Like everyone else, Sarah Palin's speech on Wednesday night left me sputtering and pissed off. Her comments on community organizers, while obviously aimed at Obama, veered far off course and hit at the grassroots that work so hard to make this country a better one. I was storing up a rant, so here it goes...
It was all over this week’s Republican National Convention. The notion of community organizing as something worthy of the utmost derision, while their promise of "giving America back to Americans" was supposedly something to come from on high.
In her first appearance before the nation, Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin ramped up the sneering, better-than-you politics we all know and despise. According to Palin, "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer’, except that you have actual responsibilities." While obviously a lowbrow potshot at Senator Obama, Palin managed to offend a wide swath of everyday Americans who consider organizing in their communities to be a worthwhile service and their duty as a citizen.
To say that community organizing is bereft of any kind of responsibility, is to show her woeful lack of understanding of how this country works, and what grassroots, on the ground organizing means to so many people, both the organizers and those who benefit from their hard work.
Abolitionists, women’s suffragists, labor organizers, students and citizens registering voters in the segregated South, fair housing advocates, gay rights activists, AIDS activists, churches helping the poor, children’s rights advocates, environmentalists...all of these and so many more have had a massive impact on the policies of this country throughout history and have improved the quality of life for those who live here. To say that these fights involved no responsibilities is not only to ignore the importance of their cause, but to underestimate the the impact of potentially losing those struggles. To say that there is no responsibility when someone’s job, life, health, sanity or basic human dignity is on the line is to acknowledge her ignorance of the individual struggles of everyday Americans, and also to ignore the basic fact of our history: that no rights have been won in this country simply through the actions of government, but through the hard-won fights of average people working together for a common goal.
For someone who purports to be of a party that believes in less government to speak with such contempt of those of us who decided that WE were the ones who would save us, and not politicians, speaks to her self-importance and insularity when it comes to how the rest of the world lives. It is also a smack in the face to every woman who fought for the right to vote and every woman who fought to break that glass ceiling so she could stand on that stage and backhand us. Irony is sometimes less than funny.
Even setting aside the long, proud history of community organizing in this country, and addressing her comments toward her intended target, Barack Obama, doesn’t do her much justice. While she and others in her party have looked upon Obama’s grassroots organizing as if it has no place in the resume of a future president, by doing that, they are missing what many people have already figured out: that having experience working side-by-side with everyday people, in tough situations, fighting for economic justice for laid-off steelworkers and empowering voters actually gives Obama a unique perspective on America that neither she, nor McCain can claim. He’s been on the streets with US. You know, the ones she and McCain say they are fighting for? But neither of them seem to know us.
The only understanding of fighting she or the rest of the RNC speakers could portray, was one of war and guns and bombs. That McCain fought with the usual bloody tools of war, and thus we should expect him to fight for us. Thanks, but no thanks. We don’t need more bombs, and we don’t want to kill more people. We need affordable food, affordable housing, and affordable healthcare. We need jobs that don’t discriminate against us based on gender, or sexuality, or color, and the right to collectively bargain to maintain fair wages. We need to bring an end to AIDS, protect children from abuse and protect women from abuse and sexual violence. We need air we can breathe, water we can drink, and sustainable methods of living that do not rape the earth for our short term gain.
And we need people who will fight, not with guns or bombs, but by working together with passion, commitment and conviction, regardless of party or the petty differences that separate us, because we have a common goal: to make a better life for ourselves, our friends, our families, and even people we don’t know. Not for praise or for profit, but because it’s right.
If there is one positive thing that came from Sarah Palin’s speech on Wednesday, it is this: I have been talking to community organizers all over America, and they are pissed. And when organizers get really pissed off, we cannot be defeated. Thanks for the kick in the ass, Sarah. You gave us just enough fire in the belly to shut you down.