As an activist and spouse of a full-time community organizer, I found the most infuriating moments of last night's RNC was the open mockery thrown by Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin at community organizers.
The attacks weren't just mean-spirited: they also betray the GOP's own most cherished legacy, Ronald Reagan's call for people to help themselves rather than rely on government hand-outs. "Government is the problem," he declared at his inaugural address in 1981; "All of us together, in and out of government, must bear the burden."
Community organizers have been bearing that burden.
Organizers pick up where government leaves off. They exemplify communities trying to fix their own issues. My spouse, like Barack Obama, graduated Harvard Law School and chose to organize mainline and evangelical Christians to eradicate global poverty. Our classmates easily make over $250K annually at their big firms. She makes minimum wage.
Her colleagues all over the country work with day laborers, unions, single mothers, veterans. They may not label themselves "community organizers," so maybe it's politically safe for the GOP to after them. But when Sarah Palin compares her taxpayer-funded job as mayor favorably to privately-funded community organizers with no "actual responsibilities," we can only conclude that today’s Republican Party isn’t so keen on self-help after all.
Seems today’s GOP doesn’t just hate government solutions to our communities’ problems. They hate ANY solutions.