The Indypendent e-news
September 4, 2008
Organizers demand apology from
Community organizers across
“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
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.
Comments
You know, of course Republicans won't get what community organizers are. Most Americans, let alone Republicans, don't understand how societal change occurs. MLK's March on DC and the civil rights movement - they have little understanding about how that occurred. Of course it was organizers knocking on doors and conducting meetings to educate and mobilize the populace to push for their civil rights and challenge power. Beautiful stuff and the Republicans mock it.
I thought Palen and Ghoulianis' comments about community organizers showed deep contempt for social change and collective action.
Demanding an apology from people who despise you when you know there's not a snowball's chance in hell that you are going to get one sounds lame and rhetorically empty. Just keep on doing the good work you are doing and enjoy the spectacle of these cretins choking on their words when a former community organizer is inaugurated as president on Jan. 20, 2009.
I wonder if community organizers had anything to do with the four, count them four disruptions of McCain's speech last night. I was watching the corporate press after the speech and most lauded McCain on a "great" speech. I was like, are you watching the same bumbling old man get disrupted by Iraqi war vets and have difficulty delivering his lines as I was watching? The corporate press is so quick to cuddle up next to power and never ever criticize. McCain's speech is pretty much, I'm a former POW and white, and I have got a evangelcial VP pick who likes guns and eats meat. Did I mention we are both white?
Renowned Community Organizers:
Eddie Perez is mayor of Connecticut’s capital city. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Ph.D., Boston University was an American Nobel Laureate, Baptist minister, and civil rights activist. Marie Kirkley-Bey, Ken Green and Art Feltman are Hartford state representatives. The late Paul Wellstone of Minnesota was a senator. Nelson Mandela became president of South Africa. All were Community Organizers!
What is community organizing?
Community organizing is a long-term approach where the people affected by an issue are supported in identifying problems and taking action to achieve solutions. The organizer challenges those he or she works with to change the way things are—it is a means of achieving social change through collective action by changing the balance of power. The tactics and strategies employed by the organizer are similar to the processes of leadership including timing the issue, deliberate planning, getting the attention of the populace, framing the issue in terms of the desired solution, and shaping the terms of the decision-making process.
Community organizing looks at collective solutions — large numbers of people who engage in solutions that impact even more people. These people usually live in the same neighborhood, town or block.
Here are some examples from history:
• Civil rights: The boycotts of businesses and buses in the South brought about desegregation and the Voting Rights Act.
• Labor unions: Strikes against conditions in factories throughout the early part of this century led to the 40-hour work week and better working conditions for all workers.
• The anti-war movement: Protests against the war pressured the government to end U.S. involvement in Viet Nam .
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