On community organizing. [Updated.]
Sep 4th, 2008 | By benwyskida | Category: Uncategorized
Every year, thousands of young people sign on for low-paying, backbreaking work as community organizers. These are Democrats and Republicans, partisan jobs and issue-based jobs, secular jobs and often positions filled by churches, social service organizations and charities. The term “community organizer” can be a little vague, but basically it’s a role in which you try to get a bunch of people in a specific neighborhood behind a particular cause or issue, usually addressing a major crisis or need in that community.
For a year and a half I was a grassroots organizer, working in parts of Washington DC to encourage poorer communities to rally behind better transit options, and against several potential polluters.
Last night in her speech, Republican Vice-Presidential nominee Karl Rove Sarah Palin ridiculed community organizing, saying that Barack Obama had no real responsibilities as an organizer and degrading the time he spent doing important work in South Chicago. Certainly in those years Obama wasn’t doing anything as important as being a sportscaster, which is what Palin was doing. And clearly Obama’s experience doesn’t give him more perspective than Palin on urban issues and urban policy, and he wouldn’t need that anyway because only 79% of the country lives in urban areas so Palin’s experience as Mayor of Wasilia, Alaska should qualify her just fine to manage the needs of Urban America when if John McCain chokes on a pretzel. Arrgh. The idea of an elected official ridiculing these jobs, held by people who are being paid shit because they want to help other people and make communities better and who burn themselves out doing it is so outrageous I don’t even know where to begin.
In short: Fuck her. Seriously. Community organizing is good work; hard work; and whether I agree with this or not lots of people are doing it because it’s the lords work. Barack Obama holding that position for three years is about three times longer than most people last; while Sarah Palin was reporting on dogsled races, Obama was trying to organize residents to keep lead out of their drinking water. Fuck her.
If you want to know more, Chris Hayes has this great roundtable discussion of several organizers about what it means to them that Obama could be President, and how his experience is relevant. Also there is a website up already to demand an apology … which may never happen. That site has a good discussion of what organizing is, exactly, if you’re trying to explain it to your Republican uncle who may have been swayed by the speech last night.
Also Stirling pulled together this little list of some of our community organizer faves:
Jane Addams
Saul Alinsky
César Chávez
Ernesto Cortes
John W. Gardner
Samuel Gompers
Jesse Jackson
Mother Jones
Martin Luther King, Jr.
John Lewis
Paul Wellstone
Total losers, I know!
There are a ton more here although some of them are like crazy socialist songwriters. But still. Fuck her. Community organizers are fighting the good fight, and learning a lot more about how the country works than John McCain learned in the Senate.
About The Author
Ben Wyskida is a writer, activist, conscientious hedonist and political communications strategist living in Brooklyn. - Visit Ben's site.
What have community organizers ever given us? Except for women’s rights, civil rights, the 40 hour work week…
But MLK doesn’t count. At least not in AZ.
Heh. Good point.
i think this may come around to backfire …
Thanks for this — I work in Boston as an organizer, and how dare she!
But she was in the PTA! There are real responsibilities there, the book burning and all.
does anyone know yet what books she tried to ban?
Jewish books mainly. Just guessing.
Was Yentl a book? I bet she hated Yentl.
Thank you. This is great. You so well put into words what many of us are feeling.
Heard a great comment on the radio: Jesus was a community organizer; Pontius Pilate was a governor. Yay!
[...] Community organizers. [...]
i loved it when guiliani said “community organizer” and all the republicans laughed. and by loved it i mean i laid down on my kitchen floor and did the primal scream.
fuck them.
You came into this world alone.You’re going out the same way.A pox on both these parties.Fend for yourself.You’ll be a lot happier.
fyi, sarah: Jesus was a community organizer (and Pontius Pilate was a governor)
Get real–community organizing was mocked because it is a bullshit “occupation”–I should probably put a few more quotemarks around that so you understand how ironically I use the word occupation. I’ll be more direct–if you call yourself a community organizer, go ahead and tattoo a giant L on your forehead, because what you really are is a hugh LOSER, a failure at life, probably unable to find real, meaningful work that has any actual value (why they’re paid “shit”, if you were too dumb to figure that out). A crack whore offers more to the community that an “organizer” (they give sex and take crack off the streets–at least that’s something).
All CO’s really do is stir up trouble, even where it may not have existed, because without it then they themselves realize how worthless they really are. For example, a CO will get a neighborhood riled up that they don’t have as many police patrols–because they’re poor and/or minorities, of course. So they’ll march and get on the local news (COs do love those cameras) and the police will relent and increase patrols. But then the CO will get everyone in a tizy again because now thy’re living under a “police state”–patrols driving by, dispersing groups of youths and chasing away people from their streetcorners, like they expect them to commit a crime–why, because we’re poor and or minorities?! They don’t treat folks in rich, white neighborhoods like this, no sir.
And enough of this “Jesus was a…” It was humorous when somebody ran a compilation of all of the politicians, actors, etc, using that line–at least we know their e-mail is working. Jesus was no CO, not in the current understanding. He rebutted all efforts to get involved in or change politics and while he certainly said it was our duty to help the poor, he left that to be what it should be–a matter of personal conviction.
But here are some historical community organizers I’ve found: Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Che Guevara, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, Mao–you get the idea–all power-to-the-people, workers-unite… at least it starts out that way, but socialism has a tendency to run amuck. With Obama’s desire to create a national police force, as powerful as the military–which comes straight from the pages of the folks I just listed–I fear that this could be exactly the case with him. For an empty suit, he sure could do a lot of lasting damage. In that way, he is not a joke at all.
Thanks for taking a big stinky crap and then leaving Prolliwontbebak Sowhybother.
Um, yeah… No. That’s all I have to say to that.
ha ha. Well I spent 6 months making sure that Seniors knew how to access services like health care and home heating oil. That’s not meaningful? A friend of mine does work making sure that homes get their lead paint inspections that haven’t; not sure how that’s stirring up trouble. Also i don’t really understand the point about the national police force — I’m not sure where that’s coming from. You do seem very angry though.
[...] We took on some important topics. I wrote a spirited defense of community organizing that I’m pretty proud of. Also we spoke out about the bailout, and what it meant for [...]
[...] We took on some important topics. I wrote a spirited defense of community organizing that I’m pretty proud of. Also we spoke out about the bailout, and what it meant for [...]