Sarah Palin Laughs In The Face Of Community Organization

Yesterday I was thinking about this whole election thing and was deciding that I needed to get back to my roots of speaking out on racism and the racist establishment, and a bit of child activism in there. But when I heard Sarah Palin trying to destroy what it means to be a community organizer, I just couldn’t let that go by without some sort of complaint.

She tries to play up the whole Mayor of a town that has fewer occupants in it than my neighborhood. She should be ashamed of herself. But of course she is not, because that is how people like her are, proud of their ignorance. She downplays the role of a community organizer even though we now know that she was forced to hire an administrator to run her government due to incompetence and the threat of a recall campaign. So maybe she should go easy on the “me have experience, you low community organizer person.”

Maybe she should have thought about this before attacking and belittling community organization to make her pittance of real experience look like she actually ran the country. The fact that she wouldn’t even be on that damn stage had it not been for the community organizers who organized the suffrage movement. But I guess that really isn’t all that important to a woman who is running for VP. Or the fact that women wouldn’t even be in the workforce had it not been for community organizers getting them together and raising hell. Remember that little thing called the feminist or women’s rights movement?

How about the fact that blacks would still be slaves if community organizers hadn’t pulled together to raise awareness of the evil of this institution? How about the fact that blacks wouldn’t even be allowed to chase the American dream as she is doing let alone come into the building to watch her jackass make a fool of herself insulting community organizers? But then again we know that the population of blacks is so low in Alaska she probably could care less if they were allowed into the hall to watch her slap their accomplishments in the face. She can stand at her podium grandstanding as if she is some worldly leader.

A nice little African proverb for her is that a single bracelet won’t jingle. They sit in their little convention and praise people like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. both of whom were those pitiful community organizers that they find so funny and sorry. It is interesting that before putting the speech together they didn’t bother to actually find out what a community organizer does and how they don’t collect money to help people. I guess to McCain and Palin the only time a person deserves their help is if they are getting paid or have a bunch of power behind it that they can abuse.

The facts are that community organizers are on the ground getting the things that these two fools fail to get done, done. And according to the community organization website this UNPAID job entails: Community organizing is a long-term approach where the people affected by an issue are supported in identifying problems and taking action to achieve solutions.

The organizer challenges those he or she works with to change the way things are—it is a means of achieving social change through collective action by changing the balance of power. The tactics and strategies employed by the organizer are similar to the processes of leadership including timing the issue, deliberate planning, getting the attention of the populace, framing the issue in terms of the desired solution, and shaping the terms of the decision-making process.

But if the Republicans had it their way they would have us believe that a community organizer is someone who sits on the stoop, drinking a forty oz. laughing and joking with the people as they pass by. Or maybe they just think it is what Sarah Palin did while in the PTA, sitting around shooting the breeze with the other parents. But to those of us, who know, perform these duties and rely on these people it is a lot more than some friendly person who just wants to sit and chat about your day and that of your kid or family.

The GOP got it way wrong on this one and I for one hope that this stupid statement comes back to bite them and her in their collective BUTT like a pitbull with or without lipstick.  And so I ask Sarah Palin and supporters, community organizers the world over have had to face life or death opposition to their positions, what life or death opposition have you faced?