SPRINGFIELD, Ill., Sept. 5, 2008
GOP Insults Anger Community Organizers
Republican Put-Downs Of Obama's Work Helping The Disadvantaged Riles Activists
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Barack Obama
A look at the life and meteoric rise of the president-elect.
Organizers described themselves as the antidote to big-money lobbyists who wield so much influence. They talked about helping powerless people join forces to demand better schools and safer streets, often by working through churches.
"If people in office were doing their jobs, perhaps we wouldn't need community organizers," said John Baumann, executive director of PICO National Network, whose name derives from "people improving communities through organizing."
"I don't like seeing the really hard work that goes on in really poor communities being demeaned by cheap politicians," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. "Community organizing is as American as democracy. It believes that ordinary people can do extraordinary things."
Obama, the Democratic presidential nominee, has often talked about his three years as a community organizer in Chicago. He uses it to demonstrate that he understands the problems of people losing their jobs and stuck in deteriorating neighborhoods.
Republicans belittled his organizing experience Wednesday night.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani began summing up Obama's experience by noting he had worked as a community organizer. "What?" he said, with a tone of disbelief. "Maybe this is the first problem on the resume," Giuliani said.
Vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin touted her credentials as mayor of an Alaskan town. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," she told the cheering crowd.
Several organizing groups condemned the remarks.
John Raskin, who works to make low-income housing available in New York city, quickly launched a Web site, "Community Organizers Fight Back," to respond. It attracted scores of responses Thursday from organizers upset by the criticism.
"I just think it's adding insult to injury," Raskin said of the Republican comments. "First, to create an economy that leaves out so many people and then to insult people who are trying to help."
Obama even raised the issue in a fundraising appeal to supporters, saying that "Republicans mocked, dismissed, and actually laughed out loud at Americans who engage in community service and organizing."
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said Palin's comment shows she is "too tough to be pushed around" by the Obama campaign's criticism of her experience.
Quote
Community Organizers of America
Organizers describe their work as identifying potential leaders in a community and then helping those people tackle local problems. They research possible solutions, teach people how to figure out who can help and how to explain their concerns, then try to pressure the powerful into taking action.Maybe if everyone had more houses than they can count, we wouldn’t need community organizers. But I work with people who are getting evicted from their only home.
John RaskinCommunity Organizers of America
Some organizations set up their own community groups, but most work with existing institutions, often churches.
Baumann said their concerns might be as basic as getting rid of a drug house or having more police patrol their neighborhood. Organizers also help set up job-training programs, push for better parks and streets, and press for school improvements.
"I basically think of it as very conservative. People are concerned about their families and ... the vehicle for that is through organizing," Baumann said. "The importance of assisting people improve their own lives - it's quite a responsibility."
Dave Beckwith, executive director of The Needmor Fund in Toledo, Ohio, said it would be wrong to assume community organizers and the people they help are all liberals. They include both Democrats and Republicans and their work can involve clashing with politicians from both parties, he said.
"This is an election that I understand to be about the middle," Beckwith said. "People active in community life and who have aspirations for their communities - it seems to me that anyone would want to speak to those people respectfully."
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See all 579 CommentsYou would think. However, Palin/McCain/Guiliani are speaking to their base and their base is mean-spirited, hateful and full of spite.
Wasn''t Jesus a community organizer?
You mean people who actually working with real people in the trenches finding out what is really going on and needed by Americans doesn''t help one be a better president FOR THE PEOPLE?
Liberals are not as good with the mean-spiritedness as you guys are but if we don''t fight back with the same weapons used by you, we end up like Gore. Nice guys seem to finish last these days. Funny thing is, we turn the mirror on you, and you don''t even like it.
By the way, Giuliani is HATED by NY firefighters and cops for the way he treated them and families. And also for the way he is exploiting and profiting from 9/11. Check out this link:
http://www.rudy-urbanlegend.com/
As far as Sarah Palin, she...
-Believes that creationism should be taught in schools, not evolution;
-Believes that women shouldn''t have the right to choose; even in cases of rape and incest or severe medical indications;
-Believes that citizens should have the right to bear AK-47s;
-Believes only in abstinence education; despite the fact that her daughters have been having unprotected ***;
-Has only been out of the country once in her life and that was just last year;
-Was mayor of a small town with fewer than 6000 residents with a budget of less than 12 million a year and fewer than 50 city hall employees;
-Is governor of a state that is closer to Russia than to Florida;
-Was part of a group that wanted Alaska to succeed from the Union.
-Is being investigated in 2 State of Alaska firing scandals
And this woman could be our next vice president and possibly our president?!?!? Scary!!
You got it.
Doesn''t like community organizers. Right. Because CHANGE COMES FROM THE TOP DOWN. Right, my friend?
Given the number of lobbyists, CEOs, special interests and religious right-wingers in the convention audience, I have no doubt Mr. McCain was utterly sincere in saying, "I work for you."
Change is coming, my friend. More than you counted on.
v=3SwwO00aWqM
OBAMA! OBAMA! OBAMA!
Fear and smear is all the GOP has. Shameful.
The GOP has been in power for 8 years, why spend so much time on Obama and none on your own accomplishments?
Pontius Pilate was a governor.
Lobbyists work for the Corporations
Community Organizers work for the Citizens
If the U.S. Government is WE THE PEOPLE, how can you compare the two????
and they say those on the left are the elites?
That is exactly right. Thanks to Republican policies (tax giveaways to the richest 1%), our poor are herded into ghetto''s to, basically, die. Community organizers and churches attempt to bring self-help to these communities by organizing them to realize that, together, they still have strength. There''s nothing wrong with THAT at all. Frankly, Mother Teresa was a community organizer.
The Republican ideal of a community is a gated community: where the riff raff are kept out by 10 foot walls and shot if found inside.
The Republicans should be ashamed of themselves. How can they care about the American people when they ignore a very large growing part of it?
If you wanted an answer to your question, you''d ask a community organizer, poser. From what little I know, a community organizer organizes the community and, thus organized, they can place more pressure on politicians to improve their neighborhoods via better law enforcement, better parks, etc. If Obama did that for three years, I expect he performed that duty, was successful at it, and help many by doing so. But you''d really have to ask someone who knows. You won''t because you don''t care to know the answer (you''re probably afraid at the answer you''d get).
My guess is that McCain and Palin do not know there are Americans that earn less than $250,000 annually?
[Posted by schotzy81 at 11:24 AM : Sep 05, 2008]
he didn''t help anybody ... they''re lives spiralled out of control once he got involved ... and there were absolutely no accomplishments. he made it all up so he''d have something to discuss in one of his speeches.
that''s what you''re looking for, right?
schotzy81 said: "Is this an example of honest debate or vitriolic hatred "
Thats an example of honest debate. Thats an honest example of an actual phenomenon in our country that clearly illustrates Republican ideals, and I should think, their consequences.
I take it you have never worked in any type of Outreach program. Once you do, you will never be able to ask "What did he/she do?"
Let me suggest that this holiday season you work in a local soup kitchen, it will scare you, but it makes the heart feel good.
For me I have worked with the mentally ill (bi-polar mostly) and the drug addicted; the hardest to deal with is the homeless children. Especially when the little 5 year olds come up to you and ask things like "Why does God hate our family?"
I have yet to figure out a good answer.
Divide and destroy: a prime Republican value.
OK, I was exaggerating. Sheesh. People who don''t belong in gated communities probably just get tazered.
(although I wouldn''t put it past Grover Norquist to go for the gun).
Didn''t a guy in Texas shoot two mexicans in the back who had just robbed his neighbors house? Bet thats your idea of ''family values''. They both died, running for their lives. He was honored with a dinner by his community.
My guess is that McCain and Palin do not know there are Americans that earn less than $250,000 annually?
Posted by ramos937
Think about this...Obama says he wants to raise taxes on businesses, large or small. This includes grocery stores, clothing stores, gas station owners, etc. If he does that, who do you think is going to pay for it?? The same people paying now, struggling to make ends meet!
That''s the real question.
So far, Obama claims that simply being a Community Organizer qualifies him to be President...
...and running for President qualifies him to be Commander In Chief.
We wouldn''t be having this arguement if Gov. Richardson was the nominee.
[Posted by hawkscreech at 11:56 AM : Sep 05, 2008]
it was the republicans that were whining ... whining about criticisms of her experience as a small time mayor ... in sarah palin''s speech. here''s the quote that''s only about a page scroll above.
these criticisms were in response to all the whinning from republicans about obama''s experience. but nobody seems to have any issue w/ gwb''s experience ... who needed special tutoring on world affairs in 2000 prior to the campaign (that was all acceptable).
"I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities," sarah palin told the cheering crowd.
this is a slap in the face of ''all'' community oranizers. reference to obama specifically is strangely absent.
if you can''t see this you''re just blinded by your ideology.
"Obama, only 24, struck board members as "awesome" and "extremely impressive," and they quickly hired him, at $13,000 a year, plus $2,000 for a car--a beat-up blue Honda Civic, which Obama drove for the next three years organizing more than twenty congregations to change their neighborhoods.
Obama worked in the organizing tradition of Saul Alinsky, who made Chicago the birthplace of modern community organizing, as translated through the Gamaliel Foundation, one of several networks of faith-based organizing. Often by confronting officials with insistent citizens--rather than exploiting personal connections, as traditional black Democrats proposed--Obama and DCP protected community interests regarding landfills and helped win employment training services, playgrounds, after-school programs, school reforms and other public amenities. "
And so on and so on. Google it yourself, poser.
Is THAT particular experience more valuable than say, being a captain in the army? How about being a private soldier, stationed in Japan, S. Korea, Germany?
Thank God for community organizers- the ones with a heart for the people, I mean.
"The College Years
Remembering the values of empathy and service that his mother taught him, Barack put law school and corporate life on hold after college and moved to Chicago in 1985, where he became a community organizer with a church-based group seeking to improve living conditions in poor neighborhoods plagued with crime and high unemployment.
The group had some success, but Barack had come to realize that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that community and other communities, it would take not just a change at the local level, but a change in our laws and in our politics.
He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practice as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years. In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the U.S. Senate."
By the way, how does this description stack up against that of Palin''s "college years"? What was it, 5 colleges in 6 years? One she left because it was "too rainy"?
You were saying about exaggeration?? Why don''t I compare you to a Nazi, in the interest of ''fairness''?
"Liberals may disagree with this, but please stop pretending that conservative viewpoints stem from a desire to see the poor trampled on. "
I don''t say they stem from a desire to see the poor trampled on. I say they result in the poor being trampled on.
I expect Repubs to cut gov''t spending. Its also politically unpopular, because roads, prisons, cops, teachers, etc, all get cut with it, and who wants that? But Repubs have 100% shirked their responsibility in this matter. Even with total control of the country for 6 of the last 8 years, they have INCREASED gov''t spending!!! What does that tell you about them? It tells me that they are liers, thats all.
And I cant vote for liers...
As for community organizers: God bless ''em. That is one tough row to hoe, in one Tough neighborhood. I couldn''t do it (though my daughter did).
gotta go.
Senator Obama has done the work, he understands the process. Senator McCain merely sat in the big chair!
Posted by gctomajtom
You wonder because you ignore the fact that the poor communities also count "White" people in their numbers, I am certain that they also benefitted just as much from any help received from community organizers.
I am also sure that his efforts were concentrated in the areas that supported him, and so if there were "White" people in those communities, they were helped.
Do you think that he should have gone to some well-to-do area that is predominately "White", who cannot accept his presence because of his ethnicity, and helped people who don''t need it?
Posted by bobnjersey
Isn''t this obvious? They are so blinded and delusional, they didn''t notice that McSame did not have the "Republican" brand visible at his convention. The majority of America does not agree with them or their assessment about Palin. Most see her for what she is, a far-right wing looney. But it will come out as soon as the press can interview her. If they are so proud of her, why hide her away from the media? These nutty loons insult our intelligence! And anybody listening to and taking directions from Rush Limbaug is just absolutely crazy!
The whole point was that Obama claimed this work makes him qualified for president. That was Obama''s claim, not anyone elses. The Republicans aren''t making fun of community organizers, and you can''t site a single reference where they have. Each time, they are ridiculing the idea that being a community organizer makes you qualified for president, as Obama claims.
In his now acknowledged boring acceptance speech, John McCain offered no fresh vision for the future but a Bush menu of radical conservatism and empty bravado. Dr. David Gergen summed up McCain''s performance as follows: "I did not think that the substantive part of the speech worked very well. It was mostly a rerun, retread of a lot of old Republican ideas that have brought us to where we are now. I think the country is looking for fresh answers. It''s hard to separate yourself out from President Bush when you essentially have the same economic policies as President Bush. I thought that the policy presentation was a little thin." (CNN). That says it all. Do we say anything more? NOTE: Tom Ridge, former Republican Homeland Security Secretary, in an interview on MSNBC (Sep. 4/08) gave us a new phrase for John McCain--"John Bush" before correcting himself. Pass it on!
What a zombie. Tonyd_31 drooling the standard bumper sticker name calling hate mantra of the Brown shirt Nazi Democratic party.
LOL!! Drool on Tonyd_31, robot attack brownshirt of the Dems, the NEW and Improved Nazi Party.
FROM MSNBC:
"GOP delegates attacked by protesters
Police wielding pepper spray arrest at least 56 as protest turns violent"
That''s it, the answer to everything is more government.
Posted by brianbwb
Why do you make the usual Dem PREsumption that areas that are predominately White are well-to-do?
Your racism is clear and obvious. Must be a Dem in denial.
By tonyd
One could say the same about Obama: Most see him for what he is, a far-left wing looney. Include all of his terrorist friends and Reverend Wright in that.
This is a typical Democratic bigot.
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