eyes. I was rather taken aback; I could not figure out how anyone could find it a minus to be a community organizer. When Palin spoke, we all got the message.As my mother said “They talked about personal responsibility and getting people away from depending on government, yet they attack the very people who organize people so that they are not dependent on the state.” The issue is what Jason and Maria said: fear of underprivileged communities organizing. It’s also that idea that the base of the Republican Party apparently don’t want folks to be truly independent or self-sufficient if they don’t vote for them. I hope the GOP comments energize folks to get out and mobilize voters in the upcoming election.
They have made the protesting at St. Paul regulated so much that the Convention Attendees aren’t even inconvenienced by the situation. Most of the protesters have had their lives financially ruined by these fat cats, and they have it made it difficult to get their message out except through rioting for media attention.
This is getting ridiculous. The hypocrisy and corruption that has plagued the GOP for the past decades is finally showing itself. I can’t understand why these ‘deregulating small-government’ people are so adamant towards others who try to help other families and communities. I mean, isn’t that ‘conservative’? It seems that the GOP wants to establish a form of fascist totalitarianism in the U.S. Gov. Palin’s comment: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.” just shows that she seems to believe in stripping the power of Democracy and handing it over to state officials. She has no respect for the people. NONE! Her ridiculous stance on deregulating is basically saying that she will stand behind every firm, enterprise, and corporation that intends to break the law and exploit the American people. Disgusting.
I saw clips of these attacks on shows like The Colbert Report and these clips were enough to make me feel outraged. Grassroots organizing is by far the best chance we have at achieving true democracy and we simply cannot tolerate this kind of mudslinging at these people. Organizers are people to be admired, if anyone, not politicians like McCain and Palin. We’d better watch ourselves too because it’s also true that these two are busy creating a Frankenstein monster of their own… which could likely turn and attack these organizers… and us as well.