Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin made history last night, as she addressed the RNC. In her speech, she (of the lifetime NRA membership) aimed barbed verbal ammunition at Barack Obama, though many reports indicated that she would not do so; so much for reciprocating his class-drenched gesture of reminding the press corps that he, too, was the child of a teen mother, and that they should back the muck off of Bristol Palin. I know, I get it– it’s the convention. It’s a pep rally, time to rile up the fans.
Palin displayed exquisite contempt while commenting on Obama’s past work as a “Community Organizer”; and yes, that’s exactly how she pronounced it, as if the words were too strangely shaped for her mouth, as if they should be chaperoned by quotes.
But, community Organizers do extraordinary things. If you don’t believe me, look here, at one of the most revered “Community Organizers”, ever:
From last night’s performance:
Before I became governor of the great state of Alaska, I was mayor of my hometown.
And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves.
I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities. I might add that in small towns, we don’t quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren’t listening.
We tend to prefer candidates who don’t talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco…
Politics isn’t just a game of clashing parties and competing interests.
The right reason is to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.[npr]
Well that sounds…positively…Gandhian.
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Thank you, Nikki, for inspiring this post.
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Update/nb: Please do keep in mind that I’m not a fangirl of anyone I mentioned– I don’t think Gandhi or Obama are divine, but I do respect both of them, for different reasons. Additionally, I am not comparing Obama to the most famous brown person, ever; I am trying to open a space for discussion about the phrase “Community Organizer”, since I was struck with how much disrespect it marinated in, last night.
Finally, it may be worth noting that I harbor a wee bit of ill-will towards a party I once partied with– my very name, when mispronounced in Malayalam, in an American way, means Elephant)– but unfortunately, no longer recognize.
Bad night for the Republicans. McCain’s speech was a dud. The Democrats had 4 intensely absorbing nights, the Republicans only one.
Cindy McCain gave a better speech than her husband. I watched her on CSPAN earlier today give a speech at a luncheon held in her honor. She is much better in small gatherings speaking without a teleprompter. I had no idea she was such an impressively authentic well spoken woman.
By the way, Cindy McCain’s great pride and joy at the selection of Sarah Palin in both speeches makes me wonder whether she played a major role in her selection.
Hi rob,
No problem — I just want to disclaim up front that these are my opinions on community organizing, but I do want to reemphasize and acknowledge that there IS an entire body of (academic) literature on community organizing across several fields, including Sociology, Social Welfare, and Public Policy.
I think it’s fine to think of community organizing as related to local politics, but it is often much bigger than the locality. I think the mention of MLK, Jr., above, as a community organizer is really on-point. It wasn’t simply that he worked with others to facilitate building “people power” for social change; he was able to bring people together, at great personal risk and safety, to effect long-lasting change. These people were folks who had been systematically disenfranchised (literally and figuratively) from the political process. Their success wasn’t spontaneous action; it happened through deliberate planning and mobilization, and it resulted in local-, state-, and nation-level policy change. Community organizers are the people who help facilitate that planning and mobilization.
I think the concept of a power “imbalance” is key in this model; we do not typically think of the “mobilization” of power-holders as a form of community organizing. Marginalized communities are often told that they are powerless — that their lack of wealth translates into a lack of meaning, worth, or purpose as citizens.
Community organizers are change-agents; they help catalyze, gather, and utilize the resources that already exist in marginalized communities to help people take ownership and empower themselves to make the change they [people] want to see. It’s only recently (relatively) that these positions have become full-time, professionalized positions, but historically organizers either were, or became, community leaders.
A community organizer is one who has specialised in the art of sucking at the teat of government welfare. If you, as a community organizer are so convinced at the rightness of your beliefs and actions then why don’t you go for private charity rather than lobby the government thereby forcing people to give money to causes with which they may have no truck?
P.S. Adolf Hitler was a community organizer. Jesus and Gandhi did not aspire for political office.
103 · HitlerWasACommunitOrganizer said
And a vegetarian! And a teetotaller! And a dog-owner! Kill them all!!
103 · HitlerWasACommunitOrganizer said
Ah, contempt explained!
So what about federally funded faith-based initiatives? Are you against those too?
105: I am against federally funded faith-based initiatives. I am also against state funded faith-based initiatives. Faith based initiatives should be paid for by private means. You know, all that separation of Religion and State thing…
104. Thanks for making my point about the absurdity of comparing Obama with Gandhi, Jesus, MLK and others who actually spend their entire lives, NOT running for office, but actually working for the community.
107 · HitlerWasAcommunityOrganizer said
i wasn’t making that point, but ok.
108. Well you may not have been making the point but you did stumble upon the correct point.
Obama = Community Organizer = Gandhi, Jesus, MLK etc makes just as much sense as Paul McCartney = Vegetarian = Hitler
i appreciate your kind encouragement, prof. herr hitler.
I third ChicagoDesiDiva and OttieSpottieDelicious! Obama served as a community organizer straight out of college; at that age/stage (given that it took her siz years to get her first degree) Palin was a beauty queen.
What I can’t figure out is why all the talking heads are comparing Palin to Obama when she was just picked for VP and he is running for POTUS. They will never debate!
80 · ak he did not just say that he is not a muslim – his ultra-defense about not being a muslim reflected his belief of this as a smear, which essentially reflects a belief that being a proper presidential candidate (or indeed, a good american) is incongruent with being a practising muslim.
I know we’re past this topic in terms of the comments, but I had to respond to this. I’m a Muslim and an American, and I deeply respect the rights of all religious and non-religious people in the country. Still, I would be very unhappy if someone started calling me a Christian on TV just because my name was “Mary.”
That doesn’t mean I don’t like Christians, or that I view Christianity as a smear. My indignation would be based upon the fact that someone is misrepresenting my identity and spreading things that are not true about me. I wasn’t offended by Obama’s statement that he wasn’t Muslim, just as I would not be offended by a statement of a Muslim, Jew or Hindu saying they weren’t Christian.
but that was my point – i didn;t take offense at him denying he is a muslim – he clearly does not practise it, so not only was this an innacurate comment, but also one which, given america’s recent history, was meant as an insult. my issue with obama stating over and over again that he was not a muslim was couched in terms that reflected that being called a muslim while running for office could never be a good thing.
Gandhi was a community organizer who completed his mission and retired into private life. He didn’t try to leverage his experience as a community organizer into a position as a head of state. He deferred that to others who he felt were more qualified. Interestingly enough, Palin also commented that Sen. Obama has written two memoirs yet has never authored any legislation of note. Giuliani discussed his dismal/ineffective voting record in the IL legislature. Celebrity Senator is a most apt description. He and Paris are both equally qualified as celebrity endorsers.
114 · Global Sanskrit said
which would be a devastating point if it was true.
111 ·Amrita: Obama served as a community organizer straight out of college; at that age/stage (given that it took her siz years to get her first degree) Palin was a beauty queen.
That is factually correct, absolutely. And you are also absolutely correct that this race isn’t supposed to be between her and Obama; it is supposed to be between him and McCain. So let me phrase it appropriately, At the age/stage when Obama began his journey of self-discovery between coke and madrasas, McCain was an Officer in the United States Navy fighting in a war for his country, a POW and a Medal of Honor winner. See how it sounds when it is put that way?
101 · Valmiki: Bad night for the Republicans. McCain’s speech was a dud. The Democrats had 4 intensely absorbing nights, the Republicans only one.
Yea, because God wanted the Democrats to win and sent a hurricane. And then he made the Republicans speak things that didn’t really appeal to those left of center.
But c’mon cheer up, it could be worse, it could’ve been an unathletic Indian person whose parents were Brahmins!
Jesus f@#king Christ. He was a lawyer, he was THE most powerful person in the Indian National Congress for decades, he used the brahmanical equivalent of dictatorial behavior by threatening to kill himself everytime his political positions were challenged; and had another of other flaws as a politician (See: no separate electorates for Dalits – poona pact; and how he managed to get Subhash Chandra Bose to resign from the Congress Presidency) and a human being.
If you’re going to invoke Gandhi, at least have a minimum of knowledge about him – he wasn’t f@#king
Mark PhelpsAquaman – he was a really really really good politician and as a result was and is an inspirational figure to many. He also did a lot of harm along with whatever good.Why don’t you go, tick by tick, over their respective policies and tell me which party you have more in common with (you’re not electing a King, you know). On the Republican side: severe government intrusion into people’s public lives, introduction of church values as bases for laws and policies; massive government spending usually for small segments of the population and through the military (see surplus–>deficit figures); a candidate that professes to know nothing about economics and whose economic advisor Phil Gramm lives in the debates of the early 1990s; and a chorus of people who sound more like Marie Antoinette and Herbert Hoover than people who have any realistic grasp on the American, let alone global economy.
In contrast, you have a Democratic party that, for better or worse, is also supporting tax cuts for everyone except the rich, has a stronger record of balancing the budget, a social base that is not trying to impose its values on the rest of the country, and a candidate that is smart, savvy, pragmatic, and nonideological.
But for some reason, you think McCain is better? If after considering all this your option is still McCain, I would argue that your philosophy is not “libertarian” but simply “pro-rich” or something along those lines. Because he sure as hell ain’t pro-market.
And I say this as someone who doesn’t particularly like the politics of either because I’m to the left of both – but I’m honest about it – I don’t think Obama’s going to solve all the problems, but I don’t think that McCain is going to solve ANY of them.
This, on the other hand, I agree with, despite the misunderstanding of Gandhi and the lack of historical information on Jesus. Obama is no Emma Goldman, Martin Luther King, or Malcolm X. At the same time, he isn’t John McCain or George Bush either. His career path is not abnormal these days, but in the 1980s, it was more of a departure from the norm, I would guess; for someone who eventually sought the presidency for a major party, it’s extraordinarily interesting. Al Gore, for example, was a journalist for a few years, and that in its own way is a form of service, but it’s not the same.
So it depends which standard you measure him by – the community organizer who left and went to law school and ran for office and ascended on individual mobility rather than working through his community for community power – or the presidential candidate who has a unique background and experiences in group based mobilization adn work and more experience with the day-to-day issues of hte poor and of power than almost any other candidate in recent history. Yeah, it’s only 2-3 years, but it’s potentially 2-3 formative years at a time when other people might be becoming DC staffers or running oil companies into the ground or f@#king up in the naval academy.
115, thank you for quoting other blog sites. A refresher for you is in order, http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obama_polishes_his_resume.html, and http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/o000167/votes/ are better choices. At least he believes in abstinence.
Sarah Palin is HOT.
There, I said it.
Al Sharpton is a community organizer.
re: global sanskrit’s link: http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/obama_polishes_his_resume.html
Their main point is to contest the technicality of saying “passed a bill” since:
For me, it is perfectly ok, in fact even better, if a senator ropes in others to collaborate with him. To me, a statement like the above is similar to telling a father he is overstating his claim on a child since he didn’t actually give birth. Come on.
Second, the link you give does not consider the entirety of Obama’s legislative record in either Illinois or the US Senate, rather it concerns itself with three statements from an ad aired around June.
Third, there is a disconnect in the site saying: Obama did not cosponsor one of the three bills, but that bill included provisions from bills he had sponsored earlier. This to me is an authorship technicality—if someone publishes something, and which is coopted by others later, you have to credit the original author, isn’t it?
Fourthly, the point that two of the three was in Illinois legislature and not US Senate—so what? Illinois is a pretty big and diverse state, and it is a representative microcosm of the country. It isn’t as if anyone claimed this was done in the US Senate (if it was, ok that needs to called out).
Finally, it is ridiculous to think every senator/congressman votes on every issue and to mock Obama’s record—which has been fairly diligent, contrary to what the republican machine will have you believe. Here is McCain: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/m000303/votes/ I dont see even one vote there.
McCain hasn’t voted on a single bill since 4/10, and has missed 61.xx% of votes in the current house. On the other hand, Obama has missed 45.xx% in the current house and has been voting on most of the non trivial bills even now. Dont be ridiculous and dont swallow everything your bosses tell you.
OK, Here is my Jesus the community organizer Tee Lets agree that Jesus was a community organizer before he became Messiah/Son of God…OK!
Honest question… what part of getting the country $400 billion into debt makes the GOP the party of fiscal responsibility? Remember, they controlled both the White House AND Congress for most of the decade so far.
And, Bill Clinton left a budget surplus behind when he left office.
By what standards are we judging fiscal responsibility?
I have no idea what is being discussed here because there are 130 long ass post’s here so forgive me if I rehash some points.
There was a very similar article about this written on CNN.com about other communtiy organizer’s like Cesar Chavez and how important they are in history. I just cant believe that the GOP machine thought they could go on this and not have people fire back at them. On the other hand didnt McCain vote against making Martin Luther King day a federal holiday? I guess they really do feel like that towards community organizer’s. At least they keep it real.
If Obama “leveraged” his experience as a community organizer into anything, it was Harvard Law school, considering that he did right out of college. If he’s running on any experience for the POTUS, its not his community organizing, but his time as a civil rights lawyer, constitutional law professor, and senator (both state and federal). It’s funny how the GOP never brings up his time as a law prof or civil rights attorney when they are smearing him; it’s much easier to go after what someone did right out of college than actually looking at the body of their work.
I hear F. Scott Fitzgeral was a copywriter right out of school. That must mean he never wrote anything besides ads, right?
A friend of mine quipped recently: “Jesus Christ was a community organizer; Pontius Pilate was a governor.”
128 · coconut said
That would make for a great bumper sticker! Love to see the religious-right’s reaction to that!
@ak, oops, sorry, my comments were directed at Zainab, not you! Sorry. Oh, and SM Intern no need to chastise me, I’ll be more careful in the future. 🙂
128 · coconut said
He was working for a Catholic charity. Doesn’t get more unamerican than that (depending on which Evangelical voter you talk to).
here in england people are saying palin is like margaret thatcher – looks harmless from the outside but very fierce inside. kind of like a steel fist in a velvet glove. thatcher said ‘there’s no such thing as society’ and she did a good job of removing almost the entire manufacturing industry here and in the process destroying the safety net and self respect of the working classes.
more shirts mlk, gandhi added to the shop here
132: Yeah if she was not there atleast Britain would have a stagnating and moribund manufacturing base. Atleast the working class would have a safety net and self respect. The consumers be damned.
125: One of the under-reported reasons for Clinton’s leaving behind a surplus was that during his Presidency, Congress was mostly under Republican rule. Divided government -> Less Government Interference -> Profit!!
117: I agree with you. But what you cannot deny is that he did not arrogate to himself the power of the state to force you to do anything against his will. Sure he would try to emotionally blackmail you but you were free to part ways with him. That is what Subhash Bose did in 1938. Was MK Gandhi a dick sometimes? Surely. But he did not coerce you to follow his programs. Would Barack Obama do that? Obviously. After all he wants the power to tax you (an example) as he wishes.
110: You are welcome. Anything else you would like to learn about?
128: Pontius Pilate is venerated as a saint by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, an Oriental Orthodox Church descended from the Coptic Orthodox Church.
BTW Pilate was a pretty decent chap but got overwhelmed by events. From the Catholic Encyclopaedia:
==========
Pilate is a type of the worldly man, knowing the right and anxious to do it so far as it can be done without personal sacrifice of any kind, but yielding easily to pressure from those whose interest it is that he should act otherwise. He would gladly have acquitted Christ, and even made serious efforts in that direction, but gave way at once when his own position was threatened.
Reminds me of a certain Presidential Candidate this year, who when his position was threatened reversed his position on wiretapping and public financing for the election 🙂
I guess McCain didn’t fully brief Palin:
Terra Sigillata: McCain calls young people to become community organizers
I find Palin offensive and frightening
11 · ptr_vivek said
yeah but Jesus was for all the people.
To the first poster:
I agree with you. I went to Zazzle and made one (though there is no picture, rather a list of famous organizers).
http://www.zazzle.com/famous_community_organizers_shirt-235775085332974722
50 · rob said
The hubris in this statement is staggering. On the one hand, you insist that government not spend your money to better somebody else’s life, on the other, you mock people who take time out of their life to actually work for disadvantaged members of society – those who, both by commission and neglect, have not had a fair share of the educational and economic advances available to the wealthier swaths of society.
Not for the moneylenders in the temple or the pharisees – Jesus (as depicted) had the rudiments of a power analyis 🙂
134 · HitlerWasACommunityOrganizer said
You need to read some Foucault dude. Or anyone who talks about the way that power works and how it can force you, coerce you, encourage you, give you the option of choice, allow you to do things to other people along the same lines, etc. – in multiple, multiple ways. On a desi blog (even if it’s an ABD blog), it’s a bit of a stretch to me to argue that well Obama has the state machinery and therefore will coerce you (Obama didn’t set up the tax system that forces us all to fund the Iraq and Afghanistan wars 😉 while Gandhi operated in a nationalist project that did’t have a state – but within the context of the project he was in – he used his mass base and tactics of threatened self-immolation and demands for deference to impose his will very much. It’s the reason why there aren’t separate electorates for Dalits, part of the reason why the Congress left was not more vigilant and active and in power, and other things. He suppressed strikes and peasant revolts in his own way.
So, getting away from great man theories of history, you can argue that he was simply a representative or powerful person subject to the needs of the upper class/upper caste base of Congress leadership, or you can point to his role in promoting those interests – it’s the same thing. It doesn’t mean he was a “bad” person – but that he opposed a couple of power structures (imperialism and industrialization) but definitely lent support of various kinds to many others (Hinduism, landlord dominance, factory-owner dominance).
Anyway, I don’t profess to be a Gandhi expert, but if we’re going to talk about him, we need to talk about him as a person, rather than as a mythologized figure. Just like with Obama – who is ALSO a politician and can be discussed and evaluated in the same way. But they’re not SO different from each other – politicians not at the bottom, not at the top, using social identifiers of the disempowered – that they can’t at least be compared, if not equated.
141 Dr AmNonymous said
Your last sentence goes to the crux of the matter. Can Obama and Gandhi be compared? Yes, since both are politicians. Similarly McCain and Obama can also be compared and for that matter any two politicians. My beef is with the meme which Obama fetishists are propagating that Obama = Community Organizer = Gandhi => Obama = Gandhi
142 · HitlerWasACommunityOrganizer said
No, people are taking umbrage at the idea that an occupation of community organizer invokes such derision and scorn.
143 · english said
While, ignoring the issue that it was in response to Obama’s campaign discounting Sarah Palin’s office and credentials…
or the
realitypossibility, that in Obama’s case, as for his contributions as a “community organizer” are indeed negligible and sparse.144 · RahulD said
or that in Obama’s case, his “community organizer”ly contributions are indeed negligible and sparse, thus warranting derision as a response.
145 · RahulD said
Reading is fundamental. It was the occupation of community organizer that was mocked, not Obama’s contributions in that role.
(And if the lion’s share of sarah palin’s experience can be compared favorably only to obama’s 3 year right-out-of-college job, well, I see a problem, and it’s not with the scorn-worthy community organizer gig).
142 · HitlerWasACommunityOrganizer said
Yeah, except I’m not doing that so why not respond to me? And your first point is wrong – sure they can be compared as politicians, but they can also be compared as mass mobilizers, as people who are attempting to mobilize particular factions, as people who are messaging in a populist way, and as people who are strategizing about how to deal with power rather than sitting in its lap and mocking those who do.
I have my criticisms of Obama, but he is far closer to Gandhi (both in some positive and some crucial negative senses) than McCain is. Give me a single instance of how McCain has mobilized groups of less powerful people in order to build their power (ideally for specific ends). That’s what community organizing is,in its broadest coherent sense (which is why it’s annoying on an analytical level for me, who has done community organizing, that everyone and their dad now says they were community organizers–but i let it slide for the sake of the election ;).
145 · RahulD said
Community organizing is hard and requires long term work over a great deal of time. Measuring the success or failure of a community organizer’s contributions is best left to those who understand the specifics of it. On the other hand, one can see the ways in which Obama’s experience might have benefited HIM – and how that would alter the way that he conducts policies. So it’s not the street cred argument i buy as much as that he benefited from it intellectually (as i did, for whatever little bit of good i did).
143 · english said
Word.
Yes, Rudy’s mocking — community organizer, what??? — makes this evident. Palin was a little subtler.