Gov. Palin, Let Me Define "Community Organizing" For You

In her debut speech at the Republican National Convention last night, Gov. Sarah Palin mocked Senator Obama's early work as a community organizer, saying, " I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

While I am glad we have a woman on the ticket for Vice President and admit she gave a powerful speech, I could not let this moment slip by without one clarification. Just what exactly is "community organizing" anyway?

Most people have never met a community organizer, or at least didn't know it if they did. It's easy to dismiss it as some "citified" job, something distant and amorphous and out-of-touch with reality. However, if people knew what community organizing was about, they might sing a different tune.

Community organizing is just that: the endeavor to organize a group or groups of people around a common goal, for their own good, to gain a voice in the halls of power. It involves meeting with people, listening to their concerns, helping them to join forces together and advocating for their interests. It's not as foreign as it might seem; anybody who has seen the movie "Norma Rae" could recall the union organizer who inspired Norma Rae to stand up to her bosses at the textile mill. "Norma Rae" was based a on true story, and the courage and persistence of the real Norma Rae is nothing to mock at.

We have a proud history of "community organization" in this country. That's what Dr. Martin Luther King was doing when he organized the members of the black community in Montgomery, Alabama, to walk to work instead of taking the bus. That's what Susan B. Anthony was doing when she organized the suffragettes to rally for woman's right to vote. I daresay that's what the Founding Fathers were doing when they organized the various immigrant groups against the British power that demanded taxes without representation, emboldening people to believe that a new country may be born and out of many people, one.

Gov. Palin, do you mock the work of Dr. King? Do you mock the work of Susan B. Anthony, your foremother, without whom you would not be voting let alone running for office? Do you mock the foundational belief of this nation that we, the people, own our government and therefore have a voice in it?

No, Gov. Palin, I am sure you do not mock any of those proud men and women in our history. But why, then, do you mock Senator Obama for believing in their principles and their dreams?

It's true, Obama did not accomplish anything so grand as racial equality or women's suffrage or founding a new nation. That much is obvious. His two main victories were "the expansion of a city summer-job program for South Side teenagers and the removal of asbestos from one of the area’s oldest housing projects" (and that's according to the National Review). Even so, you're going to knock him for trying?

You can criticize Obama in a lot of ways, several of them legitimate. You can argue against his policy proposals, and I would listen to what you have to say. You can call him a liberal, and I would offer no defense. But mock his work in Chicago as a community organizer and I will publicly denounce you: Either you are ignorant about what community organizing entails, or you are deliberately twisting the truth.

Readers, please take the time to investigate for yourself what exactly community organizing is and what Obama did for those years on the South Side of Chicago. Below are links to more information.

"Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City," chapter by Barack Obama in After Alinsky: Community Organizing in Illinois, published in 1990.
"On the Streets of Chicago, A Candidate Comes of Age," U.S. News & World Report (August 2007)
"How Community Organizing Shaped Obama's Politics," Wall Street Journal (March 2007)
"Obama's Community Roots," The Nation (April 2007)
"The Organizer," National Review (June 2008) - not full article unless you subscribe to the NR