Think Progress has an article about individuals who serve as leaders among community organizers. Conservatives like Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin are making fun of community organizers in an effort to try and diminish some of the early achievements of Sen. Barack Obama, who was on the ground working with real people. I wonder how comfortable Palin would be working with black people on the streets of Chicago ... without an army of Secret Service personnel? Obama was doing that ... he was helping real Americans make the best of tough situations and doing it when he could have walked out of Havard and got a high-paying job to make money or he could simply have jumped right into politics. He decided to devote time to helping real Americans ... not the richest two percent of people McCain and the Republicans want to protect from the tax man. Here are some responses of community organizers as compiled by Think Progress. Here is one: – Center for Community Change: When Sarah Palin demeaned community organizing, she didn't attack another candidate. She attacked an American tradition — one that has helped everyday Americans engage with the political process and make a difference in their lives and the lives of their neighbors. Here is another: USAction: These groups, and the millions of individuals they represent, are dismayed by the recent dismissal of their efforts in the form of political attacks. Community organizations have been at the heart of every major reform in modern history – from the Boston Tea Party to the civil rights movement for example, the quest for civil rights began when community organizers mobilized the disenfranchised." Community organizers are individuals like the ones who started the civil rights movement. They were black and white people who risked their lives to rally people to fight injustice that began with the organization of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the Selma-to-Montgomery March (that included Bloody Sunday) and numerous other marches for freedom. The civil rights movement might not have been important to Palin, Sen. John McCain (who originally voted against the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday and opposed other civil rights initiatives before flip flopping) and Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (who uses racist terms to describe Sen. Barack Obama), but it is to a lot of the rest of us. Her words mock the bravery of people like Dr. King, Rep. John Lewis, Ralph Abernathy, Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman and countless others I could name who, through community organization, did amazing things to improve the lives of real people and mold the United States of America into the great nation it is today.
Think Progress on community organizers striking back:http://thinkprogress.org/2008/09/04/organizers-respond-palin/
http://sandygholston.blogspot.com/
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