In the most beautiful display of organization, community organizers raise their voices loud and clear. They will not stand to be disrespected by right-wing ignorance. Even the person who helped Obama get started in community organizing speaks out in a must read article.
I highly doubt that we will hear the McCain-Palin ticket talk about community organizers again.
Digg Link
http://digg.com/...
From Newsweek we learn that Obama only made $10K as a community organizer but he worked 16 hours a day. It is quite obvious that Obama cared about people over monetary benefits. Quite frankly, when I read Obama's biography I was sold. Only someone with true compassion for service makes a conscious decision to work with the poor and disadvantaged.
The biggest surprise may have been for one particular organizer: Jerry Kellman, the man who supervised Obama when he arrived in Chicago to work for the Calumet Community Religious Conference (CCRC) on the South Side of Chicago. Kellman thinks the years that Obama spent in Chicago—meeting in church basements, liaising meetings between community members and earning a $10,000 salary for a job where 16-hour days were typical—were integral to the politician that he would become.
Kellman describes Obama's responsibilities
In the beginning he was by himself, he would talk to me and I would support him but that was pretty brief. Mostly, he was on his own on a small budget. Out of those scarce resources, he was responsible for gathering people in large numbers. He had to change the power dynamics between business, government interests and the community.
Kellman also discusses how Obama grew as a person as a result of this first experience.
I think it was the pivotal public experience of his public life. It's where his basic orientation in public life was formed. He learned that the way to get things done is to get people to work together, even though they may not like each other. His sense of compromise also developed there. Basically you carve out your ethical limits and make sure to never cross them but, within them, understand the need to use compromise to get things done.
http://www.newsweek.com/...
Community Organizers across the Nation fired back at Sarah Palin for her snide remarks against their profession.
Community 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... to defend themselves against Republican attacks.
http://organizersfightback.wordpress...
Even faith-based groups were offended by Palin's statement. It made me wonder how many Republican-leaning organizations experienced an eye-popper after hearing their profession mocked.
"As a life-long Republican, the comments I heard last night about community organizing crossed the line. It is one thing to question someone’s experience, another to demean the work of millions of hard working Americans who take time to get involved in their communities. When people come together in my church hall to improve our community, they’re building the Kingdom of God in San Diego. We see the fruits of community organizing in safer streets, new parks, and new affordable housing. It’s the spirit of democracy for people to have a say and we need more of it," said Bishop Roy Dixon, prelate of the Southern California 4th ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the Church of God in Christ, member of the San Diego Organizing Project and former board chair of PICO. PICO is comprised of 53 faith-based organizations and 1,000 faith communities from 50 denominations working in 150 cities and town and 17 states.
http://blog.faithinpubliclife.org/...
There are also videos on youtube concerning Sarah's blatant mockery and ignorance of the responsibilities of community organizers.
So, thank you Sarah Palin and the Republican party for proving once more that you pride yourselves in being ignorant.
And, in case you missed Barack Obama's response here it is.