Posted on 09/08/2008 9:29:03 AM PDT by buccaneer81
Ann Fisher commentary: This work is nothing to sneer at Monday, September 8, 2008 3:12 AM By Ann Fisher
In her acceptance speech last week, the GOP nominee for vice president took aim at the Democratic nominee for president, trashing Barack Obama's work as a community organizer.
But the ammo landed like so much shrapnel in the hearts and minds of community organizers across the country. Community Organizers of America launched a Web site and demanded an apology. The National Association of Social Workers issued an angry news release, with the Ohio chapter and others following suit.
Here's what angered them: "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," Gov. Sarah Palin said Wednesday to the Republican convention and an estimated 37 million television viewers.
Clearly, she hasn't heard that community organizers are the fabric behind the fluff of politics, the woof to political warp. And they vote.
They run the food pantries, form the block watches, organize health fairs, clean up graffiti, promote public art and help poor children get dental care. They clean up after hurricanes and beautify our parks. They recruit and develop leaders, motivate and work for the greater good -- all for little or no pay. They connect us, and we sometimes barely notice.
Two earlier speeches Wednesday in St. Paul, Minn., showed that Palin isn't alone in her thoughts. At a breakfast with Ohio's delegation, former New York Gov. George Pataki said: "What in God's name is a community organizer? I don't even know if that's a job." The Buckeye audience laughed and applauded, according to The New York Observer.
Former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said Obama "worked as a community organizer. What? (He laughed.) I said, 'OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume.' "
In a New York Daily News report, Marvin Olasky, the provost at King's College in Manhattan, defended Palin's viewpoint: "If folks in the community-organizing movement are astonished that a conservative criticizes that, then they don't understand America."
Here's the America that I understand: Lisa Grazier is a stay-at-home mom who home-schools her children, coordinates the Camp Chase Block Watch, serves as president of the Friends of Westgate, is on the board of Friends of the Hilltop and is a member of the Westgate Neighbors Association.
"Pretty much every day, I tell myself it's about the community, about what God has put into my heart to do," Grazier said.
Trisha Dehnbostel is a wife, mother and social worker for the Godman Guild. She has transformed a stretch of Columbus rubble into a community garden, where teenagers learn how to grow up and make the world a better place.
"It's a way of life," she said, "and to have that be diminished and say it's not important, that just makes me sad."
A campaign spokesman said Palin was responding to critics of her executive experience as mayor of an Alaskan town of fewer than 7,000. "Community organizers certainly serve a valued function in civic affairs," he added in the e-mail.
Who's he trying to convince?
Ann Fisher is a Dispatch Metro columnist. She can be reached at 614-461-8759 or by e-mail.
afisher@dispatch.com
Also in Chicago politics - get the dead to vote.
She confuses “organizers” with “community organizers”.
Organizers organize to get something done. Community Organizers organize to get the government to do something.
We conservatives love the former and hate the latter.
Sorry Annie, but the issue is that community organizing does nothing to qualify one as President of the United States.
Doing “commentary”....one of the few things less valuable than being a “community organizer.”
This is a woman who lives in ColumbASS, OH where the worst and most obnoxious fans in the country live. OSU fans make the taliban look like compassionate people.
We’ll sneer at the Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Barak Obama types if we want to.
That is what community organizers do. Obama got a lot of money to serve as a phone book.
Insert sound of crickets here.
The question that needs to be answered is “How much of his work is still in place today?” All that social work is fine, but if it just goes away, it doesn’t mean a thing and costs the more.
Yes, Ann...it is. It is one thing to be a “community organizer” and take personal pride on the basis of your own standards, whatever they may be.
It is quite another thing to enter the fray for the US Presidency, and make this one of your three major qualifications. (he has yet to make much of his..ahem...”experience” of being “president” of the Harvard Law Review (laughable) and a “professor” of “constitutional law”.
Notice how he doesn’t have the complete stupidity to promote his thing at Harvard because he knows would be laughed off the stage if he did. He lets others try to promote it, but even they sheepishly know how stupid it is to use that as any kind of qualification.
But isn’t it funny...you don’t hear a lot about his professorial days either, do you? I wonder why? Hmm. I wonder.
So that leaves him with his “experience” he thinks he can promote as a Saul Alinsky disciple as a community agitator, er, “organizer”, his experience as a state legislator, and his short stint in the US Senate.
From all accounts, during his days as a state legislator, he had the distinction of being disliked by others for his propensity to swoop in after all the months of hard work had been done by others and take the credit. What I would call a “Seagull Legislator”. (This is analogous to a “Seagull Manager who swoops in, craps all over everything then leaves)
And being a US Senator, well...there IS no “there” there. His candidacy is laughable.
Most Americans don’t know what a “community organizer” is or how you get that job, but if you explain it to them, they would look askance at you and say: “Oh. So, it is his job to stir people up and create trouble? Who pays his salary?”
This community organizer sounds like an incredible job. A great step prior to running for county dog catcher.
Re: They run the food pantries, form the block watches, organize health fairs, clean up graffiti, promote public art
Where I come from, a lot of volunteers do this.
And they don’t list it on their resume!
In Cuba, they have Community Organizers, they are called the “Committee For the Defense of the Revolution” and basically their job is to tattle on anyone who doesn’t follow in lockstep with the government.
I’m beginning to be concerned that McCain/Palin may lose the community organizer vote.
Why do you demean dog catchers like that. At least they do have responsibilities and accountability.
Columbus: when you don’t have enough cash to fly all the way to NYC or San Francisco.
Graffiti??
I would ask Ms. Fisher this question: If community organizers are doing such a fantastic job why, after spending untold millions of dollars taken from working folks at the point of a gun (read taxes) is the number of "needy" at about the same level it was some thirty years ago?
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